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@emily-waldorf

Oh goodness, you’re also conspiring to break my heart 😭😭 I love how Qatar is finally starting to act like a good big brother! I’m so proud of both of them!

I’m asking you all to forgive me in advance 😭

Chantara

He was here. I’d known he’d be here, but it still startled me.

My aquamarine gaze followed him as he crossed the heaps of what looked like tarnished gold. He didn’t look armed.

I should have been feeling a lot more than I was, but that was hardly an unfamiliar sensation.

He didn’t come directly at me, that was like him. A faint smile touched my lips. Always circling around, avoiding, deflecting. He really hadn’t changed at all.

The smile faded. Yes, he had. He’d never be the boy I loved again. He was a traitor, and he’d always been a coward. I should have known. Perhaps I had.

As soon as he was within reach, I flung myself at him, not in an attack but in an embrace.

I flung my arms around his neck, as though I could bring him back to me with that alone. The chains rattled and jerked me back, but I didn’t let that stop me.

I felt him flinching, trying to recoil then finally giving up. Of course, I’d almost forgotten. He hated being touched now, and I knew why. In an easy, artless motion that looked like affection to everyone else, I let my hand slip down to his shoulder, then his back, trailing along the paths already drawn out for me. This time I really felt him shrink away.

I didn’t smile, but warmth spread through me. My head was still buried in his shoulder. Somehow, for no logical reason, I expected him to smell like fire and ash. He never had before, but perhaps I’d expected our ruined relationship to have taken tangible form.

It hadn’t. He smelled like fields, like the outside. That wasn’t like him at all. I was so used to the smell of poison lingering around him, to the sharpness of chemicals drawn into his clothes.

He hadn’t tried to attack me yet. Of course he hadn’t. Aydin didn’t attack. He recoiled. Flinched. Dodged. He always had before.

It would have been so much easier to kick him in the shins, but this was ever so much more satisfying. It was neither logical nor straightforward, but that was my one failing. I’d always made up for it.

I considered trying to kiss him, just because I could, but then decided that I would rather die than do that again. I would stoop low but not that low.

I pulled away, slowly, regretfully. My hand flicked past his right side, checking for a dagger. I’d already seen he didn’t wear a sword. There was none, which made me internally curse myself. I needed a weapon and I didn’t want him to have one, but I was sure he did. He was horribly suspicious, as all cowards were.

“I missed you–” I whispered.

I did. I missed him like a knife missed its target. I wished my hatred had left as deep a cut on him as it had on me.

He didn’t look at me, avoiding my gaze like a kicked dog. I shifted so I was back in his line of view. The message was obvious.

His eyes caught mine, just for an instant. Muddy was the only descriptor I could stick to them now. There was a time when I had a hundred others.

He fumbled at the chains, doing it with his left hand for some reason. He was righthanded, wasn’t he? I couldn’t believe I didn’t remember.

I leaned back against the wall and let him do it, surveying him meanwhile. His hair had grown out in thick curls. I’d never even known his hair was curly, it had always been so short. It didn’t suit him. He had a much darker tan than he’d ever had while I had known him, and the hand that unfastened my chains was calloused from work, not a sword.

I’d never thought he could do a day’s work in his life. He’d grown up in plenty, unlike me. He’d never had to work.

I smiled and quirked an eyebrow.

“Well, didn’t you miss me?” I asked, playfully.

I expected him not to answer, expected him to venture a hesitant affirmative, filled with bittersweet falseness.

Instead, he shot me a glance, sharper than I’d expected.

“No.”

My smile didn’t fade. It grew broader.

“Then you should have just left me to die, shouldn’t you?”

He sighed, then answered,

“I’m not like you.”

“I know you’re not,” I answered, disdain tinting my words.

I’m not a coward and a traitor.

We both understood the words, though neither of us had spoken them.

“You’ve changed,” I said, lightly.

“That’s what you said last time,” he replied, tossing aside the first chain. I instantly checked whether I had weapons. The castle had taken them, unfortunately. No matter. I didn’t need them.

His voice was harsher than it ever had been to me. Odd.

“You’ve always been yourself,” he continued, his voice quiter now. “I should have seen it before.”

“Was I?”

If I aimed well I could knee him in the face but it wouldn’t hurt enough. I needed to dig deeper than that.

“You haven’t changed, not at your core,” I said, reassuringly. I saw him flinch and kept going. I’d hit a sore spot and I wasn’t letting go.

“You’re still the same boy who threw that first knife and got sick for a week afterward,” I said, in the same tone I would have used to recall a happy childhood memory.

He froze, just long enough that I saw how much that had hurt.

“Do you still cry after assignments?” he asked, so quietly I could barely hear it.

I grinned.

“That passed after you betrayed me,” I whispered back, my voice sweet as honey.

“Thought it would,” he said, without stopping this time. He’d always been selfish that way, like he was the only person in the world who mattered.

I would find some way to make him feel what I felt. Apprarently, he still didn’t understand.

______

I’m out of time, so tear your hearts out over that in the meantime 😀 Oh gosh I h a t e her.