“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands.”
When his lips touch her forehad it shocks him how badly he aches, bone-deep and ragged, as if he is coming apart altogether.
If Michael cares at all about queens or gods or their countries he has forgotten it. If he cares about anything at all that is not himself and Moira and the night he touched her face like he knew her, it does not matter now. Growth often does not happen all at once -- sometimes it takes root in the dead of fall and hits a person behind their teeth like a fist on the precipice of winter.
He is trying not to look hopeful when she raises her eyes again--by which I mean is he trying not to look at her at all, just grimacing around the sting of alcohol in his throat, praying that this is the one that does him in, blurs him until he has become a comfortable fog in his own body. Everything is too sharp and too bright (especially her) and he thinks he will die if his tolerance does not let its hold on him slip.
Of course, he may actually die if he sees her in any softer light, either--the way it glances off her cheekbone and the lids of her eyes, but that's altogether another problem.
I want to go to the ocean, she says into the sudden hush of the tavern, full of the scent of mulled cider and wine. He is still trying not to look hopeful when she continues, the same smoky voice he has heard all night but with an undercurrent of desperation that rolls around in his stomach with his own. He is trying so hard not to look hopeful that he stares, for a moment, the blue of his eyes so dark in the tangle of his mane.
And then a smile breaks across his face like a flood, pooling in every corner.
"Of course," he says. It does not feel as heavy and when he promises Isra yes, yes, anything you ask, yes. It does not feel as heavy as Denocte holding its breath. IT feels as soft as the light on her eyelids and the skin his lips had touched.
He aches. He aches so bad he feels it in his throat, a lump he has to swallow around.
The door swings open before Mihchael, who stretches one leg out to catch it before it closes again. "Whatever you ask of me."
@
