[P] so long as you don't mind a little dying;

[Marisol]

I will follow you down
until the sound of my voice will haunt you

Tension builds inside Marisol’s body. A knot of thorns rises and falls in tandem with her breath; it scrapes the soft spot just between two ribs and prickles there with faint pain. Her throat is dead-plant, desert-sand dry, no matter how much she swallows or attempts to filter the grit between her teeth, no matter how deep she breathes, and it makes the cool wetness of the air coming off the sea feel like a personal mocking. Take it, says the world. The thing you need is right here—take it. And she can’t.

Has she become softer or sharper? Warmer or colder? It is impossible to decide between the urge to curl her mouth into a snarl or a somber frown, impossible to decide which is stronger—the relief that he is alive, alive, alive—the bitter, deeply hurtful disappointment that he has no excuse for being thought dead. 

And that confusion only grows deeper and more painful when she sees the shine of tears in his eyes. If this is an expression she’s ever seen him wear before, it must have only been once or twice. His gaze shimmers like moonlight on water; and when Marisol realizes that it is the patina of tears making his dark eyes glint so bright, she is almost sick. Nauseated. The muscles wound into tense knots. She feels ripped in half at the spine, between wanting to wipe those tears away and wishing they would fall faster.

Doesn’t he deserve it? Shouldn’t he suffer? Anselm’s voice breaks suddenly into her head, and for the first time she can remember it is tinged with appalment. Who made you judge and jury, Marisol?

Since when are you a god?

Some disgruntled part of her wants to argue that she always has been; at least that’s what the evidence points to. And it might be that Anselm feels the thought anyway, an acid feeling that sinks through the length of their bond and attempts to dissolve it. But Marisol holds her tongue. Her oldest talent.

I want—says Asterion. But his voice fades out before he can finish the sentence, his speech made into static by the buzzing of the Marisol’s blood.

I want, he says again. And again it passes through her without any impact whatsoever.

He wants and wants and wants, these things that Marisol cannot process or acknowledge, drowned as she is by the weight of her awkward, nearly childish rage. Perhaps the most frightening part is that she looks unscathed. Irritated, certainly, but also cold and stone-stoic. Less outwardly furious than disgusted. She runs her tongue around her teeth, tastes salt and blood and bile.

And a little laugh escapes, a single rough breath, disappointed to the extent of sounding sick. “Then how can I be mad?” she responds bluntly. “We all want things. That is the nature of living. I only assumed you were smart enough to understand that the nature of living is not the same as its responsibilities.”

Her mouth settles into a dull line.

“I gave you too much credit.” And then, acridly, tight with bitter mocking: “Forgive me.”

“Speaking.”

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