marked me like a bloodstain
A sigh ghosts from her lips, not heavy enough to fog the air, but steeped in quiet exhaustion all the same. Kai is right, of course. Dahlia is dead, and the Family is splintering—but knowing a monster is gone isn’t the same as feeling safe in the woods it once haunted. There are still nights when Flora wakes with her heartbeat pounding so loud it drowns the silence, still mornings where her fingers tremble as she fumbles to braid her hair, still too many places in her body that carry the memory of claws. So she doesn’t argue. She just lets the water slip higher along her hips, lets the echo of Kaisel’s certainty wash over her like a tide she wants to believe in.
She doesn’t turn when he stills, but she feels it; a shift in the rhythm behind her, a hesitation that prickles across the nape of her neck like a breeze curling through a door left ajar. Her arms tighten instinctively around her knees, and for the first time since stepping into the bath, she’s seized by a flicker of self-consciousness so sharp it startles her. Not just embarrassment, not the vain kind that worries about smudged eyeliner or hair flattened by steam—something deeper. More aching. An old, brittle fear that he might look at her now and flinch. That the smooth skin he once touched with reverence has been replaced with something grotesque and undesirable.
The cloth finds her ribs with a tenderness that almost undoes her on the heels of such thoughts, and she tilts her head just enough to catch him out of the corner of her eye, her cheek resting soft against her knees. The motion of the cloth is gentle, but it forces the scar tissue to shift, to stretch ever so slightly, and she can’t quite stifle the whimper that escapes her. It’s a small, wounded sound, the kind someone might make when touched too softly in a place that only remembers pain. Still, she doesn’t pull away.
Talking about Enzo is infinitely easier than thinking about her scars, if only because it’s a wound she’s been living with for long enough that the edges aren’t raw anymore, just deep. The truth spills with a kind of measured grace, well-practised and weathered by time. But as Kaisel speaks, she knows—knows without needing to look—that the full weight of her confession has landed in him like a stone. Her chest tightens, knowing it doesn’t matter how gently she’s tried to offer the truth; some things bruise no matter how they’re held. And maybe Kaisel will realize that about Flora too; the full cruelty of what her love can be. That loving someone so fiercely doesn’t make the damage any less sharp. That deciding something with her heart doesn’t make the fallout any less destructive. Kaisel, who thought he wanted to be hurt by her like it was some grand romance, a blaze worth burning for, maybe now he knows better. Maybe now he'll see that being in her orbit isn’t like basking in sunlight, but like standing too close to a hurricane. There’s nothing poetic about the stones flung from her wind. They just hurt.
Twisting as much as her back will allow, Flora reaches behind her and finds his hand with hers, her fingers sliding between his. "Yeah," she murmurs, "I’d be a different person." Her thumb traces the edge of his knuckle. "But I’d give up everything. I'd deserve to lose it all. I don’t deserve a single good thing that came from his death, not when it was my fault." She doesn’t say it like a martyr, doesn’t try to make it sound noble. It just is. A truth that’s been sitting in her chest like salt in an open wound for years. She was the one who pushed Enzo to the warfront. She was the one who thought they could handle it. She was the one who lived.
Unable to keep the position she was in without tugging at the scars across her ribs, Flora shifts with a little hiss of discomfort and leans carefully to the side, bracing against the edge of the tub. It puts her face near Kai's, close enough that her breath could brush his lips if she weren't breathing so shallowly, and when she reaches out, her palm is wet but warm, fingers curving gently against his cheek. Her thumb drags along the hinge of his jaw. Her voice, when it returns, is a whisper full of seafoam and grief, but no less decisive for it. "I’d do the same for you," she breathes. "Even if I wasn't the reason you were gone, I'd find a way to bring you back."
She doesn’t turn when he stills, but she feels it; a shift in the rhythm behind her, a hesitation that prickles across the nape of her neck like a breeze curling through a door left ajar. Her arms tighten instinctively around her knees, and for the first time since stepping into the bath, she’s seized by a flicker of self-consciousness so sharp it startles her. Not just embarrassment, not the vain kind that worries about smudged eyeliner or hair flattened by steam—something deeper. More aching. An old, brittle fear that he might look at her now and flinch. That the smooth skin he once touched with reverence has been replaced with something grotesque and undesirable.
The cloth finds her ribs with a tenderness that almost undoes her on the heels of such thoughts, and she tilts her head just enough to catch him out of the corner of her eye, her cheek resting soft against her knees. The motion of the cloth is gentle, but it forces the scar tissue to shift, to stretch ever so slightly, and she can’t quite stifle the whimper that escapes her. It’s a small, wounded sound, the kind someone might make when touched too softly in a place that only remembers pain. Still, she doesn’t pull away.
Talking about Enzo is infinitely easier than thinking about her scars, if only because it’s a wound she’s been living with for long enough that the edges aren’t raw anymore, just deep. The truth spills with a kind of measured grace, well-practised and weathered by time. But as Kaisel speaks, she knows—knows without needing to look—that the full weight of her confession has landed in him like a stone. Her chest tightens, knowing it doesn’t matter how gently she’s tried to offer the truth; some things bruise no matter how they’re held. And maybe Kaisel will realize that about Flora too; the full cruelty of what her love can be. That loving someone so fiercely doesn’t make the damage any less sharp. That deciding something with her heart doesn’t make the fallout any less destructive. Kaisel, who thought he wanted to be hurt by her like it was some grand romance, a blaze worth burning for, maybe now he knows better. Maybe now he'll see that being in her orbit isn’t like basking in sunlight, but like standing too close to a hurricane. There’s nothing poetic about the stones flung from her wind. They just hurt.
Twisting as much as her back will allow, Flora reaches behind her and finds his hand with hers, her fingers sliding between his. "Yeah," she murmurs, "I’d be a different person." Her thumb traces the edge of his knuckle. "But I’d give up everything. I'd deserve to lose it all. I don’t deserve a single good thing that came from his death, not when it was my fault." She doesn’t say it like a martyr, doesn’t try to make it sound noble. It just is. A truth that’s been sitting in her chest like salt in an open wound for years. She was the one who pushed Enzo to the warfront. She was the one who thought they could handle it. She was the one who lived.
Unable to keep the position she was in without tugging at the scars across her ribs, Flora shifts with a little hiss of discomfort and leans carefully to the side, bracing against the edge of the tub. It puts her face near Kai's, close enough that her breath could brush his lips if she weren't breathing so shallowly, and when she reaches out, her palm is wet but warm, fingers curving gently against his cheek. Her thumb drags along the hinge of his jaw. Her voice, when it returns, is a whisper full of seafoam and grief, but no less decisive for it. "I’d do the same for you," she breathes. "Even if I wasn't the reason you were gone, I'd find a way to bring you back."
