Flora
Flora snorts, the sound entirely unladylike and all the more satisfying for it, eyes wide with mock innocence as she leans in a fraction closer, her smile tugging sly at the corner of her lips. "And how do you know I haven’t set one already?" she murmurs, saccharine and threatening all at once, the kind of sugar that sticks to your teeth just before it cuts your tongue.
His frog-skincare comment earns a flutter of lashes and a dramatic trill of, "Thank you," as if she’s some pampered princess at a press line and not a girl with sand clinging to her ankles and poisonous daggers at her hip. She keeps her focus fixed on the joke, determined not to think about the way his hand settles so easily at her waist, anchoring her like something that has always belonged. The feel of him—of this—is unnervingly familiar, like muscle memory stitched with new silk, soft where it shouldn’t be, dizzying where it absolutely should.
As he spins her, the smile still touches her lips as she turns, but it begins to hollow even before her eyes leave his. There's something about the words—You went home with me every night—that catch like a burr beneath her ribs. She doesn’t know if it’s the implication, the poetry, or the lie threaded so sweetly between the syllables, but by the time she’s folded back into his arms, the blush has drained from her cheeks and her smile wilts into something quieter. Something ache-soft and devastated.
"Kai…" Her voice is hushed, barely more than breath against the music.
She doesn’t mean to let her hurt reappear like this, doesn’t mean to fold the light between them back into shadow. But the cold that seeps beneath her skin is sudden and total, like the plunge into a tidepool she hadn’t seen coming. He can’t possibly mean it, not after everything. Not after the words he'd written, the sweetness he'd offered to someone else, the careful kind of love he’d tried to build with Caly. If she really had gone home with him every night, then why had he put so much effort into kindling something new so immediately with someone else? The only reason she could think was that while she'd always been loud in Kaisel's world, he'd only thought of her as a fantasy rather than something real. Something worth waiting or trying for.
She swallows hard. Her feet slow, steps faltering as if the rhythm has shifted beneath her, music no longer a melody but a tide she doesn’t trust. Her lips part like she wants to say something—needs to—but nothing comes. Every phrase splinters before it can take shape. No feels too sharp, too final. But yes would be a lie and a mistake all at once.
Her gaze lifts to his, to the copper warmth of his eyes, and for a breath, she searches for a version of this where she doesn’t have to be the one to ruin it, but long as she looks, she can't seem to; not when the hurt still lives between the cracks. So, a gentle shake of her head is all she manages as she whispers, "I can't."
His frog-skincare comment earns a flutter of lashes and a dramatic trill of, "Thank you," as if she’s some pampered princess at a press line and not a girl with sand clinging to her ankles and poisonous daggers at her hip. She keeps her focus fixed on the joke, determined not to think about the way his hand settles so easily at her waist, anchoring her like something that has always belonged. The feel of him—of this—is unnervingly familiar, like muscle memory stitched with new silk, soft where it shouldn’t be, dizzying where it absolutely should.
As he spins her, the smile still touches her lips as she turns, but it begins to hollow even before her eyes leave his. There's something about the words—You went home with me every night—that catch like a burr beneath her ribs. She doesn’t know if it’s the implication, the poetry, or the lie threaded so sweetly between the syllables, but by the time she’s folded back into his arms, the blush has drained from her cheeks and her smile wilts into something quieter. Something ache-soft and devastated.
"Kai…" Her voice is hushed, barely more than breath against the music.
She doesn’t mean to let her hurt reappear like this, doesn’t mean to fold the light between them back into shadow. But the cold that seeps beneath her skin is sudden and total, like the plunge into a tidepool she hadn’t seen coming. He can’t possibly mean it, not after everything. Not after the words he'd written, the sweetness he'd offered to someone else, the careful kind of love he’d tried to build with Caly. If she really had gone home with him every night, then why had he put so much effort into kindling something new so immediately with someone else? The only reason she could think was that while she'd always been loud in Kaisel's world, he'd only thought of her as a fantasy rather than something real. Something worth waiting or trying for.
She swallows hard. Her feet slow, steps faltering as if the rhythm has shifted beneath her, music no longer a melody but a tide she doesn’t trust. Her lips part like she wants to say something—needs to—but nothing comes. Every phrase splinters before it can take shape. No feels too sharp, too final. But yes would be a lie and a mistake all at once.
Her gaze lifts to his, to the copper warmth of his eyes, and for a breath, she searches for a version of this where she doesn’t have to be the one to ruin it, but long as she looks, she can't seem to; not when the hurt still lives between the cracks. So, a gentle shake of her head is all she manages as she whispers, "I can't."
I hope you're sweating the bigger stuff,
finding some peace in an honest love
Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in
finding some peace in an honest love
Hope you stop when you've had enough & throw the towel in
Code stolen from Queen Sky
