your touch brought forth an incandescent glow, tarnished but so grand
Flora grins at the back of Kaisel’s head, the expression blooming with mischief as he refuses to meet her gaze, his determined focus on the shrimp only making it more obvious that he’s heard her and is choosing survival over eye contact. She watches him like a flame watches dry kindling, the heat of her affection still simmering in her chest as she turns back toward Remi with a bounce in her step and a smile that glows from somewhere deep inside her.
"Yeah," she says lightly, her shoulder rising in an effortless shrug, the words delivered with all the innocent brightness of someone who absolutely knows more than she’s saying. "Definitely some good stuff." Whether she meant to leave it at that or continue the game she and Kaisel have been playing is rendered irrelevant, however, because before she can open her mouth again, Ronin’s voice cuts across the kitchen, and everything that was warm and gentle just moments ago turns sour on her tongue.
The words don’t register all at once. They hit her in fragments, the meaning lagging behind the sound, until it all arrives in one nauseating rush. Sticking it in our daughter. Her breath catches, not in embarrassment or girlish scandal, but in the kind of stunned disbelief that feels like being dunked in cold water without warning, the air sucked out of her lungs before she even has time to react. She doesn’t laugh, she doesn’t blink, she just goes completely still, caught somewhere between being deeply insulted and completely humiliated, the burn of it crawling up the back of her neck and settling behind her eyes before she finds her voice.
"What the fuck, Ronin." The words come low and steady, every syllable laced with sharp-edged disbelief rather than volume, her gaze narrowing as she turns to face him fully. Her eyes, so often bright and teasing, now shine with something colder and far more precise, her voice no longer wrapped in affection or playfulness but in something that borders on betrayal.
"Yeah," she says lightly, her shoulder rising in an effortless shrug, the words delivered with all the innocent brightness of someone who absolutely knows more than she’s saying. "Definitely some good stuff." Whether she meant to leave it at that or continue the game she and Kaisel have been playing is rendered irrelevant, however, because before she can open her mouth again, Ronin’s voice cuts across the kitchen, and everything that was warm and gentle just moments ago turns sour on her tongue.
The words don’t register all at once. They hit her in fragments, the meaning lagging behind the sound, until it all arrives in one nauseating rush. Sticking it in our daughter. Her breath catches, not in embarrassment or girlish scandal, but in the kind of stunned disbelief that feels like being dunked in cold water without warning, the air sucked out of her lungs before she even has time to react. She doesn’t laugh, she doesn’t blink, she just goes completely still, caught somewhere between being deeply insulted and completely humiliated, the burn of it crawling up the back of her neck and settling behind her eyes before she finds her voice.
"What the fuck, Ronin." The words come low and steady, every syllable laced with sharp-edged disbelief rather than volume, her gaze narrowing as she turns to face him fully. Her eyes, so often bright and teasing, now shine with something colder and far more precise, her voice no longer wrapped in affection or playfulness but in something that borders on betrayal.
