Alix and Magalie would have been in the Greatwood, if not for her,
the way she hears fault where he stops short of ascribing it only because it's what she would do, has done, couldn't help. Less a condemnation than an acute familiarity with the guilt twisting his gut, a terrible place that she knows well. How she'd avoided falling into it, that night in Halamshiral, riding the high of her success with people who had known her sister better than she did. How easy she knows it is to be felled by, if looked at directly.
(She's never known of a certainty if Annegret had wanted her there or only taken satisfaction in holding her away from her father, afraid that if she had left her side she wouldn't be sent for— dutiful but not selfless, desperate to find love in the absence of its expression.)
“When did you stop talking about them?” she asks, quiet, sliding her fingers against his and leaving their hands there, too loosely connected to jostle his joints but close enough to make the gesture plainly purposeful.
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Alix and Magalie would have been in the Greatwood, if not for her,
the way she hears fault where he stops short of ascribing it only because it's what she would do, has done, couldn't help. Less a condemnation than an acute familiarity with the guilt twisting his gut, a terrible place that she knows well. How she'd avoided falling into it, that night in Halamshiral, riding the high of her success with people who had known her sister better than she did. How easy she knows it is to be felled by, if looked at directly.
(She's never known of a certainty if Annegret had wanted her there or only taken satisfaction in holding her away from her father, afraid that if she had left her side she wouldn't be sent for— dutiful but not selfless, desperate to find love in the absence of its expression.)
“When did you stop talking about them?” she asks, quiet, sliding her fingers against his and leaving their hands there, too loosely connected to jostle his joints but close enough to make the gesture plainly purposeful.