His dark voice trails down her spine, lighting a path of desire that renders her breathless. "If only I were in a position of no consequence."
Alia's breath wavers when the pad of his thumb slowly glides across her bottom lip.
"Then I could give in...
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"The marks humans leave are too often scars." - John Green
•
Alia continued to hold Valen whilst he cried. Her fingers gently brushed through his hair, calming him whilst her heart jolted with fury. For a while, she glared at the ceiling and imagined the ways she'd slit the throats and cut out the hearts of the beings responsible for his tears. But the immortal Gods are untouchable — bound to the lands of another world. So she knew her fantasies were just that:
Fantasies.
But it was the only thing she could do to keep herself from screaming at them until her throat ached and bled. If she was stronger, if she was anything like them, she'd make them pay for doing this to Valen. For tormenting him until his soul was a remnant of what he once was. For making him feel forgotten and lost in a world that feared him.
"Whose death are you plotting?" Valen whispers, a weak smile tugging at his lips. Alia closes her eyes, taking in the sound of his voice that she missed so dearly. "I can feel the anger within your touch, and I can hear it inside every beat of your heart." His hands slip underneath her t-shirt — his t-shirt — to splay his fingers against her warm skin. But the smile quickly fades, a deep sigh leaving him as he slowly regains his breath. "Even now, all I want to do is take it away. I want to calm you as you've calmed me, but I know my actions warrant anything but your serenity."
Alia's heart trembles, warming at the care he has for her. "I wish for the death of the Gods," she whispers. "I want them to suffer for what they've done to you, and I want to make them bleed for sending that thing to you." Her hand moves to caress his wet cheek, resulting in him relaxing further into her touch whilst his harrowed gaze remains on the wall. For a while, he doesn't respond to her, and Alia wonders if she's said something to upset him.
"Before I fell unconscious," Valen murmurs, catching Alia's attention, "I thought I was in a dream of trickery."
Alia's movements falter as she frowns. She remembers him thinking she was inside his head as if she was a figment of his troubled imagination. She remembers the pain in his eyes and the terrible contemplations of what her presence could mean for him.
"From the moment I escaped Evropí, every slumber has been plagued by months of forgotten memories. I would spend hours recording them in my journals, following the reversed timeline that my mind revealed to me. But when I slept next to you, the memories didn't come. When I awoke and saw you, I couldn't comprehend that I was awake. I thought my mind wanted to torment me and use you to punish me instead. I thought it conjured your image to taunt me, to make you shed my blood just as Evropí did. But when you looked at me with that look in your eyes, I began to fear something else entirely." He pauses, voice wavering. "I thought my mind would make me a witness to your torture. I thought it would make me watch you bleed instead of me, and I don't... I know I wouldn't have been able to bear it."
