BETWEEN DEATH AND DESIRE
Do not do this.
The light climbs to my lips.
I open my mouth, and even now — even with his voice breaking apart in front of me, even with everything in me that loves him screaming to stop — I do not fully know which words are about to come out of it.
The old language rises up through my throat like something that has always lived there, coiled and waiting, patient as the forest itself, for five long years.
"Elara, no—"
The first word leaves my mouth before I can stop it. Foreign. Heavy. Terribly, perfectly familiar, like a song I forgot I knew the words to.