Hushed Willows black in the magic, beauty in the tragic

She remembered wondering, “What if the last time we danced is the last time we will ever dance?” — and now her fear was coming true in real time, and she crumpled beneath its weight.

Aditya did not hurt Coelacanth or frighten her as Komodo had, but now she fiercely wished he would. Oh, she would do anything to spare him the pain she saw in his eyes! — but she was the reason the pain was there at all, and she knew it. Swallowing hard, her cerulean eyes misting with unshed anguish, she shrank into herself and wadded up her tiny musculature in an insignificant knot of self-loathing. She loved his eyes, those limpid pools of burnished sungold, touched with a ruddier fire that made them uniquely beautiful — but found herself too cowardly and unworthy to hold his stare. Prematurely she broke away from the blistering eye contact, line of sight blurring with tears as she focused on the grass at her paws. The inkdark empath felt her own heart so keenly! — yet just as she had during the altercation with Komodo, she involuntarily opened herself to Aditya.

It was a tidal wave of broken hopes and bitter loss, a cacophony of grief that drummed in coursing aftershocks through her quaking body, and in its wake there was no music. No laughter. No chikni raat. For a long moment after Aditya spoke, his voice distant and clipped, Seelie didn’t move. Then, because she wanted to obey him if she could not love him the way he needed her to, she stole after him in a hangdog slink so downtrodden, her nose knocked against the rims of his pawprints.