Blackfeather Woods It was real and I repent

They don't deserve to find you.  She can't tell what he means and she scarcely has time to puzzle it together before he moves towards the wounds on her neck.  The fear escapes from wherever she'd beaten it down to. She freezes;

she thinks: this is a man who could unravel me, and
she thinks: this is a man who could kill me, and
she thinks: i'd let him.

The fear moves back down to allow something else to crawl up.  It tastes like autumn-turning-winter, crisp edges and heated silence.  It sounds like the rake of his tongue against her neck.  It's not the quick and ever-burning thing she feels for Raven (a bomb), but something slower (the fuse).

She is desperate to construct something where there is nothing.  Maybe if she closes her eyes she can pretend — at least in this moment — that everything's alright.

She wants to say: make sure they don't, then. and what scares her is that she's not sure if she'd be flirting with him — or with death.  

Instead, she lets him spin silk of her in silence, to unravel her wounds both mental and physical.  

She's in no place to barter.