Dragoncrest Cliffs you got a boy like him, a man like me

kismet intervened and answered the unspoken thought that hung unhinged between them. val stepped back as if struck by a fatal blow. sobeille tracked the anguish as it made his features its home.

it would be so easy.

not now, instructed a voice. was that voice her own, or someone else’s?

the intensity in her posture slackened. she shifted her gaze from val, as if awoken from a reverie. she licked her lips, appeasing the snarling of her own tangled emotions more than the ruination of val’s.

she said nothing else. he, like all the men in sapphique, would never be spared her true empathy. sobeille turned from the cliff edge where val’s soul nearly joined those of the graves beneath her feet — wondering after the faint voice she’d heard that did not speak again.