Page 87 of Florescentia

The sarcastic tinge made my mouth sour.

He propped his elbows on his knees, as if waiting for my interrogation to be over. But I was far from finished.

“Why are you really here?”

“I told you—”

“Not everything,” I said shakily. “My father warned against the likes of you. It scared him enough to put sigils on the chair he’s practically bound to out of fear. You aren’t telling me something, and it’s scared him enough that even his ill mind remembers the threat.”

“Is that so?” His voice was muffled as he rubbed his face with his hands.

“You weren’t supposed to come through,” I said. “I shouldn’t have let you through.”

Altair stood, stretching his neck to the side as he stepped forward.

I backed away.

“I just needed you to let me through.”

“You took advantage. My father was keeping you away, wasn’t he?”

“I waited a long time.”

He backed me into the bookcase, my head hitting the wood.

“Why me!” I yelled in his face, pushing my hands into his chest. I couldn’t stop the nip at the back of my throat, but the tears had run out by now, or had been stripped from the salt. “You’re lying to me.”

“Why would I do such a thing?”

“Because you’re here to kill me,” I said.

He didn’t reply, but he seemed truly and utterly worn. The lack of eye contact wasn’t soothing my worries.

I shoved him again, and he did take a stumble back. “Why are you here? To steal souls? Eat your fill? Why?”

“To die,” he said simply.

The words took a moment to process.

To die?

He ran a hand through his hair, unable to really look at me. His eyes darted away whenever they even came close to a glimpse. “You assume because I am not a person, that I am not capable of understanding the very human feelings that I consume.”

When he finally looked at me, it seemed his eyes had gotten red. Out of anger or pain, I couldn’t determine, but his expression looked real.

“I’ve known loneliness since before your earth formed from dust. I’ve known the pain of a thousand lives not unlike your own. I have been an observer for so long, watching things begin and end, that I can only dream of my turn—to live and to not.”

“If you understand so well,” I began, stepping forward, but I was shaking; quakes erupted through my body, from my abdomen down to my fingers and throat, “then why wouldn’t you let me go?” I croaked.

His eyes searched mine; his breathing picked up. Heat radiated from him: I could feel it in the space between us. His fingers by his side twitched. Would he grab me? Choke me? Had he just saved me out of his own selfish need to consume? I could only expect as much from a greedy, hungry—

“Because you changed my mind,” he said—and suddenly his hands were holding my face, and his shoulders shrugged forward for our lips to meet again.

I was still. His lips pressed so hard into mine, I thought maybe he might cut my lip with his teeth. But then my eyes closed, my mind swam away from whatever he’d just said, and my lips moved against his.

He walked me backward into the bookshelf, a couple of books toppling to the side and knocking a bookend to the floor. His fingers touched my face, one entangling in my hair. We barely had moments to breathe—every second our lips parted might be our reason to stop ourselves, so they never stopped.

The warmth of his skin, the tangibility of his touch. He was here now. There was no illusion, a completely lucid body. His lips wouldn’t stop; even the taste of his tongue just made me want it everywhere.