Tristan Caine turned his eyes to her, the force of his gaze knocking the breath out of her lungs.
"You won't come to any harm tonight," he told her, the conviction in his voice hard. "Stay."
Before Morana could blink, much less digest the words, he was gone.
And Morana sat exactly where she had been sitting minutes ago, completely stumped.
Rain.
Drops beating against the glass in a musical, melancholic symphony. There was something about the sound of rain that sent pangs through her chest.
Morana lay curled on her side, listening to the sound of raindrops hitting the glass, the urge to feel them, to see them, overwhelming her.
She was all alone. In the room. In the apartment. In her life.
Swallowing, she got down from the bed in the darkened room, and slowly walked towards the door, her heart heavy in her chest for some reason. Opening the door, she looked out into the completely darkened living area and walked on quiet feet towards the glass wall that beckoned her on a level she hadn’t realized she had.
The faint light from outside filtered through the wall almost ethereally. She walked, closer and closer to the glass, seeing the raindrops splash against the glass and slither down.
Morana stopped a step away from the glass, watching her breath steam it slowly before it disappeared. The clouds hung heavy in the night sky, the lights of the city twinkling on the right, glittering like gems on a fabric of obsidian, the sea on her left for as far as she could see, cresting and falling with the storm.
Morana stood on the spot, drinking in the view, her throat tightening.
She had never seen rain like this. Never felt this freedom in her eyes. Her views from her window had ended in manicured lawns and high fences, beyond which nothing could be seen. She felt her hands rise of their own accord, the profound need in her heart so acute, for something she knew she could never have, for something she hadn't even known she'd needed.
Her hands hesitated an inch from the glass, her heart bleeding. She slowly pressed them down. The cool glass felt solid against her palms. She stood there for a long moment, aching, only a wall of glass between her and certain death. She watched the city in a way she'd never seen it, the city she had lived her entire life, the city that was still a stranger.
Her hands slid down the glass as she sat down on the floor right against it, cross-legged, and leaned forward, her breaths steaming the glass repeatedly.
Thunder crackled in the sky, a split of lightening bathing everything in brilliant white before disappearing. Droplets hit the glass in tandem, trying to break it like bullets, trying to reach her but unable to. She sat behind that wall, longing to feel those droplets on herself, longing to let them sear her, but unable to. And wasn't that her life. Longing for things she couldn't reach, things that tried to reach her and came up against a wall. A glass wall. Where she could see everything, know exactly what she was missing, drown in her awareness even as the glass couldn't break. Because just as it did now, breaking the glass meant death.
And lately, Morana wondered if it wouldn't be worth it.
Her lips trembled, her hands pressed against the glass, seeing the tears fall from the sky and slide down the walls in defeat, and felt one slip from the corner of her eye.
And felt him in the room.
She should have turned around and stood up. She knew she definitely shouldn't give him her back, should not leave herself vulnerable. But in that moment, she couldn't get herself to move her eyes from the view and her hands from the glass. She couldn't get herself to tense.
She felt tired. Exhausted deeper than her bones.
And the fact that he'd told her she wouldn't be harmed told her she wouldn't be. She'd seen enough liars in her life to recognize a man who wasn't. He'd made no secret of his hatred for her, and that, conversely, was the very thing that told her that for this moment, she could believe his word.
So, she didn't tense, didn't turn, just waited for him to leave.
The back of her neck pricked as he watched her, and she felt him move. She didn't know how she knew. He made absolutely no sound, his feet completely silent on the floor. But she knew he'd moved.
She sat there in silence and saw his feet in her periphery.
She didn't look up. He didn't look down. The silence continued.
Morana kept her eyes on the raindrops, her heart pounding as he folded his legs and sat down a foot away from her, his eyes looking out.
Morana glanced at him from the corner of her eye, seeing his unbuttoned shirt teasing a strip of flesh she'd seen earlier, his weight resting on his palms that rested on the floor as he leaned back on them.
She caught sight of a small scar and felt her heart ache. She'd never really given a thought, in all the injustice that happened to women, to what happened to men in their world. She knew that power and survival were the two ultimates but never wondered about what the price of it was. Were the scars on him a norm or an anomaly like he was? Were they the price of being that anomaly in a family that valued blood? How many had been inflicted by enemies? How many had come at the hands of the family? Was this the cost of him coming to where he was in their world? What kind of a toll did it take on men? Was that why most of them were so detached? Because that became the only way to deal with the pain? Was that what had happened to her father? Was he detached because that was how he'd coped all his life, to keep his power?
Questions lingered in her mind, along with the memory of the gashes she'd seen across the flesh of the man beside her. She might hate him, but she respected strength. And his body, she realized, was more than a weapon. It was a temple of strength. It was a keeper of tales – tales of his survival, of things she couldn't even fathom in this ugly, ugly world.