Isabelle

“We do things we have to do.” Fiske broke the thin silence between us. “If he hadn’t jumped in, you would have died.” He paused. “If I hadn’t taken you that night in Aurvanger, that Riki would have killed you.”
I stood to face him. “I know.”
“If I hadn’t put the arrow into your shoulder, someone else would have put one in your heart. If I hadn’t taken you as a dýr, you’d be in one of those other burned villages on the mountain.”
“I know,” I said again.
“I would do it again,” he said. “All of it.”
― Adrienne Young, Sky in the Deep

“The room quieted, the space between us sucking everything into it. His eyes dropped down to my mouth and the burning in my chest ran into the rest of my body. It found every dark, hidden place and lit it on fire.
I tried to breathe, but it wouldn’t come. I was underwater, trapped beneath the frozen lake. And as soon as he moved, it broke loose and the sound of my breath rang in my ears so loud that every thought ran like a retreating army. The heat of him hit me just before his lips touched mine and I froze, trying to feel it. That stinging, throbbing pulse beneath my skin.
I lifted my hands slowly, opening my eyes to look at him. My fingertips touched the lines on the sides of his face and he pulled his mouth from mine, looking back at me like he wasn’t sure I was still there.
His breath touched me.
Somewhere I didn’t know I could feel.
Somewhere I didn’t know existed.
“Fiske.” I said his name in a voice that wasn’t mine and it hung between us in the silence.
He pressed his lips together. “What?”
I stood at the threshold of the thought. The thought of Fiske that had been buried alive in the back of my mind. I looked over the edge of it, peering down into the darkness. It called to me. It screamed my name.
And I jumped.”
― Adrienne Young, Sky in the Deep