ERIS
"I'm fine," I said.
The lie tasted like copper. It was a thin, brittle thing that I threw between us like a barricade, hoping he wouldn't see the way my hands were vibrating against his forearms.
I wasn't fine.
I was a fraying tapestry held together by the singular, desperate hope that he would walk through the door, and now that he was here, the adrenaline was trickling out of me, leaving nothing but a vast, hollow exhaustion.
I looked at his face, really looked at it.
He was gaunt, his skin sallow under the layer of dust and dried blood, his eyes shadowed by the kind of hollow stare that only comes from seeing the underside of reality.
He had spent a month dismantling five provinces and then, by some miracle of stubbornness, crawled out of a void that shouldn't exist.
Deciding not to tell him everything right now was a mercy, though it felt like a cowardice.
