I have loved so hard

that it broke my heart—

“I’m lead Thief now.” The smallest crinkling in the skin around his eyes belied the frown he kept from covering his face as she spoke the words. A weight, either already there and growing heavier or just now becoming extant, stealthily began to weight in the bottom of his massive barrel. When he had first laid eyes upon his Rexanna, at the Threshold and later at the shore, theirs had been a connection of candor, sincerity, and honesty.

Well.. perhaps no ‘honesty.’ Since Rexanna had pledged to be his while still being held as Caleb’s sex slave. And perhaps no ‘candor.’ Since he had withheld the fact that his initial attraction to Rexanna had been because of her resemblance to Mara, his dead love.

But there had been sincerity. He had meant every word, every facial expression, every feeling experienced around her. The depth of some had, in hindsight, alarmed him. Too passionate, too rushed, too much. But it had been sincere. Until now, until he spoke the words, “Lead Thief? Congratulations,” on a tongue that was suddenly re-gilded with the ease of lies in his past life. His inner beast shivered in glee at its sudden usefulness while his mind scrambled, trying to catch up with the events that were unfolding. The weight in his barrel was grown— an omen that he was trying to work out…

But it was difficult, despite all transpiring, in the face of her skin, her scent, her beauty. Despite being pushed to mount another woman— one of his soldiers, no less— and reawakening his demons with a fervor he still had yet to fully comprehend; despite all of this, he was still captured by the gilded princess before him. Her words, a siren’s song, slipped and wove his mind into a fogged remnant of a King’s head. Even her tone, which further leadened this amorphous burden in his barrel, did not elucidate his brain just yet.

Yet there was a weight in her apology, a weight that he felt as it slipped into his ears. There was so much to apologize for: Caleb, Nyx, the battles, the babes that weren’t his (did Rexanna know? He needed to tell her). When had their bond become filled with more apologies than affection? More pain than passion?

At some point his gaze had slid up from the earth, drifting over her body as she spoke ominous words of heavy consequences that a mind clawed and scrambled to process their deeper meanings. There was an undercurrent to this conversations— as all meaningful conversations are wont to have— that spoke the truth. Their words were just fillers, phrases to carry idle and insignificant colloquialisms. The undercurrent of their tones, the ebb and flow of sentiments— that is where the true substance of these crucial conversations exists. And the mind, the poor solid organ, struggles and scrambles to grasp and understand such fleeting and indefinite truths.

The weight grew heavier.

“It’s something we can either take or leave.” “I don’t think I could ever leave you, Rex,” the words, soft and deep, were pushed out of his mouth by the heaviness in his barrel. But they were candid, sincere, and honest words. Even if he wanted to leave her, as painful as these encounters were becoming, her memory was going to haunt him. Just as Mara’s and Faxr’s.

Finally his eyes left their gaze at the meeting of her delicate jaw and slender neck, slipping to her own, cerulean gaze. The eyes of a lover, of a liar. Of a princess, of a Thief. They were eyes that had known loss as poignant as his own; but they were also eyes that were weighed with deceptions as black as the liner around them. “Take it as you will.” Something shuttered through his gaze, something dark and hard. “We’ve done enough to hurt each other,” the low words came gruffly, almost unwillingly, from his throat, “That is something I will take from from this.”

He paused, no longer able to ignore the solid weight in his barrel that suddenly made the Elephant want to drop. But he did not. He stood, the burden mercifully silencing his demons. “I will also take your beauty, your light, and your tenderness. These are things I hope you recognize in yourself, Rexanna, for they made me a better man while around you,” the low voice was rough as he paused, taking a deep breath, “But I will not take your love. For you must give that to someone who holds your heart and I—” he swallowed, jaw clenching as he looked over her shoulder, no longer able to hold her eyes, “—I am not that man.”

Silence. No bells, no gifts. No peace.