"You can lie, Mauja," she was saying, eyes flashing as she looked up at him. And you can pretend to know the truth he wanted to spit back at her as his eyes gave in to dark anger, and his ears slicked back. Was she so hell-bent on living up to her self-made prophecy that she would do her best to buck off anyone who even attempted to be nice to her?
She didn't have to make things as hard for herself as she was doing. You always had a choice, and she was choosing to go the hard way.
He couldn't respect her self-pity when she did that.
"I've been told differences make us strong, Mauja."
It almost felt like a threat—was she saying she was stronger, because her fire could melt his ice? Mauja's flashing eyes narrowed, cold welling up from the depths of his impatience. He'd spent all of tonight trying, but it had come to naught. Fallen apart like a sand castle dried in the sun. Like everything.
"And you can lie to yourself and warp the world to fit your picture of the lonely, unwanted, unloved Aurelia!" he snapped at her, tail lashing once against his hocks. He wished it were storming, that the gale was roaring and the wind there to whip into his soul and whistle through his bones—to match the festering, simmering fury rising under his cold, stoic skin. "Are you so set on being some sort of dramatic story of desolate heartache and heartbreak that you can't accept anything that's proving the opposite? Because then you're just doing all of this to yourself, and you've only got yourself to blame." His crisp voice cut through the still night air too easily, a lick of a frost-edged silver blade.
"You'll be a lot happier if you just cut the damn bo ho I'm so alone and unliked crap, and open your eyes to the fucking truth."
That there's at least one idiot in this world who is trying to help you.
But it's hard to help someone when you need help yourself, too.
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