Page 64 of Falling in Love with A Tiny Bat

Before I’ve finished the sour meal, Zahra gasps, breathing heavy as she jolts upright in bed.

Her eyes jet toward me, while I’m dropping a squirming dark emotion of guilt into my mouth.

Pale, her face twists with horror. She casts a look toward Ash, finds him well, and clasps her shaking hands together in her sheets. Beneath the blankets, a drop of hatred writhes, and she sharply intakes a breath as she scrambles out of bed, stumbling away from it, toward me. “Xios, what…”

The hate clings to her, like sludge. She battles against it until I stop her, grip her arm, peel it off, and drop it—screaming—down my throat.

The silence in the wake of its existence is…well…chilling.

So, I smile. “Pleasant dreams, snowflake?”

Unease flashes in her eye as she cups a hand to her mouth, puts distance between us, and squeezes her eyes closed.

Even without the free rein slumber allows, the same emotions that have been birthing fae congeal in the air around her—overwhelming and powerful.

“What…just happened?” she whispers. “The…the voices.Thosethings are what have been behind the voices I’ve heard my entire life?”

“It would seem so.” I lock my hands behind my back to keep myself from reeling her into my arms. She is shaking. Watching her, I murmur, “I have never seen so many collected like this before. Are you all right? What, pray tell, prompted such a display?”

She ignores my question, tossing a trembling hand my direction instead. “A-andyou? You just…atethem?”

“Before they gain any true consciousness, they are little morethan the physical embodiment of whatever core origin creates them. Like the dream eaters, who can feed on fears, I can feed on many abstracts.”

“You can eat writhing monster babies, but you have a problem withmushrooms?” she blurts, voice low.

My nose wrinkles. “Mushroomshave a slimy texture.Emotionsgo down like air, and I am quite almost used to the sensation of breath.”

Fragile, shallow laughs leave her as she inches back toward her bed, peels the sheets away, and searches the bedding. Upon finding nothing, she slumps onto the edge and wraps herself in a hug.

I step forward, cautious. “Angel…would you like to talk about it?”

Her head rocks slowly, side to side. “I don’t…know what there is to say.” Her eyes close. “I had a rough childhood, Xios. Sometimes I get nightmares about…it.”

“It?”

“All of it. Bits and pieces. Unresolved situations. Suppressed emotions.” Threading a hand into the long half of her hair, she grips the dark roots. “My…mother has some very condemning beliefs about the world. When I was younger, they were impossible and suffocating. Now that I’m old enough to see her as a person, suffering and real just like everyone else, I understand that her misery and hopelessness spills out everywhere because that’s all she has inside. I was drowning on the pain she couldn’t keep in. Nothing I said helped. She was too proud to accept that anyone else knew better than her.” Zahra manages a labored breath as a tear falls down her cheek to hang suspended on her chin. “Religion was her preferred weapon, because God was an absolute force. She’d teach me that He never changes, while her rules always did to match her moods in the moment. If I ever questioned any inconsistencies, she wasonly doing her best. I think—” Zahra’s voice cracks and I can no longer stop myself.

I sit beside her, hesitate a moment, then wrap her in my arms.

Pressing her face to my chest, she grips my shirt. “I think she hated herself. But maybe I’m just trying to make so much agony make some kind of sense.”

I settle my cheek against the top of her head. Feel the prickle of her cropped hair against my jaw, and…find it tolerable despite my aversion to unexpected and unfamiliar sensations.

“We’re all broken, Xios. But sometimes, when we break, we cut other people. I pray every single day…that I might someday be able to forgive her and let go of all this resentment. But…I don’t know. It’s sohard.”

I pull my fingers through the long strands of her hair and watch Ash in the shadows of her bedroom. “I…don’t mind resentment.”

“What?” she whispers against my chest.

“You’re welcome to give it to me, if you don’t want it anymore.” I press a kiss to her hair. “I’ll swallow it for you.”

Lifting her face, she finds my eyes. Hers are starlit, sparkling with unshed tears around damp lashes.

My heart can barely handle it while I’m holding her soft, supple figure in my arms. She…is truly the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on—human and fae alike. Her ethereal beauty takes all the starry host itself prisoner.

Her lips part, and I feel the moment she closes herself off, several seconds before she pushes away from me in favor of coddling herself. “I can’t do that. These are my feelings to work through. Just giving them to you isn’t going to change anything.”

It, quite literally, will. But if she isn’t ready, if these feelings of hers that are destroying her from the inside out have yet to untangle from other precious parts of her, I can’t very well tearthem free without hurting something important.

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