Page 19 of Aïdes the Unseen
I turned to him, caught off guard.
He met my eyes, gentle and sure. “She chose this place. Made it hers. That’s what matters.”
That was the moment I realized a truth so quietly devastating, it wrenched my heart:he doesn’t ask to be chosen. Not because he didn’t want to be, but because he didn’t believe he could be.
So I stretched—not physically, not yet, but with something deeper. A tether, invisible and warm, reaching across the inches between us.
“You could stay,” I said, voice hushed as wind in reeds.
His breath caught. I’d surprised him. Then, just as gently, he asked, “And what would I become here?”
I turned, facing him fully. The rain had stopped, but his hair still glistened with it, dark and gleaming. His face was quiet stone, but his eyes—his eyes were asking for so much more than I dared name.
“You wouldn’t become,” I said. “You’dbe. Isn’t that enough?”
His gaze searched mine, a man setting out for a shoreline he never thought he’d reach. For one long moment, he said nothing.
Then just before his mouth could shape a reply?—
I felt it.
A pull at the edge of my spine. A shift in the light. A tension in the air that belonged only toher.
Demeter.
My mother.
She had felt the thread. Perhaps not the full weave of what had passed between us, but enough. Too much.
I retreated a step. Of course, he noticed, though he didn’t ask.
He only said, voice lower than before, “I should go.”
Lost Mysteries help me?—
I didn’t want him to leave. Not yet.
“Not like this,” I whispered. “Please.”
He hesitated. Then, slowly, almost reluctantly, he reached out. Not to grasp—but to trace a curl of hair that had fallen across my shoulder.
His finger stilled a breath above it. Never touching, but hovering right there on the edge of wonder. My heart raced even as I held my breath almost desperate for the contact.
Then he dropped his hand.
“I’ll find you again,” he said. “If you want me to.”
I nodded. The words wouldn't come. Not yet.
So, I gave him something else instead.
I leaned forward and pressed my hand to his chest, over his heart. “I want you to remember what it feels like,” I said, “when someone looks at you and doesn’t flinch.”
He stared at me, and in his eyes, I saw it all:
The garden.
The daffodils.
