Save Who You Can Save.

She still smells of amber and night shade, sticking like a sickly sweat to the air all around. This mill is far too small to keep up this act. This act that I do not know every inch of her. That I do not know the meaning of every soft snore, every lip curling smirk, every glimmer on her eyes, how every inch of her tastes under the coat of my tongue. 

Yet she bound herself to him. To this bumbling idiot of a man who couldn’t protect her even if he wanted to, least of all from herself.

Eloin growled softly to himself as he looked back out to the mist filled land around them. He would do it for him. He lied when he threw the child her way- swearing he was done. It didn’t surprise him this little life she’d made. It was so close to what they’d almost had before it happened. 

He’d never forget her wails and screams the day their baby girl died. Did the professor even know? Doubtful. How could he even comprehend how her hands had crushed into the ground in that forest in Neverwinter and unleashed death so rampant and devastating that he had to pry them out of the soil and into his skin, sending him so close to death himself that he could still feel the chill under his skin today. 

He turned his gaze to look back at Nora, her hands wrapped around the girl, clutching her close as she slept peacefully. He envied that touch. The last touch he received being that clutch of death. 

Although that wasn’t true now. His hand flexed where she’d placed her palm against his fingers. Her body still fitting in the nooks of his own. Nora. Nora. Nora. He took in a selfish deep breath picking out the scent of her from below him, her poisoned blood watering his mouth from where he perched.  

“It’s YOUR fault! Your Damp blood’s cursed us!” 

He could still hear her cry as she clutched at her bloody skirts. Keeping silent, knowing that actually the opposite was true. He didn’t know what entity’s sickness she held in her own blood, but he could smell how vile and coagulated it left her. He could see the blight course through her when she destroyed. He didn’t think it would matter. He too was encased within darkness. And yet…