#fairefic stuff

"Being in love." She said it as if that were natural, obvious; as if he were a fool not to have known, though it was hardly a question characteristic of her usual self. 

He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "I miss something," he said, "though I know not how to name it."

"Should someone love you--" she began, and trailed off, her head tilting as she thought.

He laughed. "I think no one should have the heart to love me," he told her.

At that she stopped, and turned to face him, looking up at him in genuine distress. For a moment she held his gaze, and then stepped forward, rising on her toes to kiss him.

"I have," said she. "I have heart enough for both of us."

He stared at her, surprised, bewildered. She'd been drinking spiced wine, and he could taste it on her breath, on his lips now, sweet and strong and heady. Slowly he smiled, shaking his head. "Too much drink has made you soft, Evelyn," he told her, resting his hand on her arm.

She laughed. "No - only foolish. Soft, I was already."

"And yet you cannot be so foolish if you know yourself to be a fool," he said.

"You must think me a fool regardless," she said. "And you are not mistaken. To be certain, you have hardly earned my favor."

He narrowed his eyes. "Hardly earned--"

"And yet you have it," she went on. "And my heart, also." It seemed that once she had started speaking she could no longer stop, for the next words came tumbling from her lips in a rush. "And perhaps I am a fool, perhaps I was a fool ever to let myself love you - howe'er, I love you, and fool or not I find myself tonight to have the courage to tell you as much, and - and, if you should allow it, sir, I should like to kiss you some more."

It was therefore alone that she crept down the hall to the master bedchamber and stepped into the room.

There she found it colder still, and when she tried to take a breath she found that she could scarcely manage it.

She raised her head and saw them.

There were two, shadows with inhuman faces, with eyes dark as night, each in the far corners. They paid her no mind, but had eyes only for Sir Robert, whose breath alone signified that he lived still.

For a long moment, she was frozen, and watched as the shapes slunk closer to him ere they each darted away in turn.

One of them came close enough to stretch its long fingers towards his face and hold its hand not a breath away from his mouth as if to smother him.

He stared at her. Her face was pale - howe'er, she had not the ashen color, nor the flush of red in her cheeks; she was not sick but merely frightened. "What is the matter?" he asked, wary.

She would not meet his eyes but looked at the wall behind him. "They watch me," she said. "I see them, at the farthest reaches of my sight, lurking in the shadows about the house. I feel them turn their evil eyes upon me when I pass them - I will do it no more."

He could not tear his eyes from her. "You have lost your mind," he said, mouth agape. 

"Hast thou not felt them also?" she said, her voice suddenly a shriek. Still she would not meet his gaze. She was shaking. "Hast thou noticed not their presence? The way they chill the wind and choke the air? Thou canst see them not, this I know, but thou must have some sense of them!"

He had felt the cold, had felt his chest tighten when he passed through the door, though he had paid it no mind. Yet she was right. He had known it not but he had sensed a presence there.

enough broken parts to make a whole heart a robert/evelyn fanmix

beggar in the morning the barr brothers • run for your life the fray • islands sara bareilles • our hell emily haines and the soft skeleton • say something a great big world • demons imagine dragons • let her go passenger • cannonball damien rice • run snow patrol • collide howie day

She expected anger, at the least irritation, but if he was annoyed he showed it not. He sighed instead and shook his head, pulling her close again, his fingers pulling back her damp curls. “Thou wert half-dead when I found thee,” he said. There was no hard edge in his voice, no force in his hands. She slumped and leaned against him, aching and exhausted and selfishly savoring the rare moment of gentleness.