Where the Candle Still Burns
Lucien
She was sound asleep now, curled into the space where I had been just moments before. The sheets had tangled around her legs, twisted in a soft spiral, like the remnants of breath and warmth still held her. One arm folded beneath her cheek, the other draped loosely across the place where our hands had met last. Her hair fanned over the pillow in chaotic strands that caught what little light flickered through the curtains.
The angles of her face had softened while she slept. There was no tension. No guarded defiance. Just the bare truth of her—stripped of war, stripped of memory, stripped of pain.
I let my eyes linger on the curve of her shoulder where a faint mark from my mouth still rested like a claim that had not been spoken aloud. And gods, she w
