Chapter 19: Love Me/Leave Me Be || Hael

I hadn't meant to tell him. 

And I hadn't. Directly stated it. 

But I had given him a clue, and it had been ample enough for him to put the pieces together. Even though I'd been so needy for his eyes to change for me before, I'd pulled away when I heard the wheels in his brain turning, terrified I would have been caught on a gear and ground to dust by the calamitous emotions he harbored for me now. 

Surely, he was disappointed. 

Disgusted. With me. 

Just earlier, he had claimed he'd noticed something good in me. He'd unknowingly been blinded by his own light and mistaken it for mine. The good he'd thought he'd seen was just a fond memory of who I used to be. But even as a boy, I hadn't ever been…good. Just innocent. And young. And naïve. And incapable of influencing my circumstances. Of owning fate. 

What Reyin had seen in me had been a mere projection of the good in himself.