Chapter 13: THE MARKET
316 Words
The market town was a cacophony of sound and life. Merchants shouted prices. Children darted through crowds. The air was thick with roasted meat, sweat, and incense.
For Elara, it was overwhelming. Her sensitivity to emotion was growing. It felt like having no skin, exposed to every thought around her.
She clutched her head as a wave of loneliness, greed, and hunger crashed over her. Her knees buckled.
Kael reacted instantly. He caught her by the waist and pulled her into the shadowed mouth of an alley, pressing her against the wall.
“Elara, focus,” he hissed.
She gasped. His emotions hit her like a storm, protective and violent, mixed with a consuming hunger for her.
“It is too loud,” she choked. “I cannot block you. You are everywhere. I cannot tell where I end and you begin.”
He cupped her face. “Then use me. I am your anchor. Push everything else into me. Let me be the wall.”
Elara closed her eyes and focused on him. His heartbeat. His touch. His presence. She pushed the noise into the background.
Slowly, the roar faded.
“It worked,” she whispered.
They stood trembling. The silence between them felt raw and dangerous.
Kael stepped back. “We should go. I do not trust myself to keep my hands off you much longer.”
Elara held his wrists. “Kael.”
“Yes?”
“Nothing,” she whispered. Then she released him. “Go.”
They walked through the market in tense silence. Kael walked just behind her, his hand hovering near her back, never touching.
The space between them felt alive, charged with pressure that neither of them could escape.
"Tell me something," he murmured.
She swallowed hard. "What?"
"If this ends the way we're both thinking..."
His gaze locked o
nto hers.
"...who's going to survive it?”
- Writer
