You Can't Run From The Dark

{Part 39}

~Dessa~

As Dessa started drifting to sleep, listening to Zaire reading beside her, his words suddenly halted as he glanced down at her with an amused expression. Dessa squinted up at him, trying to shake off the lull, and poked at his arm playfully.

"Don't you ever sleep?"

Zaire rolled his eyes, and Dessa's heart thumped in response. She felt uneasy about how comfortable the evening had become after their discussion, because it was far too surreal. A part of her expected the walls to crumble any minute - surely, this feeling wasn't meant to last. But as they sidled next to each other in the bed, and he started reading to her by candlelight, she gradually relaxed more and more. Seeing him roll his eyes at her was as endearing as it was unnerving. 

"I rest . . . sometimes," Zaire shrugged slightly as he answered her. "But no, I don't sleep."

Dessa tried not to pout at that realization. She'd half-hoped that she would eventually see this magnificent creature in slumber with his entrancing eyes closed, and his lips parted as his breathing slowed.

"That disappoints you?" Zaire wondered out loud, with a tilt of his head. 

 It also meant that he didn't dream, and wasn't that something to be envious of? As someone who had been plagued by nightmares, she almost wished that she had been born as a Fae, a creature that didn't need to eat, didn't need to sleep, didn't dream. How unfortunate that she was born in a mortal vessel. 

Blushing, Dessa stammered, pondering if she could lie by denying it. 

"I, um . . . I guess so."

"Do you feel envy, because you wish that you didn't have to sleep?" Zaire murmured, after a moment of contemplation. 

Damn it, stop tasting my stupid feelings.

"It seems like my life would have been easier if I was like you," Dessa sighed, and her shadow swirled slightly around her arm, as if to remind her that she wasn't as mortal as she used to be. 

Zaire snapped the thick book shut abruptly, and Dessa flinched. "If you were Fae, there would have been very little chance of you being my mate."

She hurried to place her hand over his, but struggled to find the words to take back what she had said. She hadn't meant to upset him. 

"I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking," Dessa mumbled, her brows furrowing.

"I suppose that you would prefer that you weren't fated to complete me," Zaire's gaze was fixed on her hand, and the flickering candlelight played over his sharp features.

Dessa wasn't sure how to answer that. Would  she have traded all her suffering for an easier life? Did she really  wish that their lives weren't destined to intertwine? The alternative reality was something that she couldn't really imagine. As murky as her view of the future was, rearranging the past into something more favorable seemed wrong. Dessa had always felt undeserving of a life without hardship. She had known since she was a little girl that things would never be simple, that things would never be easy. Suddenly, a jab of irritation struck her between the ribs. 

"You felt that way," Dessa muttered, pulling her hand away and sitting upright. "Didn't you?"

Zaire's responding scowl wiped away the hurt in his expression.