Getting Attention

[Raffe]

Raffe sat on the edge of the bed, frowning. This was a gift he didn’t want, a power he realised he recoiled from the simple thought of. It seemed like an antithesis to his very nature by the way Nox warred with it, though he knew there were other factors involved there. Something that would devour, though. God. The conflict wrote all over his expression, gaze arrowed down to his own knee as he tried to listen to the words. Christian and Ana stoked thoughts he’d rather not linger on, and it lodged like pain in his chest, the consideration of what he might have been able to do with such power back then. Impossible thoughts, of course; he’d been a kid. But logic didn’t care for the painful stir of feeling.

He pinched his eyes. Pushed the same hand over his head. “Right,” he said, quietly.

For the first time he was aware of the disturbance to the air when Nox channeled, like a vice around his ribs. The heart within beat fiercely in protest. He’d felt it at the cabaret too, he realised, the night he’d still been caught in the heat of the fading fever. Raffe had blamed the foreboding squeeze of wrongness on being ill at the time, then just dismissed it every time since. Or found another sound explanation.

He closed his eyes eventually, though he felt anything but calm inside. The hands in his lap fought tightening into fists. “I only have to be able to do this once, right? To be safe from it?” He tried to steady his breathing, but even that stung with failure.