Guys this is over 5K words I'm going insane...

Anyways. In which Sophie is raised with the Black Swan and Keefe is raised with the Neverseen. Enemies to lovers speedrun because I got BORED and the wordcount got TOO HIGH. Also, they're soulmates.

Fancy summary: The first time she saw him, she decided to hate him. The first time he saw her, he decided to love her. As simple as that.

Soulmates work in strange ways.

Sharing pain, sharing love. Sharing pain until you share love. Sharing love and pain until you can't tell the difference anymore.

Soulmates know each other by their pain. By their blood. By their bruises and breaks and twists and swells.

It works like this:

One is injured, and the other feels the pain.

One is healed, and they feel that, too.

Until they make skin-to-skin contact. And then when one is happy, the other feels the joy.

As simple as that.

...

The first time she saw him, she decided to hate him.

It was a decision, you see, because her first instinct was to love him, and that wouldn't do at all (for reasons related to why she was seeing him at all. you know, on a battlefield).

So as soon as she realized that actually, he had freckles on his cheeks and nose, and there was a dimple on his right cheek and not his left, and he had the smooth and long fingers of a musician or perhaps an artist— she told herself to hate him.

And she hates him now, because it's become easier with time, once she saw the bloody things he did with his musician artist fingers and once he stopped smiling so there was no dimple to see anymore and now that he's older and his freckles have faded. It's easier to hate who he's become rather than who he was.

So she does. Out of habit. Out of choice. Out of cruel smirks and poison words and daggers raised to throats that can't be slit because the guilt would be too much, she hates him.

And he hates her back.

As simple as that.

...

The first time he saw her, he decided to love her.

It was a decision, see, because his first instinct was to hate her, and while that would have been ideal (for reasons related to why he was seeing her at all. you know, on a battlefield), he had too much hate in his heart to add to it.

So he told himself as soon as he realized that her family loved her, that she had people she trusted, that she was more powerful than him so of course they loved her, she was good enough for them and she was perfect in every possible way and he couldn't be, would never be— he told himself to love her.

As simple as that.

And so he loves her now, now that her eyes have become chasms, now that she has bloodied her hands and become less them and more him and now that she knows how to glare at him and wear her hair in a high ponytail and fail and fail and fail. It's easier to love her when she's stepped off her pedestal onto a battlefield, smiling at him over her barbed dagger instead of from the sky with her angel wings.

So he does, he loves her with the jagged shards of his heart and the sharpened pieces of his mind, with the fire in his eyes that matches hers and the icy calm of his heart that she holds. How can he hate her anymore? Now that she's just like him? 

With this, he loves her.

And she hates him in return.

Of course she does.

...

Sophie is never alone.

There's almost always at least one Black Swan member hurrying by her to a task, telling her about a plan, training her or being trained by her, leafing through classified documents, or fighting beside her. She has a roommate in her treehouse that is always there because her parents don't let her do anything to help, and she has too many responsibilities to take many breaks.

But it's fine.

She's fine.

At least she isn't lonely.

She has her friends: The Heks' are in the Black Swan, so Stina shares her room. Forkle is there for reports and occasional telepathy training, as well as their weekly check-ins. Juline is there when she needs a hug and Livvy is there when she needs a laugh and Tiergan is there when she needs someone to talk to who won't ask too many questions.

She has Calla and Flori and Lady Cadence—when she's in a good mood—and she has so many people around her at all times, drowning her and suffocating her, forcing their words into her ears and their touch into her skin.

Sometimes she wants to curl up into a ball on the ground. Place her hands over her ears. Squeeze her eyes shut so tightly she sees colors in her dark eyelids, so tightly it hurts, so tightly they'll stick and she won't have to open them again.

But she can't.

She's the Moonlark.

Always important, always accessible, always available.

She wonders if Lodestar is so busy all the time, so much it feels like his brain will explode if he doesn't find a quiet corner and sit down and wrap his arms around his legs and rest his chin on his knees and breathe, god she can never breathe. Sometimes it's like her mouth is always being used for speaking and screaming and crying, like her blood is boiling and her soul is shriveling instead of living.

She wonders if he feels the same way.

She wonders if he thinks about her, too.

...

Keefe is always alone.

The Neverseen are reclusive. They stay in their rooms with their cloaks and hoods and shadows and wind, and he stays in his. He has his friends, people like Ruy and Alvar who tolerate his kid self hanging around and butting in, and he has his enemies, people like Umber and Gethen who have never taken to him.

They think he's too young for this. Too inexperienced. Too spoiled by Gisela and Fintan. Too immature.

Maybe they're right.

The worst of them is Vespera, because she thinks they're the same. Empath and empath, one too numb and one too full of feeling, cold and warm. She thinks if he goes to battle enough, he'll learn to go numb too. So she keeps on sending him out and waiting for him to come back empty. A husk.

He doesn't want to give her that satisfaction. Numbness terrifies him.

So he avoids them. And they avoid him. And they work that way, there's no other way they can work.

But it's okay. 

He's okay.

He's lonely, but it's better than being with them.

Sometimes he wants to run into the middle of the Lost Cities. Open his mouth and scream as loudly as he can, wait to see who answers his call. Maybe it'll be her. Moonlark.

She'll descend from the sky on her moonlark wings, her angel wings, her wax wings that reach to embrace the sun and don't know they'll melt if they get too close. She'll descend on him and fall, and fall, and fall, and tumble into his arms.

Will he catch her? Will he kill her?

He's not entirely sure.

He wonders if Moonlark is lonely like he is. If she gets to be alone, if she gets to have friends instead of allies, if she can open her mouth and someone other than herself will be there to answer any of her questions. He wonders if people laugh with her instead of at her. If she has inside jokes and private smiles that only a few people get to see.

He'd like to learn that secret smile. He'd like to trace it with his fingers and see how her lips bend and curve and part. He'd like to hear her laugh, study it, inspect it, learn to love it.

He wonders if she thinks about him, too.

He doubts it.

...

Sophie wakes with a headache.

It's not like the ones she usually gets when she's overworking her telepathy or reading too much small print or hasn't slept in too long. It's more like the ones from training when she falls and smacks her head on a corner, or when Blur accidentally whacked her skull with a wooden training sword, or when she tried to do a handstand to work on her flexibility and landed hard on her head.

This is physical pain that comes from a physical wound that isn't there because she hasn't hit her head on anything in weeks. So she's tired, and she's mistaking it for something else.

Fabulous. Just what she needs.

Stina's still snoring when Sophie slips out of the room, still fully clothed from the day before, and Sophie fights back a twinge of jealousy. Why does Stina get to sleep in when she has to keep working working working to overcome both the Neverseen and the Council?

There's not really any use in complaining. She was made for this, simple as that.

So she closes the door gently behind her, closing her against the bright lights. Her headache intensifies, and she scowls at a non-existent injury.

It's peaceful for a moment. Leaves drift gently down in the breeze, and the ground is carpeted with petals. Flowers perfume the air, the sun is warm against her face, and the birds are singing. Alluveterre has always been beautiful for as long as she's lived here, and she has never been more glad to be on the right side of the war. The side that gets to have beauty with the blood.

"Soph!" a voice immediately calls, and the moment shatters. She turns to see Livvy coming toward her, mask hanging from her neck by its strings. Ce must have been speaking to a non-member, then. A meeting or interrogation or healing as Physic instead of just Livvy.

"Hi," she says quickly, and Livvy comes to a stop in front of her. Ce tilt cer head to the side quickly, like ce can see the pounding headache pulsing behind Sophie's eyes. She smiles. "What's up?"

"We need your help," Livvy says, eyes crinkling with a mixture of sympathy and urgency. "There's another battle."

Sophie stiffens. "Who?"

"For us: Forkle, Wraith, Juline, Timkin, a few dwarves, Wylie is on his way there. Me and Dex and Tinker are working on the side. On their side, Ruy, Gethen, Umber, Lodestar, Alvar. Trix must be there, too. They definitely have a guster."

"No Fintan? No Brant?" Her mind cycles through the possibilities. "No Gisela? Glimmer?"

"Not yet a sign of them, not yet." Livvy looks at her for a long moment. Their eyes meet, brown to blue. Ce add, gently, "I think they need you. Umber is messing shit up, even without a pyrokinetic."

Sophie nods. There's still sleep in her eyes. She's already dressed. Ready enough. "Tell Maruca to join us. If Ruy's there too, we'll need a psionipath."

"Granite's getting her now. The battle just started. Stay safe." Livvy presses a kiss onto her cheek. "We need you."

...

God, his head hurts. 

It wasn't like Gethen meant for his head to crash into that wall when he shoved him during a mock-fight, a training battle. Gethen knows more than anything that they need him for the battle. And he knows that he'll wake tomorrow with spiders in his bed or slime in his shoes and it won't have been worth it at all.

But god. That doesn't change his aching head. It wasn't better by the time he woke up in the morning, which means it won't be better by the battle, which means his chance to see Moonlark again will be ruined by a headache.

So here he is. Trying to maintain his wicked smirk as he points a throwing star at Squall's head. Ice crusts her entire body, obscuring her identity. She's formidable on the battlefield, but her disguise makes it hard for her to move swiftly.

He can use that.

He's about to throw the star (and hopefully get rid of one of his main enemies) when there's a crack in the sky, and Moonlark tumbles out of it. Her appearance startles him, and he flinches.

Damn it.

Her hair is loose around her shoulders.

It's going to be one of those battles.

...

He's staring. 

At her, to be specific.

And she's staring, too. 

At him, to clarify.

She wishes he would stop. Then she could stop, could look away and break their eye contact and drop the taunting grin that she has to keep on her face (because she hates him) and he could drop the teasing smirk he has on his (because he has to hate her too).

Sophie levels one of her daggers at his face. Lodestar grins wider. Maruca and Ruy both have their hands outstretched, forcefields ready, but only one of them is showing the strain.

"Hello, Moon!" he calls across the battlefield, where he's at the point of the formation the Neverseen holds steady. She's in a matching one, two arrowheads poised to meet and shatter and send splinters and fire everywhere. The difference is that her psionipath won't be able to hold her forcefield for much longer. 

They haven't found Ruy's limit yet, not like they know Maruca's. Does he have one? Do any of them?

She cocks her head to the side and pretends to toss the dagger in his direction. He doesn't flinch. Instead, he laughs. "Don't call me that, Lodestar," she snaps at him.

His smile takes up half his face. She is strangely fascinated with it, the impossibility of it, of how he can smile and hate at the same time. Opposites stitched together in rough seams is what he is, impossibility after impossibility: beautiful and cruel, shadowed eyes and shining smile, golden hair and a bloodied throwing star in one hand. A prince and a villain, that's what he is. Uneven perfection.

What does that make her, if she is the mirror on the other side of the world? The heaven to his hell? The angel to his devil? Crooked teeth to faded freckles and clumsy footsteps to nimble fingers?

"Tell me your real name, and I won't, Moon," he says back, infuriating with a wink.

"Tell me yours, and maybe I will," she says, hand clenched tighter around her knife. A challenge, but a stupid one. She won't tell him her real name, and he won't tell her his.

He laughs again. 

She hates him more than she's ever hated anyone before.

Her head is pounding.

Attack now, Forkle transmits to her.

She lets her mouth slide into a smile, and lets her dagger fly.

...

There's pain where there shouldn't be.

For example, he didn't get hit anywhere near his leg. Yet it aches like Moonlark has driven her knife in and out of it fifty times, like Brant set him on fire and he has to let himself burn.

But there's no wound. Only bare skin and phantom pain. Like phantom lessens the burning stinging blistering screaming pain of it.

At least his head doesn't hurt anymore. Alvar finally gave him an elixir for it, a painkiller while his side (where there actually is a wound, blood and all) bled all over the carpet that Gisela doesn't bother washing the bloodstains out of anymore.

Keefe can deal with phantom aches, ghost pains, spirit wounds. This happens to him more often than he'd like: injuries that aren't there, that don't belong to him.

He's figured it out by now, since he's so well accustomed to pain and how it works. 

Soulmates aren't uncommon, just unheard of. 

He knows only one pair, and Alvar and Ruy aren't the types to be in love in public. Or at all. He's guessed at their relationship from all the times Alvar has known exactly where Ruy's injury is before they peel back his sleeve to treat a slice in his arm, or from the desperation Ruy has in his eyes when he shields Alvar before anyone else. Even when Gisela punishes him later for leaving Keefe open to attack when he's so valuable.

So, yeah. He can guess.

Soulmates.

It's not like he hasn't thought about the possibility before.

Usually when thinking about Moonlark. For reasons related to being in love with her (a choice, not an instinct, one he has never regretted), but also because he always seems to get the fake pains after a battle. One that involves her. One that she gets injured in.

Sometimes, when he can't sleep, he lays on his back and counts all the lies he's told himself in one day.

Lie: He doesn't like thinking about her. It's unavoidable.

Lie: He cares about what he's doing here.

Lie: He thinks everyone else does too.

Lie: He would never leave the Neverseen. Not even for her.

Then, to mix it up, a few truths.

Truth: He cares whether or not his mother lives or dies. He cares too much.

Truth: When Fintan looks at him, his gaze burns. Like he knows. Like he can tell.

Truth: He loves it when she calls him Lodestar.

Truth: He wishes she knew his real name so she could call him that, too.

Truth: He can't stop thinking about her. She's a disease, and doesn't he deserve to be infected?

Keefe rolls onto his side, the side not wrapped in a bandage, the one not aching like he's on fire from the dagger she'd thrown at him a few days before.

Soulmates.

Thank god.

...

Sophie's side burns like hell, but she still finds the strength to slide his window open. Crawl inside. It was astonishingly easy to find his room, to sneak past the minimal security. Frighteningly easy.

She lands softly on the carpet, alert, ready. Her impact doesn't make a sound, and she grips the knife in her hand tightly. She waits for a trap.

Her mission today is simple: find Lodestar. Kill him.

Not that it was a real mission. Not that Forkle ordered it. He never would have allowed her to take this risk, to learn when he left his hideout and went to a less secure warehouse for the night. It happens occasionally, even if he's dumber than she thought to have no guards, no watch, no warnings.

It will be so, so easy to slit his throat.

She leans over the sleeping body on the bed, and, yes, it's him. Golden prince and shadowed devil and all. She presses her knife to his neck, and his eyes flick open.

Sophie has been planning this for weeks.

She has planned what she will say.

She has planned what she will do.

She has practiced what her exact expression will be at this moment. She has imagined the fear on his face. Raised arms, scrambling back in his bed, vulnerable and at her mercy. No more stupid nicknames. No more dimples that drive her to distraction, that caused her to make a clumsy mistake and get hit in the leg in the battle a few days before.

No mistakes.

Except for this one: she hesitates. Her photographic memory skips a beat. She can't remember anything of what she's planned.

Because there's no fear in his sleepy face. He's smiling. Now, with her knife to his throat,  Lodestar is smiling. And it's not his usual cutting smirk. This one is softened with sleep, deepening his eyes, making them far and close at the same time (another opposite) and she feels like she can get lost in them so easily. 

He doesn't ask how she got into his room.

"Hey." His voice is crackly with sleep, deepened. His lips are chapped and his eyelids half-lowered, casting shadows of his long eyelashes onto his cheeks. And she's hesitating.

Hey?

"I'm going to kill you," she tells him.

He smirks. "Okay, Moon."

"Don't call me that."

"Kill me, then." He meets her eyes. The low light takes the edge off the sharp angles of his face, making the lines more dramatic swoops of shadow than bursts of light. His hair is rumpled, messy in a different way than it usually is. It's softening. It's... disarming.

It's hard to hate him when he's vulnerable like this. Which is stupid, because it's better that he's vulnerable. Easier to kill.

Her blade presses farther into his neck. Her uncovered index finger brushes his skin, and he stiffens. His neck is warm.

Her side doesn't hurt anymore, even though it was on fire a moment ago.

Sophie feels tingly all over. A rush of excitement floods her, foreign and dangerous and hair-raising. She doesn't think it belongs to her.

She drops the knife, and Lodestar winces as it lands safely on his chest. She cradles her hand near to her chest, the one that just touched him for the first time.

Lodestar lifts his upper body up on his elbows. The bedsheets slip down his body, and his shirt rides up. There's a bandage covering the exact spot her side was aching a few moments ago, except his is spotted with blood.

He tilts his head. "Did you feel that, too?" He's not draped in drowsiness anymore, not enveloped in his peace. He's alert. Eyes wide, eyebrows shooting up, pink lips pressed tight.

His eyes dart to her leg. Like he can see the pulsing wound still left over from their battle.

God, she hates when he looks at her like that. Chooses to hate it, because if she didn't, she would love it. And she has to kill him tonight, so she has to hate him.

"Feel what?" she says, crossing her arms over her chest.

He laughs. She hates his laugh, too, the way it rings through her. The thing about Lodestar is that he's less of a star than a sun. Everyone who sees him is caught in his orbit, and she hates that she can't help but be drawn along too. "Come on, Moon. Don't lie to me."

"Why not?" She has just admitted that she was lying. But it's fine. There's nothing wrong to admit.

...

A fallen angel, that's what she is.

And what does that make him? A hapless mortal, drawn in by the unknown.

He thinks her eyes are a curse. Who hated him enough to make him love her?

Ah, yes. That would be himself.

Keefe likes the shape his mouth forms to say her name. He says it when he doesn't need to, just to taste her disguise on his tongue. The only bit of her he knows. "Moon, we both know that you have never spoken a lie in your life. But I just heard one."

She's standing in front of his bed, arms crossed over her chest, hair tied back, pale skin glowing in the faint light. He finds himself studying her, like the mortals in human myths that can't help but be drawn in by divinity.

She favors her right leg, which is conveniently the one that was burning on Keefe's skin a mere minute ago. Like they'd been sharing pain, and now they're not. And isn't that confirmation?

"I don't need a knife to kill you," she warns as he sits up fully in bed. He's wearing shorts and a white t-shirt, worn and tight. It's from when he was younger, and it's soft enough that he hasn't gotten rid of it yet. It just barely reaches his waist, and the blanket covering his legs doesn't quite shield the bandage on his side. He wonders if she could feel the pain from his wound.

He can feel her emotions. He doesn't think he's ever felt them this strongly before. They confuse him in their potency, so intense he can't quite decipher them. Keefe grins, a quick flash of his teeth.

He's not exactly sure why he's not afraid of her. Maybe it's because the low lights soften the hard angle where her lips meet, where her eyebrows furrow. The bags under her eyes are darker now. He wonders how long it's been since she's slept.

"I should hope so," he says, tilting his head back to meet her widened eyes. His leg doesn't hurt anymore, and he can guess why. He adds, "Soulmate."

She flinches. Steps back on her good leg, just as he guessed she would. "Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm never ridiculous." He watches her closely, watches the way she retreats from him, shaking her head slightly. So she's in denial, then.

At least he's not dead. That would have hurt a bit more.

"You're always ridiculous," she snaps back at him. Then, with venom, "Star."

A shivery feeling goes through him. Is he irritated or pleased that she turned his nickname for her back on him?

He doesn't let any of that show on his face. Instead, he lifts his mouth into a smirk. "Do you think about me all the time?"

"Don't flatter yourself."

"Ah, but it's what I do best." He adds with a laugh, "Moon."

Why does he always fall for the ones who want to kill him?

...

Soulmate.

It's not like she hasn't considered it before.

There had to be a reason that sometimes, parts of her hurt that have never been injured. There had to be a reason her first instinct was to love him, and the hating came after.

She's considered it. But she hasn't accepted it. 

Has he?

Sophie thinks Star fits him better than Lodestar. She thinks Moon fits her better than Moonlark.

But it doesn't matter.

He's still Lodestar and she's still Moonlark and they don't even know each other's names.

Soulmate.

Right there, on the spot, she decides that she hates the word. It's a little presumptuous, isn't it? Like her soul wants him, is a puzzle piece that won't be whole unless she is with him.

Not true. Never true. She's whole as she is.

He doesn't seem very torn up about this soulmate revelation. Like he already knew. Or like it doesn't matter to him.

"How often do you think of me?" she says softly, cruel intent in her voice. Two can play at this game. She can be vicious, too. She can hate him just as much. She can not care.

"All day, every day," he says breezily, tilting his chin up to the ceiling as he props his upper body up with his hands, leaning back slightly. She finds herself following the line of his throat. Unacceptable. Where has all of her hard hating work gone? "You're on my mind whether or not you're there. You're rubber and I'm glue and every time I see you, the sight of you bounces from your skin and sticks to me."

Sophie swallows, hard.

He's good at this. At this fakeness. At this game of pretend.

She can almost believe he means it.

"I never think of you," she tells him, the words glowing with how white her lies are. "All day, every day, I have to remind myself you still exist."

His face draws lines across her heart, marking where to slice it in two. She makes a note for later: here is where it will shatter, so remember to set aside the time.

"I guess I have absorbed all your thoughts of me," he says, eyebrows drawing together into a hard line. "I'm rather self-centered, if you haven't noticed. It's surprising I even have room for you in my head."

"It's surprising you have room for anything. All you think about is me and you, is that right?" Sophie's legs are getting tired, standing up like she is. She doesn't want to give up her position, looking down at him, but there's no point in fearing him anymore. His legs are still tangled in his sheets. 

She sits on the ground, and now it's him looking down at her. A smirk slants his mouth like he's noticing it, too.

"Me and you and nobody else," he agrees, laying down on his stomach to face her. His chin rests on his arms, hair still disturbingly tousled. Disturbing because of the way she can't take her eyes from it. "And you must have so much room left over since I'm not there in your mind and you aren't either because I've stolen all the you thoughts for myself."

Their faces are close, now. A foot of distance between their eyes. Between their lips. 

She looks at the shadows beneath his eyes instead of his mouth, and wonders how long it's been since he's had a full night's sleep.

...

They're closer than they've ever been without trying to kill each other.

She looks different when she's not angry. Not softened, but new. Made of glass. Like he can break her if he tries.

"I was lying." The words escape her in a rush. "I think about you all the time."

His breath catches. He waits for the punchline. "All bad, I hope."

"Of course," she says, and there's a genuine smile on her face for a split second before she drops it and it's wiped clean again. There's a pause where they study each other, eyes tracing cheekbones and premature worry wrinkles and where the chin juts out and where the nose bridge connects to the forehead. Then, "I hate you, you know."

He can feel that she's not lying. It's surprising that it doesn't hurt. He shrugs. "I do know. I can't say the same about you."

She lifts an eyebrow. "Why not?" As if she's so easy to hate. Which, of course, she is.

"I'm in love with you." He makes his smirk razor-sharp, but her face still drops into shock before he adds, sarcastically, "I hope this doesn't change anything between us, Moon."

She laughs, hesitantly, cautiously. Does she believe him? He closes his eyes momentarily.

That laugh. He thinks he would be okay with her dagger going through his throat if he gets to hear it again as he dies.

"You used to have freckles," Moonlark says suddenly, and he opens his eyes. She's staring at him with a disorientating intensity. "They're gone now."

Keefe hated his freckles. "They're still there. Just lighter." He lets himself smile. "Now, Moon, you noticed. Have you been thinking about my freckles? Fretting over them? Mourning their disappearance?"

Her face reddens in the dim light, and his eyes widen with delight. "Have you really?" 

"Don't get cocky, Mr. In Love With Me," she says, face still red. It's hard to take her seriously when she's blushing. He's never seen it from this close before.

Does she have freckles? He leans in close to see, squinting in the light.

No, no freckles. Just huge bags under her eyes.

"Star—" Moonlark swallows hard, and he realizes in that instant just how close they are. Inches separate their faces. A little closer, and their lips will touch.

He waits for her to move away. She doesn't. A satisfied smirk curls his lips. "Comfortable, Moon?"

"Never around you," she admits, and his eyebrows flick up.

"Say my name again," he breathes out, and she grins. Keefe doesn't think she realizes how much it changes her face, that grin.

"Star, star, star," she says in sing-song, teasing. And then she kisses him.

Their lips touch gently, softly, the opposite of him and her and her and him and who they are. This isn't shouted words across a battlefield or bloodied daggers pointed at chests or the feeling when there's no blood but you're still in pain. It's angle wings melting in the light of the sun and metaphors mixing in a witch's pot until he can't tell them apart anymore.

He can't think like this. He can't move. He doesn't want to move. He's frozen in place, burning in place, a stack of blocks that are crumbling, ready to fall.

This is a kiss.

He's kissing Moonlark, his enemy, his love.

As simple as that.

Just as she leaned in first, she leans back first, searching his eyes for... what? Shock? Anger? Relief? He's not sure what she'll find.

"My name is Keefe," he says quietly, his lips tingling. Her eyes widen, cheeks flushed pink. The light casts a haze over her skin, blurring her exact features.

She gives him a soft smile. A moon's beam. He wants to capture that smile in a jar with fireflies, with the sun's rays and the shimmering impossibility of a rainbow. "Sophie." It takes him a few seconds to realize that's her name. And then he smiles, too, a star's light.

"Hello, Sophie Moon," he says, tasting her name on his tongue.

She tilts her head to the side. "Hello, Keefe Star."

And then she stands.

She picks up her dagger, fingers brushing his chest, lingering even after she sheathes her knife and pulls away. She eases herself out the open window, closes it behind her. She doesn't look back at him, but her cheeks remain pink as she drops down to the ground.

Leaves him behind. With his heart pounding in his chest and his lips carrying the feeling of her and her name still lingering in his mouth. His mouth curves into a sharp smile.

This is a love that can kill him.

He thinks he'd like to let it.

I know it's long but... I like it a LOT ok....