Keke

“Thank you for coming with me.”
She knew it was no small thing. Dom was Monarch of Iona now, the leader of an enclave shattered by war and betrayal. He should have been at home with his people, helping them restore what was nearly lost forever.
Instead, he looked grimly down a sand dune, his clothes poorly suited to the climate, his appearance sticking sticking out of the desert like the sorest of thumbs. While so many things had changed, Dom’s ability to look out of place never did. He even wore his usual cloak, a twin to the one he lost months ago. The gray green had become a comfort like nothing else, just like the silhouette of his familiar form. He loomed always, never far from her side.
It was enough to make Sorasa’s eyes sting, and turn her face to hide in her hood for a long moment.
Dom paid it no notice, letting her recover. Instead, he fished an apple from his saddlebags and took a noisy bite.
“I saved the realm,” he said, shrugging. The least I can do is try to see some of it.”
Sorasa was used to Elder manners by now. Their distant ways, their inability to understand subtle hints. The side of her mouth raised against her hood, and she turned back to face him, smirking.
“Thank you for coming with me,” she said again.
“Oh,” he answered, shifting to look at her. The green of his eyes danced, bright against the desert. “Where else would I go?”
Then he passed the rest of the apple over to her. She finished the rest without a thought.
His hand lingered, though, scarred knuckles on a tattooed arm.
She did not push him away. Instead, Sorasa leaned, so that her shoulder brushed his own, putting some of her weight on him.
“Am I still a waste of arsenic?” he said, his eyes never moving from her face.
Sorasa stopped short, blinking in confusion. “What?”
“When we first met.” His own smirk unfurled. “You called me a waste of arsenic.”
In a tavern in Byllskos, after I dumped poison in his cup, and watched him drink it all. Sorasa laughed at the memory, her voice echoing over the empty dunes. In that moment, she thought Domacridhan was her death, another assassin sent to kill her. Now she knew he was the opposite entirely.
Slowly, she raised her arm and he did not flinch. It felt strange still, terrifying and thrilling in equal measure.
His cheek was cool under under her hand, his scars familiar against her palm. Elders were less affected by the desert heat, a fact that Sorasa used to her full advantage.
“No,” she answered, pulling his face down to her own. “I would waste all the arsenic in the world on you.”
“Is that a compliment, Amhara?” Dom muttered against her lips.
No, she tried to reply.
On the golden sand, their shadows met, grain by grain, until there was no space left at all.”
― Victoria Aveyard, Fate Breaker

“I know you don't believe in ghosts,' Sorasa murmured, holding her ground. 'But I do,' she said.
His chest filled with an unfamiliar feeling, an ache he could not name.
'Sorasa,' he began, but the crowd surged around them.
'Haunt me, Domacridhan.”
― Victoria Aveyard, Fate Breaker

“Empathy. Carlin always said it was the great value of fiction, to put us inside the minds of strangers. Lazarus,”
― Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling