Book 4: The World Shifts

Xander

I expected many things when I pulled Finn away from the other soldiers after the battle. I thought he might ignore me entirely, might flee, might do exactly what he seemed to be doing a moment ago and refuse to give me any kind of answer.

In no world did I expect the words that just dropped from his lips.

I stare into the icy depths of his eyes and try to find the wink of amusement, the sparkle of a joke. He offers me no such reassurance. Just cold, clear certainty.

In the back corners of my mind, a clock starts ticking. I can only boggle at his confession for so long before he will pull back, retract it, take my silence alone as an answer. It might be slightly longer this time; though I don’t find laughter in his eyes, I do find something uncomfortably like desperation. Like I’ve offered water to a man who thought he was going to spend the rest of his life dying slowly as he crawled across a desert. He wants this more than I almost kn