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#that both explores isobel’s horror at what her father became
patchodraws · 5 months
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Aylin curls her fingers around Isobel’s hand, draws it towards her cheek with a tender regard set upon her; Isobel nearly flinches for a moment, that same fear pounding beneath her chest, until her fingers find the soft, porcelain skin of Aylin’s cheek, and that dark fear subsides.
“Tell me you do not see the brilliance your touch grants my soul,” she says. It’s a challenge, but spoken like a prayer. “Tell me you do not feel your chest aflutter in its presence.”
“I do, but—“
Aylin cracks the faintest smile, so distant from the radiant bluster she exhibits in the everyday and far closer to the intimate grins they once shared in private moments of reverence and selfish prayer.
“Then your heart is all your own, my darling.” Insistence, assurance, and — yes, even relief colour her words, soak them in the soothing balm of her presence and esteem. “Ketheric’s had rotted long before he had ever known the grave. Yours is your own even long after. You are my Isobel, and you could never harm me.”
The grip on her hand tightens faintly, and a small trickle of gold leaks from the corner of Aylin’s closing eyes before meeting the edge of Isobel’s thumb; an old but nigh-forgotten impulse tightens her chest, sets a warmth beneath her cheeks, and she wipes the tear away with a feather-light flit of her thumb, wondering how many of those Aylin had to shed in the years she’d been gone.
How many she wishes she could have wiped away in that time.
“Have I not hurt you enough?” Isobel whispers, though the words ring hollow. She never intended to leave the greatest joy in her life, the most brilliant beacon in her faith. Still, it’s hard not to wonder how deep that loneliness struck, how far that heartbreak had settled beneath the ancient scars she wears.
Aylin shakes her head as her eyes drift open, and the adoration she sets within Isobel’s own longing gaze steals her breath for but a moment. “After all the hurt I’d endured, being with you again heals me. No matter the years.”
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