He was very close. No closer than was acceptable between two strangers, but to her it felt very close.
Riley was gazing at his grey eyes. Alann Turis had grey eyes too. But she had discovered there were so many differences between two pairs of grey eyes. Vann’s eyes were captivating. She could lose herself in them for hours, taking note of the vagaries of them.
He had a distracting way of catching the eye. Riley would be minding her own business, glaring at everyone to forestall any more invitations to dinner. Then something would catch her eye and she would turn and it would be Vann.
She could have trained herself to stop looking, but in another place the shine that caught her eye could be a claw or a sword. So she accepted it and turned and looked.
He looked at her in an astonishing way, as if she was the only person alive. It was a way that twisted her up inside. It excited and frightened her.
You didn’t look at your friends like that.
And she was pretty sure you didn’t hope time might stop moving so you could gaze in your friend’s eyes for hours with nobody noticing. And perhaps you might want to look elsewhere too, for there was more to a face than eyes. But anywhere else was far too dangerous. His eyes were bad enough.
No, that’s not what friends did.
She could not imagine this man as ‘just’ a friend.
She woke up every day with a mixture of anticipation and dread. It was hard to turn him away. But she needed to. She wasn’t staying in the human territories any longer. She needed to know. She needed to test herself. She couldn’t stay here any longer. She didn’t want to know Coastside. She wanted to leave!
And on occasion, when she felt herself slipping, that maybe it would be alright, she remembered Peitar. And that jolted her out of it faster than a shock with a lightning rod. Though at the same time a part of her would be saying Peitar didn’t even compare to this man…
Riley shook her head. ‘No. I don’t want to be friends.’ she turned to leave again. She was surprised her voice didn’t wobble.
But once again he called her back.
He was always doing that.
He looked so lost and confused. ‘But why?’ he asked.
‘I don’t owe you an explanation.’ she snapped suddenly, unable to bear it any longer.