His kiss tastes like honey that's sweetened cough syrup to make it go down easier, to make her heart go down easier, and his tongue is like silver in her mouth, something far too wealthy for her anyway. It's hard to avoid the way he makes her feel like gold, the way he makes her feel like royalty, even though she knows without a shadow of a doubt, that he is not her royalty, and she can never stand by his side as a princess.
Zen is so warm, and with just a brush of his tongue against hers, she's left shuddering and eager for more, unable to long for the kiss to end, as if really the honey made this cough syrup addictive, and somehow Zen's lips against hers, his tongue trading waves with her own, is something that both melts her and makes Kihal feel invisible, as if she has nothing else to cling to. And when he pulls away, she follows him before she catches herself, mere centimeters from his lips, close enough to feel his breath and how it tingles her just kissed lips. Close enough that Kihal is already imagining another kiss, a chance to draw close again as if he loved her, as if this was more than an accident or a mistake.
But even she knows that there is no future here, no kiss to ignite another one, even if Zen's eyes are still half closed, even if his breath comes out in puffs and makes her feel as if she held some power or some authority to bring a prince down to her own level, but Kihal's aware of what this would all mean. She's aware of Brecker, aware of the fact that being with Zen pulls her away from Yuris Island, aware that even though something is ignited at his touch, she doesn't love him in quite the right way to make the kinds of sacrifices that the two of them being together would entail.
"Sorry." Zen's breathless, and his pretty blue eyes look away from her; his nervous tongue flitters like a spark of metal under the sunlight when he licks his lips, pent up nerves telling her that one kiss isn't what he needed either to think that this was at all possible.
"It was impulsive, I know." For me, too, she almost says as she bites her tongue, too aware of his presence to lick her lips, to let him see a side of her still caught up in the past moments.
"I-, you, the sunlight and your smile, and I, I, thought you were really pretty." Zen can't seem to speak right, butchering his words at an attempt at honesty, at an attempt to explain why he'd kissed her on a sunny day in Clarines, when all of their problems before seemed a world away.
"Thought?" Kihal says, even though she knows she shouldn't.
"You're really pretty." Zen seems to find his voice, finally, "And I like you a lot, but I, I'm a prince." And all of his past mistakes, Shirayuki, flitters through his mind. Kihal knows it, knows that, knows of the rumors that still flutter around the castle and everywhere.
'Don't you know that the Prince was seeing a commoner woman from Tanbarun? Don't you know that the two of them were never meant to be cut from the same cloth? Despite all that they clung to. A prince should know his place, and it's not with a poor foreigner woman.'
Shirayuki had slipped so easily out of the fold of all that is assumed and expected here, that Kihal doesn't think anyone else has a better disappearing act than her redheaded friend, besides Kihal always thought Shirayuki was strong enough to make it through the suspicion. But she guessed that nobles like Brecker had had their say, that they'd smashed love that had bloomed and blossomed there.
Zen still loves her, but he's trying to be responsible now. And besides he'd kissed Kihal on a whim, on feelings that feel more like a crush than the romance that had bloomed between him and Shirayuki.
"I understand." Kihal answers finally, "You love her, and I'm not going to pretend that I'll take that away by being here. And besides, I was impulsive too."
"I'm sorry." Zen mutters finally, finally letting the words meet the air.
"I'm sorry too." Kihal answers, knowing that her response didn't make things easier, that she was hurting Zen like all of this had as well.
"You don't have to be." Zen sighed, and then she watched as he walked away, a sign that maybe this door closing was really the right choice.