Next chapter's on the 14th of May.
"It that true?" The witch asks again.
The silence hangs between them, takes his tongue from him.
Her words continue.
"Do you really think that you can do more to end this dream dead than you can alive?" She asks him.
He thinks that if he said yes she'd maybe kill him, for a price, if he could just manage to say it.
It feels like eons pass before she talks next, words slow and deliberate.
"You've been playing along with that man's games the entire time but you've been flaunting them at every step." She tells him, half lidded red eyes steady, fixed on him, inhuman.
"You have become close to everyone. You could have faked it if you'd wanted to. You didn't though." The woman says.
"You've been protecting them all the entire time," she reminds him, "when it would have made your job so much easier and quicker to just let Kurogane-san die, if not to do it yourself. Your magic would have made it simple. You know that even as you deny it. The same with the princess. You could have sent her into a sleep like that king back in your world, kept her out of the way, used your power to take the feather from wherever it was the second you landed and made sure that you landed in the perfect place each time." The witch says.
"It's been three years that you've been traveling." She says. A thin stream of smoke follows her pipe as she brings it to her face. She pauses, puts it to her lips, breathes in deeply, holds it, exhales.
He waits.
"You could have ended this trip years ago, could have reunited the girl with all of her memories by now. There is nothing stopping you from doing it." Yuuko accuses him, without heat.
"You keep wanting it to last just a bit longer." She tells him.
"You keep wanting to have just a little bit more fun. You've enjoyed yourself, haven't you?" She tilts her head in a way that would be playful if she was in any way amused. She dares him to deny it with a single arch of her brows and Fai just can't.
He drops his head into his hands and smiles despite himself, through his burning throat and the dizziness.
Eventually he replies.
"And so what if I have. I'm still doing what that man wants in the end."
His hands in his hair nest deeply as he tries to keep his voice down, keep ahold of himself because he never thought he'd talk about this and he's half-delirious anyway and he just doesn't know what she wants.