"Rhyanon, you are incredibly talented."
She crosses her arms over her chest and stares at Irving. She can't remember when he stopped feeling like she had to look up to meet his eyes; it seems like that happened a long time ago. He's still taller than she is, he's still old, but now it takes something out of the ordinary to remember that they're not on the same level. Something like the incredibly complex spell he's demonstrating for her now.
She feels the static pressure of mana collecting around her and brushing up against that source of similar power that's flowing through her. She lets her eyes drift closed as she instinctively reaches with outstretched fingers in an attempt to follow her teacher's movements, to grasp the gestures that help him infuse his will onto the target. She bites her lip and pushes against the barrier that blocks the Fade – the genesis of their shared power - from the tangible world. She has to see past what's solid, she knows that. She has to focus on what he's doing, not what she sees. It takes an intense amount of concentration – she can feel the coils of pressure, like fingers locked tight around her wrist. Her forehead beads with sweat, and she shakes her head.
"I can't do it," she whines.
Irving sighs. He lets his mana slowly fade away, and then he looks her in the eye. "Rhyanon, you're not supposed to," he insists. "Not right away."
"Then what's the point of even showing me?" she snaps.
A smile quirks at the edges of the First Enchanter's lip, and he shakes his head. "The point is to show you what's possible. You must be patient. Power like this cannot come to you all at once."
His fingers trace lightly across her shoulderblade, kneading away the tension there, until she shrugs him off. She pulls away from him, and backs up into the wall, which hurts, when she crashes into it. It irritates her, enough to make her scowl and glare at Irving. Not like it's his fault.
He sighs, and sits down – atop his desk. As always most days – since the start – he waits for her to speak.
She kicks the wall behind her and doesn't look at him.
"I know you're angry -"
"Duh."
Irving sighs again, a familiar sound: exasperated, worried, afraid. He holds her gaze – and she can feel it – until she has to look up just so that it doesn't feel like he's staring at her. "Rhyanon," he says softly. "You have to start thinking about yourself."
She shakes her head, not wanting to hear this argument.
"You have so much potential," he whispers, almost like a prayer. "Don't waste it."
It's not a waste to help my friend, Rhyanon thinks, although immediately she wonders if that's true. It's been a long time – too long, since she's even seen Anders. He doesn't hang around with her anymore, why would he? He's been Harrowed for nearly three years now.
"Can I be excused?" she mutters.
Irving sighs, but concedes, the way she'd known he would. He always gives her whatever she asks for.
She retreats to the library, burrowing into one of the many shadowy corners. She tucks her hair behind her ear and stares up at the shelves that stretch up to the ceiling, twice her height. It's warm in here, and comfortable, and she likes being able to hide.
She huddles over a heavy tome that she isn't exactly reading, losing herself in the rhythm of the words. She likes the feel of the thick parchment between her fingers, the pages soft at the edges from years and years of being handled and read by who knows how many mages.
She nearly jumps out of her skin when she hears the footsteps approaching. She swallows hard and schools her features. And she reminds herself that she's not doing anything wrong.
Her stomach constricts a little when she recognizes Anders. He gives her a smirk, then scratches the back of his head and crouches down next to her. He reaches over to the book she's reading, flipping through the pages. He then flips it over so he can read the title etched into the spine.
"A History of Diplomacy and Politics and Boring People Who Died A Thousand Years Ago," he announces, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Interesting."
"You like reading," Rhyanon accuses.
Anders just shrugs. "Sometimes. Maybe."
Rhyanon crosses her arms over her chest and stares him down. "What do you want?"
"For you to not bite my head off?" he replies, immediately. "For a start." He sits down next to her without bothering to wait for a response. Rhyanon pulls away and raises an eyebrow. He's never been able to joke his way out of trouble with her. She has a way of cutting straight to the core of things, demanding the truth.
"You can't just come over here and pretend like nothing's changed," she insists. "Like we're still friends."
"I thought we were," Anders whispers. He sounds tired, wounded. Afraid. Rhyanon can hear it in his voice, but she can't acknowledge it. She curls up tighter, protecting herself.
"That isn't what I meant."
"I know."
You have to start thinking about yourself, Irving had told her. Maker, she is so damned selfish already. She doesn't know how to help anybody even if they ask, and nobody does.
She cautiously glances up at Anders, but she keeps herself removed from him. He has a way of making her feel like she's losing herself, getting too caught up in him. And she can't let that happen. She can't afford to lose anything more than what she's already lost.
She breathes: slowly, carefully. And she tries to figure out how to ask the question she already knows he won't answer.
He only gets serious like this when he's about to run.
He's been doing so well: fitting in, following the rules. Teaching. She sees him working with Wynne sometimes - the two of them speaking softly, sometimes even laughing, as they delve into complex healing that Rhyanon knows she'd never be able to figure out. She doesn't want to. She's just glad Anders has found something he's good at. Something that might keep him here.
"I want you to be happy," she says carefully.
He shifts a little, next to her, and nods. "Yeah. I know."
"But?"
"Who says there's a 'but'?"
Rhyanon glares at him, but he doesn't flinch. He never does.
"I don't want you to go away again!" she demands. She throws her fears out into the air, she forces herself to say them out loud, where she can't take them back. She has to trust that he'll hear her, that he'll listen, that he'll care.
Anders holds her gaze for half a heartbeat, and then he drops his gaze. He buries his face in his hands. "Melly..."
"You are gonna run. Aren't you? You're gonna try to escape again."
She lashes out and hits him, raining her fists against his arms, his chest. She flails helplessly until he grabs her wrist. He pushes her away from him, pressing her against the wall at her back because there is no other space. She had been hiding back here, after all.
"Would you shut up?" he hisses.
"What are you thinking? What's wrong with you?!"
"Rhyanon! Shut. Up."
She does, finally. She slams her jaw shut so loudly that she can hear it clicking. It hurts, a little bit. The impact vibrates through her skull. She glares at Anders, and waits, as long seconds tick by, for him to get up and walk away, for him to leave her.
But he doesn't.
"I'm not gonna tell on you," she mutters.
"You think that's what I'm worried about?"
"Isn't it?"
He shakes his head. "No. Never. I'm never gonna tell you what to do."
"You want me to get you in trouble?"
"I get myself in trouble, kid."
"I'm not a kid!" she snaps.
It never used to bother her, much, when Anders treated her like a younger sister. She basically is. But she needs him to listen to her.
"You don't have to do this, you know," she adds, more quietly. "You could... stay."
He shakes his head, and kisses the top of her head. The same way he'd done before his last attempt, three years ago. At least he's not hiding it from her this time. "No," he tells her. "No, I can't."
Rhyanon nods. "I know," she mutters. She tries to be angry at him, but she can't. She understands the crushing pressure of this place, all too well.
She obviously isn't at all surprised the next day, when she hears the whispered rumors about Anders' absence. Jowan catches her eye in Chapel. Their conversation, such as it is, is short and whispered, a few words mumbled as they kneel next to one another and pretend to pray. It's enough for Rhyanon to gather that Jowan isn't surprised about Anders' disappearance either, and she wonders if he'd gotten a goodbye too, or if he'd read the signs the same way she had. Or maybe he's just used to it by now, and he doesn't let himself get disappointed by being left. She doesn't have time to ask him. The Grand Cleric is making her annual visit to the tower, and that means silence and dire threat even in the best of circumstances. Now, with an escaped mage to answer for, punishment is almost certain. Even the templars seems subdued, for now, though Rhyanon knows damned well that they'll take out their anger on anyone stupid enough to cross their path later.
The Grand Cleric preaches on Threnodies, one of her particuar favorites: "You have brought Sin to Heaven and Doom upon all the world." She spits and snaps, the anger in her tone forcing their attention. Rhyanon swears, when the woman's eyes land on her, that the priest can see something rotten and corrupted inside of her. She bites her lip, but doesn't look down; she won't admit guilt.
The Grand Cleric eventually moves on, letting her searing gaze fall on somewhere else, letting her sermon drift to other topics. Yet her words still drill the point home: she speaks of lies, and betrayal. It's not all bad, of course. She makes sure to remind them all that they may be cursed, but they aren't doomed: light and glory will shine upon them all if they confess their sins and submit to the will of the Maker.
Rhyanon doesn't care much about her soul. The price they're asking for her salvation is more than she can afford to pay.
She stays alone in the chapel afterward, though, kneeling on the hard floor until it starts to hurt. She stares at the colorful shards of glass set into the walls all around her. It's easy to make sense of the pictures – she could recite the story they're telling almost from the start. But that's not why she likes them: it's always been the color, and the light. She squints so that the edges blur and all that's left are those soft motes, dancing in the air. And she whispers a worldless prayer to a Maker she doesn't actually believe in. Even here, she can't verbalize what she wants. It's contradictory, and impossible even if it weren't. But she wants it anyway, and maybe, for a few flickering seconds, she can sit here and feel like she's allowed to believe in things.
Time slides by: days turn into weeks, then months. Rhyanon isn't sure if that means her prayer were answered, or that they weren't. She does know that it feels like her stomach constantly hurts. He's never been gone this long. Maybe, maybe, he's gotten away forever this time. She wants that to be true. Doesn't she?
It bothers her, how much she's starting to forget him. She closes her eyes, and she remembers when they used to be best friends, when he'd climb up on her bunk and play with wisps of light, making them change color and dance around her head. But all of those pictures come from when they were young. When she tries to remember Anders now, all she can picture is silent anger. And fear.
She rolls over, and looks at Jowan. He's sitting on his top bunk, studying. "I miss him," she whispers. She speaks too quietly to be heard, but Jowan nods anyway. He doesn't talk to her. What is he supposed to say?
"Rhyanon, are you listening to me?" Irving asks, the next morning. His voice is full of quiet, insistent force. She nods. She's always been capable of looking like she's paying attention, even as distracted and tired as she is. Irving doesn't buy it though. He leans in close to her, and forces her to look at him. "Are you ready for a Harrowing?" he asks her, when her attention fails, again. It's probably the tenth time in the half an hour since their lesson began. "Be ready. Focus!"
"I'm only sixteen," she tells him. She's getting defensive, almost hostile, but she's tired of having to act like she cares about studying. Even spellwork, the stuff that used to make her feel energized and awake, the kinds of games that came easily to her, the things they can do that make them special... there's nothing in them that makes her feel good anymore. Her power, when it comes at all, seems only to trickle: a tiny flow of water dripping through a crack in a dike. And even that trickle gets her punished: for being dangerous, watched constantly in case she loses control.
Anders was seventeen when he was Harrowed, and really close enough to eighteen to make no real difference, and he was probably too young. She knows they only forced the test on him because they wanted him to fail. So no, she's not ready. But it isn't fair to ask her to be.
But even when she's frustrated by his incredible seriousness and cryptic warnings, Rhyanon still clings close to Irving because it's better than trying to fit in with the other apprentices. She doesn't know how to talk to them. It didn't seem to matter when they were younger, and she was just... different, not interested in the same shallow entertainments, uncertain how to jump into a conversation or put other people at ease when it seemed like all anybody wanted to do was ignore what was really happening around them. She'd gone spying around the tower, running after Anders and Jowan, and she'd fit in with them alright. That uncertain belonging was enough to carry her this far.
Now though, when the only shared memories any of these Tower children have are of enforced silence and unspoken fears, it seems like there are matters of life and death that they are all purposely avoiding the only way they can: by refusing to admit to them out loud. No wonder they don't talk to each other, and Rhyanon feels more and more alone. The few connections she'd managed to craft in the years when they were still allowed to build them are fragile now, fraying and stretched to the breaking point.
She hears the other girls whispering about her, and she pretends she doesn't. They whisper about Jowan too, and Anders. Jowan because he's weird just like Rhyanon is. And Anders because... well, because apparently he's been fucking more than one of them, whenever they could get away with it when the templars weren't watching.
Rhyanon doesn't care about that, she's not jealous. Anders is a grown man and he can fuck whoever he wants to fuck. She just thinks it's totally messed up that those girls don't even seem to care about what happens to him. They just don't want to get themselves in trouble.
Anders is captured again, nearly two full months after the night that Rhyanon had known he was planning to run, when she promised not to tell. The templars found him just like she'd feared – and known – they would. The longer he manages to evade their grasp, the angrier it makes them when they finally do catch up. He has to know that. Rhyanon does, and she's never even tries to run.
She curls up against the rock in the alcove above the courtyard as the dawn breaks; she does it on purpose now. When there's gonna be a whipping, they do it during Chapel so nobody will notice and there won't be any unpredictable disruptions to the sacred routine of life in the tower. Nobody told her obviously, but it's hard to hide things from her when she spends so much of her time in Irving's office. So she huddles in the dark, holding her breath and listening. Twenty lashes this time. She doesn't know how that's even survivable. Obviously, it is. It's the aftermath that makes it even worse. She keeps waiting to run into him in the hall, or find him in the tiny bedroom he's got in the grown-up mage quarters now. But of course she won't because they're not gonna let him wander. They'll leave him down in the dark, until he forgets why he ever thought he could get away from them.
Rhyanon remembers when she'd first been surprised by the existence of dungeon cells in this place that's supposed to be their home. Now, their existence – and use – seems inevitable.
It takes her a while to summon up the drive to get up and fake her way through the day, but she does it, because she has to. She stops in the apprentice dorms first to wash her face and make sure she looks presentable enough to blend in. She keeps her head down on the walk to the library, and slips into an empty chair with smooth 'don't-look-at-me' silence.
Jowan looks up from the book he's flipping through, and meets her eyes. He slides his fingernail between his teeth. "Where were you this morning?" he murmurs.
He says it like an accusation, so Rhyanon knows damn well he already knows the answer. She just shrugs, ducking her head, tracing the grain of the old wood that makes up the library table. She picks at a deep hole at the edge of the piece of furniture, and tries to come up with something to say, if only so that her words can fill the silence which makes it all too easy to remember the loud shocks of the whip cracks. Not one sound, a quick burst, the way people think. It starts with a whistle of forewarning, as the leather cuts through the still air. Then the crack of impact, thick and heavy as it cuts into the skin. The long silence in between is even worse.
"He'll be okay, the stubborn bastard," Jowan says. Rhyanon looks up, startled. But of course he knows what she's thinking about. And if she could find out about Anders' punishment, then obviously he could too. Nothing stays secret in the tower for long. She nods, knowing that he's right. It doesn't make it any easier.
The mood in the tower is sullen, there is a restless anger brewing behind the quiet monotony of the daily routine. This is why the templars try to keep things quiet. But the apprentices aren't stupid. They know Anders was hauled back last night.
Rhyanon shivers, even in front of the library's large fire. She rips up scraps of paper and throws them into the flames. It's been a long time since she's actually done any of the assignments Irving sets for her: what the hell is the point?
He's not pleased about it, of course, when she turns up at his office empty-handed. But he understands. She can read it in his eyes, which are dark and heavy.
"You didn't sleep either, huh?" she asks him.
Irving sighs. "There are days, when I really wish things could be different."
"Why can't they?"
Irving just smiles sadly, and shakes his head. She knows it's her cue to leave. Their lessons don't follow any kind of set schedule. Being let go early means she's got an hour before lunch will be served. She heads down to the kitchens anyway, to help peel and cut up the vegetables that will be dumped into the huge soup pots.
"You're lookin' like you might cut me with that knife," Ada points out.
"I won't."
Rhyanon ties her hair back and keeps peeling. The curls of green and brown coil into growing piles on the table in front of her. When the other apprentices begin to arrive, with dragging steps and whispered words, Rhyanon eats her own watery bowl of soup in the kitchen, and stuffs her bit of hard bread into her pocket for later. She knows she's going to need it after her afternoon classes. It's been a long time since she's been able to sit safely out of harm's way, watching as others cast spells. Now, they've noticed her skill, and they hone it, with brutal efficiency.
"Try again," someone barks. Rhyanon isn't sure if they're talking to her or one of her classmates, but it doesn't much matter. She blocks out the voices of the senior enchanters. None of them matter. All that matters is her need to hurt something, to fight. They tell her that magic is about willing things into being, and right now, she just wants to burn the tower down. It's easy to hit the targets they put up – almost too easy. She hits them with fire and rage, ice and destruction. She's left sweating and breathing hard, and her eyes are stinging with smoke.
"Do it again," one of the templars orders.
She shakes her head. "I can't."
"You have to."
She curls her fingers into tight fists and pulls for mana she doesn't have until she can feel the pain of it firing through her nerves. When the incoming attack comes, she has to block it physically, and the shock of impact rings up her arm. She swears she hears a cracking sound, and her wrist explodes with pain. She cradles it close to her body, and glares at the older mage who stares her down, fingers wrapped loosely around his staff. "You'll need to defend yourself, Amell. Always."
She nods, but the truth is, she's so exhausted that it takes everything she has even to stumble into bed and collapse. They tell her to keep something in reserve, but they don't let her. But that's another lesson she'll have to learn: how to do it anyway. They'll keep beating her down until she gets it right.
She wraps herself tightly around her pillow and lets sleep claim her.
She wakes up a few hours later, in the dark middle of the night. One of the little kids is crying. Rhyanon can't find it in herself to care. She just pulls her pillow over her head and goes back to sleep.
She skips breakfast the next morning. Everything hurts. Her entire body is aching, even the parts that aren't covered with bruises and cuts from training weapons and the punishing blows of the templars.
She curls up in the chair across from Irving's desk and only half-listens as he praises her for her skill with primal magic. She calls up a simple flame when he asks her to, and lets it dance in her hand, but it snaps out the minute he tries to distract her, and she throws up her arm in an attempt to protect herself before she realizes that it's Irving. He's not gonna hit her. He's not even mad at her.
He sits close to her, acting more like a friend than a teacher. "You're doing very well, Rhyanon," he tells her softly. "I need you to know that."
She nods. She does know it, even if it doesn't feel like she's ever good enough to please anybody than Irving. Not doing well enough isn't her problem.
She can feel the eyes on her constantly. Even in here, she knows there's a templar standing just outside the door, with a sword and armor. Ready to kill her if he has to. Or even just if he felt like it. They tell her to defend herself, but she can't. None of them can.
She looks up at Irving, with tears in her eyes, and she traces the pattern of that sylized templar flame with her finger. The smooth wood of the desk feels cool beneath her touch. "I don't want to be good at it," she mutters.
Irving holds her gaze. "You have a gift," he murmurs. "Rhyanon, you are among the most gifted students I've ever taught."
"So what?"
"So. I want to see you succeed. There is so much opportunity waiting for you. You can go so far."
"Don't tell me that!" she screams. "You think I don't know what they're training me for?! What I'm so good at?!" Fire and pain, blood and destruction. It scares her how easy it comes to her, how good it feels. "I don't want to hurt people, Irving!" She breaks into sobs, shaking and trembling. "I don't want to be good at it."
"So what's your solution then? To stop trying."
"Maybe."
Irving sighs, and when he speaks again, his voice his deadly serious. "I cannot watch you throw your life away."
"What are you gonna do about it? Lock me up in a cell to protect me?"
He shakes his head, and tells her to go for a walk, clear her head. He suggests talking to Wynne, but Rhyanon won't do that, because she doesn't feel like talking about Anders and she knows that's what'll come up.
She stalks through the hallways instead, making too much noise, drawing too much attention herself. She radiates hostility, the kind of defiant posturing that leads the worst of the templars to take it upon themselves to put the mages in their place. And this time is no different.
One of the men she'd watched antagonizing Anders all through the last ten years is all too happy to turn his attention toward her instead. It's too late now to avoid him. Rhyanon stands there, cycling through options in her head. If she were like Anders, she'd give him exactly what he's looking for: some kind of sarcastic taunt, daring him to do exactly what he's planning to do anyway. If she were Anders, she'd be able to prove she isn't scared of them. But she is.
The templar smiles, a cruel smirk. His dark eyes flash as he narrows them, watching her every movement exactly like a predator. "I know all about you," he hisses in her ear. "I'm watching you, girl. And there's no one here to shield you now."
He slams her against the wall, hard enough to bruise. She can't slip away. Fear batters at the inside of her body, like butterfly wings, churning up a storm of panic. She licks her lips, and lowers her eyes. She wills the man to go away, to leave her alone. Tears sting her eyes and slide down her throat. They taste like acid. She's too aware of all of the things she'd tried not to notice: templar eyes on her, whispers in the night, the leering stares that started to follow her as soon as she began to develop a woman's body. The man's fingers fondle her breast, and she holds her breath and squeezes her eyes shut and tells herself she doesn't care. It's just a touch. It doesn't matter.
She can feel his hot breath on her neck. It smells of alcohol. His eyes are wild and frenzied.
Her heartbeat races in her chest and she fights without thinking. Panic overwhelms her paralysis, and she lashes out, pushing the templar away from her, augmenting her lack of physical strength with magical force, pulled from the elements she's not allowed to touch, locked away in here. All of the combat training they've been forcing her through comes back with a vengeance.
At least until her attacker hits her with a Smite, leaving her breathless and shaking, too weak to pick herself up from the cold stone floor.
"What is going on here?"
Wynne's voice echoes off of the close walls, startling both Rhyanon and the templar into frozen shock. Rhyanon picks herself up first. She doesn't answer the Senior Enchanter though. She doesn't even look at her.
The templar sneers at the old woman. "This bitch -"
"I'll thank you not to use that language in my presence, Ser."
To Rhyanon's astonishment, the templar snaps his mouth shut. But he won't let the matter drop. Wynne insists on walking with them to the Knight Commander's office, and Rhyanon clings to her, hovering in her shadow the way she had when she first got to the tower. That seems like forever ago now. But she needs the older woman's protection more than ever.
Greagoir pulls his templar aside, out into the hall, and Rhyanon is left alone and squirming in the man's office as Wynne goes to fetch the First Enchanter. She looks around, taking it all in, trying – failing – not to be intimidated by the sheer number of things that could hurt her in here: weapons, magebane, lyrium... it's all locked away, but that doesn't change the fact that Greagoir holds the life and death of every person in this place in his hands. She thinks about the whipping post in the courtyard, the dungeon cells in the dark. She closes her eyes and clenches her fists and says a silent prayer.
The words have barely escaped her lips, in murmurs and exhaled breaths, when she hears footsteps behind her. She whirls around, her heart beating too fast, out of control. She swallows deep gulps of air as the First Enchanter wraps his arms around her and hugs her close. She doesn't bother trying to hide the obvious evidence of her scuffle with the templar. "What happened?" Irving asks urgently.
There is too much fear in his voice. Rhyanon's heard it before, when he's trying to fight the Knight Commander on a punishment, when he knows he won't win. Fear curdles in the pit of her stomach too. Irving soaks a bit of cloth in water and hands it to her, beneath Greagoir's disapproving glare. The Knight Commander has returned to the room. Alone. Rhyanon's not sure if that should make her feel safer or not. She holds the cool rag to her cheek and glares at two men who hold her caught between them. They argue about her as though she's not even there.
"She's just a child, Greagoir. Surely you -"
"She attacked one of my men."
"I did not!" Now, they do pause. Greagoir blinks. Irving sighs. "I didn't," she repeats, more softly. She forces herself to steady her voice and her breathing. It takes effort not to whine, or plead. Or scream. Instead, she ducks her head and waits for them to figure out what to do with her.
"You take care of her, Irving," the Knight Commander sighs. He stalks out of the room without another word.
Rhyanon holds her breath. Was she imagining it, or did she actually hear the smallest bit of sympathy in the templar's voice?
Her head is still ringing in the aftermath of the Smite the templar had cast on her. She suddenly feels weak, almost too tired to stand. Her thoughts are muddled.
"Rhyanon," Irving says gravely. She stares at him, barely processing his words. "You need to be careful."
What does that even mean? She lifts her hand to her head, fighting off the pressure of trying to figure out right and wrong. How it it be wrong to fight to protect herself? How can it be wrong to be angry when everyone else stands by while people are getting hurt?! The looming threats and consequences, the closing walls of this place... she can't do this anymore.
"I can't!" she screams, out loud. "What's the point?"
Her teacher tries to comfort her. Irving rests a gentle hand on her shoulder, but she just shrugs him off, pushing him away with surprising force.
"He wouldn't want you -"
"Don't you dare try to tell me what he'd want! He wouldn't want me to be stuck in here with you. He wouldn't want to be in cell!"
"You're lucky you're not!"
Irving, who has never been unruffled or loud in all the years she's known him, yelling at her, breaks through Rhyanon's selfish anger. She forces herself to look up, into his dark eyes and his troubled, frowning face. He looks about a thousand years old.
But she can't stop being mad.
"Isn't it your job to protect us?" she spits, before stalking out of the room.
She throws herself onto her bed in the dorms, not caring what anybody else thinks about her, not caring about the rumors that are already beginning to circulate.
"Did you get in trouble?" Jowan asks. She doesn't ask him how he knows she might have. He always knows these things.
She shakes her head. "Not really. They just yelled for a while."
Jowan nods. He reaches for the bruise rapidly darkening under her eye until she flinches away and he pulls back. "Looks nasty," he whispers.
Rhyanon shrugs. "It doesn't really hurt," she lies. She could fix it herself, if she wanted to. She isn't sure she wants to, though. It feels kind of good, to have some obvious sign of impact.
