Episode 68
No More Walls
Arisanna looks up into Cerian’s face hovering over her. What happened?
Did she fall asleep?
“You appear disoriented,” he says as he twines his fingers in her hair where she lies with her head in his lap again as their train clacks beneath them.
“I don’t remember going to bed.”
He shifts. Are his ears turning pink?
“You fell asleep,” he mumbles. “On...on top of me.”
Stars above.
“Well. I’m mortified now. I am so sorry. We weren’t talking, were we? I guess I was more tired than I realized. And you were so comfortable...” Now she’s rambling.
He studies her for a few moments without saying anything as she presses her lips together to keep from rambling even more, but thoughts swirl in his eyes as he looks at her.
With a sigh, she opens her mouth again. “What are you thinking?”
He doesn’t rush to answer, but she doesn’t prod him.
“You keep apologizing for...for things that make me happy,” he finally says.
“Me falling asleep on you makes you happy?”
“You make me happy, Arisanna. You’re...you’re like a light in my darkness.”
That was almost romantic.
Before she can manage a response, he rubs his face and gazes at the inky blackness speeding by outside their railcar window.
Is he thinking of Elowyn again?
“You look like you could use some distracting, my elven prince.”
At first, he clenches his jaw, but then he sighs. “It feels wrong to be distracted right now.”
“And yet here we are.” She pushes herself to a sitting position as she faces him on the velvet bench with her legs curled under her.
Brows knit, he turns back to her. “I don’t understand.”
“This place, Cerian. It exists to draw us closer, but it also exists as a place of rest. Right? When everything is too heavy a burden to carry in the real world, we have our heartlanding, where it’s just us.
Where we can simply exist and let ourselves be distracted.
We can go for a walk in the woods or have a snowball fight or.
..or enjoy the hot springs together. All the heavy burdens will be waiting when we return. We don’t need to carry them here, too.”
He studies her without speaking, and she breathes out slowly as she looks down at her hands.
“Here, I can forget everything I’ve been told to be my whole life,” she whispers, “and just be yours.”
When he slips a finger beneath her chin to lift her face to his, her stomach does a little flip, but he says nothing.
He just looks at her with those brilliant emerald eyes.
His gaze pierces something deep within her soul, as if he can see all the parts of her she shares with no one else.
The fears, not of the dark or of creatures in the woods at night, but the real fears that permeate her core.
Fears of not measuring up. Of not being enough.
Of letting down everyone who’s depending on her to be perfect.
Unflappable. Dependable.
Words people always use to describe her.
There’s no room in her life to be anything less.
And as Cerian gazes at her with all the understanding that could only come from knowing what it’s like to carry his own impossible burdens, something inside her shatters.
Then the tears come. She tries to hold them back. To stop them. Arisanna Montarac never cries.
And yet they won’t stop.
He draws her to his chest as sobs wrack her frame, and he rubs her back and combs his fingers through her hair.
How does he know? The little things that make her feel safe—that her mother used to do when Arisanna was too young to understand how heavy this burden of living up to the world’s expectations of her would be.
“I’m...I’m sorry,” she says with a shuddering breath.
What must he think of her now?
“I am not.”
She pulls back to search his face again. His eyes hold a devotion so intense she can barely breathe. It’s overwhelming and intoxicating and mesmerizing all at once.
“I told you I want all of you. With no walls between us,” he says.
A strangled laugh catches in her throat. “I’m pretty sure you were referring to...to something other than tears when you said that.”
“All the parts of you that are...” He pauses for a moment as if gathering his words, and she doesn’t rush him. “All the parts of you that are mine alone to love.”
Her breath catches again, and he doesn’t look away.
“For someone who isn’t good with words, you have your moments, Cerian Westaria.”
A smile ghosts across his face. “Let me be to you what you are to me. Please.”
A shudder passes through her. “What do you mean?”
“Let me be your safe place. The person you don’t have to hide with. Your...everything.”
Her eyes flit back and forth between his. The intensity. The sincerity. The vulnerability.
“Your everything?” she whispers.
He slides his hand along her jaw and leans his forehead against hers. “My everything.”
One more solitary tear slips down her cheek, and he wipes it away with his thumb.
“My light will fill your darkness,” he whispers. “And when my light wanes, yours will guide me.”
She chokes on a lingering sob.
“And we’ll be stronger together,” he says softly.
Then he kisses her. Gently. Tenderly. Full of affection and devotion. And she kisses him back with a longing so strong it’s terrifying. An aching need for him fills her. It gnaws at her and burns within her.
And she gives in to the desire, letting go of the fear of losing control.
Of not being enough. She straddles his lap and kisses him eagerly with a hunger that seems to catch him off guard, but he quickly responds in kind.
His hand is hot when he tentatively slides it along her leg, and shivers shoot to her toes at the newness of this touch.
“No more walls,” she whispers against his lips.
“Nothing between us,” he murmurs as he trails kisses along her jaw.
She slides her thumbs over the upper edges of his ears, and his breathing grows shallow as he pulls back to look into her eyes. There’s fire in his gaze. A blazing passion that threatens to consume her.
Then he takes a deep breath and breathes out slowly before slipping his hands over hers and pulling them away from his ears as he threads his fingers between her own. He’s so warm.
“I don’t think I can do this here.” An aching longing fills his voice, sending threads of heat racing deep toward her core. “I wish the train would stop.” He says it so quietly she can barely hear him over the thrumming of both their hearts in her ears.
Where will they end up this time? And what will they do when they get there?
When he stands, he draws her with him, never looking away.
She can’t look away, either. The hold he has over her—it’s stronger than her worries. Stronger than her fears.
It feels right. He feels right.
Her tutors and teachers and parents prepared her all her life for this role.
But she wasn’t prepared for the elf standing before her, gazing past her eyes into her heart and soul.
She wasn’t prepared for the way he’d need her and she’d need him.
For the way his heart would complete hers, as if she’d been walking around her whole life missing part of herself, never knowing what she needed all along. ..was him.
“Where do you wish to go?” he asks softly beside the door.
“I-I don’t know. Where are we now?”
He tears his eyes away from hers to look outside, and she follows his gaze as she clutches his arm. His very warm arm.
“I don’t understand,” she whispers. “Where are we?”
The story continues in the next season…