>>5223400“Edwin…” you say. Your voice hitches, and you gather yourself, steel your spine, and begin again.
“Edwin, I love you.”
“I love you too,” he says, not hesitating… But hardly ecstatic.
“You mean the world to me,” you say. “Really, you do! If we could go back to where we were…”
“But we can’t,” he says. “We’re… Changed. The situation is different. It’s like the Fountain. It’s… Broken.”
Oh no. No, no, no, no…
“Yesss,” you admit, looking down, gripping the stone bench with trembling hands.
You will NOT fucking cry. You wish Irinnile was here.
“Ismena,” Edwin says, and with leaping heart you feel his large, strong, soft hand on yours, so warm and firm and…
You can’t help it. You kiss him. He kisses you back, too! It’s wonderful, it’s beautiful, it’s everything you were missing! But then…
“Izzy, wait!” he says, breath heaving with the effect you (to your delight) still have on him. “Izzy… Ismena… I can’t. I’m… There’s someone else.”
“Paula,” you say, resisting the urge to sneer, or to spit.
Edwin looks abashed, shamed, his face aflame with crimson blush of embarrassment.
“She’s kind,” he says. “And smart, and shares my interests, and she’s a hard worker, and…”
“And she issn’t a foreign agent, and she hassn’t ever killed anyone,” you finish. “She’ss uncomplicated.”
Edwin nods, then looks to you, tears in the corners of his eyes.
“I love you,” he says, “but I can’t do it. I can’t be party to, to… Dead paladins, and mages, and whatever else it is you’re doing. I heard about what happened… What was published in The Grey Press. I know that it’s lies—”
“Not all of it!” you are quick to correct. “The Tower, The Paladinss… They aren’t GOOD people, Edwin!”
“Are you?”
That makes you draw breath and lean back… And yet, can you truly answer in the affirmative? By Edwin of Engels’ standards… Can someone who just earlier this evening tore apart two ‘innocent travellers’ to feed to a demon, and enslaved a half-dozen more, be called ‘good’? Is there any critique you could level at his former heroes and idols which would not also damn you in his perception?
“Have you ssaid anything?”
He shakes his head, but you can tell… Keeping this secret is eating at Edwin, tearing him apart. It’s probably what he was talking to Paula about, when last you visited him in dreams.
