Leaning into the comfort of Daniel's touch, it was so easy, so natural for Inari to look into his eyes. She had felt herself drawn to them eyes since the first time they'd met, and the longer she looked, the more she felt as if she were about to tip over the edge of those crystal blue orbs and drown in pure, cloudless sky.
Not only did she see him as he had been, as he was and all he could become, but she also felt what he had felt, almost as if the experience had been her own. She felt it, and felt herself laid bare for him in ways more intimate than she had even begun to imagine.
Did he see her, clinging to her mother's hand, desperate for the attention of a young woman so smitten, so addicted to Lord Raith that little Inari was all but forgotten the moment he entered a room? Did he see her in the shadow of her elder sisters, never feeling like she quite measured up? Could he feel the hope, intertwined with the despair at learning of what lurked within her?
Could he see the monster reaching out for him even now, its heart a black hole and its white eyes leeching the color from her own? She didn't know, all she knew was that one moment she was lost in Daniel's eyes, and the next she was flinching away, breaking contact with an audible gasp.