Re: Queens: Wren & Saint.
The light sharded across the building like a blade. It carved out in sharp relief the garbage cans stacked in the alley, the flimsy way the chain-link curled back from the frame of the fence like fingers. Saint knew half a second before the shadow fell, in the same way he felt a photograph before he took it. He watched Wren's face, a study in blankness and the butter-colored dress didn't matter in one second and the next. Wren didn't scream like a suburbia housewife, in her pretty dress with her clean white hands and the camera slung around her neck like an amusement. Screaming was for women who believed the world was made up of rescuers.
Saint didn't know who she had become, but he knew the girl who hadn't believed in much of anything.
Wren took a step forward, and he saw the moment he should have moved in that. There was an opening, but he'd missed it, and the flattened syllables were hard and it wasn't the first time he'd taken a misstep. Become part of the picture, instead of behind the lens. Saint felt a flare of regret when he looked at Wren's face in profile. It didn't occur to him that it was of her making.
"We're coming," he said mildly, his voice at peace, and his movement was slow and careful as he fell into step with Wren, close enough to her side that the butter-colored skirt rumpled against dirty jeans, but he was between her and the man with the ink that crawled his throat.