Even now she couldn't tell him, the bitter root where most her worries about this particular circumstance stemmed from. It had only been a year, not nearly enough for heartbreak to knit itself whole. Especially not for one such as herself, with her tendency to throw herself into anything, anyone, any situation she decided was worth the emotional investment.... the entirety of her being and her very soul consumed by it. "He would've known it even if you hadn't reminded him," she replied through clenched teeth, frustrations raising their ugly heads from deep within her. "He's not an idiot, he's just..."
His reassurances washed over her like water, and she bit her bottom lip -- hard enough to taste the copper-tang of her blood as the pearlined edges broke skin. "I wonder how long that's going to hold," she confessed after, her head lowering. "We've been lucky, I think. Fortunate."
Deidre moved to drop her palm from his arm, but when his callused fingers found her knuckles, she stayed the gesture and tightened her grip on it instead. The visual he concocted nearly earned him a smile she knew he was so desperate to find on her face...she knew him well enough.
"Have you ever seen an Archdemon, Aurin?" she asked, looking up, finally. Stubborn, heated pinpricks stung her traitorous eyelids. "I have. The last one. It flew over my head as a child and ever since then I couldn't forget it...and it was beautiful and terrible and imagining that damned idiot throwing himself at it without even knowing the full measure of what he's getting into is..." Her throat constricted painfully, tightening over the words written all over her face, but her Pride was unwilling to give voice.
"I can't, Aurin," she said instead. "Or rather I don't know if I can. Not after last year...it's too soon. Too fresh. I could scarcely breathe."