"The reason I do not want you to go, to hand you over to… to Soren," Ithuriel gulps, squeezing his eyes shut now as he brings his hand up to encompass my own softly, pressing it further against his face. "Is because I... I want you, and," he says, visibly taking another breath to steady the unhinged warble that resides in his voice.
"I have wanted you for a very long time," he says, voice dropping to a fragile whisper as he averts his eyes, as if now that the statement is out in the open, he only just realised the futility of it. But the desperate pleading in his voice is hard to ignore, the faint catches of hope that suggest that maybe I could want him back, that maybe, just maybe, he still had a chance. Once upon a time, perhaps I would have- but if Ithuriel were to know that fact, it surely would destroy him. I shake my head sadly. Love is a cruel tragedy.
