A broken, guttural sound tore from his throat.
Then he let her go with a rough shove.
Elka stumbled backward just as Jayran broke apart before her eyes.
A sob ripped from him as he pressed a shaking hand over his eyes, but it did nothing to stop the tears pouring down his face. His entire body trembled uncontrollably, like a tree battered helplessly in the middle of a storm.
It looked as though someone had driven an axe straight into his chest and split him open.
He looked ruined. Broken beyond repair.
Elka stood frozen where she was, though every instinct screamed at her to put more distance between them. Yet she could not move. But his pain and grief felt like a living thing, palpable in the space that separated them.
This was unfamiliar territory to her.
Pain, she understood. Cruelty, she understood. Abuse had shaped nearly every part of her life.
But grief like this?
Love like this?
Those were foreign things.
