Try as Altira might, she couldn't maintain eye contact with the woman when she leaned it. It was like a automated reaction, as soon as their eyes touched, hers faltered. There was just so much intensity there, so much undeniable emotion. She couldn't do it. That was until she said those few words that truly struck to her. She looked up into Talia's eyes with shock and concern. Her voice was barely above a whisper, she didn't trust herself to talk any louder, "He would die for me?"
Memories came flooding to the surface, A cougar, a startled horse, her brother, long hours spent by a bedside waiting for something, anything. By the time she had pushed the memories back under the surface, she was walking towards the bedroom. Walking into the bedroom.
When she looked back on this moment, a few days from now, when her logic was yet again around her. She would shake it off as being far to storybook. Nearly in tears over a stranger, how dramatic. But perhaps Talia was right, and in that moment, when so many memories of a time she did not wish to recall came rushing forward, some deep, instinctual, maybe even primal part of herself told her to get up. Go to him.
She pulled the quilt away and ripped the blanket that Raff was snuggling away. With this odd mix of natural grace and emotional forcefulness, she slid under the quilt and wrapped herself around him. Her arms snaked under his and gripped his shoulders from behind while she buried her face in his chest.
Not caring if he was awake enough to understand was she said, her trembling voice told him, "There are men who would die for duty, there are men who would die for love. Then there are men who would die out of duty to who they love. You aren't allowed to do that. You aren't allowed to die." She held herself against him fiercely, going so far as to entangle her legs with his.