Standing in the distance, alone, was a slender figure Hallie knew to be Liam. Seized with the desire to be with one who understood her emotions implicitly, she walked towards him. He looked up long before she approached.
“Hallie.”
“I don’t know why he does this,” she said, the words all but spilling from her mouth. “He didn’t tell me any of this. He never tells me where he goes. I don’t want to lose him, too.”
“One thing I’m sure of,” said Liam, his eyes unblinking. “Teague would never leave you.”
“He never gets tired of running,” said Hallie. She wanted her face to look hard, absolute, yet it looked anything but. “We’re always running even if we’re in the exact same place.”
“That is the life he has chosen,” said Liam, hands in his pockets, bending away from her, away from the world.
“But I’m stuck with it! Liam, I’m always stuck with it. And now he thinks he’s finding Atlantis! Atlantis! I can’t say that out loud without sounding crazy—Liam, we’re all crazy enough—“
“You’d do better to accept his shortcomings.”
It was a brutal thing to say, perhaps not the words themselves but in the way he said them. When she looked into his face he was not apologetic.
“But I’m tired.”
“But, but, but.” Liam was gentle again, looking back up at the burning mansion from where they stood, at the witches standing darker than the sky. “You just have to stand it a little while longer.”
“I’m not like you.” Hallie rounded on him in the field, eyes full of a longing that was both alien and familiar. Familiar, because Liam knew the mer, knew the way their faces could take on the loneliness of the sea. Alien because he had never seen it on her. “Everyone loves you; they all love you, in there, you know that, right? They love me because they have to. But they love you because you are the way you are. Even Teague loves you. Victoria loves you.”
That was what she had meant to say. Everything else had just been a feeble mask.
“Why are you so lonely if you’re surrounded by so many people?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” Hallie crossed her arms against her chest, brightly embarrassed, her hair curling against her neck. “You’re just trying to keep me at a distance. Like usual.” She looked back towards the falling manor, the fire so alive it hurt her eyes. “It’s cold,” she added, uselessly.
“Do you want to go back?”
“No.”
There was that unspoken thread that hung between them, a glittering thing so easily broken. Hallie did not want to move.
Silence, then, for long moments, until; “I don’t try to keep you at a distance.”
“I know.” She paused. “I miss you. You’re never here.”
Liam laughed. “I’m afraid I’ve been doing that to a lot of people lately.”
Hallie did not know what to say, did not want to press the issue, explain that what she meant was that she missed him, and that was the important part, and could he please look at her for once instead of seeing her as one of many. She was right next to him, and she did not know what she looked like, small, probably, insignificant.
“Try being around more. Maybe.”
“You’re wonderful at being indecisive. Ever since you were a little girl.”
“I’m not indecisive about this.”
“No,” he said, and though she wasn’t looking at him there was a smile in his voice. “Should a werewolf and a mermaid spend time together, Hallie?”
She hated it when he said it like that.
“That’s what you are, not who you are.”
“Does that make any sense even to you?”
Hallie laughed suddenly. “No. But it did in my head. Whatever, Liam—you know what I mean, you just like doing this, pretending you don’t just to make me talk more and make myself sound like an idiot.”
He smiled that frequent smile, so gentle it nearly hurt her.
“Or maybe I just like the sound of your voice.”
Something in Hallie stilled, and another something stirred. The heat of his body was proximal and demanding; she could not decide where to land her gaze. Awkwardness made her limbs heavy as she turned to look up at him, squinting to make out his familiar features.
“I don’t think that’s it,” she murmured.
The change had subtle, brief. Now Liam looked back down carefully, at the bland features that were somehow beautiful, the purity of her face that held the wildness of the mer in place of the wer’s cruelty. She was very painfully young.
“They’re almost finished. We should go back,” he said.
The night was preternaturally still but Hallie’s hair was curling like vipers round her neck and down her back. She tried to push it back with a hand but this did nothing to halt its wildness. “I don’t want to,” she said, almost on her tip-toes now, stretching upward to see a new tightness had wound its way around Liam’s lips. It wasn’t the mouth that gave him away, though; it was his eyes, which for a second blossomed a bright yellow like that of sunflowers. For that moment only he lowered his head.
“Teague will be wondering where you’ve gone.”
It wasn’t so much the tone but his use of you’ve instead of we’ve that spurred on Hallie’s uncharacteristic stubborness. “Liam, he’s with Jorja and Vincent and Maren, he doesn’t even notice—“
“You know that isn’t true.” Liam was blinking, eyes flashing forth between yellow and green at an alarming rate. His hand moved to her shoulder as if to steady himself there; the face hovering above hers was suddenly feral, as if a wildness was barely contained beneath its surface and fighting to come out. Hallie had seen this on the wer before, torn between their humanity and the carnal desires which ran so much deeper than any man’s. It was a part of him, she knew, because as often as she tried to separate Liam from his fellows he was what he was; and perhaps that was, in the end, stronger than the who which flickered in his ambivalent eyes. Resolve slipped away from him like a whisper.
“You’re… something,” she whispered, paralyzed with fear that the hand on her shoulder would turn into a half-formed claw at any moment, crush the bone beneath like so many leaves. The power of him was laced like a poison in every vein, and nearly drunk on champagne and nervousness, Hallie closed her eyes. Inside of her, beneath that fear, there was a brilliant light, her magic, and she pulled at this now without truly knowing what it was she was doing. A flush shone on her neck and cheeks, and the inky reddish tangles of her hair reached towards Liam, skimming his collarbones with the shyness of moths. She was radiant with it, translucent, almost, light from nowhere bathing her in a glow of several moons.
“No, Hallie.”
It ended just as abruptly as it had come—Hallie jerked away, frustrated and shamed at once. He had more control than her, and they both knew this, and his gentleness only served to incense her further. He had won. Liam always won.
Hallie stalked away through the long grass, towards the fallen manor, though the heat flayed at her skin. She would never prove her worth among them; she was, for better or worse, an orphan, and an ill-fitting one besides. Her mother was even more of an outcast than she was, now, and her father was dead. Hallie rarely blushed but now she felt like her face was on fire. What did Liam think of her, after that? She didn’t want to know. She hardly wanted to see the expression on his face, afraid it would be that one she most hated—mixed pity and compassion for the girl who was as fickle as her serpent-like hair. Her mind had been so clouded as she’d leaned towards him, pulled by the wildness that emanated like smoke. Something in her had set him off, but what was it? Why had he, briefly, looked so bitingly disappointed in her?