It’s jarring, the sudden roughness, the sudden tether to this unreal reality, so familiar and foreign—

He freezes, eyes wide.

His pulse thunders under Voltur’s lips.

He's all rough hands and burning presence and muscles straining in the flickering candlelight, in a moment his hands are fisted in fine coppery hair and-

When Voltur lets go of him for just a second– when his hands find their place lower down instead, closing around him–

He panics. 

There was a time, not long ago, when this was all he had ever wanted.

Now he lurches back, ripping himself away, crawling– his breaths are so fast too fast—

It's like a sudden slap. 

He rocks back on his heels -

- dreaming -

"What?"

He tries to master himself.

He tries.

He can fool himself into thinking that he is breathing more easily now, that his limbs are not so rigid–

“I am– sorry,” he manages in a gasp, eyes welling up with tears. “I am sorry–”

"I- no. Do not apologise. Forgive me. I ought not to have - assumed -"

For elves are fickle, are they not?

He had dismissed those warnings, had thought-

It is not as though he did not watch Astryx flit from thought to thought. And, indeed, man to man. 

"I shall withdraw."

The world spins around him. He feels sick.

It has been a long time since he has lost control like this. He– he faintly remembers what to do, maybe, laying there with his weight on his elbows, with his head bowed into his chest– he remembers, he thinks.

“Please,” he manages, pathetic, through swollen lips. “Let me– explain.”

He halts on his way out, and turns his head. 

Ophel looks up at him from his place on the ground. He opens and closes his mouth, searching desperately through the fog for the right words, the thing that will make him stay–

“Where are you going to go?”

It comes out choked. The elf’s tears fall, his blue eyes shine like–

mirrors

"Do not concern yourself."

"I will be well."

And he leaves. 

He sobs.