He was in there, somewhere, beneath the fear and whatever else it was that was holding him back. The real Altair, the one she’d seen in bits and pieces, lurking, never allowed out, but occasionally shining through. It gave her hope. Hope that one day, he might be set free. With her.
“Then why?” she asked, pushing as gently as possible.
“Because,” Altair said heavily. “I’m not a very good protector.”
Christine opened her mouth to ask for more information, to ask why not, to get him to explain, but something dark and terrifying crossed behind his eyes. Whatever it was about, the sign was clear. It was a warning. Don’t push it. He was opening up to her more than he had before, and if she kept diving deeper, eventually he would retreat.
Sometimes, it paid to be content with the victories won and come back another day, instead of trying to win the war all in one go.
“You won’t be a good protector,” she said quietly, mulling that over, analyzing the sentence. There was so much wrong with it, she wasn’t sure where to start. In fact, it was so bad, it was almost comical.
And just like that, she had her plan.
Smiling openly, warmly, almost amused, she stepped forward, right into his personal space. The look on her face was disarming, she knew. That was the point. To let her get past his barriers.
Because if he knew the shitstorm she was about to bring down on him, he’d have been stepping back already.
She lifted her finger, focusing some of her magic, and she poked him right in the sternum. Hard.
“Ow!” he yelped, her finger amplified by the magic of her spell, allowing her to hit him hard enough he felt it painfully. “What was that for?”
“That,” she said, dropping her happy visage, and replacing it with the frustration she felt within. “Is for thinking that I need your protection.”
She poked him again. “And that, is for being so blind to your surroundings that you’ve failed to realize the most basic truth about me.”
Altair blinked. “I...what are you talking about?”
Christine stared at him, open-mouthed in shock at his continued ignorance.
All at once her surprise turned to anger. The ever-present staff, so comfortable in her grip it seemed an extension of her body, came up and slammed down into the ground. Fire blazed in the intricately carved runes along its length, and the tip brightened considerably.
“I am fully capable of protecting myself,” she growled. “Without you.”
Altair swallowed nervously.
“I have spent twenty years of my life studying, training, practicing and pushing myself as hard as I can, so that I don’t need to rely on anyone else. How dare you think that just because I’ve taken an interest in you, that I say I want you around, that it means I suddenly need you to shelter me from everything.”
The dragon shifter backed up, but she didn’t let him escape. Christine paced him, step for step. Sparks shot out from the base of her staff every time it hit the floor. The power of her birthright, of who she was, flowed through her and through the instrument she’d spent years training with.
“I am a grown adult. A witch wise in the ways of magic!” she shouted, power flowing into her, whipping at the skirts of her robes and billowing her hair out behind her. “And a pretty darn powerful one at that!”
“Christine, I—”
“I’m not finished!” she shrieked, light surging from the top of her staff and disappearing into the ceiling above. “If I think you are worth the risk, then that is my choice. My decision. It is not yours. Do you understand me?” she shouted.
Altair stammered, trying to respond. The wind howled and whipped around her as her anger bled into energy. But Christine was better than that. She calmed herself, and the light faded, and her voice returned to normal.
“Your attitude, your assumption that you must be my protector, it screams of invalidation. Of tossing aside a lifetime’s worth of work. As if you have no faith in me,” she said quietly, pinning him in place with a glare. “As if you don’t trust me, or my ability to protect myself.”
“It’s not that,” Altair managed to stammer out, looking around for an escape, any way out of the predicament he’d found himself in. “I never looked at it that way.”
“Of course not,” she said, shuffling slightly to the side, blocking his direct path to the exit. They were having this conversation whether he wanted to or not. “You’re too wrapped up in your own guilt, your own grief, that you aren’t focused on the rest of the world around you. Only yourself. Like the eye of a hurricane, you ignore everything else as it spins around you, thinking yourself the center.”
“How...how did you know?” he gasped.
“How did I know?” she shook her head. “Altair. It’s written all over you, plain as day, for anyone who takes the time to look. Your face says it, your actions say it more so.”
“But I don’t understand. If you know this about me, if you can see all this, then why is it that you still want to be with me?”
The pain went deeper than she thought. What was he hiding? What could possibly be so bad, so horrible, that he thought himself so unworthy of the caring of others? Christine’s heart ached for him. He must feel so alone as well. Pushing everyone away from him, trying to ensure that he didn’t bring anyone else down with him in his spiral, as he viewed it.
Well enough of that. He needed to be cared for, tended to and, maybe after all was said and done, loved. She wasn’t going to commit to anything, but nor would she rule anything out.
“I’m interested in you,” she said, shuffling slightly closer. “Because I’ve seen the other side of you, Altair. The
