Darlington was patient with the wait for whether she'd acquiesce, a part of him too aware of that strange gapping readiness for that. Waiting. A second like the whisper of eternity. But she reaches out. Given her hand, it is impossible not to see their smallness from a girl who had never been more than that. Malnourished for too many years, undoubtedly both of food and by any number of her prior substances abuse.

Without even needing to tilt her hand, the bones are so apparent. In her fingers, the delicacy of her wrist. Even as he kept himself from stroking the pad of his thumb down the center of her palm at first touch, he waited for it. Not her, but the want. The ease, violence. The thought about how easy it would be to break these bird bones. But nothing comes. No flicker of longing licking at his seams. At least not of that kind.

I will worship you until the end of days, he'd said. An absolution refusing brook even with the predictable. It makes him want to lower himself to that held hand and brush his lips against her knuckles. Fingertips. So fragile, and yet so full of power, too. Promise or abasement? To her, or for himself? He can't tell. His book was set down, second hand joining the first, as he started slowly, gently to knead his thumbs against the thin muscle over the palm of her hand.

He could warm his hands, but it might send his claws into her, too, and the perversity of answering a wound left by the ghosts of frozen dark with another of demonic flame is not lost on him.