Salvage ~ V2: Trial and Error (Steampunk/ Gaslamp Romantasy ~ FxM, MxM)

Chapter 35: I Can't Have This ~ pt.2

Kelvaran looked down at Kazia's hands gripping the dagger and brushed his fingers over the back of her hand.

"Do you like this?" he asked with a tinge of sadness.

Kazia loosened her hands around the dagger and gazed at it fondly.

"I love it," she said quietly.

"This belonged to my sister," Kelvaran said, his sadness growing. "Given to her by my parents."

"Oh! Kel," Kazia protested, pushing the knife toward him. "I can't have this..."

"I want you to have it," he insisted. He moved forward to press himself close to her, wrapping his hands over her hands around the knife, trapping it between them.

"It's not appropriate," Kazia said, gazing up into his eyes with a bewildered expression. "I'm... I'm a Devratha," she said, her voice full of self-loathing. "You know that my father probably..."

Kelvaran silenced her with a gentle kiss.

"I want you to know that my intentions are sincere," he whispered. "And that I know that you are not him, and that you are not with him."

"I know all of that without this," Kazia said, her eyes pleading with him to take back the dagger. "But you can't have many things left from your family, and this... this is the sort of thing you would give as a... as a promise gift."

Kelvaran sucked in a breath and looked away over her shoulder.

"It doesn't have to mean that," he said, his voice choking almost imperceptibly. "It's probably too early... and perhaps you wouldn't..."

Kazia looked up at him sharply.

"Kel," she said in a rebuking tone reminiscent of their Mistress, "look at me."

He turned his face down and she furrowed her brow at the tears gathering in his eyes.

"Do you think you're not coming back tomorrow?"

"That's a possibility every time I go," he answered.

"But this time feels different," she said.

She looked at him for a long moment, clearly struggling to gather thoughts, so he waited. She finally lowered her face away from him.

"It isn't that I wouldn't consider it," she said softly. "Just that none of this is anything I ever thought that I could have. I'm not prepared... I don't know how to do this."

"Neither do I," he said, lowering his head to graze his forehead over her hair. "I'm just following my heart. I've always been impulsive, just ask Mistress Amelys."

Kazia laughed, but then looked up at him again, her expression serious.

"What if you really can't endure my... peculiarity? If you make me promises now and then later begin to find me tiresome..."

"I think you'll begin to find my bitter disappointment with the world tiresome first," he countered.

Kazia stared at him at a loss, then looked down at the dagger caught between them.

"If we can't last, then this..."

"Then I'll still know that my sister's legacy is in the right hands," he said. "Nereyna was almost as proficient with small blades as you are... almost."

Kazia smiled and took a step back, drawing her hands along with the dagger out of his grasp. She looked longingly at it again, then replaced it in its box.

"I can't have this yet," she said firmly. When he seemed ready to protest she emphasized, "Not yet."

She took the box back to the mantel and set it down gently, tracing a finger over its pearl inlay once more. She turned back to him.