Eleanore should have been annoyed by that. The quiet overprotectiveness of it, the small deception layered beneath his easy permission that morning. Instead, standing here with her pulse still hammering and the memory of that thing's shapeless, hungry lunge still burned into her mind, she found she couldn't summon anything but gratitude.
"Thank you," she said quietly, "for following me. For not actually letting me go alone, even when you said you would."
"Don't thank me. Just—" His voice caught slightly, some rawness slipping through the careful composure he usually maintained even in the middle of a crisis. "Don't ever do that to me again. Do you understand? I don't know what I would have done if I'd been even a minute later. If that thing had reached you before I did."
"I didn't plan on nearly dying today, Caelestis."
"That's not funny."
