Chapter 1
A radiant stream of silver spills through the window, bathing the wild curls that splay across her pillow in a glittering luminescence that makes her chestnut tendrils glow like golden blades of wheat basking under a high summer sun. Haunting the only corner the light fails to touch, Severus watches her sleep. Night after night he comes here, tracing the soft curve of her cheek with his dark gaze, the smooth slope of her delicate nose, the gentle swell of her lower lip…
He hates her.
Sometimes, when that perpetually pouted lip trembles in the night with unseen terrors, he aches to reach out and soothe it still with a gentle touch, to delve into that clever mind of hers and pluck out all that torments, all that taints what precious time he has to watch…. To be here… with her.
But then a new light comes and another day must be lived and let go and he remembers all the ways he would love to take those same blood-stained hands of his and ruin her with them.
Oh, how he truly, painfully, heartbreakingly hates her.