Samantha Cassidy

For several days, Samantha had felt as though she was drowning. The girl seemed to exist in a constant stream of anxiety and stress. It pushed up against her from every direction and made her feel as though she was being pressed by every direction. Everything felt muffled and muted somehow. Often in the passing days, she would attempt to have a conversation with Aiden only to find herself unable to keep up. All she wanted to do was sleep. All she wanted to do was hide within the safety of his bed and stay way from the outside world. And she was content to do so even after Aiden had pressed a kiss to her lips and left the room. He had something he had to do, he'd explained, though he hadn't elaborated any further than that. She could stay here, he'd said, and that was exactly what she'd intended to do. She tried so desperately to let sleep take her back to the state in which she didn't feel all the anxiety that plagued her in those waking hours. But sleep wouldn't come for the faerie girl, and being in Aiden's bed without him only made her sad.

She tried to fiddle around the room to entertain herself. First showering to give herself something to distract herself, then dressing herself. She wore none of the elaborate, beautiful outfits that Nadya had bought her or she'd bought herself in the passing months. No, she certainly did not feel beautiful enough for those outfits right now. She felt small and tired and broken. Her outfits now consisted entirely of sweat pants - the kind with holes in the knees and were faded past any recognition of a real color - and one of Aiden's t-shirts that she'd swiped from his closet. She didn't put on shoes or makeup or even brush her hair. That took too much effort that the Fae Queen just simply did not have as of late. She looked a mess with her wet, tangled hair and rumpled clothes and the eyes that were red and blotchy from the combination of lack of sleep and crying.

She couldn't help her worry. She couldn't help that she saw them in every single corner, in every shadow. She wanted to go home and be with Dorian, but being inside the floating iron fortress that was the Ark seemed the best bet. She tried so hard to smile and laugh with Aiden. She tried to make sure that he didn't know that this was bothering her so much. After everything he'd gone through lately... she couldn't plague him with this. And everything that Frost had warned her about and Aiden's dealings with faeries... She told herself over and over again that that couldn't be true. That Aiden loved her and wouldn't harm her. And yet... there was that pressing terror that wouldn't let her find the words to ask him about everything. Because it was so, so unlikely. But what if?

The more she thought about it, the more it felt as though the walls were pressing around her in the bedroom. She couldn't breathe. There wasn't air. Her chest felt tight and her heart threatened to thud right on out of her chest. She had to get air. It was that alone that had her forcing herself out of the bed and directly out into the hallway. She didn't bother with shoes or a jacket, instead just finding the staircase that led to the upper deck and out into that fresh air that she so desperately needed. She ran straight to the edge of the deck, her hands reaching out without thinking to wrap around the cool steel of the railing. Instantly she felt the way the metal burned her, and as she jerked herself back she found her legs giving out from under her as she tumbled to the wooden deck.

It was that, combined with her thoughts and the pain on her hands, that seemed to open up the tears. She pushed herself to a sitting position, her arms wrapping around her knees as she let out those pathetic sobs into her legs. She was grateful, then, for the sound of the ocean and the emptiness of the deck that she could let out all those fears and emotions in peace.