Before The Fight
By Kathryn Bell / Spinebreakers Crew
Cale entered the room silently and softly closed the door behind him. Arbell had asked Vague Henri to send him in to see her as soon as he could. She had been fretting about him and his impending fight for hours alternately with and without Riba. Arbell had worked herself into such a state that she was infinitely paler than usual with worry. Turning to see Cale stood watching her just in front of the door she had no choice but to run over and throw her arms around him with a little cry.
Cale was shocked but not unpleasantly. The girl that had been the subject of his deepest feelings and thoughts for so long suddenly throwing herself onto him so readily. She who had been so cold and so cruel for so long, and he himself had felt such hate for her at one time. Despite all of this they had both let the other burrow deeper into their hearts and had both softened considerably. For the first time in a long while Cale let his constant guard and wariness drop. Burying himself within her arms they absorbed the moment; Arbell letting her worry diminish and Cale letting himself feel true bliss for the first time.
Arbell pulled back slightly and looked right into his eyes. The memory of a cold harshness she had seen there once before echoed through her mind but did not register, for his expression was different now. Cale had, however slightly, let her in. what she saw there was, for all the world, a teenage boy completely in love. Arbell's heart thawed and she did the only thing she could do. She kissed him.
Cale did not have the words for how he felt at that exact moment. He was a mixture of so many different, often conflicting, emotions not only concerning Arbell but his life as a whole. His thoughts about his treatment in the Sanctuary, his treatment from Solomon Solomon, which at any other time would have angered him now only gave him a strange sense he deserved this. But at the same time the love of Arbell Swan-Neck was too much to comprehend so he did the only thing he could do. He kissed her back.