“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved: in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
This is how she lost him.
She was walking home one warm summer evening when she realized he was gone. Or that he had never been there to begin with. As she stumbled across the cobblestones, she told herself that she'd never had hopes for anything otherwise. That she'd always known he'd never see beyond their friendship. She convinced herself that there was nothing she ever could have done to change that. That trying to make him love her was like trying to start a fire underwater. She blamed the elements. She blamed the war. She blamed everyone but herself, because she would have betrayed everything she knew and loved to be with him—except he never asked her to.
He'd never wanted her heart. Maybe that's why Mafalda had given it to him. She'd hidden it away in the darkest parts of him, between the shadow and the soul, where he'd never find it. He would never discover that he'd had it all along, like a water stained photograph in the cellar. Someday, in the far off future, when he starts making room for someone else, he might find it. If Mal were lucky, he might wonder; maybe suspect who it belonged to and why it was there. But in the end, he would throw it away the same as one would a ruined picture.
That was how she lost him.
