She wanted to argue with him, but he believed so strongly in what he was saying it was hard to. And he didn’t know enough, he didn’t know she had magic. It would be hard to argue with him without revealing that. Nevertheless, she wrapped her arms around her shoulders, shaking her head. Soft wisps of loose hair flew around her face. “I am a liar. There are things you don’t know, things you can’t know. I don’t deserve it, Percival, I don’t.”
He moved to put his arms around her gently, resting his head on her shoulder. He almost whispered, “You are my dear friend, you are my dear, dear friend. There is nothing you could say or do to make me stop loving you, there is nothing you could say or do, nothing anyone could say or do that could make me stop caring about you, there is nothing that could ever happen to make me be okay with you feeling like this…” As he spoke he felt his own tears spill over, and his own arms begin to tighten around her, carefully and slowly. “There isn’t anything in the entire world, Summer. There isn’t anything. I’m so sorry.” He just wanted to fix things, there wasn’t anything that could keep him from wanting to make it better.
She couldn’t stop herself curling into his arms. It felt so safe there, just as if nothing could hurt her again, despite knowing how false that was. She sniffled, gracelessly, and didn’t say anything for a moment. It did help. A little. The desperate, tearing despair that had driven her up to the tower was gone, anyway, slashed through the way sunlight slashes through stormclouds.
“You don’t understand, Percival,” she whispered back, but it didn’t have the force of earlier protests. “You don’t know what I am. The things I am … you shouldn’t care so much. I’ll hurt you, I won’t even mean to, I’ll just want too much and hurt you.”