I lay next to him as the stars dance across the sky, accented by the twin moons I have grown to love so dearly. It feels like an age since I’ve been here and yet I fear my time here has been too short.

Anders looks over to me with concern, his silver eyes alight with the words I know he wants to say and I am dreading to hear. I don’t want to break his heart. The winds gusts and blows my hair in my face, along with sand from the beach where we lay together. Our beach. A place that has brought me so much comfort and now is bringing so much pain.

He swipes his fingertips across my forehead to move my disheveled hair from my face.

“There, now I can see those magnificent eyes.”

“You are too kind to me, Anders. I can only imagine how much of a mess I look like after today,” I say.

“You have never been more beautiful than you are right now,” he says with a serious look in his eyes I’ve never seen before.

“Please don’t do this. We knew my time here would be short and that we shouldn’t get attached.” This is agony.

“Well it’s too late for that! And I didn’t realize that you would be taken away from me like this,” he said sternly. I’ve never seen him this worked up in my time here.

“We have to say goodbye. It is what is right. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I am already broken, Selphina. Without you, I don’t think I’ll be able to breathe. Not being able to touch you, to kiss you, to even know if you are safe!” His voice becomes increasingly more frustrated. My heart skips a beat.

“What would you have me do then, huh? Have you face exile because you can’t let go of a girl you met two weeks ago?” I can’t stop the harsh words from coming out, but I have to make him see. See where I am coming from and agree because he might lose everything if he doesn’t.

“I love you.”

The words came out so softly that they shouldn’t have been heard over the waves. But I did hear them.

I don’t want to say what I have to, but it was already spilling out of my mouth before I could think twice about it. “I am not right for you for so many reasons. For one, I am not from your planet. I don’t fit in here, the king made that clear tonight.”

“Don’t bring my father into this. That has nothing to do with how I feel about you.”

“He said it and now I have to, to make you see, that I cannot be your future.” I force him to look into my eyes. “I am not enough for you.”

“You don’t get to say that, Selph! You don’t get to dictate if you are enough for me; that is my decision.”

He looks desperate for me to give in, but I can’t do it.

“You will make the wrong choice. I am not the woman you should be with. I have dark things from my past that haunt me and I can’t keep you safe from them if you follow me.”

“What are you so afraid of?”

He stares at me for a long time, his lips forming into a fine line. Nothing that I say will make this better, it will only push him further away.

“Goodbye, Selphina.” He starts to walk away down the beach and back towards the castle in the mountains.

His words are like a knife in my heart. I want to stop him, to tell him that this meant as much to me as it does to him.

But I can’t.

So, as soon as he is out of sight, I cradle my face in my hands and sob, knowing that this will be the last time I ever let myself be happy.

It hurts too much when it inevitably ends.