emery foster felt bamboozled, backstabbed, and betrayed.

to say he was not a social person was an understatement–his disposition leaned toward the solitary. the only person that he could marginally tolerate was ashby, and even his enthusiasm could become grating.

so therefore the sudden presence of you in his life was a real anomaly. at a glance, your energies did not appear to mesh; abby suggested that you were the sun, and he was the moon–however kiko interjected that you were a serene stream, while emery was a gloomy midnight bog.

despite this, he liked you. he'd seek you out during free periods to show you the studies he had done in his leather-bound sketchbook (which appeared to have been through multiple wars), and let you run the pads of your thumbs over the spattering of freckles on his cheekbones. friendly, platonic behaviors, yes.

but it had all been a lie.

as it turned out, you had been enlisted into keeping an eye on him by his older brother, marshall. even if your intentions had been pure, whatever perception he had constructed of you had been shattered.

"i don't want to speak to you. i don't know if you've noticed, but i never really get on with fucking liars." emery's tiffany-blue eyes were rimmed with red, his brown brows pinched in a disdainful manner under the curls pouring over his forehead.

he had shoved the copy of the sunrise on the reaping you had purchased for him back to your chest, somewhat winding you. his hands, normally so delicate in their artistry, trembled at his sides, though to withhold whatever storm brewed beneath his skin. anger was an ill-fitting mask upon features so often touched with quiet reverie and fairy dust, and yet it clung to him now, making a stranger of him.

at the slow ascension of your eyerbow, he attempted to usher you out of his dormitory. a provocation. he felt it as keenly as the sting of salt on an open wound. "i have no need for marshall’s misguided guardianship, nor do i seek his presence in my life. and i certainly have no use for you."