Ezra flinched at the expression on her face. He'd hurt her and he could see it. "It wasn't always," he said softly, a conciliatory remark. Once upon a time she had buoyed him up so much that he hardly had to worry about the curse. But now...

"It reacts to how I'm feeling," he said. He wasn't sure if he had ever made this connection explicitly before, but as soon as the words hit the air he recognized that they were obviously true. It all compounded; the shadows moved in and made him feel hopeless and then the hopelessness made the shadows move in more, and along the way he stopped doing the things that helped fend them off, and then it all collapsed in on itself. "So when things are hard — everything is hard."

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