06-22-2017, 12:30 AM
Ellyse
I'm the only one who will walk across a fire for you.
it's only fear that makes you run, the demons that you're hiding from.
And with the delicate swipe of a match, the flame is lit inside of him, scalding hot – and it surges and grows, swelling from within, filling him with the unfiltered heat of abandonment, heartache, and rage. He is stirred from the soft-spoken, brooding melancholy and brought forth with ferocity burning within the heaviness of his gaze, boring into her – and then his rumbling, growling voice emerges, harsh and scathing. She is unflinching, the hazel of her own eyes glowering as tension filters through her thick, heavily defined muscle. It provokes an involuntary reaction, as her bones stir and reshape beneath the pale, golden surface of her skin – long, curving rods of bone rise from her flesh, parting through the sinewy muscle to reveal thick, six-inch long spikes, surfacing along the ridges of her rib cage, the slope of her spine, and the broad exterior of her breastplate. Finally, a single, upward-curving horn shaped of her own bone emerges between her darkening eyes. Her adrenaline is coursing through her veins heavily, causing her heart to pound so roughly against its confinement, he is certain to hear it.
He is furious, and nearly quaking with the rage enveloping him, and she is wary – there is a tumultuous storm inside of him, and he presses closer to her (she can feel the warmth of his breath across her cheek, kept apart by the hardened bone spike warding him from coming too close). His voice is rising with each spoken word, and she is uncertain and unfamiliar with him, with his anger – and though she would never admit to fear, apprehension is bubbling just beneath the terse, stoic surface of her feminine features. Her upper lip curling to reveal her clenched teeth, but inside, she is shaken, startled by the sheer force of the emotions effervescing within him.
Do you see me? he asks, and she does, her steady gaze glancing between the endless intensity of his left eye and the scarred tissue of his right eye, and then traversing the length of his body, riddled with deep scarring (not an unfamiliar sight – her own King had many of his own; it hadn’t phased her then and it did not phase her now). Yet, there is anguish and shame seeping into his anger, there are so many intricate layers to his despair that she is caught breathless, her heart thrumming so loudly she can hardly process her own thoughts.
Even when he finally rotates away from her, trembling as a deeply buried sorrow rises and spreads throughout his chest, she is quiet, wondering how she had gotten here – what would have happened if she hadn’t stopped; what would have happened if she had let him be? His voice is softer, quieter, but laced with a bitterness more poisonous than cyanide itself, with harsh, humorless laughter forced out after a rhetorical question (one she would not answer, even if he had wanted her to).
There are hot, burning tears staining the golden sheen of his skin, but she does not stare – averting her gaze ever so slightly to the ground. The finely preened ivory feathers that lay neatly across the broad length of her winged appendages bristle and stir – anxious for the wind beneath them, longing for the freedom and safety of the bright, bare sky above – but she does not go; not yet.
Magnus only loves himself, he utters quietly, as what is left of his heart shatters, breaking apart into small, fragments, pooling on the dry, dusty ground that lay beneath his weight.
And then, If he loved you, why is he not here?
Her lungs are emptied, breathless and aching, but oxygen is too painful, too hot and unbearable for the delicate tissue within to withstand. Time seemingly comes to a grinding halt, and she can hear nothing but the pounding of her heart, or the rush of her blood surging through her veins – slowly, the thick lines of bony spikes recede into her body, leaving her bare and exposed, but what did it matter? Softly, quietly, the golden flecks of her warm hazel eyes glance up from the wavering tendrils of grain, still touching along the length of her legs, swaying to and fro in a breeze she does not even know is there.
”I never said that I thought he loved me,” she whispers, her voice hoarse, with a prickling of unshed tears stinging at the corners of her eyes, burning hot. ”not the way that I loved him.” And she, too, is heartbroken – heartbroken like he, for herself, for her son, for her daughters (for the one who had never known him; might never know him).
She had been foolish enough to fall in love with him– foolish to think that she could mend what had already been broken. She had been reckless with her own heart and she was left alone, blind, groping around in the dark to desperately gather what pieces were left.
”Perhaps that makes me a fool, but if I had to do it over again, I would, again and again, and I am not going to defend him – he hurt you, I can see that,” her voice is quieter again. Hesitant. ”he hurt me, too - but I know that you know, deep down, that it isn’t true.”
when all your promises are gone, I'm the only one.