i don't have a choice, but i'd still choose you. || magnus

[Ellyse]

your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine. i don't love you, but i always will.

  The sun in all its brilliant splendor has since dipped beyond the fading horizon, its light tucked away beneath the rim of lightly dusted mountain peaks, giving way to the resplendence of darkness as it settles into the void. Once decorated with a blinding array of colors from each end of the spectrum, the sky now lay open, painted a deep shade of sapphire and riddled with diminutive fragments of light. Slowly, the moon rises, emerging from the shadows with her radiant, lustrous light, illuminating the darkness with a gentle caress. And yet, she had never felt more exposed – she had never felt so bare.

  A warmth spreads through the broadness of her chest as his cheek turns to her, seeking her touch, the white-hot ferocity of his anger dissipating into weary fatigue, his heart and mind splayed open before her. Gently, her whiskered lips touch his jaw again, traveling the familiar trail of bone and sinewy muscle to the ridge of his neck, the warmth of her breath lingering there as his throat rumbles with emotion and little else. As turmoil thunders beneath the surface of his skin, her lips place light kisses along the ridge, an unspoken apology lingering in each one. A shaky sigh spread across the length of his neck as her forehead rests for a long moment against him, the heavy scent of sweat and musk leaving her light-headed and breathless.

  Her own heart had become selfish, mangled and wrung with a longing she could not satiate, but the warmth of his body so near to her own is her only reprieve. She has always known he is a broken thing, pieced together with delicate, fragile threading, yet it has only drawn her closer to him, like a moth to a flickering flame. The irony is not lost on her; her own father is every bit a moth as he is equine – and though she has not inherited his complex compound sight, or his feathery antennae, or even his thin, translucent wings, there is a part of her that wonders what small piece of her is so inherently broken beyond repair that she cannot resist the proverbial fire burning inside of him.

  A shuddering breath emerges from her tired lungs as her skin parts from his own, her gaze shielded by her heavy eyelashes as her chin tucks close to her chest, but she is not without his touch for long. His voice reverberates through her bones, settling somewhere deep within the casing of her marrow, raw with emotion, unraveling her at once all over again. Her deep hazel eyes meet with his, a moment of intensity shared – both bent, verging on the edge of shattering, vulnerable and weak.

  ”Tell me what you have lost,” she murmurs, her shoulder pressing against his as her neck tucked itself beneath the crook of his jaw, listening to the faint thundering of his beating heart. ”the names that you call out in your sleep.”

  She would never tell him that his guard falters in the dead of night while he rests, nestled beneath the stars while flush against her own body. Too often, his handsome face contorts with some undiscernible emotion – the golden hair matted with the salty brine of his tears, which she washes away with a gentle touch to lull the demons stirring within.

  He is strength personified, beyond the thick muscle that lines his hardened body – it is the way he moves seamlessly between stoicism and a kind smile, and the way that he can fiercely guard so many but embrace so many more. There is so much to know, to understand – and yet, in those dark moments, cradled beneath the moonlit nights as her lips gently touch his cheek to chase his nightmares away, she does not know him at all.

Ellyse

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