At first, he had been the only name written in the constellations of her veins. His had been the name that was was carved into her bones and breathed into her lungs and tangled in the curls of her matted mane—and it had been a name that had stood alone. But she had run, would always run, and he had not chased her. They had become ships passing silently in the night and time, as it does, had continued. His name was no longer the only name buried in the sandy shores of her heart; his name was no longer alone.

There was Sleaze now, with his haunted eyes.

There was Sleaze, with the fragility of his demons—so like and unlike the brokenness of Kingslay. He fell into her and she onto him, and while she granted him the tranquility of quiet, Sleaze gave her the gift of distraction. She was drawn to him as she was drawn to all of the monsters and the demons and ghosts of the worlds and, in time, she had accepted him into the constellation of her breast. He became part of her, and she allowed it—the ash of his presence building the columns of her heart.

Kingslay was no longer the only name, was no longer the only star swirling in her veins.
But he was still burned the brightest. He still cut the way none other could.

So she does not fight the pull in her belly when she sees him, does not even deny that she had missed him. She is utterly open before him, pulled apart for him to play over every detail. He was, and would always would be, master of her fate. “Kingslay,” she breathes in her voice of fog and morning light. She comes up to his smoldering side and, without fear, presses her mouth to his neck, feeling the tendrils of heat that remained and aching for them—wishing they would stay for longer. “It has been so long.”

The world has spun and the moon had been reborn time and time again. She has met Sleaze. She has lost her father. She has still not found home. So much has changed and yet so much remains the same. “It feels so obvious to say,” she murmurs, her voice soft, barely audible, “but I have missed you so.” In the way that the flame misses kindling, in the way that flesh misses the bone. She missed him. Of course she did.

The sky is dark, but Etro does not mind. The clouds split open with the pull of lightening, but she finds that she likes it, finds that she enjoys the threat of rain in the swollen heavens. After all, the electricity in the skies is nothing to that which crackles and sparks between them; it is forgotten in the tension of their young bodies, in the touches that linger and then sweep away. He is a knife to her throat, but she leans into it. He is a fearful beast, but she does not fear—not even when his breath rolls over her skin.

He shudders, and her flesh responds in kind, bunching and shivering against his dissipating heat. Her throat is suddenly dry, but it is not because of how he may kill her. It is not because of how she may love him. It is real and tangible, and she feels her skin tingling with sensations unknown. “Kingslay,” she breathes against him again, as if she is fated to say it; as if she is to forever pray against him this way.

“Tell me that you missed me,” she murmurs, and the sentence is both demanding and hopeful, her muddy brown eyes moving to find his, her head blocky and lacking in grace. The older she gets, the harder the lines that draw her up become. She has lost the softness of youth and no longer can hide behind the awkward growth of a child. She is created in this fashion—made up of the colors of earth and rock, tall, perfectly average except for perhaps the extra weight from Percheron blood. In another life, she may have been a warrior; her body could handle the stress of it. In this life, she is nothing of the sort.

“Please.”

She may not be the same child he left behind, but there are still constellations trapped within her breast. There are still impossibilities ground from the dust of her bones and fates not yet writ. And yet. Oh, and yet, there are differences between this encounter and the ones before. Differences that at once seem so small, so trivial, and yet are a yawning chasm between them. A chasm she is not sure that she can cross. Not even for him. Her mouth tastes of metal; it is bitter and cold. She is cold. She is shivering with the disappearance of his heat, and she does not know if she will ever feel warm again—ever feel whole.

With a breath that sounds like a sigh, she parts from him, stops leaning against the knife that is his body. Her eyes shine with tears that do not fall, and she swallows hard, blinking softly, not bothering to hide the emotions that strangle her throat. “Oh.” Her voice is soft, has always been soft, and despite the years that have passed since the last time they had collided, it is the same voice, silver bells not deepened by age. For the first time with him, she is acutely aware of the plainness of her face, the heavy lines of her body.

For the first time with him, she feels shame. She feels doubt.
“Oh.”

The chasm between them widens, deepens, darkens, and she is suspended over it; there is nothing to catch her now. He has been one of the only truths that she has ever held close, and it is crumbling. He is looking at her but it is not the same; he is not the same. In truth, she is not the same. She does not fear him, but she fears something—fears herself, her doubt, her life now that she has managed to negate even the magic that had once existed between them. She was wrong—always. She destroyed—always.

Now she has destroyed them.

“I understand,” she says softly, although she is not sure that she does. Not sure that she ever will. “I do.” Etro does her best to look strong, but her version of strength has never been the same as the world’s. She wears emotions like armor, and her armor now is vulnerable—it is shadowed by her insecurities, the visible breaking of her heart. “I should stop bothering you,” because that is all she wants to do. She wants to lean against him until his fangs are at his neck. She wants to break him open that she can understand what she did wrong. (What did I do?) She wants to know; needs to know. “I’m sorry.”

She would do anything to stop this pain ripping through her chest. She would do anything to quiet the demons screaming in her head. She was made for this, but not this; she is not equipped to handle the way her heart is beating—so fast, so hard, so loud. She is not equipped to handle the way that she is gasping for air or the way that the earth is shifting, revolving, falling from beneath her. Her reality is being torn asunder, and she is gasping, and he is there, but she can’t touch him—and it’s too much.

All of it is too much.

But then he speaks, and she wants to cry from the relief, from the glorious, beautiful pain the blossoms in her chest, bruising her ribs with each breath. No. To what, she didn’t know, but he had spoken, and just hearing his voice—the same, clanging syllables rattling around his mouth—was enough to drive away the shadows for a second. She closes her muddy eyes and leans against the wind that stirs, and she breathes in the faint burning scent of his body, and feels the ash tangle in the curls of her matted mane.

No.

When her eyes open, there are still nebulas swirling there, the constellations of her cells a stark contrast to the plain angles of her face and the slope of her hips. “You can’t tell me no,” she says simply in her voice of sea and tides. She may not be beautiful, but she is the daughter of Yael and Vanquish. She is a princess of the dunes and a daughter of the desert moon. She may not be beautiful, but there are heavens in her DNA that can quiet the monsters and still the storms and bring magic to its knees in her presence.

She is not beautiful, but he cannot tell her no.

The pain is still washed over her features, and she smiles at him—the curves of her lips sad, wistful. “I love you, Kingslay,” not so much a confession as a truth of the world, “but you cannot tell me no.”

She is dissolving before him, but he still remains quiet. She is shattering, and still has only uttered one word (no) that rings and echoes in her ears. She is falling, falling, falling, and the only motion that he makes—the only reaction he has is to look away at the rustling of a nearby tree. That is perhaps the saddest part of this entire encounter. That single slant of his handsome, haunted head is something that will play through her memories over and over again until it is burned, seared, branded there for eternity.

Tears spring into the corner of her eyes as she realizes the futility of this exercise. She is shaking him at the shoulders, screaming at him to love her, and he cannot. It is not within his DNA—and she, she cannot fall upon this spear again and again. She is made to love and, in turn, be loved. Perhaps not in the way that is expected (she loves like the wind loves the swirling dunes of the deserts; she is to be loved as the sun loves the ever waning moon), but she is to be loved. She expects it—was raised to expect it.

And he—well, he could not.

She sighs again, and this time it is intertwined with bitter acceptance, with pain, with heartache. This time, she knows that she is closing a chapter that will never be re-opened. So, despite the fact that her lungs are alive with her agony, that every cell is burning with need to go away, she draws it out. She watches him with muddy brown eyes, tracing the hard angles of his body, his flat shark-eyes, the places where ash settle into the slopes of his shoulders and the faint traces of fire can be seen on his hide.

She studies him, memorizes him, loves him in spite of it all.

“Go, Kingslay,” she finally says, and her voice is barely a whisper. She nods her head toward the trees, the borders, the area where she is not. “You should go.” Etro feels hollowed out, and she wonders how much more she could stand (how much could one soul bear?), but she forces herself to straighten. She is a daughter of Yael and Vanquish. She is a princess of the dunes and a daughter of the desert moon. She will not let this—him—break her, even if she feels the cracks running like fault lines through her flesh.

“I will think of you,” she confesses, one more time. “I do not expect you to think of me.”