in my veins; any

[Kingslay]

KINGSLAY

A fog rolls off her tongue when she whimpers.

It melts into the white sky and then the clouds before it’s lost. He wonders if when her body is his, when her soul falls from her eyes, if she will find her breath out in-between the clouds and the white. He wonders if she will exist apart from it, and then he decides he doesn’t care.

Someone somewhere loves her, and he doesn’t care.

Someone somewhere loves the way the breath rolls out of her in a way that’s more poetic than the ways that Kingslay loves it. Someone somewhere loves her plain brown hair that falls in waves across her neck and back. Someone somewhere loves the gentle curve of her smile and thinks it looks like the bend in the crescent moon. Someone somewhere thinks about all the pretty metaphors and similes that break like tides over her body, but it isn’t him.

“Are you going to hurt me?”
Of course he is.

Of course – because he is made for hurting things. He is made to make them scream. He is made for that last hiss of breath escaping their collapsing lungs, for that last kick of a dying muscle. And even though he’s trying to be good(for her, always for her), it doesn’t show here.

“Yes.” He answers, the only sound to fill the gaps between her labored breaths. She shuts her eyes like she knows what’s next. She only knows a version. The truth is so much harder.

“Please, don’t.” She says, shaking like the winter air has burrowed deep into her bones, but her body is betraying itself. She is afraid. He feeds on her fear, on the beads of sweat rolling off her cheeks, like flames feed on gasoline.

“Okay,” he answers, biting his tongue and drawing blood, thinking of all the ways she is almost like Etro. The slope of her narrow hips, the dark catacombs in her eyes. He could let one go. He could let one live. He will be good. For her. Always for her.

She whimpers when her eyes open, and when she turns to go on legs that are still shaking, he thinks of all the ways he could split her open. He thinks about her mewling. He thinks about her spilling blood instead of fog. She moves quickly, and he thinks that he could let one go, that he could let one live.

But he won’t.

And in a second he is at her throat, and she is mewling like he thought she would. She crumbles against him and the fire burns her skin until the white-cloud air is smoke and singed hair.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“I lied,” he answers. He always would.

And then she falls into the earth thinking about someone somewhere that loves her that she will never see again. And he thinks about her marrow. He thinks about the light in her eyes until it goes. He thinks about how he almost let one go, how he almost let one live – but then didn’t.

And so, he made the Gods themselves bend at the knee.

KINGSLAY BY NEVAEH | HTML BY MAAT | IMAGE © ILYA KISARADOV

[Lucrezia]

Silence.
It lingers here in the confined dark forest that is pushed off to the side of the meadow. The trees that stand so close together, rise up together, stretching out their hands for something, whether it may be the gods or curiosity. A fog intertwines itself through the trees. There is an eeriness among the forest as it is nothing but still – nothing here seems to live. It is a frightening place, but it does not compare to the home she once knew.

She remembers the cold and darkness. It once was a distant memory, tucked far away, never wanting the memory to resurface again. However, here in the middle of the forest, where she stands, the memories come flooding back and shake her whole core like an earthquake. These trees remind her of the ancient giants that hardly could be seen by the constant thick fog that surrounded them. The stillness of the shadows and the quietness of the land only brings her heartache. Home, she thinks. Yet, this place was not here home. This was not the kingdom she knew, not the Chamber she remembered. This quiet little forest had nothing compared to the ancient giants of the Chamber.

Lucrezia doesn’t quite recall the feeling of the cold against her multicolored skin or the way it sent a chill down her spine. It has been sometime since she had ever felt the breathe of winter on her neck or a thick coat wrapped around her body, hoping to keep the chill away from whatever winter brought that year in the Chamber. It had never happen that way in the sandy dunes she calls home now (Is it my home still?). There was no cold and darkness, except only light and perhaps goodness.

The multicolored mare sighs, a small fog rising quickly from her mouth into the white sky. She moves through the forest in a zig-zag like fashion, keeping close to the trunks and shadows of the trees. The shadows cannot conceal her though. Lucrezia is nothing but an obvious target within the white winter forest – she is covered in spots and peafowl colored markings of white, brown, orange, and yellow. She is alone out here like this, alone in the dead of the wintered forest.

Alone she might always be.

Her body provided little amount of warmth due to her living circumstances in the sandy dunes. Lucrezia once had wings that would have helped her with warmth, but the peacock wings at her side have disappeared long ago. She was nobody now without her wings – a deserter. However, the mare does not mind the coldness that much. The cold made her feel something – alive or dead, or something in between it all. She only needed to feel something in order to feel alive. Yet, sometimes she didn’t feel alive at all, just a soulless body roaming the world.

Lucrezia has lost track of where she has gone in the forest. Nowadays she loses track of her time and place when she dives deep into her mind, clouding her mind of distant memories and thoughts. The smell of smoke and singe fills her nostrils. It is fresh and sharp. She stops in her tracks, her nutmeg eyes tracing across the wintered forest, and inhales the scent again. It does not bother her but instead fills her with curiosity. Lucrezia has always had a heart for adventure, which may never change for her and surely doesn't now.

She is closer to the source more than she realizes. Lucrezia turns to the right and sees the tragedy before her – the monster covered in fire and the dead mare burning. “Oh,” she whispers. It is all she can manage to think of saying at the moment.

html © shelbi | character info: here

Lucrezia

[Kingslay]

KINGSLAY

And right before she goes, right before the light leaves her eyes forever, she screams.

It’s muted, she’s weak. It warbles in the emptiness of the night before it’s lost, but regardless it shatters his illusions. Because she would not scream. If she were real she would lean against that fatal kiss – and that knowledge is what draws him in, that knowledge is what makes him seek her out in ways that he shouldn’t. He looks for her in the narrow hips of strangers. He looks for her in the plain curves of their bodies, the galaxies in their eyes. He looks for her in ways that would make her stomach turn against her – in ways that would leave he blood running cold.

And then he ends it.

He smothers her quickly, without drawing out her death, and the crack of her vertebrae sound almost like lullabies, and the quiet that settles afterwards feels almost like relief, like a salve on an oozing wound. And for a little while, there is nothing.

Until there isn’t.

“Oh,” she says, and he hears the breath catching in her throat.

It isn’t all that’s snared. He’s caught, too. Off guard. His walls are down, merely fragments of stone against the ashes of his kill. He isn’t hungry, and it’s like she’s pulled the stars into alignment, because he’s always hungry. There is always a need. There is always something.

If he were worthy of existence, he might smile. If he were anything less than wicked, he might lose his breath in awe of her. But he has never been won by beauty, or fate. And he has had his fill of the beautiful moments. He craves the terrible ones instead.

“Run,” he says, and his lips are almost smiling. Almost.

And so, he made the Gods themselves bend at the knee.

KINGSLAY BY NEVAEH | HTML BY MAAT | IMAGE © ILYA KISARADOV

[Lucrezia]

She is in awe.

Her eyes brighten, watching as the fire monster smothers the burning mare quickly. The crack of her bones sounds like haunting lullabies – a familiar lullaby her father once hummed to her when she was but a small girl. And then there is a dead silent between it all. She feels like she can hear her own heart racing. It is pumping so fast that it almost feels like it’s about to explode from her chest.

But she isn’t afraid.
She knows she should be, but she isn’t.

Lucrezia is curious, struck by wonderlust in what stands before her right now. It captures her enduring fascination with the boundless beauty and unpredictability of all nature’s mysteries, leaving her to seek out the meaning of this. It is not death that captures her enthrallment. Lucrezia has seen what death can do to others, but it is the way he looks at her. The way the monster stands there after killing something, taking life away from this world. It is the raw image of him. The vulnerable parts as one soul keeps from another. It is the darkest secrets of the soul. It is the emotions, the yearnings, the dreams, and the thoughts hidden behind a mask so often worn during an entire lifetime.

It is everything beautiful and terrible at once.
It is heaven and hell.
But it is real.
And it is true.

She yearns for this vulnerability. The rawness of a child’s heart again. She wants to see the world again like she used to. She wants to feel the thrill of adventure, the adrenaline in her blood, and take in the beauty and newness of the world.

But she can’t.

Lucrezia has fallen far beyond the innocence of a naïve child. She has seen this world full of terrible things. The beauty she once knew has been torn away. She knows within herself it’s still there, somewhere in the darkness. And that’s why she stays. She doesn’t run when he tells her to. No, she needs this more than he might know.

She needs to find beauty in the terrible moments. Her heart craves to find a balance again between her soul and mind. There must be a way to restore what she has lost along the way. She has to find herself again, she begs herself every day to feel something again in her growing world of gray.

“Why should I run?” she whispers back to him. “I have nothing to lose.” And she didn’t. Every part of her was willing to die right here to find something beautiful in the world, to find something good in this terrible moment. It was a risk she was willing to take. But what was the cost of such a decision or mistake? Lucrezia doesn’t question it truly. She’s already made up her mind as she remains unmoved.

html © shelbi | character info: here

Lucrezia