"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
how come I never got used to the feeling of sleeping in a cage? too long driving, too damn hungry; a tied-up hound but nothing stays
There is no fire burning in his core, but he is still warm. Valdis melts into him, each second weighted with allure and increasing comfort. It’s startlingly quick how her heart flutters with the naivety of a child. Don’t be a fool, she tries telling herself, but then her eyes trace along the lines of his shoulder, neck, then face as he turns his head to look at her. This is what she has been afraid of. Folding into him, with their curves so perfectly complimented, opens a realm in her thoughts that she has spent months evading.
She has never known the touch of a man, and she reveled in the concept of being untouched. She was pure and belonged to no one.
All of that collapses now because she not only nestles into Sinner, but she enjoys it and yearns for more. Against his skin, her breath is warm and level despite how her pulse quickens in his grasp.
You are truly something else, he mutters when his throaty chuckle has quieted. Valdis smirks. In her uncertainty (is he playing with her or is he speaking honestly?) she simply responds with an arrogant, ”I know,” before resting her cheek against his shoulder, basking in the attention he offers her. ”Queens aren’t impervious. I suppose I can handle her, if it ever comes to that.” There is already tension between the two women, so who is to say it will not escalate? Valdis will not stand down or cower in the face of opposition. It simply isn’t in her nature. There will be an interesting standoff if Mary ever steps between Valdis and her ambitions.
A breath catches in her throat when Sinner’s lips stray. They glide along her torso, feeling her, claiming her. Her mind yells for it to end, to step away, but her naïve, youthful heart anchors her in place. Drawn to him, Valdis allows him to skate across her entire being and memorize every muscle and curve. He already hooked her. There’s no way she is escaping this (but truthfully, she doesn’t want to anymore). As much as she didn’t want to fall into his trap, her susceptibility spiraled the moment she pressed into him, and now her mind is drunk with illustrious ideas. ”You know how to keep a girl interested,” she jests as he tugs on her mane and sets aside Sylva so that this moment – as surprisingly intimate as it is – may live another few minutes longer. ”My King,” she breathes, smiling as she tastes the words on her tongue, letting them simmer and tingle, ”do I sense a growing fondness?”
A hopefulness brews in her chest, but her mind continues reeling back to what he is. Torn, Valdis wonders if she has so easily lost her own game.
She finally gave in to him. Letting the devil in. Did Valdis not know what good would come from this? The devil was full of lies and tales. He had desires and needs, but many of them come and go.
The hound does not dwell on the thought of hurting others. He has always taken what he wanted and when he wanted. The first steps were slow, but these were important steps to be taken. Steps that allowed him to understand and learn where, who, and what. From there it would only go uphill—him achieving everything he ever wanted.
Valdis filled him with something more though. Something he never knew he wanted so much. She clung to him like a leech. A cancer he could not quite get rid of, poisoning his thoughts and desires. It was refreshing though. A desire he would not get rid of. A passion he wanted so badly.
She is warm and intoxicating. This time she does not play her games with his desires, but lets him ravel in her. Sinner does not miss the parts where she enjoys herself. It only gives him the knowledge that she has wanted him as well.
He smiles at her arrogant reply. The girl’s confidence was something he personally enjoyed about her. Her willingness to get what she wanted was something he wasn’t quite sure of yet. Perhaps neither she did either just as he did not know what he was capable of. But if Sinner knew anything from knowing Valdis this long, Sinner knew she was capable of so much more. “Oh, I have no doubt you will,” he answers back with satisfaction.
The tension between the two mares is something he does not care to dwell on. He has no idea what could come of it. Valdis and Mary were equally both capable, independent individuals. But where they are both now was all because of him. He would either be their ending or beginning.
“It’s not my fault you kept me waited,” he says with a humorous smirk tugging at the corner of his dark features. There was no telling if Valdis would change her mind and keep him waiting again. She was not always predictable, but their game was new for both of them. If he needs to do anything to keep her giving him what he wanted, then he just might do it.
He laughs at her next words. “It sounds so much better when you say it like that,” he growls in pleasure, pulling her just a little closer this time. “Now, what could possibly ever give you that idea?”
how come I never got used to the feeling of sleeping in a cage? too long driving, too damn hungry; a tied-up hound but nothing stays
”The best things are worth waiting for,” she purrs as a coy smile tips up the corners of her mouth. It’s hidden from his view as she traces her lips down his neck, mirroring him tantalizingly. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, or even this easy, but her willpower has crumbled over time. She has watched the seasons pass, and she was able to elude his warm touch for a year before succumbing. The suspense was built not only for Sinner, but also herself.
It made this moment all the sweeter.
When Valdis breathes him in, she finds herself intoxicated, addicted. She doesn’t want this to end after all. Yes, she muses, Sylva can most certainly wait. Slowly – unwillingly – she peels her lips from his neck, but she doesn’t stray from his side. Comfort takes the place of her initial fear of him as his demeanor somehow seems to soften the longer they are together. Valdis, too, can sense herself buckling to his whims. There is still a fire in her soul, unable to be tamed, but somehow Sinner has reduced it to a kindle.
Her eyes blink up at him and memorize every ridge that comprises his chiseled face. Is she a fool to become smitten with a monster? Or was this simply in her cards because she is the child of one? Smiling with a single lifted brow, she savors the throaty laughter that tumbles past his mouth. ”Just a feeling that I have,” she admits with honeyed, teasing tones. It frequents her mind how this may all possibly be a ploy to build her up, only to break her down, but perhaps this is her taste of reckless behavior. By wrapping her in his web Valdis can very well be destroyed, but she throws caution to the wind as her gaze levels on his. ”Tell me something about yourself,” she murmurs, her voice quieted by the gentleness of their interaction, ”something not everyone knows.” Driven by her piqued interest, she dives deeper into knowing him, wanting to break down the walls that separate them still.
Every touch and brush of her lips is intoxicating to him. As her lips tracing down his neck he is filled with tingles of thrills. A delightful feeling consumes him. This feeling is dangerous and wild. He is drunk by the feeling. Addicted to the feeling it gives him. And he only wants more of it.
“Indeed, it is,” he says back with a deep-husky voice.
He knows that all too well. The best things that have ever happened for him in his life had all come from a price of waiting and being patient. Not everything would always come so easily. Sometimes you had to wait for others to make their downfall. Then again, sometimes you needed to be the domino that falls, and sending the word ablaze (just as he helped to have a hand in the plague, giving him the opportunity to become the ruler of Sylva).
The dark stallion lives in the moment right just as they are entangled together. Her company is more than enough (perhaps even more enjoyable then hunting right now in this moment). It is the first time he truly has desired something other than the taste of flesh and bone. It her taste that he craves most. Her body that he desires and needs now.
Their chemistry together is dangerous. A mixing of elements and minerals that can be chaotic and destructive. But he only feels life when he is around her. A fire he wants the whole world to burn in with him.
Her sweet and honey-like tone fill him with more now. “You might be right,” he says with a humorous tone. She says all the right words, pulling him even more. Is he truly blind by the possibility of what she can do to him, or will she be something more powerful that will bring him everything he has ever wanted? Sinner doesn’t show his fear of what she can do though. And neither does she give a hint of doubt.
Valdis looks at him, her gaze is wild and dangerous to him. He does not pull hi dark-nutmeg gaze away from her either. She is too addicting. But even her question pulls him out of the lustful nature he has fallen into with her in this moment. A question that was personal, a secret that not everyone knows. Giving such information away can easily be his own downfall, his own weaknesses exposed. What are even his weaknesses? Is Valdis the only thing that has ever made him fall to his own knees?
You, he wants to say but can only make himself think it. Was it wrong of him to not confess how much she made him fall? The hellhound swore he would never fall beneath what his own mother and father had become, leaving behind their own glories behind for something weak as love. And for someone else.
He smiles coyly at her, hiding his confusion and pushing it to back of his mind. “I will do anything to get what I want,” he says, but that is something she already knows. But does she truly know what it takes to go for what you desire most? “Even if it meant bringing the plague here to get the crown, I would do it over and over again.” He hints, confessing his own hand at bringing the plague. The dark beast was not so willing to show his weaknesses, but he would gladly share his strengths and dealings to show how well sacrificing for the things you want was the greatest thing of all.
“What about you?” He asks pushing his muzzles softly against her necks. “What is a little secret about you?”
how come I never got used to the feeling of sleeping in a cage? too long driving, too damn hungry; a tied-up hound but nothing stays
How did this happen? His eyes chilled her bones and his growling voice trembled her core only a year ago. This was not at all intentional. Valdis savored the power that she had over him – although it wasn’t immediate – and found pleasure in having been untouched. No man, other than her twin and father, had breathed so intimately on her skin as Sinner. It changed everything. As much as she enjoyed having an upper hand, Valdis suddenly found herself content to settle into this new role and melt into his side. Everything inside her bursts into life as their eyes connect and their bodies touch. She wants more of him, and his hungry, needing eyes mirror it back. Say it - she thinks to herself - say you want me. The words never reach her lips as she swallows them further down, still afraid of this mounting crest of emotion and want.
A breath holds in her throat as she presses the flat plane of her cheek against his neck. Her pulse gradually syncs with his own, settling until she could nearly be convinced that they are one. Somehow, it feels right. A smile threatens to crease her lips and brighten her eyes, but it wavers under the baritone of his confession. There are enough context clues to piece together his implications. He searches for her reaction, but Valdis doesn’t immediately offer him one. Her heart flutters in her chest. Her mind clutches onto his words.
Her eyes fall.
But despite the rushing of her thoughts, her breaths remain steady as she asks, ”Anything?” Against her own will, Valdis peels her cheek from Sinner’s neck so that her eyes may lift to search his. A brow lifts underneath her metallic forelock. ”Would you ever hurt me?” The question is attended by a suspended quiet that makes her suddenly more aware of the forest’s noises. A wind rustles the branches above their heads and a frog croaks at the edge of a nearby pond. Sinner hints at his role in the plague, but even then, as Valdis suppresses a cough, she doesn’t scorn him for it. In contrast, his persistence and determination is admirable. She is a victim of his decisions, but even then she wants to be next to him. ”Only a strong King can rule Sylva,” she affirms with a soft press of her lips against his jaws. He did what he must to gain the throne. It hadn’t been readily – or easily – handed to him.
Not like it could’ve been handed to her.
The conversation was comfortably focused on Sinner, but as expected, it beckons for her own answer. Admittedly, an answer should have already been floating around in her thoughts. It’s natural that he would want to dive into her own life like she just had into his. A contemplative lick of her lips creates pause and hesitation as Valdis wracks her brain for something – anything – that can equate the heaviness of Sinner’s confession. Much of her life has been sheltered, however, and her experiences are minimal. Alas, there is one thing that comes to mind because it’s what has engulfed her entire existence.
”My family is extensive,” she begins slowly, her voice low and her eyes distant as she stares toward the empty shadows of the forest. ”My father was absent during childhood and so I was raised by mother and Kagerus. They have their own brood of children now, so I feel that my twin and I are on the outskirts – not really belonging anywhere.” So much confessed in just that little bit. She has a twin. The caretakers of the east raised her. Yet, she doesn’t end there. ”I hold animosity toward Kagerus for the sole fact that she isn’t my actual parent, even though she has only been kind to accept my brother and I…” her tongue feels swollen and her mind is swimming.
No one knows this.
No one knows what has been brooding inside Valdis, simmering beneath a calm surface. ”I would turn against them – against my family – if it meant getting ahead.”
Her breath catches as she slowly blinks before peering up at Sinner, surprised even by herself.
His own desires for himself are becoming intertwined with his own lust. A lust that latches onto him, blindly leading him down a dark path he would have never dared set on. His heart—is that even possible for him to have?—lunges with hope and pleasure at the sound and touch of Valdis. It is a dangerous path. A path that could be his greatest downfall.
It was not within the hellhound to spill his secrets. His desires were kept to himself and his tools to achieve the greatest of his desires were never meant to be shared. The things that would make him weak should never be whispered. It was only asking for his downfall. And Sinner truly doesn’t know if he could ever be willing to let another one in complexly that could tear him from limb to limb and destroy the foundation he has built for himself.
Valdis wanted more now. She wanted things he could never dare tell another. Things that would make him weak. A weapon that would destroy him. He does not know how to be weak in front of another. He doesn’t know how to share things that others do not know about him. Things that no one should know, but himself. He is his own weapon, mastered and perfected from the fire of hell. No one else would be his undoing except for himself.
She turns to look at him, meeting his dark hooded gaze with her own bright blue eyes. There is an unspeakable fear in her words, but Valdis does not give it away. She is a master of concealing her fears just as he is. They are a match, but he knows deep within Valdis cannot help but question just how far the hound will go to get what he wants. Was she rethinking her stay to be within Sylva? It was possible.
But she would never leave him.
He would never let her go.
Never.
“I would never,” he says flatly, but he allows a some truth to be heard in his words. Sinner has never been good with showing his feelings. It is a dark world, a world he has never truly been in himself. He knows nothing about feeling emotions. Not until Valdis came.
But his words are not the entire truth. He lies more than allowing the truth to be seen. It was all he could do when he doesn’t know the truth himself. There was a possibility he could if it meant getting what he wanted. Something he desired more than anything—he might just sacrifice her for what he wanted.
He smiles naturally with a coy expression at her compliment. Valdis knew very well how to turn his desire into something more, but their chemistry was beginning to grow and magnify into something more. Elements coming together that collided and crashed. But he has yet to truly know if their chemistry will great something dangerous and disastrous, shattering both their worlds and future together.
Sinner listens carefully to her words, watching as she digs and hesitates to answer his own question. It draws his curiosity out, pulling him closer to her. There was something there, tugging at her thoughts as she contemplated the very nature of her own darkest secrets. What are you truly capable of? He asks himself. What sort of weapon would she become as she unfolds the darkest of herself to him now.
Her voice comes slowly, ringing in his ear. Valdis’ gaze shifts into the distance. But the hound does not remove his eyes from her. He wants to see every emotion she feels, tumbling over the rights and wrongs of the problem she is currently facing. The epidemic of where you stand on the edge of values and principles. It weights heavily now in her mind, he can see it and hear it in her words. The topic of family and those she left behind to come to Sylva.
The anticipation is building up in him, but he holds onto the thin line of forcing it out of her. Begging her to spit it out. But he is patient enough to let her focus on finding her words, finding the place where she stands between all she has known and what she has become now.
”I would turn against them – against my family – if it meant getting ahead.”
She says and turns to look at him with a surprised look. Even he is shocked by the very thing she has just admitted to him. But it was the biggest turning point of it all. For him.
