leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped
There is some distant twinge there in the center of his chest.
Disappointment, perhaps, when she extinguishes the flame and they are plunged into darkness.
But the shadows do not swallow them whole. No, because they are both bathed in the dim light of the galaxies splashed across his skin. And when he inches closer, he tells himself it is only to better see her in the darkness.
He wears the same smile, half-crooked. On any other face, it might have appeared cocky. (And perhaps it is, but he wears it with a sort of wide-eyed innocence.) She is aware of the brilliance of her magic, he thinks, how refreshing. And the smile deepens with her mention of the glass stallion, the water Isakov had thought so fondly of.
It is not hard to tell that the fire she commands lives in her chest, too. She is bold, bright. He sinks closer still, head tilted as he studies what he can make out of her in the half-dark. The eyes mostly. Gold like his. And he sees the same in her as he sees in everyone else, the shimmer of something just beneath the surface. Something begging to be drawn out. But he has not worked out how to translate that shimmer just yet, doesn’t even try, just studies her a moment longer, smirking.
I’ll bet you could, he thinks, concentrates hard, certain that she will hear it. He feels no overwhelming urge to defend the glass stallion who had acted as a father might but whom he had never belonged to. Instead, he lets the smirk shift back into a delighted smile at the sound of her laughter. Perhaps it is a cruel sound, inspired by the thought of destroying, but it still awakens something keen and bright in his own chest.
“What’s your name?” he asks, head still tilted, smile still tying up the corners of his star-kissed mouth. “What else are you willing to tell me about you?”
There is silence then for the space of a breath before he continues, “or would you prefer to remain a mystery that I will spend the rest of my life unraveling?”
