He is wild and unending, cheerful and yet dark, and she finds herself confused by the implications. She angles a delicate head, peering up from behind lengthening lashes, petite in her youth and the hints of the woman she would become hidden in the softness of her face. Her mind whirrs silently as she tries to find the upper hand, to understand him, but she gives no such thing away, instead smiling that plain smile.
“And if they were right?” she answers sweetly. He doesn’t seem the type to bend so easily to thoughts of self-consciousness, but she cannot help but plant the seeds anyway—cannot help but wonder at what would become of the boy should the words become bombs to detonate later.
She cannot imagine that they will, but there is still so much of manipulation for her to learn.
Perhaps some would find themselves self conscious of being circled like prey, but she feels no such plucks of fear. What has she to worry in this world? Her mother’s very magic runs through the very veins of it. There was nothing in the shadows greater than those cast by Straia. She was sure of it.
So she remains relaxed, keeping an ear trained on him as he circles until he comes to stand before her again. She lifts her pretty head again to meet his gaze, to hold onto it. She feels that faint buzzing in the back of her head, that sweet rush as her newest gift expands within her, as though her very veins were flooding with it. Rosebay has little practice with the enthrallment, but she has even smaller self control.
“Crowns,” she practically purrs in her silvery voice, continuing to hold his gaze.
“Tell me, do you like to bleed?”
but in all chaos, there is calculation