Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
Gale recalls with pristine clarity the way that Mazikeen had tasted, the way each of her powers lent flavor to the heart he had consumed. He had felt full, powerful in a way that he’d achieved in no other lifetime.
But the fullness had not lasted for long, and the bottomless chasm of greed and fury that drive the thing wearing Gale had not quieted for long. Sickle’s blood had satisfied it, sweet and young, and there is still the heart to eat, if only Mazikeen would move away so he might reach it.
He still stands over the filly’s body, with Mazikeen between them now, and the light has gone out of her skin. She refuses to meet his gaze, focusing instead on Sickle, and jealously rises hot in his chest.
He pulls her head up with Wishbone’s magic, forcing her to look at him.
“This is your fault.” He tells her, his blue eyes searching hers for some spark of understanding. She knows this is her fault, doesn’t she? That if she’d just done as he’d said, as she’d promised, that Sickle would not be dying? He had known that the girl was slow, but Mazikeen has never disappointed with her cleverness.
“Try again.” He says, and the world goes dark.
---
They arrive in the past, just as Sickle asks if she is going back to Tephra. Gale has never done such a thing before, and so he still retains the blood across his face, but he remembers the future they’d lived and he meets Mazikeen’s gaze with a cold fury.
He wants the woman broken so he can put her back together in a way that makes him happy. He had forgotten this for a while, been focused too much on how she felt about him (a side effect of his sister’s empathy, perhaps?).
Time to use that empathy in a way that benefits him, Gale decides.
This too, is a new ability, and so the emotion that he sends to Mazikeen is weak. The Curse has little knowledge of emotion, and so nor is the emotion the Love that he’d intended to project.
“I want to see you hurt her,” He says again, and kisses the mark on her cheek that he'd drawn with their daughter's blood in a future that will only repeat if she refuses again to do as she is told.
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