09-09-2021, 07:21 PM
selaphiel
She matches him step for step, this smoldering beast with her terrible teeth and her terrible claws.
And he cannot tell the stench of this death from any of the others.
Is it her death he smells or his own?
Will she kill him?
There is a tremor in his pulse, a kind of shuddering in his breath, but he does not try to separate himself from her any further. There’s no use, he realizes, because she will only pursue him. He could unfurl his wings and take to the skies but it would only be a matter of seconds before she was after him, he thinks.
So he stays and he stares at her with those pale eyes.
And her scathing words sink bone-deep, kick the air clean out of his chest.
They could have buckled his knees if he’d let them. But he clenches his teeth, eyes burning, and shakes his head just barely. She’s right, he knows. She is more familiar with his weakness than anyone, really. Because she had been forced to come to his aid that day in the darkness when she’d sacrificed her own life to keep him safe.
His nostrils flare and his heart pounds out a staccato beat but he does not allow himself to look away. He doesn’t have it in him to speak with a barbed tongue, so he only shakes his head and says, “you don’t mean that.”
And he narrows his eyes, feigning a bravery that does not quite reach all the way into his pounding heart. He narrows his eyes and takes one small, stilted step toward her, lowering his head to maintain eye contact when he asks, “and since when do you care about power?”
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
