Whatever stretches between them will never be kind. He had hoped it would be once; he had hoped that he would be able to provide her with a gentle love, the kind he had never experienced. He had wanted to walk with her in the sunshine and cradle her at night and whisper every sweet nothing into her ear because she had deserved it. Lord knows that she had deserved it. And what had he given her instead? He had just given her pain, anguish, sorrow. He had selfishly taken from her and given little in return; he had used every intimate knowledge he had gathered and weaponized it because he was weak—
too weak to be the kind of man that she deserved.
Now, even now, she makes her way toward him and she is the one who is supporting him, his diseased weight resting against her shoulder and his mouth finding its way to her neck. She tasted like heaven; she tasted like salvation. His breath is hot and he moans a little from the nearness of her, the proximity of her doing more to cloud his vision than the fever. How often had he imagined this since their last parting? He had assumed he would never see her again—let alone touch her. He had long thought the possibility gone.
“He’s a bastard,” he manages to mumble, words slurred as he leaned heavily against her, coughing again, the blood managing to fleck her shoulder. “I’ll kill him.” The world begins to slant, and he closes his head, head dropping heavily to her side. Makai has never gone this long between Chamber visits before, and were he more conscious, he would be surprised by how quickly his life was being drained from him. Death normally came quietly, nipping at his heels and at his throat like an illness, but this was like water circling the drain, each moment bringing it faster and faster so that he could barely keep up with it.
Delirious, he reaches out weakly to lip at her jaw. “I’m glad you are here,” he confesses, eyes unseeing and bloodshot. “But where is Malis?” Makai lifts his head, looking sightlessly around as if he could find their once-small girl before he takes a shuddering breath, exhausted by the effort. “She shouldn’t run off so much.” Nuzzling into her, her presses his cheek to her skin, “But it’s nice to be alone.”
A fevered kiss to her jaw before he goes very still, muscles hard beneath his coat, sweat sickening his coat. “I killed them—her.” He is seeing now, but it is not what is before him. It is the beach and he is young and there are two mares before him. He is drenched in their blood and Magnus is there and before he knows it, his brother (his brother) is raging and he is dead. Now he is older, but the beach is the same, and she is mumbling words about changing wings and he is so angry at her—so angry at her for reminding him of Oksana—that he cannot control it. She is dead before he knows what's happening.
“Why?” the voice rips from him and keels on the wind, strangely high-pitched before it dissolves into nothingness. “No!” he screams and his voice is thick now, hoarse, the sound ripping from his torn throat and the violence is enough to draw forth another coughing attack. “No!” His head is splitting apart, and he can hardly think around it—cannot even feel Oksana pressed against his side. The time, when his knees buckle, he does not bother to catch himself. Instead, he crashes to the ground, sides heaving, and nose coming to rest on the wet soil. “I love Oksana,” he confesses to no one. “Please tell her when I die.”
MAKAI
I'm a dead man walking here
but that's the least of all my fears