11-30-2015, 01:50 AM
(10-12-2015, 04:20 PM)Kingslay Wrote:
The ravens are falling.
They lose black feathers like ash after the eruption, but they don’t end. They don’t sizzle, or crack, and the heat and flames do not eat them up – instead, they come alive with it, with fire. They breathe the orange and red through their lungs. They run hot with fire they harbor in their veins. The putrid stink of burning flesh escapes him because there is no flesh left to burn. There is only fire. There is only smoke. There is only magic and ego. But she doesn’t know what he is. She does not hear the threat coiling like a venomous snake at the back of his throat.
She doesn’t know.
She doesn’t know.
She doesn’t know that he could hold her eyes in the crook of his jaws, between his teeth – that he could press until the ooze wept softly on his tongue. She doesn’t know that he could bleed her out until nothing is left but red, weeping earth and a scream that runs so deep it will echo pitches through the eyelets in the leaves of the trees around them. She doesn’t know that he knows what she looks like inside out, that he could draw out her veins and her tendons in the dirt with eyes shut tight against the tops of his cheeks.
But he could show her.
He could show her, and it would be the last thing she ever knows.
He wants to. The creature in his belly is curling through his innards, purring and growling against his organs. It wants food. It wants to be placated. It wants flesh, and bones, and yellowed-fat. It wants boiling blood, and charred flesh. It wants. It wants. Kingslay feels the acidic saliva drip off the creature’s fangs and burn holes through his insides. He could show her.
Instead he swallows his hunger. Instead he listens to her coo about the war she will bring, the flesh that she will feed him with instead, and he pretends not to see all the seams in her flesh, all the ways she can be undone. Instead, he holds the flesh of his cheek between his teeth until the meat bleeds. Instead, he focuses on the metallic tang of iron his tongue and tells himself he needs her still.
He needs her still.
He needs her still.
He needs her still, but it isn’t for her wicked beauty. He does not see the slant of her hips, or the ogee curve in her face. He does not hear the cadence in her voice. It’s not why she’s alive. He hears the thrum of her pulse in his ears and it sounds volcanic. He sees the ash settle on the ridge of her spine and wonders how blood would look in its place. It’s not why she’s alive.
He needs her still, and in the end it will be enough.
In the end the flames will settle on his skin, and his dark eyes will steady instead of rolling white and wild in his head. He doesn’t need to agree to do her bidding. She’ll know. She always know.
“Eight,” he breathes against her ear, and she’ll know.
