tarnished

[Tarnished]

I'll use you as a warning sign,
That if you talk enough sense, then you'll lose your mind.

She looks at him like she has stumbled across something otherworldly—ethereal and untouchable, it probably never occurs to her how easy it is to break him; he doesn’t let on how easy it was for a girl to get under his skin, after all. Tarnished watched Else live her life for years, meanwhile she never spared him another thought; he took her children under his wing and he kept them as safe as he could, because as much as she hurt him he couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her—he never could, no matter what he said or how much he pretended to hate her.

He thinks he loved Dominion, too.

But Dominion didn’t need him the way he needed her to.

Exemplary is… different.

Strange, because she cannot hide her feelings as well as the others. Beqannians are usually better at this, pulling up the mask and hiding everything behind a guise of ice and nonchalance—especially the politicians, his mother made sure to make him understand that all of them were almost always full of shit. He watches her carefully, wondering what it is that she finds so fascinating. Traits are commonplace now. He isn’t ugly, but there’s better-looking; she must have come across a stallion or three by now that were less scarred and much… well, prettier.

It makes him that much more curious about the look in her eye.

“Not long enough, eh?” Tarnished teases, moving closer—testing his boundaries, of course.

He was always doing that.

It’s what got him into trouble the last time.

TARNISHED

( Talk some sense to me )

[First person was not agreeing with me. :| My bad.]