etro --
in the hushing dusk, under a swollen silver moon,
I came walking with the wind to watch the cactus bloom
She is not surprised when she feels the pressure of his teeth against her, when she feels the way his mouth wraps around her throat, the threat of it clear and writ into the moment. She should be surprised, but she is not, and she doesn’t move; she doesn’t fight the moment, doesn’t fight the pressure, the way that he hungers for her blood to spill silver across the muddy meadow floor. She has known from the very beginning who and what he is. She had known from the first time they met, the coppery tang in the air biting into her conscious, of the blade in his hand.
So she doesn’t fight it—doesn’t pretend that this was not always where this was meant to go.
Instead she just takes a deep breath, tipping her head back so that she can look at the stars, so that she can take in the heavens, relishing this moment where he takes his life between his teeth and cradles it instead of crushes it.
“I am,” she whispers to his mumbled question, the motion of her voice causing her throat to ripple between his teeth, the pressure uncomfortable but not unwelcomed. “I always think of you, Kingslay.” She wonders how many different ways he has imagining undoing her. How many different ways he has seen her strewn across the floor, her heart taken apart and still beating for him, forever beating for a monster who does not know how to love in return.
For a moment, she imagines that she feels the heat of him increase, his teeth warming and she doesn’t reach for her gifts any more than normal—does not wield it as a weapon like she had against the Gift Giver—but still, its smothering effect calms whatever brews beneath his flesh. “You can, you know,” she finally says, her eyes still on the sky above them, her pulse slow and looping. “You can take my life, if that’s what you want.” Part of her wishes that she could look him in the eye while she says it, but she supposes that if she is going to lay it down before him, it doesn’t matter.
“It’s always been yours to take anyway.”
-- vanquish and yael's trait-negating desert princess --
@[Kingslay]