you could break my heart in two, but when it heals, it beats for you
He denies her any victory at all, and so she chokes on her pride.
What is the struggle here? The humiliation of not being able to bully him with her beauty or humble him with her power? Not just power over Hyaline (she doesn’t wear a golden circlet or lord herself over others) but power over men, over women, with her carnal appeal. She has embraced it but with Brigade it cripples her, leaves he struggling for even footing.
Brigade is dismissing her again and she feels foolish, chided by his mocking her implied grandeur. “Only Primarch.” She says more gently, without the barbs that had guarded the words she had first thrown at him. Even though she knows better than to give him softness, she does because he cuts her and her first instinct is to be kind. Instincts that are wrong when it comes to this man, she reminds herself.
She’ll go, in a moment, walk away from him rather than run as before. She’ll still cry when she is safely away and secluded, but at least this time it wont look like a retreat.
Her eyes haven’t left him for a second but she does not realize it until she is watching the hard planes of his face flex into the feral desire she remembers from the moment he’d taken her by the mouth and torn away any chance of escaping him unscathed, unbranded. The stillness that takes its place is not familiar at all. Kensa almost prefers his fury.
“That does not surprise me.” Another she would invite into the snowy slopes of her home, the glittering chill where you could often be the first to break trail through the mountain powder. Not Brigade, he would not come and now that he knows who she is, even a maybe would be an insult. So she doesn’t say anything and steps forward to leave though it brings her closer to him.
“It was…” Her topaz eyes search his face, trace the divide in his blaze, linger on the wine colored lips. Her farewell dying on her tongue. “I’ve thought of you.” Kensa is direct and honest whenever she can be but this is a confession she has no reason to provide him. In fact she looks away, turning her face from him so that light ribbons down the rippling gold on her neck. Let him be cruel to her before she goes and remind her why she fled.
Kensa
@[brigade]
