[mature] like dreams that turn to dust,

[atrox]

hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

He has no reason to still be here, he knows. Nothing tying him to this woman or this moment and yet he settles into it all the same. His yellow eyes remain trained on her, despite the impassive features of his nearly slack face—save the tension that lives in the cavalier smile that pulls tight in the corners of his mouth. There is an edge to her voice that sharpens his gaze even more, wondering at what lives beneath it, and although he doesn’t show it pleasure in getting her to bite back, it simmers beneath the surface.

“You cared,” he yawns, shrugging his shoulders. “I cared, I guess. I prefer you fighting instead of being all,” he pauses, considering her with an intentionally lazy glance, “sad and pathetic.”

He sniffs lightly, catching the fading copper of wounds that dry on her, but he says nothing about it. Instead he just continues to relax in her presence, wondering what it must be like to care so deeply. There are few things that Atrox have cared about in his life and they are all dead or long gone by now.

Or no longer know that he exists, he thinks with a scowl.

But this, he tucks away into a place where even he can’t reach it.

Her next sentence catches his attention, dragging him back to the presence, and he focuses on her again. “I don’t live in Tephra,” he snaps, suddenly angry at her for forcing him to say it but his anger is a quick thing, It flashes, bright and furious, and then dies out, leaving him simmering in the aftermath of it. He takes a deep breath and then smiles again, the motion just a little cold. “And I’m always bored.”

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING