we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea
She does not understand magic. Not the kind that her father is made of. Not the kind that weaves her mother from winter itself. Not the kind that forced others to fall under Ivar’s bidding. She certainly doesn’t understand the magic that surrounds him now. This death and darkness. These things that should frighten her but instead intrigue her. Calling to her in the shadows and pulling her forward.
But she thinks, in a way, that perhaps she understands him.
Understands the weak boy she had first met with the rasping voice and nearly tangible weakness—and now the man, Alliance Champion and magician, who stands before her. At the very least, she wants to understand him, which is more than she can say for most things of this world.
He draws away and she remains, nearly demure in her innocence, in her unknowing, and she watches as the shadows bleed away from him. Until he is what he is underneath it all. Her heart stutters in her chest as she studies him—takes in the simple color, the beautiful face—before he returns to her cloaked in dark.
“I will hold it here,” she whispers, drawing her nose down to her chest. She was never one for eloquence. She had been thrust too early into maturity to ever study language truly, but she does her best to try and translate the swelling of emotion in her. She reaches silvery lips to his cheek and presses them there.
“I will show you the ocean one day,” she promises, because she is certain that she could take him there now. That he would survive. “There are places within it so dark that you lose yourself completely.” She watches him. “I always think of you when I swim through them. I go there more often than I used to.”
@[jamie]