"we pull apart the darkness while we can" She is curled in the shadowy forest at the base of the small mountains that border the southern edge of the kingdom. It is quiet here, filled only with the sound of her own labored breathing and the wind rustling through the pine needles above her. They sound like wings in this silence, like feathers cutting the air with their strange, easy frailty. But she feels softer in these moments, as though the years of exteriors melted like armor to her skin can loosen, only so long as there are no eyes watching her. For a little while she can remember the bay sabino girl who played in the jungle with her mother and father, the girl who laughed and smiled and raced with the jungle cats until they grew bored of her games and disappeared into their sky-perches among the treetops. For a little while, she can be that girl again. Those memories that came after, the ones who try to hide like nightmares in her thoughts, they fade a little for that girl.
Her breath catches in a grunt as another contraction ripples through the sinew and muscle beneath her bright blue skin, but still she says nothing. There is no one here to call out to. Her family no longer names the Chamber as their home, and she is not a creature designed to make and keep friends. She is strange and she is volatile, all sharp edges meant to hide the things that live within. But this life is a tangle of things that do not make sense. Feelings she cannot (will not) unravel, truths she denies because ignorance is easier. She would have Killdare here if she could choose it, but how, when she cares as she does, could she choose such a thing. There have been many times where they have spoken of Dacia, and she can see even without his words to reaffirm her quiet conclusions, how deeply he loves her, how desperately he does not want to lose her. And even though she thinks she can see a little of the same when he looks at her, when he touches the blue of her neck and she folds reflexively into the curve of his chest, it is what she cannot see that holds her quietly at bay. There is no room in this puzzle for her. His doubt would not exist if there had been no seed of uncertainty planted.
How could she bear to wound him, how, when she would readily cut down those who tried. How, when he had carved out a place beside her heart and she found she liked the weight of him in her chest.
Another handful of contractions race to greet her and she tenses with a groan, stretched so that her cheek is pressed damp against the dirt and moss of the shadowed forest floor. She pushes and pushes again, a slave to the impulses of her sweating, exhausted body until at last the contractions have gone and there is a small, perfect silhouette laying still beside her. With a quiet whicker on her lips, she twists to nose the filly, urgent until the child stirs and she can see the rise and fall of her tiny ribcage. She rises carefully then, steady on her legs as already her body works to heal and regenerate. With a tender gracefulness that does not match the rippling coils of muscle beneath the blue of her skin or the pointed obsidian horns springing from her forehead, she steps forward to draw her tongue across skin that is cool and damp and the same rich brown of her father. She does this until the child is clean, until the blue and the brown are free and visible, until she has stolen some of the dampness so that this perfect creature will not freeze when spring touches her flesh.
She shifts again, tired on her feet, tracing her mouth across this girls bare forehead until her little face lifts to lip soundlessly at Malis’ cheek. Already some of the softness fades from Malis, some of that easy quiet, and it is replaced with a sort of feral possessiveness as she glances around them with eyes like raw emeralds plucked from the earth. It is many long moments before the instinct fades and she remembers herself, remembers whose kingdom in which she resides, under whose protection she remains. Killdare can be trusted. Even hidden away at the edge of the kingdom as she is, she is certain he would let no harm come to her, to their child. Certain that the beast who looked both horse and goat and devil would not find her here. But when he had split open her skin, he had buried doubt in the crevices to let it grow and fester.
And still-
Killdare can be trusted.
With a brow furrowed with quiet uncertainty, Malis returned to nosing her daughter, touching her cheek and her shoulder and her flank until at last the delicate girl clambered to her feet to nurse. Satisfied, the quiet blue mare returned to drying her child, her heart tightening at the way the brown dapples of her body melted into brilliant blue points. “Victra.” She breathed finally, nosing the small pair of dark leather wings folded against those narrow withers. And then she is quiet again, still, when the filly turns to nestle gracelessly against the warmth of her mother.
MALIS makai x oksana
± when you feel my heat, look into my eyes ±
Trust was a relative term. Lately the Magma King had been thinking just that. Was he trustworthy? The last few months had been a whirlwind of change and tangled promises and confusing paths that all led back to one another. Love was a fickle mistress just as the Chamber herself was, mostly he was certain this was her doing, always finding ways to throw just enough hammers in the gears that made up his life.
Not only had Killdare come to terms with the feelings he had been harboring for Astri's youngest child, he had kept her and made her his in a sense and with that they had made new life. Not only was this part of the web in which he seemed to weave, but he had found his heart bursting in two. One half rested with the color changing girl and the other was being hesitantly kept by an indigo woman. Then again there was the uncertain appearance of Spyndle and his mind was working on overdrive to try and settle what this all meant to his heart.
Perhaps he was a greedy beast, perhaps the Chamber had made him that way, or even the fires of hell that were roiling within him but he wanted them all. There was no way to chose and in that choosing there would still be loss. Another life was brewing within the blue woman and he was just as in love with her growing belly as he was with the expanding barrel of Dacia.
Today he goes to her, wherever she may be, swerving through the pines because Malis had taken to hiding, to distancing herself. They both had spoken long on the matter at hand and perhaps it was because they were both no spring chickens to the world that a fight and tears and anger had not come to fruition from the words- the truth. He offered her nothing but the truth, no matter how hard and confusing those truths might be. Killdare was no liar, he never had been, a man was his word and the King was indeed a man.
As he approaches the scent of blood and birth hangs heavy on the damp spring air, he burns for a moment forgetting the certainty that all was well. Finding them both against the lichen at the base of the southern mountains, one blue, and another a small indigo pointed bay. No matter how hard Malis pulled from him he only pushed to be near her, unrelenting in his favor and not quick to release her from his grasp. Unbeknownst to the women in his life her would fight to keep them and with them their children- he had already lost so much. He waits mere steps from their coiled bodies, breathing ash into the air and bringing warmth to keep the cool at bay. "Malis?" he asks, waiting to be accepted into their midst.
KILLDARE magma King of the Chamber 
"we pull apart the darkness while we can" There was very little in this strange, broken world that Malis cared to hold dear. She coveted her mother and her father, though both were mostly just memories now for all the time they spent hidden away together in the wilderness at the edges of kingdoms and forests. Her brothers and sisters she loved, their children too, and for a long while she had tried to protect them from the jagged pieces of too many broken lives like fractured bones splintered and buried beneath flesh. But the darkness loved Malis, loved their strange, ruined princess, and she found that the more she tried to protect, the further her darkness reached. So she learned to stay away, learned to love her family at a distance that was safe for them so that those like Pollock, demons made real and tangible, would never find them.
But Killdare was like a balm to the flayed open wounds on her heart. A hand to hold in the dark loneliness that chased her through long days and filled her nights with nightmares real enough to leave blue on skin that should be brown and coax curving horns of bright obsidian from the hollowed out angles of a delicate, wild face. When he had refused to burn her that day in the meadow, refused to hurt her where so many others had leapt at the chance, something had changed. She had cut herself anyway of course, stubborn and brittle and instantly wary, with the point of one horn so that they could watch the shallow wound on her foreleg knit itself back together before the blood had even spilled into the damp grass below. He had asked her not to do it again, not to hurt herself, and the quiet concern in his voice had struck her. It was strange, impossible even, but more than the shallow cut on her leg had been healed that day.
She hears him through the trees before she sees him, but she knows his sound, the weight of his heels in the mossy ground, so she does not startle. For him, she softens as she does for no one else, the harsh angles of her body disappearing beneath a sea of supple blue. When she eases towards him, quiet in the tides of irresolvable reservations, her muscles do not snake like razor-wire beneath the shiver of her skin.
Malis, he says and her brow furrows deeply, disappearing completely beneath thick tangles of indigo and black. Hesitancy bleeds into her expression, into the way she holds herself back a moment to watch him because it is still a wonder that he means so much to her, much more than she will ever let him know. Where Pollock had cut her open and left wounds like valleys in the marrow of her broken bones, Killdare had come and filled them. It was pieces of him, slivers of undeserved kindness and compassion, of warmth she barely understood, that held her together now. While love was not a thing she recognized, not a word she felt she had any right to, she suspected this was closest she would ever come to it. What she felt for him was possessiveness without jealousy, desire without hunger, a warm need that blossomed tentatively in her chest when she found herself sinking into the green oceans of his eyes. She did not need his exclusive affection, did not want it because she did not deserve it, because with her ghosts and her shadows and all those broken pieces, she would never be enough. It was his happiness she wanted most of all.
She would’ve slipped closer still, to him. Would’ve pressed her tired face to the curve of his neck, her cheek flat against the plains of his shoulder if not for the way his skin still smoldered, thick and acrid like the ash that fell from his nose like dirty snow. She is weak in this moment, weak in her quiet resolve to hold him at a distance so that he can hold on to his Dacia. Weak, with their daughter pressed unsteadily against her legs, a perfect blend of two unlikely parents, blue and brown with the smallest pair of mahogany dragon wings draped over her small ribcage. In this moment, Malis is glad for the way his skin smolders too warm for her to touch him.
But the heat and the acrid stink mean nothing to Victra, so the girl tips forward before Malis can stop her. She is almost against this impossibly large man, tucked away in the comfort of his warm, when Malis shoots forward to stop her. The blue mare drapes her head over the filly, pulling her back with her chin across the narrow of her delicate chest. Victra is startled but unafraid, so she settles back compliantly against her mother’s long legs, staring quietly up at the man who she innately knew was important in some way. Relaxing again just a little, Malis buries her nose in the soft tangles of her daughters forelock, quiet until she says, “Killdare, meet your daughter. Her name is Victra.” There is a short pause, a silence no longer than one single beat of her heart and then, “Victra, this is your father.”
MALIS makai x oksana
± when you feel my heat, look into my eyes ±
In this moment everything is broken and mended over and over again. Everything that was wrong or frowned upon about their peculiar predicament was meaningless. He had forgotten what it was like to greet them, fresh and new to this world. So helpless and perfect and small. What was more was that there was only one moment like this, there was no take backs or do overs. In the stillness he watches as she burns in her own way, for a moment when he approaches them both in the quiet of the wood and he utters one word.
There is more to say but they both dare not speak the truths that surely bite at her own lips just as they do his. He had given her what he could and though it was not all of him it was the best he had, the world was such a mess and somehow he had made it even more so. Most importantly she had accepted this without so much of a fight or a scream or a holler and it only made him burn stronger for her. She was understanding where so many others (himself included) were not.
For what it's worth he would never hurt her with intention, just as he had proved that day in the meadow, when she had offered and he had refused. How could harm something so lovely, or wildly beautiful like the untamed vines in a jungle, sprouting with vivid blooms that were poison. Yet still he could not pull away, nor did he want to, somehow he felt whole and complete in the tangled web he had woven. Somehow she made him less beastly, if only she herself believed it so.
A word fills his mind and he realizes she is speaking, naming their child, a small winged-girl who makes to touch him. His burning skin is poison itself and without the quick reflexes of her dam she would surely have burned. "Victra," he repeats, allowing the sound to ingrain itself into the very core of his heart. With that he simmers less, blackening and hardening until rock crumbles and falls to the mossy floor. In its wake it leaves a man, all he's ever been, deep and earthy and bay. Filling his lungs he exhales plumes of blackened smoke from his nostrils as he touches the filly lightly on her shoulder.
"It's is good to meet you. I've waited a long time."
KILLDARE magma King of the Chamber
"we pull apart the darkness while we can" It is hardest when they are close like this, when she can smell the ash on his skin, the dry-dust scent that usually followed in the echo of summer but seemed to love him just the same. She breathes it now, quiet, uncertain like she so seldom is. But this thing they have, this space they’ve carved out in a tangled mess of so many lives thrown carelessly together, it doesn’t make sense. She cannot back it with reason or logic, can barely put it to words. But she feels it. It is the ache resonating in her belly, a warmth in her chest that she has only ever known once before- but even this feels different this time. This love, this affection, it is exhausting. To want to protect someone, to want to give them whatever will make them happy, to know that she might be the ruin for him as she has been with so many other things.
Hers is a cursed love. It is not easy and it is not simple, it is wrong and ruinous and it will be now just as it always has been. There are days, so many days, where she decides she will leave him be. She will fade to the forests and the mountains (is this not why she disappeared to give birth here?) and stay away until he has forgotten the strange blue mare who broke the things he loved most. Maybe one day he will even resent her as he should now, and she will not be the ache in his chest that he is to her. But she is too much like her father. She is weak and she is selfish, and she does not know how to let go. Not of this, of him.
So she is quiet because everything she wants to say is the wrong thing- because she wants to know if he regrets this yet, if she has broken too many things for him to forgive her. It will happen one day, of this she is sure. Nothing in Malis’ life is meant to last, nothing but her sin and her shame. Nothing but the body she is trapped perpetually inside. Hers is a life of almosts, of things she will never deserve.
And she doesn’t know how to let go.
When Killdare shifts and the magma hardens to stone and ash that fall away from his skin, Malis releases her hold of Victra. The small girl doesn’t react right away, being born is such exhausting work, but after a moment she disentangles herself from Malis and totters forward unsteadily. The big mans nose touches her shoulder and she responds with a whispery nicker, leaning forward to collide against his thick, feathered legs. Once there she frowns, looking at their width and height, at the thickness of the dark hair around his fetlocks. She turns to look back at her mother’s more slender blue legs, and then finally down to her own. Seeming satisfied, she reaches down to nose at his feathering, tugging at a clump with impossibly small, blue lips. “I wook-” she pauses to drop the fur from her mouth, lifting her small face to peer all the way up at his. “I look like both of you!”
She seems pleased by this and, with an awfully big yawn for such a small creature, curls herself as close to the chamber king as her uncoordinated body allowed. Victra doesn’t lay down, not yet, but noses sleepily at his elbow with small blue lips and dark whispers as soft as satin. “How long did you wait, daddy?”
Malis slips closer now, close enough press her mouth against their daughters hip, close enough to trace the thin lines of muscle that disrupted the mahogany smoothness of Victra’s wings. Against all logic, against all better judgment, Malis lifts her nose from their daughter long enough to nuzzle a spot against Killdare’s shoulder. But as quickly as she’s done it she’s pulled away again to resume her grooming of the bay and indigo child nestled drowsily between them.
The ash tastes like regret on her lips, and she wants to burn with it.
MALIS makai x oksana
i don't even know what this is i'm sorry D:
± when you feel my heat, look into my eyes ±
For a time they watch him in silence and he can do nothing but share that quiet. What jolts him to the core is that it is so deep that noiseless space, haunting and disappointing all the same, but he must bare it. He will bare it because he is a selfish man, a bullheaded man at times and it is not yet certain that he is as rational a thinker as they all expect him to be. His ways and words changed to suit his need, just as the shell of his body took on different levels of the earth but in the end, underneath all of it, he was just a man. Maybe a silly and stupid man, a love blinded fool, or a needy sap that didn’t know when to give up. Either way he is certain it is worth the ache it causes him, one look at their daughter assures him of this notion.
She is unbearably cute and she is outright gangly still in her newness, regardless, he cannot help the small smile that traces its way against his lips. Killdare watches as she tilts her tiny head to his legs, plucking at the coarse feathers that gather around their base. What is it she could be doing? Those are not for eating, but before he can say as much she lets go, simply inspecting the lengthy hairs. A small indigo pointed head looks at her own legs as the King watches in silent amusement, then the girl turns to look at her Dam’s stalks as well before she attempts to speak. First words are often simple, Victra’s prove intelligent, already observant in her young age. At this he chuckles, a rumbling noise that ends with approval, “I suppose you do look like the both of us don’t you? I think it is best that way.”
Just enough of each parent in the grand scheme of things. Some color from her mother and some from himself, though whose side in stature she would take after he was yet to be sure. Secretly he hoped she would be more gracefully built than himself as she aged but time would tell. For now he is content to enjoy her nearness and her easy questions that flow from her mouth like a river.
Others might have to think long on that answer, to tick off the years as if they had somehow forgotten, Killdare did not- he immediately knew. He was not a man to spread his seed carelessly throughout the reaches of Beqanna, instead he was more particular about the matter, choosey one might say. His pale green eyes lifted from the boney child near his side and held another set of emerald colored irises. “ Six years,” Was his answer, the words almost solemn as they passed from his head into existence. Six long years it had been and the child that resulted of one careless night was still practically a stranger, a woman grown now and though he had made to visit her it was never enough. After all this time he was still subject to his shortcomings and the results they left behind, maybe it would be that way always but he dare not think it.
If his words shook her he would not know, emotion was hard to read against the black band that traced her face, the sharp thorns that erupted from her crown to her nose’s bridge. He could forever watch her though, trying to discern the answers in the depths of her eyes or the lines against her face. Even now he just stares as she bends to trace her way against their daughter’s wings before she reaches to briefly touch his shoulder.
Killdare has known little of happiness in his life, sinking as she pulls away just as quickly as she leans in. Before she can retreat too far he snakes his neck above her own, tugging awkwardly to bring her back to his side where it is warm and they are a small if broken family.
"Stay..." the word is but a whisper against the velvet triangles of her ears.
KILLDARE magma King of the Chamber
it is muse, it is life <3
"we pull apart the darkness while we can" Nothing has ever felt as right as this moment, this heartbeat in time, watching her daughter curl against her father, against this man Malis might love. She had been robbed of this moment with her first child, with Alight, who had been the product of rape and murder. Nothing would have convinced Malis to seek Pollock out, to let him know not only that Malis had lived despite the broken bones and flayed open wounds, but that they had a daughter together. As soon as she had felt the child move in her belly, as soon as she had known for sure, she vowed that he would never find out. It was an impossible vow in a world like this one, a world so full of dark and violence, but it was one she had managed to keep so far. Alight and Giver, the boy who had been stolen away and given to her to raise by an arrogant child-magician , were both safe and together, discovering a world where Pollock did not know they existed. It was better this way, she was sure of it.
Perhaps that is what makes this feel like so much more- this easy, albeit awkward, closeness between such a strange and broken family. It doesn’t feel like jagged pieces forced together, it doesn’t feel like fake smiles and polite propriety. It feels honest and as real as anything she has ever known in her life. She remembers her own family as they stand together like this, can see her own innocence reflected back at her in the form of her daughter. Oksana and Makai had tried and failed to protect Malis from this world, from death and violence and disappointment. But it found her anyway. She can remember the way her father had reeked of death and rot when he finally abandoned them in the Jungle. She can remember how she hid her tears and her heartbreak even when her mother could not. That was how her family had ended up here in the first place, with Oksana seeking out the support of her sister, Straia. The Chamber was supposed to be a safe place for them. But her world had shattered a dozen more times after that, plucked out of restless sleep to find herself trapped in very real nightmares that left very real scars on her skin and heart.
She learned sooner than some that there was no place in this world that could be considered safe.
And yet she could feel herself slipping into that dangerous place, even now with her mouth tracing shapes against Victra’s small bay back and the heat of her ash king seeping deep enough to warm her frozen heart. This felt safe. It was everything she had ever wanted as a girl; a best friend and a family – she had never dreamed of things like love, not when she saw how it destroyed her parents. But she had wanted a someone, a light in the dark when the shadows grew too deep. She had found that with Killdare, but did her happiness not come at the cost of his? He had voiced his concerns that his Dacia might not accept this.
She feels torn in two watching them; even so she cannot hide the small smile that fades across her lips when Victra seems so pleased at being a perfect blend of her strange, imperfect parents. But then that smile is gone from the blue of her quiet mouth when Killdare answers their daughter’s sleepy question. It is not Victra he addresses, not that she notices as her eyelids grow heavy and she sways against her father’s large legs, but Malis. Six years, and she is undone by the intensity in those pale green eyes. She hides it as well as she can, with her lips still pressed to the curve of Victra’s withers, though she thinks a shiver might have slipped unwelcome across the blue length of her spine. When she turns to touch him, as fleeting as the life of a raindrop, she expects his skin to flinch beneath her mouth. It is why she pulls away so quickly, instantly uncertain, though she conceals that easily.
But he doesn’t.
He doesn’t flinch or sigh or flash sad eyes full of pity.
He pulls her close.
She is not as strong as she pretends to be, but she is as selfish. When he reaches out to draw her back to him, she folds willingly into the embrace. It is strange and unfamiliar, but it is home, and she can feel that truth in the very marrow of her bones. She is stiff at first with uncertainty, with indecision, but those feelings drain away when Victra sighs sleepily between them and tumbles into a contented, happy heap of legs and wings beneath their feet. Malis softens a little more, and her lips move to rest against Killdare’s sooty shoulder now that Victra is sleeping. But he shatters her quiet with his next request, just one single word from dark lips pressed to the curve of her small blue ear.
Stay.
She feels a thousand things at one, a hundred thoughts that won’t line up for her to see them properly. She wonders if he knows the darkness in her heart, wonders if he had read the uncertainties in her face when first he had joined them, if he guessed that she wanted to leave so that he could find happiness untainted by the ruin she always brought. The small blue mare balks and might’ve even backed away if it weren’t for their daughter sleeping peacefully underfoot. Her heart races in her chest and she does try to pull away from Killdare, just a little, so that maybe he won’t feel it through the skin of her trembling chest. When her thoughts finally seem to organize and she is certain she has control over every inch of her blue, thorny face, she says, “What do you think will happen if I stay, Killdare?”
It is then that she realizes he’s split her open wider than Pollock ever had.
MALIS makai x oksana
:| :| :|
± when you feel my heat, look into my eyes ±
Would he stand down wind of the firing squad? He would, over and over again until the essence of his very life spilled bright and red and burning against the forest floor. Until the final bullet struck him true and the last fleeting gasps of breath left his chest cavity. Times had drastically changed these days hadn’t they? In the midst of trying to change the Chamber somehow he felt he was changing himself as well, or She was changing him in that sly, practiced way she had. There was little doubt in his mind that the Kingdom Herself could do such things, bewitch the mind in some voodoo magic with fire and with blood. How it was truly done he wouldn’t know, to question that it was actually done, well, he daren’t- some things were better left to rest. She had spun her spell true, snaring him the sticky threads of spiderweb and tangled hearts, was that her thing then, matters of the heart?
The thought is not one to dwell on now, even as his own organ pounds heavily in his chest as they embrace. It was easy this way, even if stretching too far to one side left the strings taut and aching on the other end, even if he had yet utter words that would surely snap the tether he held to Dacia. How could he say it? What words would urge her understanding and acceptance and still give him dignity in place of shame? If the lines broke what would be left of him? Thinking it caused a shudder to wrack his body, a sharp stabbing pain against the confines of his chest, he couldn’t bare to lose them- any of them. Already he was too deep in the water to surface and the only happiness to be had was drowning surely, sinking into the swells of that ocean and being tossed about by the waves.
Even now he can feel how Malis sinks under the treachery of that deep blue, he himself feels swallowed whole by it all, blissful in the murky embrace. Their child, their girl edges into warmth and sleep and comfort, a bundle of bay and blue and wings and he can feel her gentle breathing against the hairs spilling down his legs. He was protection, he was love and he was safety and Gods help him if he ever fell short of that certainty. Heaven’s help the ones who lay threat to any of it because he would devour them quicker than any arm of the ocean.
Warmth settles over them, seeps gently from his true skin now, which was nothing like its potential inferno that wrestled deep within him. The beast was silent as he collected it and stored it away, it was not needed right now, so close to things he cherished and held snuggled against his skin. The deep blue woman pulls from him, breaking the circle to form questions on her wildflower lips, digging deep her words, as sharp as the spikes that stand out so blatantly against the ridge of her face. What would happen? What wouldn’t happen he thought, softening his own features as he dove deep within the eyes that reflected his own in so many ways. If she wanted promises he would give them, cover her in them until he was blue in the face and air ceased to spill from him. What he gave instead were truths, eyes begging though the words would never bend knee to call her back if she were to flee from him.
“If you stay I will feel whole again,” all because he would feel as whole as he felt now, because if she left he might shatter, just as the rock had when it fell in pieces from his skin. What would be left once he had been broken over and over again, what would the beast do, who would he be?
KILLDARE magma King of the Chamber
"we pull apart the darkness while we can" It isn’t matters of the heart that the Chamber deals in, it isn’t love, isn’t anything so mortal. It is a bloodline she loves to bleed dry, a particular brand of poison she so enjoys to employ. It began first with Atrox, when she demanded his heart- the very same heart that still beats like a drum of perpetuity in the chest of the Kingdom. But it hadn’t ended there. She had demanded Makai next, not his heart, but his life. She brought him back from death, back from the grave, so that he might live and die at her whim. So if the Chamber does change Killdare now, it is likely not because of who he is, but because of who he chooses to love. Granddaughter of Atrox, daughter of Makai, Malis owes this Kingdom a blood debt.
Such is the legacy of a family ruined with darkness.
She feels a bit like a parasite the way she clings to him, with all of her sharp and dark and desperation bubbling up from the marrow of her bones to seep against him. If she were a better woman she would leave him now, leave her child too, and free them both from the toxicity of her love. But she is weak like her father, weak like her mother, and it is this ugly, selfish love that holds her close against the brown of his skin where she can taste ash and pine in the satin of his neck. He is so much better than her, so much more than she could have ever deserved in a thousand lifetimes, and it takes everything that she is to keep still beside him because she is dying inside. His very existence shatters her and she is undone a thousand times, one million different ways until the only thing that holds her together at all is the pull of his gravity.
“If I stay I’ll ruin everything.” She whispers in a voice of broken desperation, quiet enough that Victra does not stir where she sleeps peacefully beneath them. “I can’t make you whole; I don’t even know how to be whole.” But still she does not pull away from him because she cannot, because she can feel the darkness looking for her, can feel a storm brewing in her soul and if it blows through there will be none of those shattered pieces left to rebuild from.
She disappears within herself for a moment because it hurts too much to exist, hurts too much to fall into the warmth of those emerald green eyes when he watches her as he does now. Vulnerability flays her open and she flinches beside him, forcing away the memories that come to find her in these lonely moments, memories of being tortured by creatures with hands, of being crushed alive beneath Pollock’s horns and pummeling hooves. Her words are acidic when she speaks again, meant to push him away to someplace safe, even though she is terrified of the dark that creeps in without his warmth to eclipse it. “Killdare, you cannot hold on to such a broken thing without being hurt.”
MALIS makai x oksana
we can end this one here and start a new one when this weird junk eats your muse
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