here lies the love of my life, leliana

[vulgaris]

" every scar will build my throne. "

Starsin had seen Leliana in the memories of the others and planned to send the hunters for her at some point. She was Just a Healer then. But she dug her little fingers into the thick nightmares where he keeps her all to himself, just him and the memory of how she tastes. The awful hymn of her crying as he walked away. That was when she commanded Vulgaris to find her and drag her back here even if it meant crippling that other wing. And he obeys, he obeys like the fool he’s always been. The red woman is a healer, after all, and the people of Loess need relief from their illnesses. The sounds of their fitful fever dreams send him from the borders of his kingdom in the dead of night.

Now he walks, head lowered and serpent eyes reflecting the pale moonlight as he hunts for her. He slips through the forests of Sylva and then across Tephra, swims the cold waters to get to the Resort where she hides from him. Vulgaris doesn’t pause to shake the salt water from his coat but rather lets it drip in an obvious trail behind him. (God, somebody stop him.) But no one stirs as he passes them by. No one cries out that a hideous intruder has crossed into their home.

He pauses as he looms over her, curled tight around their newborn baby with that one crooked wing covering her. At least this time he knows for certain that this is his child, even if she favors her mother more than the others. There is a thought to lean down and kiss her sleeping forehead but he no longer has the lips to press to her sweet face.

Now, there are only teeth. How fitting.

“Wake up. We need you in Loess,” he explains, short and to the point. Because if he says anything else then he’ll beg her to run and hide better this time, away from him and those who follow in his wake. Somewhere they can never reach her even if they knew where to find her. But he says nothing else. He just watches her and waits for her to rise because he knows that she would follow him to the edge of the earth and take a running leap from it if he only asked. Somewhere in that tangled mess of memories, he knows.

His tired green eyes drift back to Malca and he wonders if she should stay with her mother or here where she is safe. At least if she comes to Loess, Vulgaris knows he can crush the life from anyone who even breathes wrong around her. But she deserves more than violence, than the bloodshed already pooling at his door. He sighs, slow and unsteady, before looking back to Leliana.

“Sabbath is there already.”

VulgariS

@[leliana]

[leliana]

I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you

Part of her has known that he would come.

That it was only a matter of time.

She has been waiting for it—no matter whether she was dragging her time out on the island, or if she was next to the river reliving all of their best and worst memories, or even if she was in the Pampas, haunting the shadows and the darkest corners. She has known that he would come for her.

So she is not surprised, even though she is startled, when she wakes up to him standing over her. She flinches briefly, drawing her injured wing over her daughter, the wounds by the base now silver scars against the mahogany of her coat. Her pulse rises in an instant ache to see his face, mangled as it is—

And fear

For the first time, she feels fear when she sees him.

For her, perhaps, but mostly for her daughter. For the tiny, impossibly beautiful little girl tucked into her side. That fact alone keeps her muzzled, although she never would have put up a fight against him. Her chest still aches with love for him, despite the terror he has slipped into her veins and the way he has crushed her spirit beneath her palms. But it doesn’t matter because he comes to her when she has her daughter by her side.

She will not, cannot, cause a fight here.

So she doesn’t call for others, doesn’t try to wrench Dovev away from his family although she knows he would come. She just rises gracefully, the moon spilling over the cedar tree tattoo twisting up her back. Her hazel eyes are quiet and bruised and, soon, all of that fear and that love—those sharp aches that had brought her so close to the surface for a moment—all of it bleeds from her.

“Okay,” she says softly, nudging her daughter to her feet to follow her.

When Malca has risen and drawn her close to her chest, she looks to Vulgaris—to a serpent who would have once completed her family and now stands as its greatest threat.

“I will follow,” her foot rises and she walks herself into her cage.