"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
It is a dangerous thing, this insufferable boredom.
But she knows that Ghaul is occupying his time somewhere else.
With someone else.
And it agitates her nerves, certainly, but it also makes her grin with all that venom.
Because she has never wanted anything more than she has wanted something to destroy.
She had been a strange child and now she is a strange something else. She is not quite an adult but she has lost all of the youth in her thin frame. She no longer cuts her tongue on her fanged teeth. Instead, she sinks them into the throats of her prey and then swallows them whole.
Still, she carries her violent thirst for destruction. It had been born alongside her and fit itself neatly into the chambers of her heart in the days that followed. She had felt it perhaps the most fiercely when she first laid eyes on her father. The useless fool, dead-eyed and dumb. How she loathes him still, though it has been months now since she was last forced to look him in the face.
She thinks of her mother often, but does not long for her desperately enough to risk returning to Taiga. She is certain now that if she looked Bethlehem in the eye now, she would kill him. She would give up her own life to do it, too.
So, instead, she wanders Pangea in search of something worth occupying her time.
Stave is no stranger to boredom, although he usually finds creative ways to keep it at bay.
There are plenty of small creatures that scuttle around the kingdom for him to practice on, learning what it means to let his gift sink into their flesh and touch the very core of their life force. It is an interesting thing to drain it slowly from them—to feel it seep out their bones and to know that he can do so with just a thought, with the barest flex of muscle. He does not need to move an inch to see the shadows begin to seep into their eyes and to know that he was the one who did that—he was the creator and destructor.
Today though, he looks for larger prey.
He finds himself skirting the shadows, his black eyes depthless, watching the barren land and the life that has just begun to spring forward from its cracked, undead soil. His lips nearly quirk into a smile, and they would if he could feel any kind of emotion that would warrant it. Instead, it is a crocodile smile, wide and empty and cold, his white teeth flashing as he sees the venomous mare out of the corner of his eye.
Stave has never practiced his gift on an animal as large as him, but he sees no line in the sand that he would not cross—not even for someone who calls his home their own. Instead, he stands there, still but not hidden, bold and brazen as he feels the tendril of his power begin to seep forward. It crawls over the rock and the dirt, faster and faster until it reaches her. He snakes it up her legs and then dips it into her chest, finding that same core he had found in the small animals and holding her life force in his palm.
She feels the strange thrumming in the earth.
There is some tendril of something snaking its way across the terrain.
Faster and faster.
Until it reaches her and itches up her legs.
It is a peculiar thing but her confusion – brief and corrupt – does not show on her face. The expression remains cool, passive. Even as warmth travels up into her chest and then, suddenly, becomes something cold. Ice cold. It closes a fist around her heart, which struggles to beat around it.
But it inspires no fear. She does not panic. She does not throw back her wild head or roll her wild eyes. She does not scream or shriek or unhinge her jaw in some desperate attempt to shirk this strange thing that has begun to crush her heart.
The cold spreads through her veins. It is not long before she loses sensation in her legs. She could sink to her knees, surrender to this strange thing. But she remains on her feet as a wicked kind of grin ties up the corners of her mouth. She closes her eyes, delighting in the strangeness of it. She drags in a shuddering breath as a sharp twinging pain spirals through the struggling heart.
She tips back her head finally, the grin remaining. She shivers with her delight, licks her lips. There is some guttural sound that swells and bursts at the base of her throat. Yes, she thinks. This will do.
This is the first of many lessons that Stave will learn with his gift:
not everyone will fight death.
There are some who will welcome it with relief, who will let it sink into their bones and be nothing but grateful that it is finally there to carry them home. These are the weak ones, he thinks. The ones who do not fight it because they think it is an escape, because they think they deserve it. They are weak.
But there are others.
The ones like her.
They do not fight death because it is a thrill to accept it. It is a rush to feel the coldness of it sink into their chest and the danger of it slip under their tongue. It is a drug to them, and he is all too willing to supply it.
These will be his favorites.
In time, in time.
He watches with fascination as as she grins, letting the poison of his gift wind around her heart, squeezing with the prowess of the very snake whose skin she wears. She throws her head back and, for the first time, he feels something like desire—something like curiosity. Something like kinship.
He releases his hold on her life-force slowly, letting it flow back through her bit by bit.
For a moment after, he stands still, breathing quietly as if he had been running for miles.
When he finally does move forward, the light glimmers against the constellations on his coat and his black eyes remain completely flat. He says nothing as he moves forward—just watches, just studies.
How delicious the way her heart struggles to beat.
Her pulse trips and staggers.
Her pulse sinks to its knees and the heart.
Oh, the heart goes on fighting even as she sinks her teeth into her tongue and lets the blood pool in her mouth.
Her eyelids flutter heavy and a series of shivers chase each other down the ladder of her spine. This is her first glimpse at primal pleasure and it spirals reckless through the network of her veins.
She can feel it loosen its grip. She can feel it slink out of her, not all at once but slowly, bit by bit. Until it is gone and it leaves her raw and gasping. She is sucking hard on a shuddering breath when he emerges and the vibrant green eyes fall heavy on his face.
He says nothing but she knows without having to ask that it is he who was responsible. She grins, slow, viperous, blood dripping down her chin. “Look at you,” she coos, her voice thick and pulsing as she studies him, “aren’t you remarkable.” It is not a question but a statement.
There is something in her that is still tightly coiled, throbbing, and she drags in another hard breath.
“Won’t you come closer?” It is posed as a question, but it is plainly evident that it’s not a question at all. “I want to get a good look at you.”
It tires him to play with things like life and death, to tug on the strings that are meant only for gods and fates, but he does not mind the fatigue. He does not mind the way that his body groans beneath the strain or the faint shimmer of sweat along the curve of his neck. He prefers this—prefers the effort that it takes because it reminds him of its weight, of its importance. It is something to be relished and revered.
Not that he shows such exhaustion to her.
Before her, he still stands straight, his handsome face stern, impossibly dark eyes unmoving and his lips pressed together in thought. She comes out of the grip of his gift and he watches her shudder back into life, the feel of it dripping slowly back into her veins and bringing color back to her cheeks, her eyes.
She simpers despite the fact that she has only just escaped the end and he finds that he rather likes that—likes that she doesn’t cower before it but rather embraces it. Likes it enough that he doesn’t scoff at her question, her demand, and doesn’t grind his heel into her. Sighing, he gives into it and moves forward, acutely aware of the figure he cuts—the stars that live on him like so many of his father’s offspring.
When he is close enough, he cranes his neck and looks down, nothing softening on him.
“Is this close enough?” A pause as he considers. “Or do you require pressure on your throat to know?”
How sweetly she trembles.
How prettily she tilts her head as he emerges from the shadow,
every stoic, galactic inch of him.
She quivers still, not with fear but with exhaustion. But it thrills her so completely to know that he could have extinguished every last ounce of light in her. Would she be missed, she wonders. How delightful it is to think that nary a tear would be shed for her, the viper’s daughter. She doubts that even the viper would weep for her. She’d caught word of a brother, another child born from the union of her nopetiful, vicious mother and the insufferable fool. No, there would be no reason at all to cry for the daughter. Perhaps this is what makes it such a thrill.
And what a sight he is to behold, she thinks. It twists something awful at the very center of her as she openly, unabashedly studies his dark face. The simper remains, sweet in a kind of unconvincing way as he peers down at her. She finds herself hungry for the heat of him. Is this close enough? He asks and the simper lists and fades and tilts her own fine head.
There is a beat of silence that passes between them. It is not close enough, she thinks but does not say. Instead, she edges closer still. Until she can breathe the heat of him. How heavy it lingers on her tongue as she shifts her focus from his face to the galaxy stationed on his shoulder. She breathes out a sigh, long and slow. “Touch me,” she says. Tilts her head so that she can catch his eye. And perhaps there is some glint in the gaze that could be mistaken for innocence, something soft and secret.
He has never been concerned about whether or not he would be missed.
Either the answer was obvious (Desire would, of course, mourn his presence—as she should) or the answer was unremarkable (he had little care for whether the fleas of the world cared). It was a freeing sensation to not care about what others thought of him or didn’t; he was more concerned with the way that the dead rallied to his call. The way that he could crook a finger and they would come crawling from the worms and the dirt, pulling themselves forward on their bellies to grovel at his feet should he wish it.
These are the things that matter the most to him.
Still, he is interested enough in the young girl who lies on the ground before him. The one whose eyes grow large with wonder at his gifts (as they should, he thinks, as they all should). Was it repulsive how she craved the dark within him or exhilarating? Was he intrigued but it or turned away by it?
He mulls over this questions as he comes closer, as she simpers and coos, her tongue sugary syrup as though he could not tell the poison that lies beneath it. Nothing purely innocent writhes beneath the promise of death the way that she does. Nothing purely good would crave the shadows so intensely.
But his face remains impassive—that is, until she orders him again.
His eyes glitter cold as he leans down, the warmth of his breath contrasting with the ice on his heart as he lets his nose hover just above her. Almost enough to close the distance, to run teeth down her cheek.
He sweeps his fine head up to the sensitive skin below her ear and breathes,
No, he says.
Whispers it hot against the trembling shell of her ear.
And perhaps she is intoxicated by this, too. Surely she can feel the fingers of his rejection wrapped tight around her throat. And oh, how it almost coaxes a terrible sound out of her. A plea—a pithy, pitiful thing. But she was not built for begging. So, she grits her terrible teeth and she pushes herself to her feet and she steadily meets that golden gaze and wonders why the most dangerous things are also the most beautiful.
She skims her tongue across the surface of her teeth as she studies him. The vision no longer strobes at the edges. The nostrils do not flare. The eyes do not roll in equal measures of ecstasy and misery. She is steady now, though a tremble still lingers in the cruxes of her knees. Still, blood drips steady down her chin from where she’d cut her tongue on her teeth. The effort it takes to swallow it is too much, so she allows it to sink into the dust between them.
Perhaps there something good will come of it.
She drags in a steady breath, blinks those brilliant green eyes, and exhales. How one delights in the fury of being alive after coming so close to death! She does not try to touch him now, though there is a vicious longing in her chest that wants nothing more than to press her mouth into the middle of all those stars and let those pool in her throat, too.
“What kind of magic is this, then?” she asks. As if she might save herself the burning embarrassment of his rejection. As if she’d never asked anything of him at all. And how she resents the weakness, brittle and fickle and fleeting.
Stave likes the power that comes with denial, with rejection, with dismissal. He likes the feel of it and flexes his hands, letting it simmer in his bones and enjoying the way that it swells in his chest, winding through his veins with a heady kind of sensation. He watches cooly as she gets to her feet, noting the blood on her chin, and that strange light in her eyes—the way that she regards him, yearns for the end.
There are worse things, he thinks, than a girl like this.
(Although it does not stir his belly or provoke a reaction.)
“It is mine,” he says simply, although that would answer her question. As if he could simply provide that as an explanation and it would be enough. But why should he be forced to pull back the curtain? Why should he lay it on the table for her to dissect and investigate and study? Still, she has been a good subject so far and he is not ready for the moment to end—so he obliges, if only a little.
He turns his depthless gaze to the ground and concentrates, pulls on the soil and the life that it teems with until he finds the hook of death—and he yanks. With an exhale, the creature springs forth from the dirt in a small explosion of activity. It is a badger, although you would have to be truly learned in such things to tell from the skeleton alone. It is sharp and ivory, stained with time, the flesh long gone, but it moves quickly enough, scampering forward and whistling through the bones like a hiss.
It runs between his legs before he snarls and it comes to a trembling stop, turning its head toward her.
“Because I can always finish it tomorrow,” he says simply, his smile cold.
