SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
She is not much of a leader, Gospel.
It has never been power that she was hungry for.
Relevance, perhaps.
Revenge.
She has never wanted the world to belong to her so much as she has wanted to watch it burn. Isn’t that what had drawn her to Ghaul? To Stave? Their penchant for destruction.
But she thinks of neither of them now. Nor does she think of her children, in some dark corner of the Cove, railing against their father’s undead army. Would she be proud to see how valiantly they fought?
It is the sea that calls to her when the bird comes. Feeble, broken-winged, fluttering through the wind like some freakish thing. And she knows immediately who sent it. She casts a lazy glance over her shoulder, as if she might find him standing there. But she is alone except for the dead thing and some distant shiver that starts in the pit of her gut and splinters outward. A figment of her imagination, certainly, but thrilling all the same.
She is proud, Gospel.
Certainly too proud to come when she is called.
And yet, she goes.
Follows the dead thing until she finds him leaned up against a tree.
And she smirks, all venom, curls her tongue sweetly around a fanged tooth and lets it numb her.
“Finally come to finish me off?” she asks. Almost purrs it. Almost bats her sooty lashes.
But she has never been coy, Gospel. So, she merely blinks at him, tilts her fine head, skirts that narrow gaze down the slope of his shoulder, up the curve of his neck, lands finally on his face.