#naaklein

“ these violent delights have violent ends.                    & in their triumph die, like fire and powder,                                               which, as they kiss, consume.                             the sweetest honey is loathsome in his own deliciousness.”

SHE’D LOATHED HIM at first glance. He was nothing but a vile man, someone to brush off just as she’d been brushing off everyone else she came across. He was nothing special, nothing of an exception, nothing to take a second look at. But he PUSHED her. Deities of her realm, did he push her. Unlike others, he didn’t back from her bladed tongue — if anything, he was one to hone it.

    He was just as sharp with her as she was with him, and perhaps that was her draw. She liked what wasn’t good for her. And perhaps he did too. For as the thunder rumbles softly outside, as the rain splatters against the window…she thinks of how they’d even come to be. She and he, from different worlds, different BEINGS entirely. They were ever meant to meet, in all actuality, in all common sense. But they HAD. Several times over.

        That had to be something of fate, didn’t it? …Fate. Where he certainly wasn’t Heaven-sent, maybe he WAS something of a fallen angel, something of a flare for death and destruction, someone God hadn’t wanted, but someone with enough wit and vigor to pass as something close to a deity.                   ( oh, don’t be foolish. you’re getting ahead of yourself now, can’t you tell? )        But her mind can wander — just as her fingertips follow the curve of his jaw, the gentle slope of his neck to his collarbone, the soft dip of skin over bone and muscle. Bone and muscle she had healed, bone and muscle that had been struck, beaten, bloody, bruised. He’d been through so much….they BOTH had. Together, at that. It wasn’t just in solitude that they’d earned the scars they both harbored now. She, the one along her stomach, jagged and deep, and he, the large slash along his abdomen, curving his hip and thigh.

         She’d thought that arrogance would have gotten him killed any other time. (It almost had.) Several times over, as a matter of fact. They’d both lost each other more than once, and in different ways. Fingers tighten in the sheets, find themselves clinging vice-like enough to prove knuckles white. She’s not going to lose him again. Not now.  Not AGAIN. And he seems to find the same discomfort, somewhere, lost in a dream before he wakes. Fingertips find hers, and had she not been accustomed to his warmer-than average temperature, she’d have gasped. He’s always been warm to her. And he tells her to stay.

                                             ………and she breaks.

        Breaks because NOT staying is all she’s ever known, really — to leave, to vanish, to become something of a ghost. She was the wanderer, the hurricane, the one to deem everything upturned and distorted only to leave with the mess in its wake. She didn’t know how to stay. She didn’t know what THAT felt like. They’d told each other to stay so many times….

         But here….she knows she needs him, needs SOMETHING like him in order to find a wisp of air from beneath the water’s surface. She’s been drowning for so long that resurfacing — that CLINGING to something (someone) feels like she’s being pulled under all over again. But she needs this. She needs this.

                        A kiss to his knuckles, eyes holding his in terrified affirmation.

                                                        ❛ I’m not going anywhere. ❜

     It was cold, painfully cold. Surrounded by chiseled stone, polished marble, the finest silks (at least, according to the servants who had been tasked to caring for her), but it all felt so artificial to Cassandra. So lifeless and dull. Even their hearthfires lacked the same warmth and life that she had grown accustomed to. She could appreciate the craftsmanship behind every pillar she trailed her fingers over as she walked past, behind every feather-soft sheet she pulled up over her head to try and imagine was a gentle, protective wing. Most of all, she missed feeling secure. She was invincible when her dragon was near. She was safe, protected. Free.

     Everything was so foreign to the young woman here. She understood whenever he spoke in riddles to tease her or challenge her mind, but the people here lied through teeth bared through the guise of a smile. Women here were treated as delicate dolls, dressed up in binding dresses that hindered breathing and in enough jewels to weigh them down. Young women were to be still and silent, to speak only when spoken to, and be pleasant to all women of similar "rank" (a concept that alluded her and she had little interest to learn) as well of any man who would approach. The woman who asked Cassandra to call her mother told her that she would become used to her home in time. And while Cassandra would nod as she toyed with whatever was handy, more to have her mind focused on other things and to keep herself from shouting how she had a home. How she was happy and warm and safe and free where she was until the prince stole her.

     If nothing else, Cassandra was grateful for days that she could escape into the gardens and, if she thought hard enough, she swore she could hear the sound of his strong wings on the wind. Was he searching for her? Was he trying to get her back home? Any attempt she had made to escape ended in misery and being locked in her room "for her own safety." And after so many weeks, Cassandra had stopped trying to escape as often. She still ran off on her own, of course, but her attempts at isolation and wildness had been stopped short as of late. She had heard the queen excitedly talking about potential suitors for her new 'daughter' and how she was throwing a gala to debut Cassandra to the court. The idea sicked the young woman.

     Cassandra felt her own inner fire fading, barely an ember, as the servants of the castle helped pull her into the gown she was to wear when she stood beside the royal family to greet their guests. It was lovely, she had to admit that, with its deep, dark red velvets and gold trim. They pulled the laces too tight for her taste, but at least she had learned how to breathe in their blasted fashion.

          if you hurt my baby

v nice!

Rhythmic clattering implied hurried paces along a stone corridor, a courtyard gated and concealed beyond the doorway be his destination, dawn’s sunlight blazing forth between the great pine trees guarding it. Masked knight then revealed his face as he stepped out to the grass, a sigh briefly made while he unravelled a small paper scroll. Voice boomed out to HIM, his ally in darkest deeds that no man or beast could end. Gold pieces strewn about carelessly was proof of that.