There is something different about the black unicorn, this night.
It is not a new thing, born of Novus and the time Calliope has spent with queens and goddesses and a red man whose smile curved just the same as the blade he wore. It is an old thing, one of feral magic and crooked gods and a world that shifted and shivered, and it makes a smile bloom on the paint’s lips even as her heartbeat quickens. The magic of the maze is still thick on her skin, in her throat, and beside Calliope the night is electric, a ferocity no swathe of stars could hope to tame.
Shrike wonders if this is what it means to feel homesick - except that there is also contentment curled in her chest, steady as a bear. It is almost a purr in her throat when she pulls away from the unicorn again, and a spark leaps between them. It hisses against her skin and pricks like a blade and does nothing to dampen the smile she wears.
Oh, this is what she has missed, a fire to burn the world clean. Not for the beauty of ashes from castles or to see what a god’s bones might look like picked clean, but to know another monster has paid for its crimes. Calliope is a guillotine, and Shrike a hammer, both of them crafted by blood for this purpose.
In response to Calliope’s words she only flashes her own teeth, and remembers the way it felt to have claws rake down her sides, to plunge into freezing water, to see the unicorn fallen. But she can find no regret in her heart when she looks into the eyes of the lioness, only hunger, only joy.
“I am ravenous,” she says, and laughs like lightning.
don't do much these days
keep the wolves at bay
keep the wolves at bay
