Even the scale she pries from her own skin and presses to my lips is not enough. Even the press of her ear to my chest can not stop the wardrum beating of my heart, or the rage roaring loud and not in my veins, or the promise my magic still whispers even now into my ear. That one day I will be better. That one day I will be her god, too.

One day, one day, one day.

I will consume her.

---

Isolt is only as tame as a bristling wolf as she kneels before the other unicorn. There is no kindness in her bloody eyes, no joy in her submission, no settling of the rot gnawing its way out of her chest.

There is no permanence in the way she bows at Avesta’s hooves.

There is only a snarl barely contained in her throat, and the taste of the sea when she cracks that midnight-dark scale between her teeth. And the way it rots, and ferments, and grows moldy on her tongue is proof that only one of the two unicorns is a god here. And one day, she will be the one who lords over Avesta like a bear lording over the shark it has killed.

Isolt is not thinking of regret as she watches her leave. She is thinking only of tomorrow, and wondering how she will be different, how her magic will be different, how she will be years older in a day.

It is that thought that has her smiling 9 bloody and feral smile as she sinks deeper into the snow, burying herself in ice and winter and all of its cold beauty. The cold bites into her skin and she welcomes it like the grim reaper welcomes the dying home. Down in her icy, self-made tomb she slips into dreams of rotten things floating in the sea.

And tomorrow, when she awakes and claws her way free like a butterfly tearing through it's old skin, she will go looking again for the unicorn with saltwater in her veins instead of blood.

---