She tasted what it was to be him. To be brash and wild, unbound in her fury. She was a river running out to a waterfall, but she was already over the precipice. Florentine’s ire had sent her freefalling. She was the white spray scattering into a million pieces and catching the light. All around the two of them, the same light fell, breaking and shattering upon their bodies. Florentine let the light pour in through open windows and keenly it fell upon her, upon him. It was a spotlight upon their sins, a reminder of how much they had wronged each other.
 
They stand close, scant space between them; it is intimate in this light. Her heart thunders with his proximity, her skin trembles to be this close. Everything about her knows him, remembers him. But nothing about them is like it was before. Nothing about her feelings are romantic or sweet. She remembers him in love and it makes the flower girl burn, hot, hot, hot. Those amethyst eyes promise to consume him with her fire too.
 
Had he reached out to touch her wing, like he thought, she would indeed tremble. This wild girl would shudder with a fury as powerful as a storm gathering at sea. She would take his energy like the storm from the sea; it is a storm that would destroy her and destroy him too. What a blessing it is then, that he does not the arc of her golden wing.
 
Instead, Florentine watches as his argent eyes flare with knowing. His misdeeds lie between them, but he casts them away as he simply watches her. This king does not care, he moves to speak yet falls to silence and stillness beneath the touch of her gold dust lips.
 
Those lips can feel how he falls still, how his heart rate spikes. It drums against her mouth in a rhythm she knows. Laughter, clear and beautiful, horrible and cold, echoes in voices all around them. It tattoos his skin and heralds the coming of her storm. Her laugh of splitting stars will bring no mere storm upon this earth. His eyes flash with anger and their storm is here.
 
Her neck curls back, her throat defended, her manner appearing shy, wary. But she is none of those things and her elegant wings flare up like forbidding arches of gold. She has seen the worst of him; Florentine could return to Dusk as broken and beaten by him as Lysander had once been and still she would feel victorious. This night boy has no hold on her heart; not any more.
 
Elvin ears fall to her skull and fea-beautiful stands before him, gilt and bright. Reichenbach’s old lover is a rock to the savage sea he throws at her. His words are waves and she tastes the salt of them upon her tongue, feels the sting of their force upon her skin.
 
He leans into her and she does not relent. She is small beside him, fragile, but her ears fall to her skull and her chin lifts. They are tectonic plates colliding and the earth would know their force.
 
Beneath golden lashes, beneath flowers and gilt hair, she keeps his gaze. Each word that falls from his tongue is a weapon shaped just for her. Her threat was a vow, but it was just that. The Night King’s words are those of a boy scrapping in the dirt, using her deeds to pull her down. He does not talk of the future like she, he just dredges their past and the dark of their sins.
 
Cold as ice, her star boy accuses her of the same things she has heard so many times before. She waits until he finishes and stays strong as he leans into her. She stands before him, grand as a cathedral, gilded in gold and painted in grace. Florentine will welcome him in, like the sinner he is.
 
Above him a star breaks through the dark sky and unbidden Flora remembers the boy she fell in love with: a gypsy with a heart as wild and free as hers. A boy who captured her love of night and turned it into a love of its King too. She adored that boy, but the man she looks to now has silver-moon eyes she cannot touch; he is nothing like her gypsy boy and Florentine is nothing like his flower-girl.
 
Reichenbach smiles his wolfish smile and she feels his teeth upon her skin. She does not sway.
 
“You are flogging a dead horse, Reich.” She hums, darkly, deeply. Her eyes are unwavering, her voice low enough so he will hear it just above the solar winds roaring through her open windows.
 
“I did not come here to lay our deeds out or list all the wrongs we have done. I could list yours too. But I won’t. Do not think to guilt me with Isorath. I hold no regrets over my actions and, even if I did, I need not, for you have helped him haven’t you? You elevated a man, who betrayed his previous court for his own desires, to another position of power. Your new lover has done well by you. I am sure his pride in his achievements is a glow all can see across Denocte. Had I abandoned Rannveig, might I now be your shadowed Emissary or Regent too? Is that what you do, favour your new lovers over your people who have served you for so long?”
 
Still he aims for her, still those blows strike the gold of her. But Reichenbach, you have made this fae-girl strong – does you know that? His words only harden her more. Florentine glows in the sunlight she has made. She is a torch in his land, fending off shadows. The star boy has made his flower girl greater. His once fae-queen has risen and she keeps ascending.
 
“Maybe they do.” She hums again, dismissive. “It is no lie that I was not made for a crown. As a child I frequently ran from the duties of being a princess. My father would have warned everyone against my ascension, most of all me.” Her eyes lower to the Night King’s lupine smile and there they linger thoughtfully along the curve of that black, satin lip. “But you forget, Reich, that for all flowers are beautiful and fragile, they are poisonous too.” She says it thoughtfully, wonderingly. Was she capable of poison? Her court possessed healers, her court possessed the Poison Master and Reich had changed her so…
 
Florentine stays close to him, wondering, considering. Her eyes watch the way worlds reflect upon his mahogany skin, the way his gypsy coins burn bright. She lifts one, its weight familiar, its print even more so. How many times had she idly toyed with these when tangled in an embrace? “I do miss these.” She says softly, wearing a smile that is unlike any she has worn for him this night. It is a smile he might recognize, one she has worn for him before.
 
What queen is it that eviscerates in one breath and fondly reminisces in another?
 
That smile he might recognize… it is a ghost.

@Reichenbach I love these two together. So Much. <3

florentine
rocking your pretty flower world