The fires fall to darkness behind them, swallowed by the night. Not even the winds can reach them with the hubbub of the markets. The fringes of society fray into cobweb trails that reach ghostly threads out to claim their new queen and its Ghost.
 
The cobwebs dress him wasted and old. They cling to her horn and drift behind like a tattered banner. The edges of Denocte paint the strangers with dust, coat them in rust and the dirt of abandoned homes. Raum hears their ghosts, the blink of fires that once lit the windows like lamp-lit eyes. But those fires were long ago snuffed out. They were long ago scolded by the ice of dragon fire.
 
Clouds of phantom ash gather and bloom before his feet. They press on and reach for the tails of mice, the heels of orphans and the ends of their queen’s tail. The Crow’s skull tilts as electric eyes drink in the stones that turn to apples and the greedy feeding of malnourished orphans.
 
His eyes trail over the sneer of a colt, the heedless glance of the giving queen. Raum waits until mouths are fed, until the teeth of hunger no longer rake along the ribs of the famished. Only then does he step from the shadows.
 
“I would have made him a Crow.” The Ghost muses in a voice of silk that slides, beautiful and dangerous. Raum is mercury beneath the moon, liquid poisonous and beautiful, destined to be poured out for all.
 
He lifts his electric eyes to lay upon her. Slowly they survey every inch of her with sparks that prick at her skin like static. He would wonder if they felt like pin-pricks, like the knives that cling tightly to his leg. “All the orphans became Crows.” Raum continues, trailing cobwebs from his slim sides like a string bearing all the souls he has taken.
 
Slowly, silently (for he is always silent), he steps toward Denocte’s chosen queen, though his gaze peers into the black, hollowed eyes of buildings and their breathing shadows. He wonders of the ghosts that live there and how many were by his blade.
 
His thoughts are secrets, never to find a place upon his tongue. The assassin regards the queen once more, his corvid gaze stripping her skin like the snap and pull of a sharpened beak.
 
A fire sparks to life, broken wood alighting with a hiss and crackling laughter. Its light sparks something dangerous within his gaze and his eyes flicker to the smile of pearls that gleam upon her lips.
 
“Careful,” He warns as soft as a caress. “I might steal that smile from your lips.” No smile comes to lighten the weight of his threat. Nor does he step from her side when the mirrors blink awake to capture the silver of his skin as he stands beside her, close, close, so dangerously close.

---

@Isra please forgive me, still remembering how to actually write

 

His eyes are on her moonlight smile. They are on her horn that splits the sky like a sea.
 
The queen smiles as if she has victory, as if her words mean anything at all. The Crow watches her and watches. If Isra ever dared to believe it was a gaze that gave her any high regard, oh she would be wrong. But few would ever think such a thing anyway. To be held in his gaze, that blue of electricity that jumps like ants and whose touch is lightning upon the skin, is surely uneasy. Does it set spines to crawling, like hair that rises with the silent static of a building storm-strike.
 
“You say that as if they did not choose before.” He sings like a lion – but it is no song. It is a purr that rattles the earth and slides like a serpent through the grasses – all silk and silent danger. “Starvation drives everyone to desperation, Isra and you cannot be in all places, turning stones into apples. An orphan longs to belong, and no amount of apples will ever assuage that desire.”
 
And it is a truth that resonates deep. It is a truth that saw him abandoned with a letter tied about his slender, young throat. “To become a Crow is also a choice.” He whispers to her like gravel, the words as fragile as cobwebs that drift and sway upon her torso.
 
She smiles for the both of them. The unicorn makes names for his every move. But, despite she has known violence, despite she knows how her blood sounds as it trickles from her, Isra has not known Raum. The Ghost has not yet struck like a serpent might. Her smile is so wrongly founded, but he does not offer his own to gloat at her ignorance. He has no care for being the best, the right, the victorious.
 
To Denocte’s Ghost, to strike like a serpent, is to bring a fallen god to the brink of his death, a dagger piercing his ribs. Oh Isra, for now he is just a cat, bathing in beneath the glow of the sun. A solitary ear listening to the sound of a mouse’s breath and considering all the ways it could still those fragile lungs.
 
Isra, the brave, brave queen steps toward him until nothing but cobwebs and nightmares can breathe between them. Still her horn splits the light, still her smile is as bright as pearls. Her magic dances again and beneath his feet is slick, slick glass and upon her lips like petals and poison is a threat as sweet as sugar.
 
Obedient Raum does not move, but feels the cold of his still-metal dagger. Only the glass beneath his hooves is colder still.  The Night Queen laughs and he knows now why his goddess appointed her. It is a wise and clever goddess that uses these two as her instruments upon the earth: the victim and the murderer.
 
Her skin is hot beside his. It sings with the rush of her blood, the trembling of her nerves. But Raum is cool, the balm to her worry. His heart is a steady beat, a gentle, lulling rhythm – and when is it ever more than this? When does it ever run like a staccato drum?
 
The lamb trembles and he regards her like a crow from its branch and not a murderer stood skin, to skin with his queen. “Then turn them to daisies.” Raum says more softly than the caw of a crow. His offer is an intimate thing, spoken in the small spaces between them. He does not fear her magic, not when his weapons are so much more than knifes and scarfs…
 
This Crow’s weapons are claws and fangs, horns and spikes.

---

@Isra 

 

Bestow Isra with a crown!
 
For a rare smile creeps and crawls across his lips. It answers her beckoning words with silence and a fleer that cuts like a blade.
 
He watches the bravery that the Night Queen dons like armour. Still with that smile, sinister as a crow’s beak, Raum studies her every inch. So lazily does he peruse the girl, silver eyes reaching to press upon every flaw, every chink they find within her pride, her bravery.
 
“No,” the Crow hums in agreement, and all smiles are gone, even if his voice is as gentle as a dream. “But it is a salvation all the same.” His gaze, a cold kiss from a midnight wind, watches as her crown tilts up. The queen’s horn strains twists for the sky like a cry and the Ghost wonders how she ever came from water and salt.
 
“It is family they seek and it is family we offer.” Dysfunctional, twisted, wrong… each truth falls like a stone and he does not deny them. Raum does not shy from her, not like she does from him. He does not keep his gaze from hers, not when he stands so open in the silver of the moonlight. It catches the cobwebs he wears like dank clothes of dread and ire. The silver dances across his skin – veins full of mercury blood and sparks of silver electricity.
 
Even mountains would tremble more than he when her horn lowers with a whisper past his throat. The skin still feels the caress of air it stirred, but still the monster is not moved. Still her watches her unchanged, unmoved. The girl curls like a sea’s wave, her mane seaweed sinking lower and lower. Had he known how her heart called out to heat and sand… oh how he would have let his gaze turn to scorn and his lips press dagger thin.
 
Raum still knows the grate of sand against his own heart, the burn of a sun that would not set. He loves the sun, he hates the sun – and his eyes lift skyward, up to black, black, black as hers drop down, down, down.
 
Isra sighs, the rush of water over pebbles, and he tastes the salt upon his tongue. Electricity, born of magic, fury and hope tingle upon the Crow’s skin, it stirs his nerves. Slowly his gaze descends like a raven feather to settle upon the curve of her spine. His knives are still cold, hard metal. Nothing of them has changed, not even the slick glass she set beneath his feet, not even the eyes of starving orphans that watch their saviors with wary desire – hungry desire.
 
Silence pulls tight and keening between them. It writhes in the spaces between them, it is a balm upon Raum’s skin. It is a bath in which he would bathe for an eternity. His brother would speak, Raum knows he would... Acton’s voice would shatter the silence like glass. But Denocte’s Ghost has never been anything like the Magician. He was born to perform in the light and in the darkness fade to nothing but death and silence.
 
So he turns his skull toward the brewing storm. To the girl whose spine curves like a swell at sea. To her hair that rises like static before the crack of thunder. Ah magic stirs within their bones. The air is an elixir of passion and might and Raum waits, oh, he waits and he watches. His breath a rhythm of the tide that welcomes the storm in.

There is no crack like thunder, there is no roar of a wave reaching shore, but the magic shifts nonetheless. Oh the air sighs as softly as a ribbon caught upon a breeze. The iron of his dagger turns soft. Its hilt stirs with magic and then falls limp. A brush of petals against his leg pulls a breath from his lungs.
 
There is a moment of stillness, filled with the perfume of newly formed flowers. Raum’s daggers are gone and only flowers hang where they should be. Ire swells to match the sway of her magic. His own is the beat of a crow’s wing and his skull snaps forward. Silver lips, so suddenly golden, press tight to the curve of her throat, the tender skin of her jugular.
 
“Very good.” The Crow murmurs, “but your enemies will always have more than one weapon to wield against you, Isra.” And his lips part as the silk of sharp, canine fangs press against the smooth of her throat; it was the press of a lion’s breath upon a lamb.

---

@Isra 

 


The flowers hang limply, choked against his leg. Their leaves are wilted and jagged, not even they can survive the touch of his mercurial skin.
 
He ignores the brush of their stems, touches that whisper, touches that tickle. He does not spare the flowers any thought, not when his teeth, sharp and white, feel the resistance of chocolate skin. But unlike chocolate (that melts with the warmth of her body) Isra’s skin presses, holds tight and does not yield beneath the press of sharp, sharp fangs.
 
Her skin is a testament to everything this girl is. She is soft silk, warm and subtly resilient. But Raum is made to break flesh, he is born to spill blood. His grasp at the queen’s throat is a warning, but Isra is a witch. He tastes the magic upon her skin, an elixir and a poison here to cast him straight to hell.
 
The scales beneath their feet, slippery like sheet ice, ripple as if monsters of the deep shift below. Then it shudders shifts and changes at the command of Isra’s night magic. Flowers grow where once only glass shone. These bouquets are nothing like the flowers of the meadow, nothing like those that sway in a breeze…
 
The flowers the unicorn conjures are as twisted as the horn atop her crown. They laugh like harpies at the sky and splinter all they touch. They rise like weeds, growing with magic as water and imagination as their sun. They reach for the pitch black sky and do not stop. There is no green, upon their metallic torsos. They click and clack together as metal petals clash with metal petals. The leaves of this steel meadow are as intricate, as spiked, as the wilted ones that still hang at his leg. But the flowers the Crow wears are soft and limp and there is nothing so gentle about the horrific flowers Isra makes.
 
Each flower is silver and copper with rust but slowly they begin to glow red, red, red. It is not a red naturally found. It is the red of Raum’s cut limbs… Leaves slice into the silver of his skin, they shred the real flowers to ribbons, leaving them to sway in the breeze: a rhythm of death.
 
Raum’s blood spills hot and bright. He turns Isra’s meadow into a sea of poppies; his blood, her magic joining in macabre art. The skin of his limbs shifts and turns, until armadillo hide layers protectively over the cuts of his legs. Each bite of the flowers is less now. But still the meadow glitters like rubies.
 
A harpy call resounds in a chorus as metal ivy creaks and groans and claws its way up derelict walls. Each leaf is a weapon that winks at the monster below, the monster at whom metal leaves still bite.
 
Ah the cut of each flower is electricity, white hot. Raum’s nerves awaken in sparks and riots. He blinks, with golden eyes, leonine and bright. Clever, brave Isra has made him savage, so much more than he has ever been. His breath is a shudder in his lungs, his heart thunder in his chest.
 
That heart of his beats with black feathers and red with blood. As it beats harder, faster, the blood drips quicker too. The monster’s jaws close tighter about her throat, aiming to choke, waiting for the first drop of her blood to trickle along the groove of her throat. He does not relinquish her, not even when her flowers reach for his stomach. They are an impasse, a tangle of teeth and metal. Raum waits, patiently, an angel at a tomb, for her blood to join his.
 
So he bites, harder, harder, harder. He tastes all that she is, all that she was and all that she can be. In every taste he finds her wanting, in every taste she satisfies him. As the blades reach the armadillo skin that covers his stomach, he feels its press, but there is no cut, not now he wears armour like a soldier at battle.
 
But, slowly,  the Crow releases his queen at last, though his lips do not pull from her skin. The Ghost keeps her close, his breath still hot upon the curve of her throat. “If you have breath enough to speak, then yes, by all means tell them.” His threat is spoken like a lover. It is made of soft caresses, a thing born of passion and desire. But romance does not know Raum. He was not made for it and never will be so.
 
His teeth return to her throat and this time there is no hesitance, there is no holding back. Raum lunges, leonine maw parted to draw life from her lungs, at last.

---

@Isra