She stands, a lick of flame brighter than the red and golds of turning autumn. The trees and shed leaves littering the ground, frame her, turning her flame as bright as the sun. But even with her skin not as bright as any flare, Raum would find her. He would find Rhoswen even at the ends of the earth when all was black and her light snubbed out to naught but shadow and ash.
 
He moves to her, in pain, in vicious victory and hidden secrets. Once Raum told her all, but now he keeps his lips shut. The Crow is a piece of art, a tribute to death and blood and violence. He is painted red and silver, moonlight bleeding. He might have bathed before meeting her here, had he passed a stream, had he felt he should hide. But Rhoswen knows every part of him; this girl knows the blood on his hands and the black of his every thought.
 
The Ghost stops, a few feet stretching between them, feeling at once an intimate distance and yet a whole canyon dividing them. Acton’s blood is the spray and splatter, smear and brush of red paint across his skin. It adorns Raum in death and he does not hide it from Rhoswen.
 
Raum drowns her in electric blue as he studies her, before slipping his gaze away to study the way Denocte frames her. “Denocte.” He hums softly, as his gaze returns to her, “Can you not stay away, Rose?” Those words fall off his tongue, heavy and mocking. He knows she is made for more than darkness. She is made for sand and sun and mirages and a part of him still resents her for it. It prowls leonine and sets his gaze like teeth against the heat of her skin.

---

@Rhoswen - so sorry, this is off the boil

 

Why?
 
Rhoswen’s question rings out like a death knell. But Raum does not flinch. He is forged of stone, cold, hard, unfeeling.
 
His gaze trails over every inch of the girl he once so adored and loved. A part of him shudders, a part of him that is not stone, that is not filled with arsenic and horror. It thrashes and rattles in its death throes – for Raum is dying. Each part of him is turning to ash and ruin and soon there will be nothing of him left.
 
“Because he was weak and a traitor.” Raum says at last. “Because he tried to kill me.” But Raum had been waiting for Acton’s attack. He knew what was to come, that Acton was no longer his brother, no longer his ally. He knew blood would flow like a river, that the ground would be bathed in red bloodshed.
 
He offers none of this to his Day girl of fire and light. He need not, for his skin is painted with his deeds and at his back is a ghost that haunts him all wan and pale. Oh Acton, where is your spark now?
 
Raum might have smiled, were he any other man.
 
Instead he tilts his head back, his eyes closed. Upon his lids the sun shines bright, it turns his gaze red, red,red and dries more the blood upon his skin. “Isra is gone.” He murmurs for Rhoswen, each word silken and monstrous. Each word is designed to be a dagger, for when is he ever happier than hurting the girl he hated to love?
 
Then his eyes open and they are gold and leonine. They a brilliant and bright and savage. Oh they are so laden with violence and promise and such savage desire. He sets them upon Rhoswen. He holds his fire girl there in chains of gold that sear with sunlight and the wickedness of stars.
 
From his lips slip such soft words but he has learned the art of barbed wire from Isra, and each silken word is designed to hurt. “And I am going to take Solterra from Seraphina.”
 
From you.

---

@Rhoswen - this made me profoundly uncomfortable. I am sorry he is such a -every expletive under the sun- 

 

She stares at him, glorious and bright and savage. He knows he might burn within that gaze, but she is in every way the opposite to him. He has the water to douse her flames, he has the cold for freeze the very lava in her veins.
 
Their souls clash, their souls clamour, the desert resounds with their war. Raum looks upon Rhoswen, within her he sees the girl he once loved, the girl of flowers and sunlight – the girl who was the sun. And the sun turned its back on night.
 
Would he die to let her live? Would he let the moonlight of his skin fade to gold, just so she might rise? Never.
 
He holds her, as if his eyes held chains. He keeps every inch of her within his sight, he does not relent.
 
Yet Rhoswen speaks and her words are vipers in the sand, they are made to hurt and bite. She laces poison in his veins and the very flesh of his lungs pulls tight. A breath, she steals it from him as though she stole little more than a penny.
 
Anger does not stir within him, it does not rise like a monster out of slumber. No, Raum’s ire explodes, her poison the spark to his gasoline. He moves to her, bloody and wild. Vengeance seethes upon his tongue, it courses through his blood. His ears are crumpled atop his skull , his neck now an advancing serpent. His lips curl leonine, savage.
 
Yet he laughs. He laughs cruelly, the rumble of his chuckle the sinister grumbling of the earth set to quake. “You think she is weak?” he hisses, vitriolic. “She has your heart Rhoswen, how can she ever be weak?”
 
And his laugh is gone, the cutting smile with it. “But what will break her heart more? The mother who calls her weak and cared so little for her? Or her father who loved her but had to kill Acton?” Corvid his skull tilts, surveying the fire-girl before him. “I shall let Sabine decide what she will forgive and what she will not.”

From you.

---

@Rhoswen <3

 

When one was not born into silk and pearls, you appreciate it when you get it
 
His hatred is an ember that refuses to cool. He cannot contain it, it is an explosion ripping through him. It is a supernova rippling out, out. There will be no black hole to swallow everything when his ire is done. He will lay fragments into everything, pieces of himself that will grate and itch and sting like a splinter. And Rhoswen’s will be the worst of all.
 
Within him is black. All is full of ink as thick as tar and as vas as a cave.  Anything that falls into him would be lost.
 
His heart, his heart. Never is it mentioned, never has he thought of his heart and what place it might hold within him. Never has he been so sentimental to consider its health. But now he does. Now he feels its pestilence, its fetid wrongness. There is nothing of him in Sabine, nothing of Rhoswen either.
 
The fire-girl does not sway, not when he moves toward her with blood gleaming upon his skin and dead souls haunting his every step. He hears their cry, he sees Acton watching him. But oh, Raum saved him from this, from the danger of Day girls. He warned Acton once but the Magician did not listen. And he paid for it.
 
Each muscle is taught, each inch of him is rigid as a bowstring pulled tight. They say once a lion tastes blood it thirsts for it again and as Raum’s tongue wets, he knows what it is to be a lion. Rhoswen comes to him, a fire consuming all. She chokes him with acrid smoke, she burns him with the weight of their daughter and yet he stands, as if he were stone. But oh how he watches her, oh how he drinks in every piece of her and despises each one.
 
Was this what comes of love?
 
Yes. His heart is a fetid, diseased thing. It decays within his chest poisoning his blood with the bacteria of hatred and violence. Sabine stands as pure as a lily between them, so fragile, so white. Yet there is nothing weak of her. Raum’s black eyes, dim as ditchwater, regard Rhoswen with a bleak stare. “No, Rhoswen. Sabine is stronger than both of us.” And Raum holds on to that, by the gods he clings to it.
 
Then he moves, brushing past Rhoswen for the Steppe awaits. “I will not kill you, Rhoswen.” Raum says, as he stops, head tilting to speak back to her.  “Not today, at least.”
 
But as he steps away, as he leaves Rhoswen as she has left him so many times before, he knows he will destroy everything of importance to her. Then, Raum realizes, then he will return for her.

---

@Rhoswen <3