like icarus loved the sun
Ash brushed against his dark skin, whispering over the planes of his broad shoulders to vanish into nothing — Florentine's petals, scattered into nothingness... a laughable remnant of what they had once been. Reichenbach noted the symbolic nature of the scene, but said nothing of it, keeping his keen gaze upon the flower girl as she raged.
He hadn't seen it before — perhaps a glimpse, that fateful night, but never like this. She was awakened... and she appeared as rash and brash as her ex-lover, filled with that inescapable fury. Chaotic despite her purpose, unbound in the face of her heartbreak and rage. She extinguished the space between them swiftly, her honey gold skin bright and shining underneath the otherworldly sun.
Standing so close, he studied the gleam of her lilac eyes, the way the light slid along each long lash. He knew which way her hair would fall, knew that if he breathed her in she would smell like flowers and fresh rain — and if he were to run his calloused hand along a wing, he knew she would tremble...
But he did not.
Instead, he watched her growing smile with cool eyes. It was not a pleasant smile. It did not make his great heart throb as her soft laugh once had — though he could sense his blood thrumming at the promise in that smile, his body pricking it's senses as it tasted violence.
“Yes. It is all for you, Reichenbach. Everything, always.”
A quirked brow as he waited for her to go on, for her to explain.
“You are a bastard. To stand here so brazenly when I have felt broken bones and been covered in blood… Controlled.”
Ah... Lysander.
He had almost forgotten the dark haired man and his gleaming smile, so little did he mean to The Night King. What care did he have if Lysander couldn't take a beating? A vital lesson for him, then, not to get in the way of Reichenbach's emotions. He had simply been at the wrong place, at the wrong time — and had added more to his sentence by choosing to dance with Isorath, too. The hypnotism... he had had little control over his magic at that time, and being so lost to his emotions had forced his hand.
His argent eyes flashed at the accusation, and he might have spoken if she hadn't pressed her velveteen lips to his chest.
Stillness crept over him at the touch and he felt, unbidden, his heart start to thrum at the familiar gentle lips. Her laugh surprised him, his ebony curls sliding softly over her skin as she pulls away, wrapping her in the smell of him — the memory.
“I am surprised you still have a heart that beats; so many times you have given it away.”
Anger flashed through him at her gentle cruelty, how she could condemn his heart, his love. Still he said nothing, watching her through wary eyes now.
“I will end you, Reichenbach. Not now, maybe not even in a few years from now. There is no place in Time or Space where I cannot find you and ruin you. For your treachery, for your selfishness, for all the ways in which you serve only yourself, I will make you pay. To think you ever had a heart capable of love... If this is how you treat those who love you, then you do not deserve any love.”
It was almost a relief to hear her speak his damnation out loud — they were the same words he had spoken to himself for a long while, ever since he had allowed his brother to leave without his blessing.
"I don't doubt it," he laughed darkly, "but, as you say — it will not be this day."
They had loved too fiercely for their romance to end in anything but heartbreak... and now, supposedly, death.
“This is between us. This is not about our courts. By the gods you and your new lover have dragged mine through enough. Whatever happens from here is the two of us and us alone.”
Now he lifted his roguish head, his baritone voice abnormally cold.
"Us?" Reichenbach laughed incredulously, advancing upon the lean Florentine maintained "Everything your Court has suffered has happened because of you. I did not cause dissent within your Court, Florentine.." A grin flashed across his handsome face as he amended, "..Well... I suppose I can take the blame for Lysander... but the rest of it does not lie upon my shoulders. It was your choice to strip Isorath of his title, your choice to let rumours of War run rampant through your Court, to sit by Lysander's bed while they worried.."
He paused, regaining some of his earlier arrogance as he peered keenly into his ex-lovers long lashed eyes;
"It seems to me that Terrastellans have lost faith in their flower Queen — perhaps they want the Wolf to return." The grin he gave her was wolfish in itself, and gleaming — but he pulled away, glancing toward the direction of his Court.
"...That being said, I do not harbour any foolish desires for trouble with Terrastella. The Night Court remains neutral."
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