Rhoswen ►
"I am still alive because you wanted me alive.” She hates him for he is right, and oh what a blade it is against her skin: not sharp like the silver upon his leg but blunt and dense like a cleaver sent buried into her flesh. What was loyalty when it was severed in two? Two houses to call home: one a man, another the sun. It was an impossible choice, one that had reduced her to bone and nerve; for no decision would not desecrate the tender equilibrium she had fought so hard to create. Time and time again Rhos had played the scenes over in her mind, walking new avenues, brushing through different doors, only to find herself at the same destination over and over: heartbreak. And she was through with it -- enough. Suddenly the choice did not seem so impossible anymore.
Rhoswen knows Raum's game, knows it well, and like a mirror she deflects his glacial demeanour with a turn of her sharp red shoulders to face him square. She flared crimson, rupturing red and in his shadow, shed her skin threefold to rid herself from the memory of his touch. Crows are vicious creatures; antagonistic and sly, but even they are afraid of fire. She holds his stare with blinding ferocity, knowing how her own eyes swallow him whole: cracking his blackened heart. And finally her loathing strikes true. Perhaps, then, she should have expected what would follow; and perhaps she did, but in truth none of that mattered when her sight blurred silver and a blue noose slid tight round her throat. Rhoswen had felt many things in her life: rage, agony, misery and joy -- but nothing quite like this. As she tensed against his grip, Rhos saw time slow around them both, as though it were detaching itself to watch this spectacle unfold before its very eyes. Raum's scent was almost as asphyxiating as the cloth about her gullet, mocking her with its intensity, bleeding into her pores and assaulting her every living thought. She was drowning in him: her heart slamming against her ribs in a four-beat rhythm that knocked the last whispers of breath from her lungs: THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD--Never assume you are not as sinful as me, Rhoswen.
It was all she needed to find the live wire within her chest, jump-starting the punching virility between her teeth and in a turn of cataclysmic speed Rhoswen snapped her hind leg up and out to crack, slam, or puncture Raum's underbelly or limb, using the precious moment following her impact to slip like gasoline from his grip. She gasped in the free air as she spun away from the Ghost, whirling round to face him with an expression that was as nebulous as the violation that had just passed. Thoughts smashed into each other as she stood, chest concaving, watching the man she loved; the man who had crushed her throat and barricaded her lungs, the man who had offered protection - only to choke her under a summer sun and a canopy of speechless trees. "You are going to regret that." Her voice was nothing but a vitriolic whisper, a rustle on the leaves, and behind a bloodred wall and a Gladiatorial snarl, Rhoswen felt something inside shake and rattle in virginal grief.
It might have been a second, it might have been an hour (she neither knows or cares) and he is speaking again, but the words drift over her head like dust and air; thin, hollow, skeletal. She stares at him as though he were the only that had ever existed on earth, overwhelming intensity flooding like a monsoon from her ashen gaze, questioning how she had found herself here, with him, with bruises blooming about her neck and a heart shattered into unrecognition. She had given him everything: a child, a court, a life - and in that moment, Rhoswen vowed never to give him anything again. All talk of her brother and events passed felt idle now on her tongue; suddenly obsolete and lost to the shaking of her heart. "Oh, Raum. You chose wrong, didn’t you learn from my mistake?" Again her tone is but a murmur on the hot air; ominous and impenentrable, for her entire being has melted into something pale and unsettling. It is with an incredulous glint in her smokehewn eyes that she stares on and on at the Crow, a sick sad smile threatening to break like wildfire across her lips. The mania in her head has ended, and in its wake burns a single thought that flickers and licks in the dark: with three haunting strides she closes the gap between them for the final, ruinous time.
"When I am finished with you, you will rue the day we met."
Rhoswen knows Raum's game, knows it well, and like a mirror she deflects his glacial demeanour with a turn of her sharp red shoulders to face him square. She flared crimson, rupturing red and in his shadow, shed her skin threefold to rid herself from the memory of his touch. Crows are vicious creatures; antagonistic and sly, but even they are afraid of fire. She holds his stare with blinding ferocity, knowing how her own eyes swallow him whole: cracking his blackened heart. And finally her loathing strikes true. Perhaps, then, she should have expected what would follow; and perhaps she did, but in truth none of that mattered when her sight blurred silver and a blue noose slid tight round her throat. Rhoswen had felt many things in her life: rage, agony, misery and joy -- but nothing quite like this. As she tensed against his grip, Rhos saw time slow around them both, as though it were detaching itself to watch this spectacle unfold before its very eyes. Raum's scent was almost as asphyxiating as the cloth about her gullet, mocking her with its intensity, bleeding into her pores and assaulting her every living thought. She was drowning in him: her heart slamming against her ribs in a four-beat rhythm that knocked the last whispers of breath from her lungs: THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD--Never assume you are not as sinful as me, Rhoswen.
It was all she needed to find the live wire within her chest, jump-starting the punching virility between her teeth and in a turn of cataclysmic speed Rhoswen snapped her hind leg up and out to crack, slam, or puncture Raum's underbelly or limb, using the precious moment following her impact to slip like gasoline from his grip. She gasped in the free air as she spun away from the Ghost, whirling round to face him with an expression that was as nebulous as the violation that had just passed. Thoughts smashed into each other as she stood, chest concaving, watching the man she loved; the man who had crushed her throat and barricaded her lungs, the man who had offered protection - only to choke her under a summer sun and a canopy of speechless trees. "You are going to regret that." Her voice was nothing but a vitriolic whisper, a rustle on the leaves, and behind a bloodred wall and a Gladiatorial snarl, Rhoswen felt something inside shake and rattle in virginal grief.
It might have been a second, it might have been an hour (she neither knows or cares) and he is speaking again, but the words drift over her head like dust and air; thin, hollow, skeletal. She stares at him as though he were the only that had ever existed on earth, overwhelming intensity flooding like a monsoon from her ashen gaze, questioning how she had found herself here, with him, with bruises blooming about her neck and a heart shattered into unrecognition. She had given him everything: a child, a court, a life - and in that moment, Rhoswen vowed never to give him anything again. All talk of her brother and events passed felt idle now on her tongue; suddenly obsolete and lost to the shaking of her heart. "Oh, Raum. You chose wrong, didn’t you learn from my mistake?" Again her tone is but a murmur on the hot air; ominous and impenentrable, for her entire being has melted into something pale and unsettling. It is with an incredulous glint in her smokehewn eyes that she stares on and on at the Crow, a sick sad smile threatening to break like wildfire across her lips. The mania in her head has ended, and in its wake burns a single thought that flickers and licks in the dark: with three haunting strides she closes the gap between them for the final, ruinous time.
@Raum
