[P] black holes beneath our skin;

[Raymond]

***

Forever was a frightening word from anyone's lips, but from hers it did not need even the ghost of an accompaniment of rolling thunder. In her mouth it was blood and iron and barbed thorns, dangerous even as it flooded him with warmth. He allowed her to extricate herself from his embrace, bending to admit her like water flowing around stone. It was not just their bodies that meshed almost naturally together but their minds, and like a veteran general he felt he could have kept in lockstep with her even should his eyes be plucked from his skull.

You were kinder than I would have been, Calliope said, and when Raymond laughed it carried its usual self-confident richness, soft and amused and meant just for her.

Was it kind to hold a king accountable before the whole of Novus? Certainly the black unicorn would have meant to slay him and his regime and the dragon, spilling whatever blood she deemed a sufficient price to pay for the wounds of despotism. She would not have allowed them to disappear in the night like vagrant children. Perhaps she would have pursued them as he had not, unwilling to be contented by a favorable result if it meant the unjust could go on being unjust still.

Raymond was more concerned with results than with retribution, though retribution had a flavor he knew well. What mattered to him was that the dragon leave, and the dragon was gone. What mattered to him was that Denocte was free, and Denocte was free.

But to call his decision to punish rather than slay kind was perhaps too simplistic.

"Not all kindness is merciful," the red stallion replied through a devil's shadowed smile. "But yes, we are here now."

He watched her go, the lines of her body echoing the lion whose coat she had long since shed. Calliope was beautiful and dangerous and admirably, frightfully alive in a way that he had once forgotten possible. She loved as fiercely as she hated, accepted no limitations, feared no defeat. In many ways they had always been two halves of the same whole - the hidden blade and the army at the gates - and perhaps a lifetime of the Wheel's weaving had all along been an effort to bring those two unruly halves together. If that were the case, pity then the Wheel for its folly.

Now that they had found one another, not even the gods could stop them.

***

Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.

@Calliope