[P] of circles and fangs and hate;

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

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