“Your body is full of rage. Every sinew. It is easy to read. You speak volumes with a clenched fist.”
“Always for now,” Calliope says, leaving the grounding comfort of Shrike's skin. Each step has her gaze tracing thunder-bird wings, the curve of an immortal's spine, the last bird to leave and the way his beak seems wicked even as he bows. She wonders if she killed a relative of his, if his mate was the one foolish enough to try and take Shrike from her.
Lightning licks at her spine and it's as white as the center of the sun, hot enough to melt flesh from bone. Her eyes are molten silver and steel. Calliope wields them like weapons as she stalks into the center of the group. The only time she pauses is to flash a look at the queen and at Raymond. The look promises that she will still hunt them. Until the end of world if she must go that far to ensure no other horse's blood runs in rivulets down their claws.
The end of the world is nothing to her, not with all the things she's seen and all the things she's done.
“I've never know a god to promise safety for more than a moment. Can you tell me why?” Each word is a blade and Calliope wants to push them until she finds blood. Upon her brow her horn quivers and the cuff around it glints like a star in the sunlight rising about the mountains. “Why are there floods and birds?” Closer she steps, until she's the shadow of the goddess-- black without moonlight, black with only fury.
More words boil and smolder behind her teeth and she presses her lips together tightly enough that they ache. What she really wants to say, give me a reason, tell me it's the gods, give me a war. And below that, deeper inside her soul another question waits, eating away at her skin.
Why should I not run my horn through your heart and see if you can bleed just as we did when the sea and the birds came?
