"Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind."
When the boy returns she sees only the flare of his slat-sides and the flash of moonlight dancing a waltz across the blackness of his eyes. It's her hope that looks at him and smiles brightly and gives a simple “Thank you.” Isra's about to ask him to linger a while and join her back to the citadel kitchens, but the colt is already slipping back into the night before she can find the words.
Some primal part of her laments his absence when the night never rises once more in cricket and star song.
Maybe later she'll tell herself that if she wasn't so tired the water would never have slaked her magic-fever. Later Isra might recall how sweetly bitter the water tasted, as if it was raw sap on her lips instead of lake water. For now all she can taste is moonlight on her tongue when she drinks.
She thinks the ache in her belly nothing more than dehydration.
But soon, too soon, the stars blend together and multiply when she looks up to the sky. Her bones start to feel weary with more than exhaustion. This feels like drowning, she thinks as she starts to slip under the darkness. The grass feels not like earth at her sides but a million needles too sharp for her defend against.
All of her hurts.
Her sight is the last to fade. It holds on long enough to see a shadow thicker than the blackness around it peel from the hedges and start towards her. Isra is still herself enough to know that it's no shadow but a ghost that creeps closer and closer like a reaper. Fury burns through her then. It's hot, hot, hot but not hot enough to burn out the poison running like thick ichor through her body.
She tries to say, I will have your bones, and then, I will turn your blood into soil and your skin into roses. All that comes out it a sob, too soft to sound furious. But maybe, just maybe the hate and rage is in her eyes when she meets his gaze and blinks back as much of the poison as she can manage.
Isra could light bonfires with all the heat in her eyes even as they start to dim.
@Raum @Acton
