no one calls you honey when you're sitting on a throne
Vendetta listens to him speak and she thinks. She thinks that there is more to this man who does not make abysses out of aquariums that defy gravity. She thinks that games do not come easy to him but they come to him all the same, seeking him out in the night. Dragging their claws through him and claiming him as their victim. Most of all she thinks that he is not all that he appeared, standing and staring into the water, alone.
He speaks of the queen, and if she hadn't already known that she had presumably called upon him to help make this attraction, his tone would speak volumes more. He is fond of her, admires her, even, perhaps. “The best stories,” she adds, “know how to create reason out of chaos.” And he smiles at her and she regards him strangely for a moment with eyes bright like blood.
“The only secret I am hiding is what the rest of my face looks like behind this mask,” and there is the barest of whispering sighs on her lips as she says this. A wry curling to the corner of her mouth. She doesn't lie, however, in saying this. Vendetta might be playing a game, toying like a cat might with a mouse, but this is who she is. She does not ask permission nor forgiveness.
He turns to look at her and she can feel the heat between their skin, even on this midsummer night. She thinks she can taste the ocean on the air around him and it's a sharp and pleasant smell. The ocean is her birthright, her history, and if the desert weren't her home she might like to know where it is that he calls his.
“Never look hope in the eye,” she says then, and if there is a dagger's edge to her voice her eyes are no sharper for it, her muscles no more tense. Hope is like a siren's call, luring you toward her with sweet promises of something more, until you've found her and she has taken everything from you. Including your life.
Vendetta knew she had felt hope once, perhaps had felt even love or trust. She chose not to remember those times, for they had only ever been her ruin. It was best not to hope but to take more, take better, for yourself.
He laughs and she watches the way he does it, the way his mane is tossed slightly as he shakes his head. The darkness of his eyes, perhaps, a little bit brighter and more like stars. There is a girl inside her who never knew a boy, never knew anything but the pain that became her anger that burns like ice. There is a girl inside her that she thinks, maybe, rears her head a little bit when she says, “Perhaps just men with life in their veins and boys in their hearts who want to learn how to celebrate again.”
@Asterion like I said, she got weird *shrug*
