m e s s a l i n a
the chains are broken,
but are you truly free?
but are you truly free?
“Messa—”
Ipomoea’s voice, groggy with sleep, was the arrow that shattered the glass of Messalina’s stare. Shuddering, light rushed back into her eyes. What was she doing? When had she —
She looked down. Cerise eyes, wide and unfocused, blinked up at her. She thought she could make out the faintest traces of amethyst in those irises, like slivers of violet dawn. His eyes had always entranced her. Their rich hue, their shining warmth. So different from her own cold blues, so beauti —
Gasping, Messalina scrambled backwards. Her hair flew in a silver halo as she backed away from the regent’s bed, away from him —
She blinked, once, twice, her thoughts not quite catching up. Swallowed by the darkness of the room, she halted a few steps away. As bewildered as a cornered rabbit.
“What’s going on? What’s happened?”
Messalina jolted, yanked from her spiraling panic by Ipomoea’s soft — yet equally bewildered — voice. He doesn’t know.
In her distress, she had neglected to tell him. She had neglected to think. Mortified, the girl screwed her eyes shut. Scrambled for the words to explain.
Scenes of blood and slaughter flashed and flashed. Moore. Casper. The guards! She had come for the guards, to bring them back to Somnus.
Her eyes sprang open. Ipomoea had pushed himself up to sitting, sleep still heavy in his limbs. Guilt struck her, at awakening him to a world of nightmares. But she had to, everything had gone wrong, she didn't know how to fix it —
Her heart could not seem to beat correctly. Control slipped again and again from her sweat-soaked grasp. (Panic and fear and exhaustion, a monster of her own creation, wanted nothing more than to pull her down with it, and never let her go.)
Time. She had no time. It dripped dripped dripped like beads of blood, like her blood, when it had leaked onto the sheets. She watched Ipomoea look down at the crimson stains in the silk. Watched his eyes dawn with realization when he followed the trail to her.
She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. Instead, Messalina bit down hard on her tongue.
She thought of the time she had fumbled her grand jeté, a lifetime ago. How choking-soft the hush of the crowd had been, how writhing-hot Mother’s fury had seethed. How neither of those things had mattered, because the pain had sharpened her will like a whetstone to a blade. Sharpened and sharpened until she had pushed herself back up, ignoring her twisted ankle and burning shame, and danced again. The smile never leaving her face.
The pain sharpened her again. Pushed her forwards, until she stood at the foot of the bed. Her movements were mechanical, like a puppet on strings.
“Moore and Casper. They are dead,” she began, her voice low and soft. It did not shake, but carried — cold and hollow and steady. She did not look at him. Her eyes remained fixed on something beyond; they fluttered closed. When they opened, she was back in the forest again.
“Murdered. By — by a monster. They were torn to pieces, there was so much blood. I could barely recognize them." She did not want to remember, but she did. The stench of blood coated her nose, her throat. Everywhere. It was everywhere.
“Do you,” Casper’s eyes, a green brighter than spring, were rimmed with red. “Do you know what the worst of it was?” Wide with horror.
“If it had been a wolf, a ravenous animal — on the brink of starvation, killing for necessity — it would have been better.” Moore’s laugh rang like bells in Messalina’s ear. She had always thought it pretty. She had never told the page so.
“But it hadn't.” She had always been soft-spoken, but now — now her softness was devastating. “It had mangled them — without reason, without necessity — and left them. To rot for the carrion.”
Her words hung, dripping dripping dripping, in the space between them.
Dully, Messalina looked down at her torn legs. The bandages Pan had wrapped so carefully around them had been ripped away in her mad dash, the wounds reopened. They hurt. She winced when she realized how much. "You're bleeding!"
“They are nothing, only shallow cuts,” she said, trying — and failing — to keep her voice indifferent. But when she looked up again, he was already out of bed, fumbling for supplies in the dark.
She shook her head frantically. No, no, not me. It's not me you should care about.
“Eulalie — Lady Eulalie and King Somnus are still out there, in the Viride, searching for answers. There are others with them, yet none I trust.”
Only now did Messalina's voice rise, in volume and in pitch. She sought his gaze and held it. Before she could stop to think (she didn't want to think), she closed the distance between them and pulled him around to face her.
“They are not safe. If something happens —” She opened her mouth and closed it again.
“I — I must go. I came to bring guards back with me, and I promised to meet them at the mouth of the forest. I only came here to alert you.” Yet she did not move.
For her eyes, cold and hollow, said what she would not. Please come with me.
@Ipomoea | "speaks" | notes: you don't even know how much dialogue I had to cut out to make this manageable >.>
