[AW] an evolutionary inferior creature, governed by hormonal chaos

[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.

 

Blood is upon the air. It turns all to metal and sin. Brutality curls in the corners of this lavish room. Its presence is nails upon a blackboard, as loud as a basilisk’s screech.
 
The king does not flinch as the girl is dragged forward and her chains rattle like the bones of the dead. But his heart beats with the clatter of them.  Ah, she is proud, he sees, as she sits adorned in grace and poise. This girl is the night that knows the sun and yet still will not be tamed. Ah, he looks over her, over every inch of her skin, black as ebony and bright as a freshly laid amethyst bruise.
 
She watches him, oh how she watches him. Her eyes are the stony grey of slate, of a bland sea, only grey and full of anger. The girl’s hatred is vitriolic, it is diesel in his veins and the twist of her lips the match to set him alight. He does not blink, he does not lean forwards and yet, he dares her light that spark. He begs to burn and scream and feel. Yet he says nothing. Oh Raum is ice upon the winter wind. He is death creeping in, silent, like shadows.
 
Ah, she eats! He watches her, watches the blood trickle like wine past her lips. Still she watches him.
 
And still he watches her.
 
She is savage and the meat tears within her grasp, steam rises like a soul before a god. Had she dared eat from the offering table at a god’s altar? Raum does not smile, he does not reveal anything in the way he watches her eat. Oh, he is as quiet as a midnight moon, as devious as a crow perched upon a branch, watching with wicked eyes.
 
Her hunger is a lion, a beast that changes her into something other. The meat is gone, only pooled blood remains. Still he does not smile, still he does not gloat, except he stirs, like a leaf moved by an idle breeze. “Was it good?” He asks her and wonders what she tasted, if she tasted anything at all, when each morsel was swallowed down like a mouse before a starved snake.
 
The napkin drinks blood from her lips, stains itself snow white to crimson. The droplets are like blood within the snow, it bears her sins so very clearly.
 
Polyxena.
 
Her name hangs between them as the fragrance of the meat once had: tempting, alluring, desirable. Within Raum, something stirs, it is vicious and white hot and savage. It would make him smile, it would make his eyes glitter, were he any other man.
 
She talks of flames, of burning flesh, of a life extinguished by the roaring of a fire. Her head tilts, the sunlight pouring down to gild along her sculpted cheek, the curve of her horns. “And what is your kind?” Raum asks and wonders what sins her kind might have committed. “Did I do wrong to spare you then?” He asks soft as silk and violent as a noose about her throat. There is still space amongst the dead, Polyxena. He does not say, but wonders if she hears the deep sea calls of her shipmates from their watery graves.
 
This ship-wreck girl feels naked, exposed and yes, Raum would strip every piece of armour from her torso. He would leave not an inch of her unseen, if only to better know the threat she brings him.
 
Even a king would not be safe from the flames. And oh how his eyes flash. Oh how his turns from mercury poisonous and soft, to a blade poised at her throat. He would spill her blood and let it mingle with that upon the plate.
 
Polyxena studies Raum as he studies her. Her head tilts, the wash of her red-wine hair curling about her slender throat. Her pendant glitters and the king’s gaze turns feral. It is a savageness, there like a spark of Acton’s magic and then gone in the blink of an eye. Raum is stone, as ever, unmoved by this girl of daring night. “Mmm.” He murmurs like the singing of a blade unsheathing from its holster. “Is that a threat or a plea, Polyxena?” He asks, soft as a whisper and as loud as teeth against her neck.
 
Then he is moving toward her and she is sea-salt and starlight, midnight and the cries of sailors lost to a monster. There is the sea upon his tongue, wine in his eyes and shadows on his skin. “Now your belly is full, you had better tell me how you can be of use to me for otherwise I could just let the flames you have evaded claim you, at last.”

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@Polyxena