childhood dotted with bodies.
let them go, let them be ghosts.
let them go, let them be ghosts.
T
oo late. Too late too late too late, his mind crows, his magic screams, and it takes
every
last
drop
of Caine’s decaying self-awareness, blood-forged empathy (he does have it, empathy — he does) to keep himself away from her. The phoenix girl does not understand. That when he is like this — when he is more magic than he is mortal — he is no longer in his own skin.
In his place, stands death.
Caine does not hate him, this monstrous, magicked version of himself — for he is the only reason Caine is still alive. Still… whole, or as close to it as he will ever come. Every kill, every horrible, heartless deed he has ever done — Caine has learned, over the years, to withdraw a piece of himself away.
To hide him (the colt with the mahogany pelt, too foolish and just-born and trusting to believe that his lovely, blue-eyed mother would leave him there, forever, with the rest of the weak and the unwanted and the loveless) — this pitiful, feeling creature, behind a dome of unbreakable glass.
To watch, with black-void eyes, the eager magic seep into the hole left behind. Reclaiming him, shaping him into a reaper without a heart. The boy he must be, to do what must be done.
“Because your life matters Caine. Because you matter to me. Ancestors guide me, you’re daft and stupid and slow.”
Too late, too late, the magic caws, delighted. He is not here to hear.
“What will you do about it, Caine?” He does not want to do anything about it. He does not want to do anything, does she not see?
“If this were a cliff would you watch me after you threw me off? You could push me down now, throw me low and watch if I break.” He steps back as she steps forwards, and it is no longer a dance of give-and-take, a midnight rendezvous between a moonlight prince and a princess of flame.
He has never been a prince, and he never will be. Another step forwards. Another step back.
“Will you kill me for caring? Wrap your magic about my throat and squeeze.” His eyes fly to hers, a gold rivaling her own, when she speaks of death. Her words shape a scene he has lived, over and over and over. A nightmare he has never been able to wake from. How easy it had been, to bleed them of their lives.
How easily she speaks of it, dying by his hands.
He has gave and gave and gave. Enough. He has had enough. The madness and magic in him quiets to an eerie, deathless calm.
“You speak so easily of death.” His voice whispers like snake scales over rock. “Caring is not a crime. Why should I kill you over it?” But what he wants to say is, I have killed for far less. I have never reveled in it. Your name is not written in blood on the reaper’s ledger. You are not wanted by him. You should never want to be wanted.
He looks at the hurt engraved like poetry in her scorching eyes, and memorizes the colors of it. She steps forwards again. This time, he does not step back.
“I’ve seen others die, Caine. I’ve killed them and never looked back. I’ll tell you a secret - they never mattered. But you, you horrid man -" This phoenix girl, killing — Caine’s eyes narrow at her cursory admission. What reason did she have for bloodshed? His magic, not yet tamed, not yet close to feeling sated, begs to taste her dreams.
Too late, he sneers back at it, and shoves it vehemently away. He does not want to know.
“You matter.” Does he? His mother had whispered the same, right before she had walked away forever. Agenor had murmured it too, right before his knife had carved torture into Caine's skull.
“If I matter to you, then I will say this. You should save your care for someone else.” Someone who will honor it for all its worth in gold. Someone, who is not him. “You asked if I would kill you. Then I ask this of you: will you kill me from your heart like you killed the others?” He is as still as black marble, as immovable as the earth beneath their hooves.
The sun crests over the horizon, burning away the dark, haloing them in a wreath of weeping gold. Caine’s eyes, once a raging, brilliant orange, die to slivers of silver. He looks at the dimming girl in front of him, and wonders what he has destroyed.
“Go ahead then, walk away. We’re just strangers after all, aren’t we?” His eyes flicker towards the distance, to a desert and a kingdom he has started to call home.
“Strangers would not have threatened to kill each other,” he says, quietly, with an echo of a smile. They are not strangers. He does not know what they are, only that he had given his first promise to her, even if she hadn’t known it. Even if he could not honor it. “And I am not so much of a bastard to simply walk away, Tonnerre. I can accompany you to the base of the Veneror, if you are heading towards Denocte.”
@
