the huntsman drew off the wolf's skin
and went home with it
and went home with it
S
ir!His voice echoes through the empty market square, and Toulouse pauses mid-stride. His skin is crawling, his heart is roaring, and he can feel his blood burning him from the inside out. For just a moment time stands still; he’s a viper still, and the temptation is there to slither away into the night, to shed his skin and emerge as something new, something unrecognizable.
But the world - Denocte included - is his tonight. A smile cuts across his face, sharp and wicked. Toulouse is both the snake and the snake charmer, and he could dance or strike in the blink of an eye.
Which would it be for this stranger?
An idle performance or the sweet sting of his fangs as he struck, true and fast, for his throat?
He turns to the pale, antlered stallion, smile vanishing by the time he meets his gaze. Toulouse lets feigned surprise make its way into his eyes, his voice, his mind - fires? What fires? It’s as easy as putting on a mask, a mask that transforms the wearer into the face it wears. His heart is still racing, flying without wings around and around and around the confined cage of his chest. He wishes the shorter man could hear it, and how it screams for more fire, more blood, more death. Death to the Court his brother is so enchanted with, destruction for all they held dear. Toulouse would burn the whole city to the ground if it meant returning his twin home to where he belonged, home to him.
But it’s not his heart that speaks when he opens his mouth, for that would give him away. It’s someone else entirely, someone not-quite Toulouse that gasps in shock and casts frantic eyes around the streets.
(It was not lost on him that it was "By Solis!" the other man swore, and not Caligo.)
"The fires," he chokes on the word, and he lets the desperation that roils in his veins echo in his voice. "We were there, we saw the flames, saw a building crash with people still inside—" Smoke still clings to his skin, and he forces a long, hacking cough from his throat to interject his words.
"Have you seen him?" His breath is light and shallow, the image of Abel still seared into his mind, with flames dancing all around. Caught, abandoned. Toulouse fixes his gaze - the eyes of a mad man, frenzied and filled with panic - onto the stranger. The whites of his eyes are showing, so wide with fear are they."Have you seen my friend?"
His "friend", who was trapped in the flames, surrounded by soldiers. His "friend" who set fire to his home, who stole the food from his friends and family by command of a mad king, a silver monster.
Have you?
@Anzhelo | "speaks" | notes: xxx
