Lysander is too close, his breath too warm. He's breaching all her sharp edges and the hard wall she's locked herself away in. For days now Isra has told herself she's the dragon in the tower instead of the maiden. She's convinced herself that the ivy and wire growing thorns around her heart are not a cage but protection. There is nothing, no cruel thing, she has not told herself that is only mortar, only survival, only the fate of the world.
Yet she trembles when he breathes patterns of heat across her scales. She trembles like she's not the dragon, or the maiden, but the entire tower built on a mountain of mud instead of stone. Isra is coming down; she's falling apart. She could count the moments he pauses by her belly in heartbeat, in the war-drum song that sounds like it's summoning butterflies instead of armies.
When she pulls away she tells herself it's because she wants to be a dragon again. What she doesn't tell herself is that she's remembering a greedy girl who wanted the world, and a gray stallion that makes her wants to drown and never surface. Her gaze grows hot, almost angry, although her eyes don't hold the hardness of it well. Sea eyes are made to be wild, to consume. They are not made to hold fire, but she tries, oh she tries.
She doesn't talk about the fact that there are more evil monsters in the world than Raum. Part of her isn't ready to admit it.
“You are more a fool than I thought Lysander.” Isra tries to keep the tremble out of her voice, the way that she can still feel his breath crawling up her belly like moss. She tries not to feel the urge to tuck her nose into his cheek and forget that the world around them is suffering and that she has made a wall of weapons instead of beauty. It fails.
She steps closer and touches her nose to his cheek so that she wont have to look at that doe-catching glare in his eyes. “It will take more than tines, and horns, and a little bit of cunning.” Fable leaps from the canyon wall. His shadow when he swoops down above them blots out the sun. Everything is black and tainted with the faint sting of brine. Isra smiles and swallows down the memory of the sea.
“You should go home Lysander. I met someone with love in her eyes when she mentioned you.” She nips at his cheek and it's not as gentle as it should be. When she pulls away all of her body strains and rails like a lion against the way her heart is saying goodbye over and over again. Maybe it has to so that she'll believe it.
Isra turns and walks away. Her dragon leads the way and there is an entire ocean of hunger in his bones.
And the beat of her heart feels anything but easy.
@Lysander
