[AW] we drew in revelry;

[Theodosia]

let our eyes show the 
fire in our hearts tonight

She had never lied well, had never quite been able to keep her emotions from showing through her face. Her heart was plastered a little too visibly on her sleeve, and that is perhaps what has gotten her in this mess to begin with -- that she had bared the soft, tender underside of her emotions and had gotten bitten for the effort, that she had not recognized that her duty as Champion and as Cadet should come before her heart.

“Perhaps all I know how to do is fight,” The words are tinged with sharpness, of a wild heart born for the sword and shield, but there is no escaping the regret that clings to them. If she had been born soft, if she had been born kind, where would she be now? Certainly not with a broken heart, counting her failures with every heavy step, where sitting here like this is the first time she has ceased her constant motion.

Her limbs itch to move, to disappear into the crowd where she will not be questioned. She stays, instead. “Often.” How could she not, when she would leave so many behind? “My dam -- he would be the most heartbroken, I think. He has lost much already -- I do not intend for him to lose me, as well.” She knows only bits and pieces of Anzhelo's past, from what her sire and her siblings had told her (taunted her with) but she knows that life had not been kind to him even before he had gotten involved with her sire -- it was evident in the scars that had crossed over his skin, in the way he had flinched away from touch but had tried so hard not to flinch away from her. And yet -- and yet, somehow, her dam found the strength still to be kind to the world.

credits

@Florentine