There is something rising in her until it laps at each rib bone, and each pale tendon, in waves of some emotion she hasn't yet found a name for. When she sleeps it feels like bravery, as if her eyes are two blazing stars looking down at the world and promising never to fade or fall. Sometimes when she walks through her city, and all the horses look at her like she is hope, that rising tide feels like a current of lies ebbing and flowing through her veins where hot blood should be.
And sometimes, sometimes when men look at her and she looks back at them down the line of a glowing arrow--
Sometimes she feels like a god then, like a thing made to consume and consume until there is nothing left. But then she remembers that her heart is still beating with love-love-love more than it's beating with fury-fear-rage, and she softens that hard thing rising against her in waves of freezing salt-water. They say that love is higher than law and it's becoming a little harder each day Raum walks alive to remember that.
Because Isra doesn't want to be love all the time, once maybe but not now.
So she smiles at him, and it's not as shivering and gentle as the look she gave him once so long ago. This time she's not pretending to be anything less dangerous than she is, and she's not pretending that the shadow of massive wings passing over them doesn't make her feel reckless. Instead she's looking at him like a queen looking at another thing that makes her heart beat a little less coldly in her chest (and like she's not sure how that makes her feel). “Until it feels as easy as breathing.” This time when she draws the bow her magic is shaking off its weariness like dead skin. The bow doesn't shine with moon-fire but when the soft dawn sun glints off the tip of her arrow it stings her eyes a little. It makes her smile look brighter, like a slash of silver across a black sky.
“Don't you ever wonder if all crowns come with a little bit of violence?” She inhales and something cold in her eyes, an echo of that rising tidal sea in her chest, begs him not to flinch. With a look she begs him to be brave, to understand that she can still love so many things even when she's drawing an arrow back with precision.
Isra is begging him to understand that something in her is making her a monster, something she sometimes loves.
When she lets the arrow go it flies straight and true towards that apple hanging far too close to his skin. But the sound it makes when it hits still makes her flinch, and she steps back to hide the reaction her soft heart has not learned to hide.
@Ipomoea
