T E N E B R A E
On my body, the grace of shadows
and in my heart: all Hells
and in my heart: all Hells
If the touch of his shadow sword is a kiss upon the column of her throat, then that is the only kiss he has ever bestowed upon any creature. Fitting it should be upon a girl who has never been kissed. Fitting it should be upon a girl who speaks only the language of battle and violence. Their kisses will be many, enough to make skin yield, enough to make blood run.
She smiles when his blade disintegrates. Her ravenous lips are the brightest thing in this dark of theirs - for the darkness stopped being Tenebrae’s the moment she stepped within it, as if she owns his darkness, as if the darkness was all she knew. She slinks around him, that smile never fading. Feline is this girl, a crimson slip of a cat loosed from the sun. Oh, the sun… if Boudika’s lips are wet with hunger, it is nothing compared to the slakeless desire that presses upon Tenebrae’s lips. It is good to be a monk, he thinks, for simply all his lips yearn for is the press of a sun, between his teeth and down his throat. Was this not what Caligo made him for? Tenebrae is, after all, one of her Stallions Set to Swallow the Sun.
The darkness adorns Boudika, it cloaks her in midnight and toys with the small light that glitters in her gaze. Her eyes reach his as her words sift through the darkness and into his ears. Everything between them smells of Night - it is the smoke of bonfires, the jasmine of wild flowers and the frankincense of incense burning like divine prayer.
Ah, his mind fills with gods. Of a goddess who is more darkness than he. A goddess who is the only girl he knows anything about. So different she is to Boudika, who stands as comfortable as Caligo within his darkness, yet this girl is brilliant like a spark, ready to to set the world ablaze. Tenebrae’s smile turns dark and keen, answering that wicked smile upon her lips - sharper than a knife. It is fuel to the delight coursing through his veins. He wants to see her in the light, he wants to see how she burns - is she brighter than the sun? Is he destined to chase her too? To swallow every lick of firelight and sunlight that dares to breathe upon her skin. And yet… and yet he just wants to behold the bright of her and see if it is beautiful, like the sun. For how wondrous is the sun and how sweet it is between his lips, upon his tongue. He dares to wonder if Boudika might taste like sunlight too. Just for a moment.
The darkness recedes, it falls back as light floods in bright and brilliant. It chases shadows from where they touch him and her. It chases the dark secrets that lurk in the scant space between them.”I do not hide behind shadows.” Tenebrae says, his lips no longer smiling. The darkness clings to him, as it always does, as it has since the moment Caligo pressed her darkness into him, into every inch and make him hunger for light. The darkness curls across his flesh like smoke, it presses upon him as if to sink beneath his skin and join the abyss of darkness within. “I am the shadows.” He says with no ounce of pride. It is simple fact. The shadows have become an extension of him. They breathe like the air in his lungs, they rise like his temper and fall with his sorrow.
But he stands, as exposed beneath the light as his magic will ever allow. He drinks in Boudika, a fire girl, lit beneath the sun. She is not fire he realises suddenly, but gleaming, liquid metal, bright from a furnace. “Community,” He breathes, still studying her, with his white eyes glowing bright. “Is that not a waste of a warrior queen?” Tenebrae jests, and yet he does not. He knows the importance of community. He is made to serve, to serve until death, laying his life out before and for Denocte and its goddess. Such service begins with the rest of the Night Order. They are nothing if not bound to serve each other as a sacred community.
Then her lips are at his ear, her breath touching where her lips do not: across the shell, across the angle of his jaw. Only a man those words breathe across his skin hot and dangerous. A shiver rocks down his spine. He is made for war and death and yet this girl breaks him down until he is no longer a Disciple of the Night Order, a Stallion made to Swallow the Sun. She names him just a man and men want.
Darkly he laughs, that sound like smoke. His head shakes, as if to rid himself of her revelation, as if to rid himself of dangerous things. Tenebrae looks back to her, to her crimson lips. Not much blood she had said. And she is right, for he imagines her dressed in more, glittering like a dew drenched rose upon the battlefield.
Are you Denoctian, shadow-caster, light-eater? Boudika asks him with her smile like silk and lips like knives. “I am.” he confesses at last, though he need not. Already her gaze is full of knowing, already they are just mice within each other’s game. They grin at each other like cats, languid and playful, predatory and beautiful - in the way all hunters are. “My name is Tenebrae. I am a Disciple of the Night Order, sworn to protect Caligo and, in turn, all of Denocte.”
He speaks with leonine pride and assurance, the darkness swelling like a mane about his throat. It reaches tendril fingers for her, brushing against the flower petals that curl into the groove of her neck.
Her smile turns sly and a petal falls like innocence. “You won’t hurt me,” Tenebrae agrees, confident, though a part of him already feels broken, changed. He turns from her, the darkness gathering about him, He does not turn back because he knows that tonight he will not dream of swords and suns but girls and how Boudika is quite the most dangerous creature he has ever met.
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