this year I devour.
She is suppliant in his hands, utterly.
That almost takes the fun out of it.
But Elchanan tries to push away his dissatisfaction. He chokes it down into the pit of his stomach, where it settles like acid, to deal with later. Now—now he must focus on keeping her here, and keeping her happy. Or—at the very least—enchanted.
He does not miss the soft sound that comes from her, nearly a gasp, maybe a pant. Satisfaction curls Elchanan’s pale lips into something that is not quite a smirk, but far too smug to be a genuine smile; he is only lucky that from where Samaira is standing, she cannot see the flash of his sharp, sharp teeth, glinting under the pale moon.
The stars shift under their feet. The water ripples gently, clear as dark glass. Elchanan hears the beat of her heart pick up speed, the way it sounds through her chest, all the way into his. With exaggerated gentleness, he noses at a piece of her long, dark hair, gives it the faintest tug, lets his breath—with purposeful scarcity—drift across the richly colored earth of her skin.
She is… warm. Human. No matter how much Elchanan’s blood pumps, he is always cold, cold, cold, and as they sway in the dark night he absorbs more and more of her heat from all the places they are pressed together.
It makes him feel especially alive.
Elchanan, she says, and his ears prick. (The sound of his own name has always been attractive to him, for reasons he has never quite bothered to dissect.) He listens carefully as she speaks; it could almost be real interest, but their proximity makes it impossible to tell. From this close, everything looks real. From this close, everyone looks angelic.
“Would you like to?” It is a simple question, no magic necessary. (Anyway, he is interested in the real answer this time.) The priest draws back just enough to meet Samaira’s eyes. His gaze is steady, unflinching, and the certainty of it could almost be unsettling, if he weren’t oh so trustworthy.
The eyes, and their confidence, seem to say: you could not possibly care for this man as much as you care from me.
Elchanan’s mouth turns down, just barely. It is hard to know what prompts it. But then his face settles back into its usual placidity; the warmth returns to his eyes, degree by degree, then all at once. Intently, he watches the way Samaira’s eyes have dropped to the strange, still facsimile of the that has been painted below them, as quiet and beautiful as any Denoctian artwork.
He breathes out, stirring the fine hairs on Samaira’s neck. “But you would like to?” And the magic has come back, though she cannot possibly tell: the touch of it is as light and clean as the feathers that line Elchanan’s wings, just-there enough to ring in someone’s ears but not enough to cause suspicion. He lets out a little exhale, in exaggerated disappointment, and admonishes her gently: “Would it not merely cause y more pain? Why not stay here, Samaira?”
And her name is the gentlest word of them all, like silk unspooling from his lips.
