Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
And the unicorn evils run them through;
This is the thing her magic, her form, her furious rage is made for. Perhaps the cursed and poisoned magic poured infected sea-water into her blood. Perhaps there is nothing more than barnacles floating aimlessly around in her veins seeking for a surface that is not rotten to roost on. Thana feels like she's made of more than cells when she presses against him, like she's made of a million cracks besides the two white ones cleaving a storm through her bloody flesh.
She wonders if like the magic she can corrupt, remake, and devour the world to feel like something more than alone.
The rush of the lion's too-warm too-bright light shakes something loose in Thana, or maybe it only gnaws at a noose tied around her magic. She doesn't pause to think about the instinct (or maybe it's want only disguised as this violent need) that makes her bring her teeth to his cheek. Nor does she wonder at the lash of that loose thing in her that tells her over and over again, consume, consume, consume. Thana only listens like a wild thing listens to the silver moon, or a wolf listens to the call of a distant pack. Eligos is listening too and perhaps it's only his call that she's hearing.
“Your blood perhaps, if it suits you. But not your body.” She says the words with teeth, drags them along his scars glimmering slick and silver like scales. The loose thing is still roaring in her, driving her, splitting apart the bits of her that felt lost, then found, then loved. Nothing in her feels whole, not with the sun flaring against her sides making her froth like a monster that's been running for hours, not with the flesh beneath her lips promising something sweet like surrender. Hadn't she heard it in his call, in the way that even now there is the sea under his dust and sunshine?
And if the magic, the rage, the rot wasn't rattling in her bones (a siren song of her own, so unlike his and so similar) she would have asked him if the sea would welcome his blood.
Instead she only traces the hollow of cheek where it meets his neck. He feels like fire underneath her touch, furious heat that makes all her winter death feel like pins and needles beneath her skin. She traces the underside of his neck and her heart flutters at the feel of his buried pulse against her lips. It flutters like a poison leaf at the touch of a butterfly's wing, like hunger. “Not this.” Thana says the last as she nips the of his chest, that thin layer of flesh protecting his heart (thin enough that her horn begs for the feel of it). For a moment she remains there, waiting, teeth aching beneath her flesh. For him to answer the question she never thought to ask.
And if she knew he was looking for monsters in their skin, she would have cut herself open with the tip of her own blade and whispered look to him like a poem writ by eternity.
