Watching her makes him feel the same as the pause between a fight, between one blow and the next. It does not matter if the battle is a verbal or physical one; the anticipation for the next round, the next move, is the very thing Corradh is addicted to. He has always, always chased a life on the precipice if only because away from the marble decor, militant schedules, and artisan drapes is the only place he feels alive. The thing that lives within him, the spotted, sharp-toothed beast curls and uncurls. The panther flexes its claws in the meat of his heart, and the beat of his blood cries loud, loud, loud in his ears.
The anticipation for her answer is almost too much. It is almost unbearable. And he savours it the same way he savours too-sweet of figs, or the fleshiest, too-rich piece of steak or organ the cooks prepare specifically for him.
I’ve always watched you fight.
She is missing his teeth and her words are an unexpected blow. Corradh relishes it, briefly, but already the moment is gone and bleeding into the next. She tosses her head, and bares her throat, and all he can think is how his mouth fits around nothing as perfectly as it does around the jugular, and how perhaps he could just show her the delicate magic of that symmetry—then she snaps her wings and steals his throat.
“You mistake me for a man who prays to gods.” Corradh says and as he says it he smiles, too, but the flash is there and gone within the span of a heartbeat. “I would much rather pray to you.” Perhaps her audaciousness has spurred him, has inspired him, because the comment escapes him before Corradh can think better of it.
Amaunet closes the space between them, so that the space that is left seems at once insurmountable and too close. His mouth feels dry with a strange nervousness, one Corradh is not accustomed to. She does not move her throat from his mouth. His lips draw back and he ghosts his teeth against her skin, close enough to touch the hairs but not close enough to touch her skin. It is he who draws away, almost teasingly. “I am not a man of afraid of extremes. I would rather know both, in due time.”
His eyes are gleaming with all the mischief of a cat’s. Perhaps it is the anticipation of their interaction that has made him so bold; perhaps it is the simple fact that there is nothing disappointing in their meeting, nothing that suggests he had been wrong about her, and this unsettles him. Corradh is accustomed to being disappointed. In fact, he expects it.
“And you, Amaunet?” he whispers her name like a goddess’s, held reverently between tongue and tooth, savoured in a whisper that borders on husky. He knows it because he has listened for it. He knows it because he waits, with anticipation, for her battles. “Would you like to know what power feels like? Or what it tastes like?” He pauses. “Or, do you already know?”
@Amaunet || "Speech." ||
until the lion learns to write
every story will glorify the hunter
