tenebrae
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
Give me an excuse to stay.
If Tenebrae had known the way that hope burned through her, he might have been tempted. Might have. Yet Tenebrae knows that it is not he who should give her an excuse. The realisation was for Luvena, alone, to come to. Though he knows this, the bittersweet ache in his chest would rise and lay words upon his tongue, it would count for her a thousand reasons to stay.
But Luvena never asks, the words sealed within her chest. They do not even rise to lay, unspoken, upon her tongue.
He laughs with her and feels the secret light that gleams from her dark body. The Order’s shadows succumb to her presence. Luvena is a ray of starlight amidst the Order’s endless night. She will be missed as surely as a flower pines for the sun.
Luvena turns to go, slipping through the dark hall as silent as a ship through a midnight sea. Her threat to tend his wounds as her final act upon leaving hangs in the air. Tenebrae’s smile slowly fades. He will not let her. He needs the ache, the burn. They remind him of his great misdeeds and twinge as he turns, fading into darkness, retreating back towards the temple. His penance is not yet over.
~Fin. Thank you so much lovely <3
