You are not Only, are you?
Stephan laughs a quiet and comfortable laugh that bubbles velveteen-soft and rich like hot chocolate. It soothes a smile out of his favorite little honeybee and it just makes him
sick with grief to know her
now.
She knows him.
She fucking knows him.
Stephan's eyes have always been wily and vibrant like harvest moons and crocodile skins - they shiver with anticipation like spiders in their webs when she comes closer - closer. His blood buckles and roils as his heart pound-pound-
pounds the life-giving vitriol through his midnight heart. Dusk steps closer - closer. He is not Night, he is Darkness.
The blood looks like bruises that matte the slippery finish on his skin as he moves languidly in the muck. Stephan wades closer - she will not be the only one to take what she wants tonight, the knife very obviously drops from him and ends with a splash. It swims like a piranha in the dark water. It hides with the intent to keep her distracted by his telepathy which takes the blade on a joyride in the places Florentine cannot see. The water wavers and hiccups at the surface where blood blossoms like lilies as he wash-wash-washes the red away. It is no dirty secret of his if he openly shares it with her. It would seem that his worst secret, Only, has already been discovered.
This is not Only and Florentine knows it. Her knife gleans with such a seductive curve in the moonlight (or is that her aura setting the metal of it aglow?) -
she is no honeybee, Stephan thinks,
--but perhaps a wasp? he wonders.
Everything else she has ever said to the man before her, burns. He burns like Hell and not the way houses or forest fires do. Everything she has ever inspired inside of him melts into cinders. All the air has cleansed itself as it cycles through the choking cyclone of flames, it ashes then grays - in the afterglow where everything destroyed smokes and steams,
He stands there in the ruins of what once was, had been, and is no longer.
No more.
He speaks abruptly and without much point, his curiosity may hopefully appeal to her moreso than the graven change of character but he isn't a betting man. Someone like Stephan looks unusually sober despite the hunter that fills in every black shadow on his long narrow, untrustworthy face.
"-and how did that make you feel to die? Tell me, was any part of it memorable for you? Yana is blessed to have such a brave friend who would come to see her at night. Isn't it lucky for you that you have also encountered one along the way?" His voice flows rich and dark and like amber - it is just as patient as well as he takes his time to tell her what she wants to know. Only has been shoved far from him now, so far away that even Stephan cannot hear his weeping fill the bullet holes in his brain. All he can hear is his own laughter rising up and overflowing.
"What is a nice girl like you doing knowing a man like this?" Her bluff is called ( or is it Only's? he has nothing to work with being on the spot like this - yet still he keeps calm) - another step is taken towards her. The lilac in her hair does not make him sigh the way it makes Only sigh but it is the way her wings tango and trill in the pale light that compels him the way laser lights demand a cat's most rapt attention.
He reaches for a feather that tick-tick-ticks in the whirly-swirly breeze that revisits them - with it it brings a failed warning and it simply moans in horror knowing Dusk has found intrigue in a place where no light could possibly live. Not even Only can breathe in Stephan's darkness. Her warmth feels like radiation against him and he doesn't dare to touch her - he couldn't possibly stand it, the light on her may very well rub off and stain the sleeves of his suit.
"Her name is Winona." Because that was the name of the girl whose blood he baptized himself with just hours ago and it felt fitting to give the stolen artifact a life of it's own. Or perhaps he was just as magical as the next sage who could turn water into wine and he had filled it from hilt to deadly-tip with his sacrifices' soul?
Then quickly -- lightning quick -- Stephan snaps at her closest wing without warning, the loose feather comes away with a hard jerk of his head and he does not bother to step back. A man who has nothing to live for will never protect his life if he pays for his deeds with it time and time again. Only gasps to life in the back of his mind. He reaches for control and only catches empty air in his bleeding fists as he hears Stephan talking to Florentine.
'
The knife, that is. Does yours have a name?' Stephan says to the dusk girl and Only hears it. The horror of it all breaks him down and makes him weak.
Don't, don't, don't! Only wails, over and over again helplessly into the vast darkness of his troubled soul.
. . .
‡
