She goes to him, the castle trembling with her resounding footsteps. The halls cry out, an echo for the roar of her heart. It thunders, like a drum, like a storm held too close, too tight. She is fit to burst, this ragged queen, with blood upon her lips and blood upon her chest.
But the blood is found not just there. It is also smeared upon her limbs and her sides. It tangles in her hair and paints its way across her cheek.
This presence of blood is menacing and beautiful upon her skin. It turns a flower girl from something innocent into something malevolently wild. She is a savage queen, made of tangles and snarls and ragged breath.
Florentine is a Viking queen; a nymph turned amazon.
Magic, telepathic and fierce, bursts ahead of her and throws itself against doors. It blows open the throne room doors and they fall away before her. In the lavish gold of this room she sights him, more decadent still. He has come, dutiful, when she called for him so suddenly.
Like dust, like a sandstorm that swells and surges against the wall of the throne room, Florentine enters. There is no corner of the room that is not aware of her, there is no part that has not fallen to stillness. The gilded gold holds its breath and Florentine’s presence sucks it in like a wraith.
But there is nothing wraith-like about this girl. She glitters more brightly that the jewels atop the boy’s crown and it is not with the wealth he adorns himself – for Florentine is not concerned with trinkets and jewels. No, Flora is adorned with life. She is lit by the fires of vitality, by the wind that picks up sand and throws it hard and coarse against glass and gold and marble.
She turns to him, her petals the mildest part of her, the tangles of her hair are bound with blood. Savage queen. Rising queen. The dusk night weeps for her in this moment , for she is more a savage queen with iron in her blood and violence in her bones than a creature forged from starlight and sunlight.
Unkempt, the flower girl surveys him as her storm subsides. Fear, fury, regret have all turned her soft leaves to sharp thorns and her sweet fragrance to a lethal poison. The girl has never known anger like this: a creature so wild not even her skin can contain it.
But she steels her heart, her soul, her everything. “Forgive my delay. I was tending to the sick.” She says without regret to warrant her words. She is not sorry, she would make Isorath wait an eternity whilst she healed Lysander.
It is his blood she wears. His blood seized by Night and spilt by jealousy.
Flora takes a breath, her lungs so full of ivy; oh wild, voracious, ivy! She binds herself in it, for what other choice have Reichenbach and Isorath left her with?
“I have not been so covered in blood since I died.” The flower girl begins, factually. Her voice is a splinter to press beneath the skin.; she hopes it will bother him and settle too deep he will need to dig to pull it out.
The blade at her throat, suddenly roused, glows warm, warm, warm. Come away, it sings to her. Time beckons her. Reichenbach had chained her once, kept her here through love and desire. But Time works now, it changes things, so many things. Is Isorath ready?
“It was the overreaching greed of a man that killed me.” She pauses, thoughtfully and she can, even now, still see her body, broken far beyond what even youth could heal. “All of my court stood together to fight him. It bound us tighter. Loyalty brought us together.” The dusk night calls to her, with its myriad stars awakening to peer down upon this court of theirs.
“I had wanted that for the Dusk Court. I still want it for us, but I was not made to be a queen, Isorath, you know this.” And she smiles, small and soft, vulnerable despite the tornado of sand within her. It is abrading her from the inside, it picks up the pieces of her heart that Reichenbach tore apart and throws them. But they swirl and swirl and swirl refusing to fall. She keeps her heart light, for when it falls it will bring down the sky with its weight.
“You also know that I asked if you wished to leave Terrastella for Denocte… I was a fool then, Isorath, for I did not ask if your loyalty lay with me. When you asked so much after Reichenbach and myself…”She laughs, self deprecatingly, “I did not think to wonder why. The Dusk Court may be your home, but I have seen no evidence that your loyalty lies with me as its queen. Not when you have been secretly meeting with my lover. Nor when both you have the audacity to do so at my festival. I might have been young and naïve. But only a fool makes such errors twice.” Her eyes hold his, where once her eyes might have been the amethyst of delicate petals, now, now they are hard like minerals, forged from the earth. They glint like the blade of a knife.
“You are no longer my Regent, Isorath, for no Regent makes a fool of their queen like you have.” Her chin lifts, “You are still a member of this court, but I would think long and hard about if you wish to stay here. I no longer tolerate the greed of men who spill blood in their jealousy.”
And it is no matter that her heart still aches for such a man as Reichenbach, for its agony is from that pledge and where it is etched deep, deep into the pieces of her soul.
She breathes and wonders when she might wash Lysander’s blood from her skin. “I shall give you a moment. You may say whatever you wish.”
@Isorath - drama llama alert.
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
