𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐇 𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐒
❝ They're the French Kissers,
that's what they do.
They will lure you in
and then they'll kill you
with a kiss. ❞
━ in which the leader of the french kissers
...
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Rose had always loved the snow. She loved how it would fall in small, delicate flakes at first, barely touching her skin before melting into cold water, only to then turn into full flurries that covered the roads and roofs in an eternal blanket that put the village to sleep. The world looked prettier that way, more even. She loved the snow not for the snow, but for the angels and laughter she and her sisters carved into it, the one home that felt the closest to heaven.
She loved the snow because it turned the cold into something beautiful, something people could admire; but that morning her footprints on the white were rushed, not tender.
Cool knuckles knocked on the door; Thomas opened it before she could knock a second time, arctic stare setting on her heated cheeks. She bit her bottom lip, almost until it drew blood. She was wrong about the snow. Other things were far colder, and far more beautiful.
"Rose... everything alright?"
"So far."
His shoulders loosened and his jaw slackened, the state of disquiet he was in dissolving upon hearing she was fine. Her heart ached. His eyes were thawed ice pouring over her, the most heavenly hell she had ever seen.
"Come on in." He opened the door but didn't step aside. When she strode forward, their faces on the verge of collision, his crisp, woodsy scent rearranged the atoms inside her.
Her mouth spoke before her mind could form a coherent thought.
"Can you see my thorns from this close?" Her breath fell on his lips, and Thomas chose that precise moment to inhale, like she was the tenuous smoke from the first cigarette he had ever smoked, or the last he ever would. "Or just my petals?"
He leaned to her, back slightly hunched, eyebrows arched like two stone arcs in an ancient temple. "Aren't they the same?"
Her spine jolted. She strolled into the house, dark and silent like all spaces he inhabited. She eddied around the room, fingertips skimming over the pocket watch that laid on his desk. The previous night had ended with him telling her about the soldier's minute, how in a battle, that's all they got; one minute of everything at once. And anything before or after was nothing. Nothing in comparison to that one minute.
Rose could only vaguely imagine it; the only time she had felt every ounce of time in a minute was when Steaphan's bullet stopped her mother's heart.
