Heir of Beasts

Ch. 6.6- Venom is Just Another Name for Poison

I know these updates are taking a while. It's not because I'm not writing. It's because I'm rewriting. A lot. This whole exchange is super important and I want to get it right. Thank you for waiting, people.

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            "O'otani," Sholu breathes into my hair, his calloused hand resting at the nape of my neck. Strands of my silvery blond hair twine around his fingers as he gently runs them through my messy waves. He says my name like it's a question he's waiting for me to answer. "O'otani."

So I do, wrapping my arms around him tighter in silent reply. Fuck, he's warm. Solid. I feel as if the slightest breeze could blow me over. I'm like one of the streamers of paper dolls that Alya and I used to cut out as girls. But maybe I'm not even that; maybe I'm just the memory of a memory, or a slant of light.

Maybe... maybe I'm nothing at all.

But Sholu- he's the something to my nothing, the brightness to my total eclipse. It's an unholy fire that burns in his veins, it's hellfire, but it's warm and it's bright. And I'm cold to my very marrow. When you're freezing, you'll share anyone's body heat. That's all this is, I tell myself. A way to keep myself alive as everything around me turns to ice and shatters. It doesn't mean anything. I won't let it mean anything.

I lean into him, tucking my head under his chin. My lips brush lightly against his chest and he stiffens, in shock, I think. Like he expected me to shove him away. Maybe even crack the empty Drakara bottle on the side table and use the shards to sever his carotid artery.

He's waiting for some kind of killing blow, but I'm so tired of killing. Of dying. Our hateful dance used to give me energy, to stir my blood to boiling and tether me to the goal of ending him, but tonight I just want to feel alive again. Whole.

He's always been so fucking bright. A false sun with the world wrapped around his finger. Silken words and cold, calculating grey eyes. The kind of intense charisma that makes people blind and deaf and dumb. He practically shimmers with life. With power, and I-

I'm still shaking. My chin trembles against his chest like a metronome keeping time.

"You're still shaking, love," he says, speaking my thoughts aloud.
"As always, your insight astounds me," I snap harshly, wrapping my arms around his back. Letting my hands press lightly against the open wounds I've created there. He winces, and I smile. But it's a fleeting joy, short lived and fragile. And it does little to quell my rage or loosen the tightness in my chest. Hurting him cannot change the past, and that is part of why I'm shaking.

I don't know how to explain it. I've felt their absence like a knife in my side, digging a little deeper every day. They've haunted me, their screams following me inside fevered dreams. Their still, slack faces are permanently etched on the inside of my eyelids, there every time I blink. They've been taken from me, and I feel it acutely, but this is a different kind of loss entirely.

A startled, incredulous laugh pulls itself free from my mouth as I realize why. Focusing so acutely on destroying Sholu, giving myself over to revenge... it was a way to keep them close to me. Maybe part of me even believed that hurting him would change the past.

That's gone now. No goal, no relief. That tether connecting us cut.

When it hurt the most, I'd remember the good things. Shira's smile. The desert lilies blooming brilliant orange beneath the cerulean sky. My mother's hands as she brushed my hair. Nather sitting me on his lap and telling me wild stories that taught me what it was to dream.