Blood of Azura

The Heart of War

She lay beneath him on grass of rich jewelled green, her hair dark as night, her eyes overflowing with love. He felt that love in every part of himself. He felt it in the world around him; living, breathing, alive. The light of the sun shone in her eyes and she narrowed them ever so slightly to shield them from it.

'Will our souls be lost forever do you think?' she asked, her full mouth lilting with sadness. Had any being looked so beautiful in melancholy?

'I care not whether they are lost my love, only that they are together,' he replied.

They would be together. There had never been a time when they were apart, and he was certain that this was the way it would always be. She smiled, though the sadness did not recede from her eyes.

'There are times when I wonder why fate would be so cruel,' she said. 'To give us these lives over another, simpler one. To create our hearts to beat as one, but for it to be this hideous sin for which we are hunted. For our love to bring a war to end all wars.'

In truth, he had wondered the same. He had wondered why he could not have chosen another, any other. He had wondered why she could not have found another soul to love, another heart to command. He wondered why she could not have turned him away that first time he had come to her. He had sought answers in the stars, in the greatest of minds he could find, in the darkest of sorcery. But there was nothing to find. There were no answers for it.

It was always going to be this way. Divined. Written. They were powerless to stop it. A force set in motion long before they were even flickers of light in a world of unyielding darkness.

'Think of how much crueller it would have been if we had been apart,' he said, hoping to soother her heart with the words. 'If we'd always been absent of each other, never knowing how it felt to be whole.'

She smiled. It heartened him for it was less sad than it had been a moment before

'Yes,' she whispered. 'That would have been crueller.' She reached up to place her hand on his cheek. He closed his eyes, always more thankful to be alive when he could feel the warmth of her skin against his own. Her heartbeat through her fingertips, loud like the call of war.

War was coming, and though he would never say it aloud, a deep part of him welcomed it. For after, all would be lost or all would be won and it was the most simple thing he could imagine. There was a peacefulness in it. An immaculate simplicity. For after this war he would stand with his love by his side or he would stand no more.

All of this would be over.

'They will be here soon...' he said, turning his head to taste the skin of her fingers. Honeysuckle. Wild and sweet. Free but not free. The great infernal counter worked tirelessly above their heads. Sand rushing. Feet moving. Weapons readying.

She nodded, a strength flooding into her eyes that caused his heart to thunder with pride.

'Then this will be done at last,' she said, echoing his own thoughts. Her voice clear and calm like the great sea. She really was the other part of him. 'We will be together or we will be crushed to dust - for I will not live without you. '

He slid up her skirts as he lowered his mouth to hers. Like it always had, her body opened for him, welcoming as he entered her in one smooth thrust. She moaned in pleasure and wrapped her arms around him, her fingers losing themselves in the dark lengths of his hair which matched her own. He trailed a path down her throat with his mouth, pressing her down into the grass while his tongue drew patterns across her skin. Like it was the last time he might taste her, he drank deep, this extra wicked sin scorching his throat as he consumed her. He would not survive without her taste, without the spread of it on his tongue. His earthly sustenance. Quickly, her body began to grow wild beneath him, his fingers clutching at the grass as the thrashing of pleasure and need spiralled between them both.

'We will always be together,' he promised as his mind began to fracture from pure white pleasure. 'Our souls will always find each other, our hearts will always beat together, in this world and the next.'

'Yes. Forever,' she cried, as she pulled him deeper into her body.

'Forever,' he echoed. The air crackled around them, the coming war both distant and inevitable.