i don't have a choice, but i'd still choose you. || magnus

[magnus]

The summer night is sweet and mellow, the heat of the day evaporating around them. She touches him again and he doesn’t bother to hide the shudder that races down his spine, the emotion flayed open on his face. He reaches for her again, tracing the curves of her face, her neck, the muscle that lies beneath it. She was so beautiful, but that was not why he cared for her, why he constantly found himself pulling her near. It was the intelligence, the sharpness, the fire—the very things that made her unyielding. He was helpless against the razor tongue that rested in her mouth, the gazes she sent that stripped him clean of defense.

But he is made even more vulnerable when she reveals what she wants to know, the request hanging in the air between them. He frowns and looks out into the distance for a moment, his heart thudding in his chest, the warmth of her curled there a comfort he cannot articulate. He breathes heavily for a moment before he glances down again, steadying himself with lips to her neck, to the softness of her.

“I’ve told you about Joelle,” he whispers, remembering the day they had stood in the Gates—when she asked of him a story and he had told her of his death, of the murder. “I think about her often. About our children, the Gates, the way I disappointed them. I think about watching her die and how I was there helpless to do anything about it. I think about her now—resting beneath the waves. Where I was for so long next to her.” He breathes out, lightheaded. “I fear that I have abandoned her, failed her again.”

Another pause.

“My parents, Atrox and Twinge. They died trying to save the jungle from a flood; they died there together. Atrox came back when the Chamber called his name, but my mother never did.” And she was who he was closest to—she was who had raised him as wild and fearless amongst the vines. “Minette. I…I found her in the meadow one day. She had been trapped, beaten, abused by a coward of a stallion name Gryffen. I helped her and her child, as well as Felinae, escape and find haven in the Gates.”

He swallows hard, shaking lightly.

“Minette and I had a child together. A beautiful little girl named Posy.” A girl he never got the chance to know; a girl he never got the chance to love. “But the world was on the brink of war and I was—I was ripped from it. A relative, a mage, named Woolf protected his bloodline and trapped us in another world, another dimension. By the time he released me, the war was over and Minette was nowhere to be seen.”

A dagger in his heart, but he kept talking.

“Makai. My little brother.” He closes his eyes, small tremors racing up his back. “I found him one day on the Beach—killing two innocent mares. He was so young, and he was covered in their blood. I lost control; I was furious.” He shakes his head. “I killed him. I watched my own brother die from my blows.”

There was more. More loss, more pain, but he falls silent, swallowing, trying to gain control.

out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know
I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll