She watches him intently, takes in his expression with hard eyes that refuse to blink, as though blinking will make him disappear. She is quiet, even as he stares at her in silence, as he snarls, as his face goes blank. She has been watching, knows that this was not a blank mask like the one she so often wears. It was something else, something she can’t quite place, and the sharp knot of fear in her belly settles in a little more snugly.
The grey remains still, only her black-rimmed ears flicking forward, catching the vain attempts at speech that he gives her. They are not what she wants to hear. They are not an enthusiastic ’Yes’, or even a reluctant ’Well, alright.’
He does not have the decency to tell her ’No’ even, just commands her to come closer.
It is not an answer, she reasons. He’d wanted her to stop playing games, to say what she meant. She had – she’d done it. It doesn’t seem to be enough.
She wonders now if she’ll ever be enough. The vein of thought is eerily similar to what spins behind Stillwater’s silver eyes, but she cannot know that. Djinni has not asked what he is: she has only borne him a son that is no different. Their boy is never far from her mind, but as the last echoes of Stillwater’s growls die out in the cave around them she thinks of him again.
Stillwater does not want her the same way she needs him too – that is clear enough in the lack of answer he’s given her.
But Ivar doesn’t need him in the same way though; he is just a boy.
The black horse hasn’t left yet (even given the chance). Maybe he will stay if she does as he asks. Maybe he will stay, and Ivar won’t lose him in the way that she surely will.
“Come here”, he commands again, and Djinni comes forward, doing what is demanded.
She doesn’t stop, not until she has to, her small chest pressed against the point of his shoulder. He is still sleek, hairless for a reason she’s never understood. This is how he’d trapped her that first time, how he’d kept her still at his side when she might have simply disappeared. Gently, she places a single kiss where she can reach, the hollow where his neck meets his shoulder. It feels strange against her whiskers and she loses them in an instant, her own hide rippling to solid grey. Up his neck, tracing the hidden jugular, she places one kiss after another, settling with her muzzle in the hollow of his jaw.
“Don’t go,” She says, oddly grateful for the difference in their heights. Her head is tilted high enough that the tears slide down her own cheeks, wished away before they can fall and betray her. This is what is for the best, Djinni tells herself, blissfully unaware of her own failings. She knows that this is not the problem. The grey mare has always desired him: he is supernaturally handsome, he is strong; he is everything a woman could want in the man that holds her. The heat that thaws the cold knot of fear is nothing more than physical desire; it will return when she is alone again. She will always end up alone in the end, it seems.
“Stay,” she whispers into the hollow of his neck, presses a kiss against the hard bone of his jaw, and another beside it, and another until she can almost forget what will happen after.