I welcome the fire as I punish the love; any

[magnus]

I wanna give you wild love, the kind that never slows down
I wanna take you high up let our hearts be the only sound

Like recognizes like and it cleaves his breast in two.

Part of him grows frenzied on it, hungrier than before, teeth gnashing at the possibility that spreads before him—the feast before the famine, the need to destroy and howl with rage. The other quiets, stills in his breast, soothed by the balm of a companion. It leaves him suspended between the two, his neck still darkened to crushed gold, the delicate skin on his nose slick, his breathing steady but deep.

“Tyrna,” he repeats her name but not her apology, mulling over what she has to apologize for. Was she the one who placed such demons in his head? Was she the puppet master, pulling the strings of his agony for so many years? The answer is obviously no, but he wonders at the simplicity if the answer was yes.

How easy it would be to rage against just one enemy.

How glorious it would be to have a solid opponent, to be able to see what causes you pain.

But his life has never been so easy and he has no luck now so he just shakes his head, dismissing her apology as the unnecessary thing that it is. “There’s no reason to apologize,” he finally manages, his whiskey voice darker than usual, slightly strained with the physical exhaustion that creeps through his immortal bones. She is wild, he thinks, and he wonders what brews beneath the surface.

Does her heart thrash in her breast like his does in his own?

Does her mind spiral outward into the orbit of despair?

Does she know this unending pain, these ghosts that do not yield?

“I’m Magnus,” he offers, because it seems only fair that he returns her name with his own. The silence between them grows again and his muscles twitch for activity, despite the fact that they also ache with the exertion. It doesn’t matter. It has not eased the gnawing in his gut, the restlessness in his bones.

He has begun to wonder if anything ever would.

I wanna go where the lights burn low and you're only mine