wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me; birthing, any

[Malis]

"we pull apart the darkness while we can"

It isn’t matters of the heart that the Chamber deals in, it isn’t love, isn’t anything so mortal. It is a bloodline she loves to bleed dry, a particular brand of poison she so enjoys to employ. It began first with Atrox, when she demanded his heart- the very same heart that still beats like a drum of perpetuity in the chest of the Kingdom. But it hadn’t ended there. She had demanded Makai next, not his heart, but his life. She brought him back from death, back from the grave, so that he might live and die at her whim. So if the Chamber does change Killdare now, it is likely not because of who he is, but because of who he chooses to love. Granddaughter of Atrox, daughter of Makai, Malis owes this Kingdom a blood debt.

Such is the legacy of a family ruined with darkness.

She feels a bit like a parasite the way she clings to him, with all of her sharp and dark and desperation bubbling up from the marrow of her bones to seep against him. If she were a better woman she would leave him now, leave her child too, and free them both from the toxicity of her love. But she is weak like her father, weak like her mother, and it is this ugly, selfish love that holds her close against the brown of his skin where she can taste ash and pine in the satin of his neck. He is so much better than her, so much more than she could have ever deserved in a thousand lifetimes, and it takes everything that she is to keep still beside him because she is dying inside. His very existence shatters her and she is undone a thousand times, one million different ways until the only thing that holds her together at all is the pull of his gravity.

“If I stay I’ll ruin everything.” She whispers in a voice of broken desperation, quiet enough that Victra does not stir where she sleeps peacefully beneath them. “I can’t make you whole; I don’t even know how to be whole.” But still she does not pull away from him because she cannot, because she can feel the darkness looking for her, can feel a storm brewing in her soul and if it blows through there will be none of those shattered pieces left to rebuild from.

She disappears within herself for a moment because it hurts too much to exist, hurts too much to fall into the warmth of those emerald green eyes when he watches her as he does now. Vulnerability flays her open and she flinches beside him, forcing away the memories that come to find her in these lonely moments, memories of being tortured by creatures with hands, of being crushed alive beneath Pollock’s horns and pummeling hooves. Her words are acidic when she speaks again, meant to push him away to someplace safe, even though she is terrified of the dark that creeps in without his warmth to eclipse it. “Killdare, you cannot hold on to such a broken thing without being hurt.”

MALIS

makai x oksana

texture © hexe78

we can end this one here and start a new one when this weird junk eats your muse