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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    [private]  lior;
    #1
    I am not afraid... I was born to do this.
    The loss of one of their own rips deep inside her, splitting her core in a way she never imagined. Nerine had been untouchable, but now they are the caged beast being poked and prodded. Nayl fights back, snarling, rattling the prison bars, but will it ever be enough? When she thinks of her leadership now, she sees a shadow of what she had once been. Sylva and Hyaline have slipped through her hands like the sand she so steadily walks across now beneath the night sky. The crescent moon illuminates her path only so much, but she has long since memorized this trail. It’s almost second nature by now, her eyes cast down without much need to see where she is. The ocean at her left calmly murmurs as crickets chirp in the beach grass to her right. It’s a serene symphony of nature’s songs, but her mind is too involved, too lost in itself, to truly take note and admiration.

    It's only when his musky scent reaches her nostrils that the world around her truly disappears. Suddenly, it’s only them at the mouth of his cave with the porcelain moonlight raining across her pied coat. Among her worries and stressors, Nayl still smiles when their eyes meet for the first time in weeks. A silent guardian he is. Even when she would consider herself almost entirely alone, she can still always feel his heavy gaze tracing the outline of her body.

    Lior is never truly gone. He is here, by her side, always.

    She doesn’t yet speak, but instead presses her forehead into the chiseled plane of his left shoulder. A deep breath drowns her in his scent, soothing her woes even for just the moment. Her eyes shut. She reflects back on their beginning, on their now, on their future. She thinks of their children – Castile and Isobell – and how they are growing too fast.

    But then she is thinking of him, only him. Their eyes meet then – her fire to his storm – and she reaches to delicately lip his unruly mane. ”Soon, I will find a successor,” she whispers into the warm, summer night for his ears only, ”and then I can focus solely on you, on our family.” And then she is quiet as she tries to imagine a life without a kingdom weighing her shoulders down, a life where she could surround herself with love for the first time ever.

    queen of nerine
    daughter of covet & myrina



    @[Lior]
    #2
    He can only look east with rise of a pale moon and hope that she would ache for him. Never would the dark man impose and make himself bothersome, never would he distract her gold eyes away from what drove her. He would wait for the day that she would tire from the weight of the crown. He would stand by her despite the absence and doubt that crept just beyond the bone cage in his chest.

    But tonight, with the ivory goddess high in the sky, she moves under the silver silk. He stands not far off from where the cave swallows the light. He waits for her as his true equine form, his mane lifting with the slight breeze, a touch of a smile on his lips. He breathes sharply when he drinks in the gold eyes and exhales into her mane when she melts into him like he has been holding his breath for ages. The larger male moves so swiftly to fold against her in a tender but hungry embrace. He had been starved to near exhaustion of her scent, her skin, her love, since they had last spent an evening together.

    But he was a patient man.

    When the woman lifts her gaze, his silver meets hers equally as he captures her eyes with his own, cupping her face if only he were human. The world could burn to ash around him and if only his like vision was of her face then he would be happy to burn with her.

    "You know I will wait for you, Nayl." He speaks low, breathing her in deeply, biting back at his need to protect her, to possess her beneath the pallid moon. "I know you will also find a successor." He is not sure what else to say but he knows he does not want to spend any more time away from her. Lior resolves himself to be her shadow and to keep her side warm every night she will allow him. The cave was cool, dark, and safe but it is hollow without her touch. Lior moves to lip at the fringe of her mane with small, tender little tugs.
    I want you to remember
    #3
    I am not afraid... I was born to do this.
    ”I know,” she whispers in the broad plane of his neck, her breath hot against his skin. Lior has always been there, lingering in the darkness of the cave waiting for her every night. She often curled against his side in the moonlight, but there were also evenings that she was tethered to the responsibilities of her crown. In those times, she would occasionally have Isobell to suppress her loneliness unless the night grew too long, in which case she would return their precious daughter to the cave to rest. ”I know you will always wait for me,” she reiterates as she leans into him, ”but I can’t test your patience much longer.”

    Oftentimes, Nayl considered how often he lied in wait, wanting to hold her, but there had always been Nerine. The kingdom had come before anything – everything – but her era will eventually come to an end, and she wants a place to rest her head when that time looms. She can’t expect him to wait another five years, another experience of the seasons before she can entirely devote herself to him, and only him.

    A knot forms in her stomach, a lump in her throat.

    ”Soon,” her reassurance is for both of them, like she needs to remind herself, too. ”Perhaps Isobell,” the thought has been lingering during the period in which Nerine fell silent, no one stepping forward or proving their worth to the crown. She shrugs, the plan not entirely solidified but beginning to slowly cement in the security of her mind.

    But it isn’t the idea of their daughter becoming a Queen that scares her now. It’s something far greater and something she has never before admitted. It claws her insides and leaves her heart open and exposed. How did something so withdrawn and cold melt with his compassionate touch? She never wanted this, but it found her and it lulled her into a daze. Once, years ago, she admitted to Magnus that she was forever alone, never to be stricken down by the workings of a heart, but here she is: a victim.

    Gliding her lips along his shoulder to his neck, she tries to hide the fluttering of her soul and the sweetness of her smile. ”Lior,” his name – his touch – is a drug to her, so pleasurable and addictive, ”I love you.”


    queen of nerine
    daughter of covet & myrina
    #4
    She is at his side finally after endless nights of watching the moon grow fat and then disappear all together. But on this night they are painted like marbled Greek deities under the careful silver eye. Her breath on his skin stirs the feral need but he only pulls her closer to him with the thickness of his neck around her own. She continues to speak and he listens for she is the only voice he hears or would ever care to actually listen to.

    The stallion says nothing about testing his patience for it is true. He had contemplated their future, his existence in her life for he sometimes felt like a flame that was to be extinguished by her breath, gone.

    But-

    He is hopeful as she continues, her acknowledgement of her position and of his lightens a bit of dread that shackles around his heart like heavy rusted bands. She was the key to relieve him of their weight. "Perhaps Isobell." He agrees with the repetition of her words, his voice low and rasped by the lack of use. Lior reserved most of his words for the iron queen though he catches his breath audibly in his throat as she presses a trail with her lips up his neck. The urge, the savage need, echoes loudly in his head but he bites back as he could almost swear he would break under the weight of his affection...but she says it...

    She says what he has felt from the moment he had seen her in the field and every day there after. She says what he reads across her face, what he has felt under the moonlight. She finally says what he has yearned for years to say but never dared utter for he did not want to break her concentration and compromise all she had built for Nerine, for them.

    "I love you too, Nayl." He whispers the words as he turns to pull her close so they their bodies touch and he can kiss every inch of skin that he could reach before clutching her close under the silk of the moon glow and pressing his lips to her own in a bold gesture that he does not care to hide any longer...loving the painted mare with every fiber of his entire dark being for as long as she would allow him.
    I want you to remember




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