[private] All that shimmers in this world is sure to fade away again [Offspring]

[Offspring]

You're looking at an absolute zero;
I'm not the devil but I won't be your hero.

  ”I have seen much over my lifetime, and I know that you have as well,” he says quietly, remembering the way Michaelis and his shadow tendrils had danced dangerously close to him so long ago, while the heat of his skin burned, while magic coursed through his veins and through his, too, creating two born of their blood: Thana, and Isra. Little did he realize that his daughter, his own flesh and blood, had come to love the monstrous creature that had bound the one who held his heart, that she had come to love the fiend that had displayed her for the sexual and physical gratification of others. That she, Thana, his own flesh and blood, had taken Tantalize away into the night herself, bound by bramble and vines, offering her as if she held no value, no significance!

  Oh, he had seen so much – and yet, he had seen so little.

  He knew how wicked the world could be; how dangerously insidious and depraved it could be.
  If only he knew the depth of it.

  ”I was born with nothing but my immortality,” he murmurs against her skin, plucking a burr from the entanglement of her tresses, his voice thrumming against her dampened skin. ”but over time, I have .. been blessed, and I have been cursed. My immortality and my ice wielding, gone,” he breathes – a truth he did not often speak; he could feel in in his bones and see it as his youth is lost to him with each passing year. ”but in its place, fire, the vision of a dragon – and an exoskeleton of flame,” he pauses, ”there is no rhyme, and no reason -  how can we say what he does and does not have?”

  All the while, he is embracing her, obsidian pressed against the dappled rust of her own, feeling her heartbeat hum to life – hammering inside of her chest, as she so often made his own do. He does not want to let her go; he could remain still for many hours and let the wayward sun fall far beyond the distant horizon, but the intensity of his confession is too much – and her gaze is boring into his own, searching for an answer, searching for the truth she yearned to know.

  ”I am speaking truth,” he murmurs huskily, pressing closer again as his mouth brushes across her cheek, and then her jaw, feeling her pulse thrum against his whiskered lips, refusing her the opportunity to draw away from him. ”I have loved only three in my lifetime,” Kera, Isle - but it is her, it is Tantalize that has drawn his tired and weary heart out of the shallow grave in which it had been buried, with her deep and wild spirit, her sharp wit and sharper tongue – he loved her more with each passing moment, and it can be seen clearly in the way the fire is burning within his gaze, seeking hers. ”and I love you, and I love the son or daughter inside of you, I love what you are – I love who you are.”

  He is quiet, then, for a moment, tracing her jaw, feeling her tremble beneath his tongue – the breathlessness of a moan, caught between her raging, fearful heart and her desire for him to covet her, to protect her broken heart. To mend it, to keep it. His lips press against hers, catching her in a longing, pressing kiss, the falling sun forgotten, and the distant, churning ocean and rumbling volcano forgotten.

  When he does part, his cheek pressed against her own, he murmurs against the crease of her jaw, ”I am tired, Tantalize,” he sighs softly, as the heat of his breathe brushes beneath her tresses draped across the column of her neck. ”I am so tired, and I want nothing more than to put an end to all of it and settle down in a way I never have before,” (Tephra, left in the care of another – no longer a King, no longer an Overseer) ”I want us .. I want you. I love you, and if I have to say it a thousand times, a million times - if I have to say it each morning you wake, each evening you rest, I will.”

OFFSPRING

another zealot with the weight of the fucking world.

@[Tantalize]