She didn’t dare show Fox just how much she looked forward to the idea of coming to the island. How much she looked for the release, for the idea of having an escape from a home that too often felt like a prison. She had spent hours trailing the borders, wondering just how far the kingdom’s protection stretched. 

Would she endanger her family with one foot outside? Would it take two? Would she need to take a longer trek before it really mattered? She didn’t know, and she wasn’t proud of how often she had considered it—how long she had really thought about it—and how hard she had to try to keep such wandering thoughts from her daughter. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her family (she did, more than she cared to let on), but she hated the idea of a cage, and she had long since felt like her wings were clipped.

But that didn’t matter now because she was free, at least for a while.

She had been glad to make the swim with Fox and Persea, arriving to the island before the bridge had been made, and her daughter and her went adventuring as the team worked. Everywhere she looked, she could feel the press of thoughts on her. Most of them joyful, some of them a little heavier than the others, and some angry—but always there. By the time that the festivities were truly under way, the lights twinkling softly around the island, the ground coated with snow she knew could only be Fox’s handiwork,  she could feel the beginning of a headache pressing into her temples, the tension building up her spine.

Persea could barely contain herself, especially when a group of children began to run around, and so Lynx let her go. With a press of lips to her forehead, and a quick smile, she watched as her daughter bounded off. For a second, she closed her eyes, taking a deep breath of the now icy air, feeling some of the tension begin to release. When she opened her eyes, she caught sight of Fox leaning against the trees, looking like his usual disheveled self, handsome and mussed with that proud light in his eyes as he looked around him.

Something squeezed in her chest, a sharp pang, and she almost turned away.

It would be easier than confronting the emotions that flooded her.

Instead, she felt herself drawn to him, turning toward where he rest and taking step by step. When she reached him, she sniffed a little, wanting to settle into his side but finding herself unwilling to make it that easy. “You never do anything halfway,” she finally said, looking around, hiding the wonder in her eyes.

and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires

He softens her, and the realization is terrifying.

Despite his command of the cold, he warms the most frozen parts of her, melting away her resistant and leaving her soft and pliable beneath his hands. He must know, she thinks, studying his handsome face more closely. He must know the effect his roguish grin has on her, his easy manner and relaxed smile leaving her unable to do anything but eventually comply with whatever he asks of her, even if all she wants to do is resist. Her spine straightens as she thinks on it, as she looks on him, as she nearly shudders.

“You know exactly what I think of you,” she says, her voice a little cold, sharper than even she intended. She wants to shove him away, wants to turn on her heel and run, that familiar fear fluttering in her chest, but she doesn’t, and that is even more terrifying. Instead, she remains rooted to the spot, her dual-colored eyes studying his face, remaining quiet even as he beckons her forth, crooking a finger at her.

She loathes the weakness in her when she complies.

She nearly growls with fury when she steps forward.

Instead, she just closes that small distance between them, her slender body coming alongside his own, wondering at the way the touch feels like a relief and a failure all at once. “Okay,” she breathes, and the word nearly gets tangled in her throat, on her tongue. “I can’t imagine there’s that much to see,” she adds with a sniff, as if the contempt and the cold words could mask the butterflies that flutter in her belly.

As if she can shield herself from the want that spreads in her veins by rebuffing him immediately.

But she knows better, somehow she knows better, and she walks forward with him all the same. 

and all of us, we’re meant for the fire, but we keep rising up and walking the wires