jamie
from the destruction, out of the flame
Just as she knows nothing of embarrassment, Jamie knows nothing of arrogance.
Certainly not enough to know that this is what itches its way through his veins to hear her admit it, that she has thought of him often. There is some flicker of cruelty, too, when he shifts his focus from her lovely (so terribly lovely) face to the swell of her barrel. And there is a singular moment when he considers saying something, calling it into focus, objecting to the hypocrisy of it.
But he does not.
He is no monster, even though he looks like one.
Sounds like one.
Feels like one.
She sinks closer and there is some tremor in his knees – or the space where he has imagined his knees out to be, the space where his dark legs bend whether by biology or by magic – but he does not cast himself out of her reach. He lets her come, even though she brings with her a question he does not immediately know how to answer.
When he’d left her he’d found a stranger in the darkness of the forest. A stranger who told him that they belonged to each other. They were the same. How easily he had been convinced, when only hours earlier he had convinced both himself and Evia that he belonged to her. She had dreamt him up and there he stood.
He has not answered by the time she speaks again, sinks closer still. He wonders if she can tell the changes in him this close. How the breath still rattles but he does not bow beneath the effort. Can she see that he looks at her steady and does not tremble with exhaustion? Does it matter?
Still, that shark-tooth smile when she speaks.
“What would you give to have me think of you, Evia?” he murmurs and he reaches for her. But he does not touch her. He merely exhales a breath across the soft plain of her shoulder.
you need a villain, give me a name
