12-10-2025, 08:53 PM
lord, I fashion dark gods too;
Her apologies are sweet enough, but both of them know he would never be satisfied with something as mere as I’m sorry. He is not a benign god, he is a god who requires bent knees and groveling.
Who requires blood, and sacrifice.
It is why he offers the girl. To show her what he will need, if she seeks atonement. And he is not coy about it either – there’s nothing much coy about the shuddering heart that cools between.
Too heavy-handed of a metaphor, perhaps. Ah well.
And yet, she is not quick to comply. Her morals are curious and deep-seated, and it is one of the things that keeps him returning to her. She has been broken and remade so many times, yet she draws some kind of line at this, even if she does not recoil from witnessing it.
He presses forward again, though he stops at the now-still heart, lowers his muzzle to it. The scent of coppery blood fills his nostrils, and he lets his mouth skim across the organ. The blood coats thinly across his lips, and it’s only then that he steps to her. His bloody mouth drags across her chest, up her shoulder, the red staining deep near her heart and fading out as it marks the path he’s traced.
“You’d be surprised,” he says, breathing barely disturbing her mane, “what you are capable of.”
What happens if I say no, she asks. Of course she does.
“You can say no,” he says idly. He is closer than he should be to her. But he lets himself linger still, smelling her scent intermingled with the other mare’s blood. He can feel the boring, base urges churn at this vision of her – blood-streaked and defiant, yet somehow still so undeniably his.
And so he retreats again, because that is not part of this game – not yet.
“You can say no,” he repeats, “and maybe I’ll forget about this request. Maybe I’ll get distracted and never come back to find out if you followed through. Maybe you’ll say no, and years later, you will change your mind, and you will give me I ask for. But will you be able to find me, then? Will I still answer you?”
(Truth told, he doesn’t know the answer to that question. He knows, by now, that she is unforgettable. And this is why he stacks the deck. Just a little. This is why he slips into the tether of their magic. He lets her feel him – briefly – but he does not let her feel what he plants there. Just a small safeguard. A push, if she should hesitate.
For he cannot forget her, see.)
c a r n a g e