bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
He watches as her body breaks and heals, watches as his brutal magic knits her back together again. He could dull the pain, he thinks, could make this easier for her, but she does not strike him as the kind who asks for much charity and he figures she may bite his head off should he offer.
So, instead, he just watches quietly, a steady and unmovable force, barely reacting when her mouth finally opens and it’s not a thank you that escapes, but a steady stream of obscenities and biting remarks.
The surprise is enough to steal a laugh from him, a rare sound that spills from him throaty and dark.
He shakes his head in amusement, emerald eyes glinting beneath the curl of his mulberry forelock.
“All magic has a price,” he says calmly, a sentence that he has often repeated in his life. “The price I pay is just a little more obvious.” He rolls his shoulders, not commenting further on the source that he draws his magic from, the very core of his being. In a way, he and his sister were formed of sadistic need. Two children taken and created into anchors, bound to the boundary of life and death, a counterweight to the greed of their ancestors. They were a grounding force. A centralizing power.
Given incredible gifts from birth and yet cursed with limitations that required bloodshed.
Still, he has never thought of it much, let alone felt pity for himself. Instead, he just pushes the thoughts out of his mind, just watches the woman and her daughter with the barest shadow of amusement still simmering beneath the surface, hiding in the undercurrents of his eyes. At her confession, a metaphorical brow rises, a corner of his lip creases. “Biting dragons is certainly not the recommended path if you are looking for self-preservation.” His voice is syrupy, the syllables dragged out in the barest of drawls. It is a voice that hints to laziness and belies the whip-sharp mind underneath, the wicked curve to him.
“But you don’t strike me as someone interested in self-preservation overmuch.”
Which suited him just fine.
His shoulder didn’t bleed and his mind didn’t wander because he valued safety.
woolf
I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste
@[Sabra]
