[open] a new king will rise from the ashes; everyone

[sochi]

Sochi

darling, you're wild-eyed, empty, and tongue-tied
maybe you need me or maybe you don't

He rises from the smoke and the ash and becomes exactly what she knows lives underneath the surface.

She hangs back, as content as she usually felt with a full belly, tipping her head back and feeling a purr of satisfaction in her blood. But she doesn’t leave completely and isn’t far enough away that she doesn’t hear the harp-sound of Tiphon’s screams, the cacophony of chaos that boils between the stallions. It spurs something in her heart, sending her pulse racing, her mind dizzy with the same need for bloodshed that must now ripple through Castile as he takes exactly what is his own—exactly what he is deserved.

Still, she doesn’t intervene. Doesn’t join him in the fight because it is his to fight and his to fight alone. She wouldn’t strip him of the right to claim through brawn and bravery and she satisfies herself by shifting in tigress form and resting, lounging on the beach with the weak winter sun shining down.

When it is done, when it is quiet, she gets to her paws and moves her graceful body through the shadows, padding through the island until she finds the dragon-stallion. She shifts when she is close enough, something sharp and bright and proud in her silver eyes. She slips up his side and reaches out to gently bite at the corner of his velvet lip where coppery blood stains him. She feels the softness of it between her blunt teeth, the give of it as the remnants of the fight touch her tongue. Her stomach twists with hunger at the metallic taste of it and she growls with approval. “A home earned is better than one given,” she says quietly, her predatory gaze leaving the handsome, chiseled angles of his face to the island around them.

“And one that is taken is better than both.”

Perhaps it is her way of congratulating him on his conquest.

Perhaps it is her way of saying that she, that her and Reia, will stay.

Either way, she falls silent after, content to watch him reach for and grip the crown.

playing the slow rooms, howling at half moons
if you are a Queen then, honey, I am a wolf

i couldn't help myself |: