[open] hangman hooded, softly swinging

[atrox]

hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

It wasn’t unlike Ryatah to be gone—to wander—but he could not help but feel as though something was wrong. It started as an ache in his bones. A biting anxiety that gnawed at him. It left him irritable and angry and he hunted frequently. Until his belly was full and the slaughter was no longer done to sate him. Until he was streaked with blood and the spirits behind him looked on with confusion but did not dare voice their disapproval, did not even dare so much as look disappointed in the panther once-King.

The creatures of Hyaline began to give him a wide berth as his fury and fear grew.

And when he went looking for her outside the lakeside kingdom, it did not help when he could find nothing. It did not help that he was left as clueless as before. It was only when his magician son had finally sought him out that he felt even a ray of hope. When Firion came to him, searching for his mother, and Atrox told him that he had not seen her for days. Firion had merely closed his eyes and cast his magic outward—hunting for some sign of her, letting the shadows slip from tree to tree to find that particular thumbprint of her. What he found struck him cold, the blood draining from his face, mouth going slack.

That was when Atrox felt his blood freeze over.

Firion didn’t say a word. Simply teleported the two of them to the river where she lay. Her body beat and bruised and broken, her chest cracked open.

Firion was silent.

Atrox was not.

A roar broke out of him as he rushed forward, falling down to her side, tears on his cheeks. He could not catch his breath. Could not find the words except the ragged sound of sobs that sawed through him. He touched her cold coat and searched for a pulse he knew could never be there. Covered himself in the dried blood and mud of the riverbank until he felt Firion’s nose on his shoulder.

“No,” Atrox finally managed, voice hoarse from screaming. “She’s not dead,” he swore, barely able to manage the words. “She’s not,” he said, not sure if it was a lie or some truth he had to cling to.

But his son didn’t correct him or argue.

He just touched him again and Atrox sagged as Firion’s magic wrapped golden threads around the fallen angel. He didn’t move as Firion glanced at him once more before disappearing back to Hyaline with Ryatah’s body. He didn’t move as the sun set and the moon rose.

He just lay kneeling in the mud, face streaked with dirt and tears and blood.

Empty of anything but pain.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING