He’s opened up the edge of her anger and she wishes she could turn it off. She wishes that she could turn back into that endless coolness of being unaffected, of burying herself in her more primal instincts. It was easier to turn toward the apathy then it was to face the knife of her fury. To acknowledge that she is hurt and confused—to try and wrap her mind around these emotions without somehow imploding with them.
It flashes across her face, something like a shadow, a bruise underneath the surface, and although she does her best to wash it away, there are remnants of it that linger—that stick to the corners. She presses her lips together, tries to swallow the pain that rises up her throat, the way it tangles around the burrs of her confusion, the way she still chases shadows because he can’t, he won’t, name them.
She shakes her head when he orders her to not give up, as though this was on her. As though she bore the brunt of it—carrying the gravity of this situation on her spine. She was not the one who had taken them here. She had not been the first to claim him—the first to set their relationship down this path of monogamy. She had not been the first to whisper the words that cemented it, that solidified it.
She had not been the one to take an axe to it.
And yet—
And yet, he asks her to hold onto it.
She growls, low and frustrated, a sound born of a reaction more than anything, a response to the emotions that churn in her belly. He places his love in her palms again and she hates the weakness in her that would bend to it, that part of her that would still slip into it and let it warm her from the inside out. Instead she quashes that weakness. “Don’t use your love as a weapon against me,” her voice is hoarse now, the emotions thick in her throat. “I know when you’re hiding. We have always been open—been honest.”
It was the very foundation of their relationship. She had been completely unformed when they had first met. Trying to wrestle with these parts of her that she didn’t understand. The predator. The woman who had killed, who had answered a dark god’s demand. It was he who had seen that, who had heard her talk about it—who had not passed judgment when she told him the truth. And now he speaks in riddles and offers her platitudes, dancing around the subject that drags a knife keenly across her heart.
She takes a step back.
“I need to go,” another shake of her head as her inky body begins to bleed away.
“I have to—” her silver eyes glance up, study him for a second before she shifts fully, the mare replaced with the tigress, powerful and wild in her own right. This time, when her eyes meet him, they are utterly feline. There is a flash of distress on her face before she turns and runs into the distance.
she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed