[private] slipping through the cracks of your cold embrace, Atrox

[atrox]

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

It is a strange thing to stand in a place carved from the Beqanna of new with a symbol of the old placed by his side; the archaic blended with the contemporary. He finds that she provides a strange kind of balance in that sense, helping to even out his unease at settling into Hyaline and finding his home amongst the newly poured lakes and the shockingly barren hills. He would prefer a pine forest or a mountain—really, anything that he could trick himself into thinking was the Chamber—but it’ll do.

Her laughter brings a shadow of a grin to his own face and he rolls his shoulders.

“I’m sorry, do you prefer Queen?” His smile is roguish and only sharp on the edges as he brings his gaze back to her delicate features, wondering how she had fared underneath the weight of the crown. It was difficult to imagine her commanding kingdoms, but he knew enough of history to know that she had done it for several years. He had loved that weight himself; loved the punch drunk power of an entire kingdom rising up beneath him, the armies bloodthirsty and furious. But his crown had always been one soaked in the crimson aftermath of war; he was more General than peacekeeper. It was a natural fit.

Would she have followed him home then, he wonders.

Would he have given her a choice.

The questions escape as quickly as they form, and he’s left to sit in her presence, comfortable in the silence as he remembers the tang of her blood and the way her skin had healed so neatly afterward.

“Meaningful conversation,” he laughs, echoing her sentiment before bringing his yellow eyes to her, lips peeling back over the sharpness of his suddenly feline teeth. “Is that what they are calling it these days?”

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING