[private] don't close the coffin yet; ryatah

[atrox]

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

Were he not so practiced in the art of cruelty, did it not come so naturally to him, perhaps he would slip here. Perhaps the mask would fall to the wayside and give a glimpse to the turmoil that somehow, some way, churns in him. The thing that makes him still alive, heartless as he may be. It reminds him of the pain he had felt when relinquishing Magnus’ memories of him. When the Chamber fell away. This bitter reminder that despite it all, he is still a man. That he still cares. That there are things he holds dear.

He hates himself for it more than he hates her and it drives him further into the fury.

Makes his resolve like granite, even when she finally crumples before him.

“You didn’t though, did you?” his voice is cold again as he bleeds away all of the emotion, emptying himself of everything that hurts. “Don’t play the victim, Ryatah,” he spits, nose crumpling and his yellow eyes sharpening on her. “If you’ve had no say it’s because you’ve never bothered to speak your mind.”

He studies her again, ignoring the ache in his hollow chest, this feral hunger that forces him to drive the knife deeper. He shakes his heavy-jawed head, tasting blood coat his tongue from where he had bit down too hard, from where he punishes himself with every moment. “Let’s not pretend this is anything special. You’ve had a millennia of relationships just like it. You walk away today and you’ll have someone else tomorrow—and you can convince yourself it’s love as long as they tell you what to do.”

Atrox swallows and feels ice in his throat.

“And don’t worry about me. I’ll have someone else too. I always do.”

Guilt settles into his bones. Grows more and more concrete. Loathing laces around it. And somewhere, deep in that rotten shell of him, he feels something like love and only knows it for the sound of its throes.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING