“Which is it you want? For me to fight you as my equal or as my enemy?”
Her nostrils flare, but her lips don’t reply.
“You don’t want me to fight you.” Behind her, the castle is a blur, like fast-moving water. My heartbeat tries to escape through my ears. “You want me to save you. All you have to do is ask.” The fire inside me is whispering to be unleashed.
Her lips separate, eyes dilate, but then she hides it with a stern look. “It wasyouwho needed my help, Titus.”
“I don’t deny that.” I dig the tip of my fang into my lip. “But you renounce what I have spoken, and one day you will regret it.”
“I can live with regrets. I can’t go on living with unsung sorrows.”
“So sing them!”Tell me you wish to escape this life! Beg me to help you.
“I was never meant to be a maiden who sang songs. I’m a tempest who destroys hearts.”
“You are not your twin.”
She averts her gaze, gripping her sword tightly as her deepest fears surface. “Sometimes I fear I am.” She attacks again.We spar until Selene makes an uncalculated error. She stretches her wrist too far, giving me a brief window to strike her sword with mine. Unable to flex her wrist, her weapon falls.
One mistake makes killing another so easy, like pressing a mold into dough. The more you fight, the more experience you gain. You notice the mistakes, see the moment to strike. Before you know it, you’vepunched out a dozen cookies. A dozen kills effortlessly made.
If this were an actual battle, she’d be dead.
What happens next is a mistake.
Or a mercy.
I advance, grabbing Selene by her collar, chest to chest. Hard muscle to soft cleavage. My sword kisses her neck. I glare at the edge of the blade, wishing the sharp edge were my parting lips.
Her soft exhale hooks me in the cheek, reeling me in.
My shadow masks her face. Such a lovely portrait, I should commission someone to paint, but I have no walls to call home to hang it on.
Our lips… by the gods, our mouths are so close. It’s so tempting, like looking at an open treasure chest. I want to proceed. Ignore the obstacles that litter the path to that treasure.
I want to dream, to imagine how my life would change if I had that treasure in my hands.
“Selene,” my sigh is a prayer a dying man makes. An appeal for clemency and redemption.
Save me from this feeling inside me. Tell me I’m not mad!
Her eyes twinkle like unpolished emeralds—shades of cloudy greens, forces of dark and light, battling to gain my affection so they can slaughter it.
Nobody truly loved her. They used her.
My actions toward her are foreign, so she’s safeguarding her mind from them.
There’s no space between us. We cannot separate or distinguish our breaths. Selene’s pupils dilate into pools of darkness. It’s easy to dive in. Unexplored waters call out to forgotten souls like mine. It’s the light we stay away from; it illuminates all the caution signs and repercussions of our actions.
“What would you do next?” she whispers.
It’s not us speaking; it’s that thing inside of us we both are ignoring.
We’re failing. It purrs in delight.
My mind screams at me to stop. The beast takes over.
Her muscles soften into me like butter on hot bread.You can never separate or scrape it off, because you would ruin both objects. It’s best to gobble it down.
