shards of iron and ice

MELITA

Every ounce of feral energy seeped into her bones. She’d tried. She really had. Her patience wasn’t the greatest, nor the grandest, but she’d taken more than a fair share of hits and blows, when all she’d wanted to do was look at some damned mountain market.

So maybe she should embrace every single nuance and notion he thought about her. She had during the blight, after all. It had lanced into her soul and ensured she was just as wicked, just as feral, just as savage as he seemed to think.

Why not hasten to it again? Why not breathe more life into her anger? Into her rage? Why did it matter, when she was striving to keep herself together, for an individual that already thought the worst of her? That she already despised?

Why not lean into the contempt, the abhorrence?

It only took a single moment: staff in her grasp, the brunt of it reaching forward to annihilate, to crush, that stupid rabbit’s foot he kept holding onto (like it’d protect him, like it’d shield him, like it was worth anything), a hiss in her throat. “Fok jou.”

help tonight to split its seams
Give the bruises out like gifts