raised on the edge of the devil's backbone

// and if i was the only thing you couldn't bear to lose,
i'd set fire to the wood, just so you wouldn't have to bury me too //

Her eyes narrow and his remain such, shadowed, haunted steel. “I can. And I am.” He says suddenly, his heartbeat thundering in his chest. She tries to make it make sense, but for Sunjata? His father has always been ahead of him every step of the way, every time, always. And it’s that addition that’s supposed to make it make sense that has him frustrated beyond words. He breaks his gaze from her to shake his head, wings flaring, disbelief wrought along his face. “No, Hotaru.” He says again while that switch remains on, where the Korofian begins to latch on and lash out.

“You know me enough to know that I do not care about my own safety.” A sharp jagged inhale has him beginning to continue, words falling from his lips. “It’s—” the realization of her trying to state that she’s not Lusea makes that piece of him dig in its claws. “That’s exactly it, can’t you see that?” He tries to urge, but he needs to move, needs to turn his focus elsewhere, away. He stands, abruptly, moving to the edge of the balcony again to feel the cold beneath his clawed hands. “He has had time and opportunities to get me. He has not. He takes it away just as he always has. He takes away Lusea. He takes away Saartjie. He takes away Vervain and you and Nate. He takes them to punish me.” She had to see that, right?

He exhaled a shuddering breath, trying to quell that inferno within him. “You do not understand his reach.” All the charisma Sunjata never came close to having. “Who’s to say he doesn’t already know of you? The minute you try to leave he could get you too.”

SUNJATA