I can give you freedom from your guilt with a flick of my wrist
Everything feels a little like cotton. She is safe here, in Ludo’s rags, with Mort calling her name somewhere in the distance. She is still present, still aware, but she is calm and unafraid. All things wither and die. Some with the seasons, some with cataclysmic storms and unprecedented changes. What is she but another sprout? Returning home to the soil.
As her arm is grasped Nephele manages to rock her head slightly to the side, but when she tries to open her mouth only frothy blood bubbles forth. Did the blade nick a lung? Her heart? With how swiftly she can feel herself fading, Nephele is sure it must be one - or both. The fangs that bite into her are barely a pinch in comparison to the pain in her chest, but the disgust is far away, and the pleasure somehow soothing instead of invigorating. Like syrup in her veins.
But then the dagger is being ripped free, and Nephele spasms weakly in the wet grass, blood trailing over the corner of her mouth to streak down her cheek and into her red hair. As Maea’s hand comes up Nephele feels magic at work, and with the last of her strength she grabs for the woman’s wrist to try and stop her. “No,” she croaks, lungs rattling. Her throat works hard, but all it accomplishes is spilling more blood over her lips. “Please. No.” And she meets Maea’s searching eyes, the distant quality of her own fading just enough to be cognizant, coherent. Aware of what exactly it is she asks for, and from the person she’d forced to do it. That, too, is clear on the Fae’s face. That she’d planned this, even if it had only surfaced in her mind at the very end.
She’d flown to the Draig to do the exact same thing once. She had failed then. She wouldn’t fail again.
“I want to be…with her again. Please.” The Ascended had killed Eriadne. Now this singular Ascended would kill Nephele to reunite them. “Call us…even,” she croaks, words struggling through the liquid in her throat.
As her arm is grasped Nephele manages to rock her head slightly to the side, but when she tries to open her mouth only frothy blood bubbles forth. Did the blade nick a lung? Her heart? With how swiftly she can feel herself fading, Nephele is sure it must be one - or both. The fangs that bite into her are barely a pinch in comparison to the pain in her chest, but the disgust is far away, and the pleasure somehow soothing instead of invigorating. Like syrup in her veins.
But then the dagger is being ripped free, and Nephele spasms weakly in the wet grass, blood trailing over the corner of her mouth to streak down her cheek and into her red hair. As Maea’s hand comes up Nephele feels magic at work, and with the last of her strength she grabs for the woman’s wrist to try and stop her. “No,” she croaks, lungs rattling. Her throat works hard, but all it accomplishes is spilling more blood over her lips. “Please. No.” And she meets Maea’s searching eyes, the distant quality of her own fading just enough to be cognizant, coherent. Aware of what exactly it is she asks for, and from the person she’d forced to do it. That, too, is clear on the Fae’s face. That she’d planned this, even if it had only surfaced in her mind at the very end.
She’d flown to the Draig to do the exact same thing once. She had failed then. She wouldn’t fail again.
“I want to be…with her again. Please.” The Ascended had killed Eriadne. Now this singular Ascended would kill Nephele to reunite them. “Call us…even,” she croaks, words struggling through the liquid in her throat.
I can give you death with the look upon my face
