Night had descended long before Lantern would show his face.
That’s who he was now, he reminded himself.
His scraggly right ear twitched as the winds of Northrend blew over the highest spires of Dalaran. The chill felt good in his tawny fur, caressing his twisted maw the way Amavia Hawkins had once caressed his cheek. Already it felt like years ago.
He howled before he descended the purple tiles of his domed perch. What Amavia had never known or cared to ask was that her lover cared obsessively. Even before the locket had instilled a streak of paranoia in him, he had constantly feared losing her. So when push came to shove (and blade to spine), he had already memorized the routes between her classes, her dorm, and every place he had known her to visit.
So well did he know the pink cobbled streets that even this aerial view was as simple to read as a drawn map. Gold windows looked like stars hanging in suspension, lingering far too close to the mortal earth. This flawed, mortal earth. Even in the clouds, Dalaran was too close to the unjust world.
Once he had believed in justice. Once he had believed in arcane magic as a tool to change the world for the better. Now he say it as the blindfold people wore so they wouldn’t have to admit how cruel their world really was.
Svafa Hawkins and her companions had no right to torture Line.
Line had no right to murder Annabelle Worthington.
In a very real sense, he had no right to bring her back.
Amavia saw that. The entire world saw that. As his claws chipped white stone and he leaped from one roof to another, he even saw that. But what did it matter? The world was a broken ruin where the strong preyed on the weak and it wasn’t the good or the evil who prevailed, but the cunning.
There were those who worked within the law, and those that didn’t.
He wasn’t happy that his methods had put him on the wrong side, but even that shadowy philosophy had failed to comfort him in the wake of tragedy. All that had ever comforted him was Amavia’s arms, and he ran to her now.
What else could he do?
The orange of his glowing eyes made them look like fireflies as he scaled down the side of the tower from its very peak, heading towards her window. He’d once looked out that window in envy. Now he looked in and felt the same.
Moonlight bathed her form in the same way the sun had caressed it this morning and she’d risen with a heart full of hope. Hope that was dashed to pieces before she’d so much as had breakfast.
The silver light reflected off a silver band on her desk. Her wedding band. And the hand that should be wearing it was buried in her hair as she cradled her head and wept. Quiet sounds and not the banshee wails she wished she could scream wracked her thin form as she laid on her side with her back to the window.
No trace of her familiar or his.
The lilies and peonies and peacebloom in her flowerbox looked a little withered; had she been neglecting them while he occupied her time? Did it really matter what the fate of her flowers was in the grand scheme of things?
Amavia thrashed in her anger and kicked at the lilac colored sheets of her bed before drawing her legs up to her chest. Along the side of her left thigh there was a wicked looking cut that was shiny with the healing salve she’d applied. Her white nightgown was short of hem and low of collar and something no young, unmarried woman would ever be wearing in front of prying eyes.
The girl in the bed was young but unmarried she was not and she looked in desperate need of comfort and someone to hold her while she wept so bitterly against her pillow.
He watched for a long while, letting the breeze continue to ruffle his fur the way it bent the flowers in her flowerbed. They caught his eye only once, but it was long enough that he paid a great deal of care when he leaned down his maw to them and breathed in the smell of the soil and stems. Though he had only been in a cell for a day, it had been years perhaps since he sat there and experienced the world around him.
These were things he would have to change if he was going to appreciate the freedom a woman had died for. At the thought, he craned his massive, furry head to an angle. It wasn’t regret, certainly, and it wasn’t remorse, but it was at least acknowledgment. Amavia had every reason to be crying, and every single one was him.
A peacebloom bent towards the breeze for a moment as he snorted lightly. New beginnings; forgiveness. He opened his maw and caught it ever so delicately in his teeth. As gently as he could, he pried the small white bloom away from its brethren before climbing inside the window on all fours.
The bed was soft under his long claws and longer feet. It almost felt plush. His maw turned sideways, peacebloom between his teeth rather than the brilliant red rose she probably deserved. But he had never been that charming. He was just as awkward as the slightly withered peacebloom between his fangs, slightly crooked and greying at the edges.
It would have been wiser to take her by surprise and pin her down quickly, to cover her mouth before she could cast a spell or scream for help. But he didn’t want to hurt her. He wasn’t a monster.
‘I’m not a monster, Amy.’
He certainly looked less a monster now than he had earlier, and the wind through the window continued to toss his fur the way it had tossed the ribbons in the trees of Stormwind’s harbor. Frozen there like a scolded puppy, his right ear swiveled as he listened for the screams and berating that he was sure would come.
As the mattress sank with his added bulk, Amavia stiffened and turned over sharply, her eyes wide in terror. The seconds between her beginning to cast a spell and the guilty thoughts at the sight of him stretched for what seemed like hours.
In the moonlight and the wind he looked sweet and endearing. A lost puppy she could take home and take care and it spoke to something inside her. Nurture him, sooth him, and at first her hand extended to stroke his muzzle.
Fingers withdrew sharply.
She’d seen what this beast could do and none of it was something she would encourage. Not a moment of it was something she approved of.
How could a murderer look so helpless?
Once he’d been her special sweetheart, her one and only love. Baby she’d called him and her throat swelled and closed off anything she’d address him as now.
More than the chilly breeze made her shiver and she felt the pit of her stomach drop. She had to take him in. She couldn’t let another innocent person fall victim to the whims and wants of Jeffrey-Ellis Sangrey. Who was he to take another life?
Hadn’t he raged once about those who did the same things he wallowed in now?
Her resolved steeled when the metallic thuds of the guard’s helmet on the bars echoed in her mind again. The blade driven through her chest and her partner cradling her on the floor of the Hold.
Were she not careful she and Raoul could be in that same situation.
Hands worked fast to cast the spell but her incantation fumbled; she would be easy to silence and her efforts averted if he just snatched her hands and ruined the somatic component necessary.
Both of his ears folded back sadly and there was a painfully obvious realization in his eyes. Could worgen really cry? If they could, he held them at bay. The peacebloom fell on to the bed between them as he opened his maw wide and reached for her hands.
His tongue had been split two down the middle like his finger. Each half had been pried away from other and sewn down with fel thread to the bottom of his mouth. The black stitched had a faint green glow where they sank down into the pink gums.
‘...to know I have done some small measure of good...’
Even when he took hold of her hands, he didn’t crush them or break the fingers as he had done so casually with his hostage. Furred, elongated claws entwined with her, settling in the spaces as best they could for how much larger his hands were like this.
‘...I will never be able to hurt you again...’
Jeffrey-Ellis Sangrey had been true to his word at least once, if only that once. For now, he was free of the locket’s suggestions and the fel did not run rampant on his thoughts. It boiled only beneath the surface, and he could control it like that. He had controlled the Curse for her, and his will had been somewhat tempered by that, even if it had been worn down again by the abuse of dark magic.
But his love for her was strong and pure, at least in his mind. It was stronger than the want for freedom and the calculating need to break and crush these weapons that were behind raised against him. He looked her over as he held her hands like that, slowly closing his mouth again.
The stitched looked grisly and painful, and surely it had been no easy task to endure nearly severing his tongue like that. If he felt nothing for her at all, if he really felt no sorrow for all that he had done, why would he have gone to such great lengths to stop?
How tragic was it that his most desperate efforts had proven to be in vain?
The fingers between his, much thinner and elegant in appearance, trembled and she stared wide-eyed at him. Had the monster came to claim his bride? Her tongue, whole and pink, licked her lower lip as she flicked her gaze towards the ring on her desk.
Visible now as she had willed the enchantment into stasis - she had been staring at it while she cried, forcing herself to acknowledge the gravity of her mistake and misjudgment about the color of his character. Those fireworks engraved into the silver were dark now and the etching barely could be seen.
Faded into the night sky and expired as their trust and relationship had.
“J-Jeffrey. You I mean what are you doing here? You don’t just kill an innocent,” The word held malice to it and her eyes flared as she spoke it. “woman and return to the city of the crime. You lied to me. You said you’d stop and I saw it, Jeffrey. I saw it all.”
Amavia shook her head and tried to jerk her hands free of his.
“You will never stop. And someday that woman will be me. I won’t be victim to your knife again. I won’t be a broken body and pitiful whisper of gossip.”
It broke her heart to say it, to recognize it out loud and to him. She’d kept a brave face with Raoul and all the way to her dorm but behind the privacy of her door she’d crumbled.
And was fast crumbling now.
Her baby didn’t live in that body anymore.
He was burned away by Shadowflame and felfire burned in his eyes now.
He let her hands go as soon as she pulled away. Even before the fel corruption, he would have held fast and tried to explain himself. He was just that entitled to the time it would take to make her see his side of it. He deserved it. But now he let her go.
A white whisker on his maw twitched as he reached down and picked up the bent and bruised peacebloom. It was offered to her pitifully.
Against her better judgement she took the stem of the wilted flower in hand. Eyes never left his and she sat there stiffly.
A Kirin Tor mage is calm, self-possessed, and clearheaded.
Fuck being a Kirin Tor mage tonight.
Her hand shook and she set her lips in that thin line that had been so constant on her pretty face the past few months.
“Light damn it, why did you butcher your tongue? You can’t even explain to me what is going through your head. I deserve an explanation. I deserve to know why you broke your word. We could have worked with the system. Working within the Law we could have gotten you free and made you a respectable man again.”
Her shoulders shook and a hollow laugh left her throat he so loved to kiss.
“Now every Investigator in Dalaran knows your face. They’ll kill you now. There will be no mercy for you now.”
She twirled the stem between her fingers and looked down at it with a forlorn expression.
“I can’t save you now. You ruined it, Jeffrey. You ruined us.”
The more she continued, the lower his head sank, until finally he wasn’t looking at her at all. His eyes darted back and forth across the bed, perhaps thinking of an argument, or lamenting the fact he wouldn’t be able to speak it. Quietly, he slipped off the bed and padded towards her dresser.
There were things she would never find hidden in places she would never look.
He would let them sleep tonight.
As for the others? He hooked one claw around the dresser’s lower drawer handle and slid it open with a creak. Every now and then he looked back to her on the bed, his eyes full of betrayal and fear. She had promised to love him forever. No matter what.
She had said a law that persecuted him wasn’t a law worth following.
Those words meant very little now and the weight of it was crushing. There weren’t enough apologies to be made, and it surprised him that he felt so much pain and not a scrap of anger at all. Was this what it was like to feel wrong?
His eyes winced suddenly and he reached in for the paper and quill he’d buried in that particular drawer many weeks ago. There was already a letter on it, but that seemed unimportant now. She wouldn’t care what it had to say anyway.
The quill looked pathetic in his grasp, too small and plumage bent by being jostled with other things in the drawer. He grimaced at it and went back to the bed. As shoddy as the quill looked now, it had been pretty once. The best money could buy.
The best pieces of himself could buy.
But that wasn’t important now, he had to remind himself.
Stay focused.
Your time is short.
Your time is gone.
His eyes scanned the letter for a free space and when there was none to be found he simply turned the page over and began writing on the back.
“I tried to stop. Please believe me that I tried. I did this so that my magic would never leave you so battered as it did that night. You screamed and begged for me to love you, and I knew I was wrong. I wanted to believe that I could balance my work and our love.
I was very foolish.
My work is all gone now. I shouldn't have clung to the fragments of it that remained in the experiment. It is gone now, like you wanted. Like you were right to want.
I have taken more than my worth.
I’m sorry that in my cowardice I turned to the only thing I knew would save my life. I had hoped you would love a living coward more than a dead hero.
I was very foolish.
I’m not a monster. A monster wouldn’t try, but I did. I did try.
I tried to stop. I tried to save Edi. I tried to control the shadowflame that killed Hadleigh and her children. I tried to love you and make you love me back.
When our hands were together, your ring didn’t appear. Maybe it’s broken .
I love you and I’m sorry.”
He stared at the words for a moment, then underlined a single line as an afterthought before he handed it to her.
While he wrote her hands twitched with the desire to stop him and put an end to this charade. How much more could her heart take today? The northern breeze blew, ticking her cheek and she glanced out the window to hide the tears collecting on her lashes. Not far beneath them was the Beer Garden and she could see the pendants flap in the summer winds.
Not even three months ago they’d celebrated her birthday there. Just the two of them on a day that was so important to her and he’d tried so hard to make her smile and make it special.
For her he’d given so much when he had so little.
For her he’d tried and that was more than she’d ever expected of him.
The silence of his quill scratchings startled her back to the here and now and she took the paper numbly, not even meeting his eyes. She was curious why he had stored things in her room but it didn’t matter in this moment.
Each word stung her and twisted the knife of guilt deeper in her heart till she was sure there must be nothing but ribbons left hanging in her chest. Those tears she’d refused to let fall spilled down her cheeks now and she afforded herself the indulgence of a single sob as she rose from the bed and retrieved her silver band.
Held between her two fingers she showed it to him as she cried in silence now.
With this ring, I do marry you Jeffrey-Ellis.Yours eternally.
A week ago she’d been blind to his true nature despite having suffered so for it. Today that ignorance no longer shielded her from the madness that brewed within him. She had bore firsthand witness to what lengths he would go.
“I love you still. And I know you tried but you can’t pick and choose when you want to be a good person. We don’t have the luxury of slipping when we tamper with magics that can wreck lesser men and women. How many slips will you have over the course of your years?”
She spun the ring between her fingers and closed her eyes, those amber eyes he likened to suns falling to night now.
The ring in her fingers disappeared and she shuddered.
How many slips would she have?
It went back on her finger in an easy motion. It belonged there.
“I love you but what will you do now? I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t have a future with the Kirin Tor. They will never pardon your crimes. Necromancy almost brought Dalaran to ruin once. They won’t turn a blind eye to it for you.”
Tears were scrubbed away with the back of her hand and she stared up at him.
“What will you do?”
The moment she picked up her ring and revealed she had not been wearing it was without a doubt the most pathetic moment of his short existence. There was a look of utter confusion and bewilderment on his face even once she had put it back on. All he did was stare dumbly until at last a shred of intelligence processed the information.
When it did, he wished it hadn’t.
His mouth opened once more, almost looking like it was going to unhinge and swallow her whole. She had promised to love him forever. So many times she had promised. Those were promises to be made or broken idly. They hadn’t even been married a week yet. Not even a week. He had promised her forever and she had not even given him one. single. week.
Savage claws delicately reached in amongst the stitches and halved tongue, prying free a soul shard that had been tucked away there for safekeeping. Clever beast. No clothes. No pockets. But he’d found a way.
He’d always find a way to keep what he wanted.
The magenta ember had swelled to fill almost the entire shard now, a small flame of the passions that had once been so true between them. That had been real magic. A magic that didn’t discriminate or judge, that considered no man or woman ‘lesser’ as she had so kindly coined. As he closed his maw again, he realized that was false.
That love discriminated against him now. It judged him as lesser and unworthy.
He felt like he was falling to pieces with every step he took toward her. A little fell off this way. A little fell off that way. She had lied. She was a liar. She hadn’t tried. She had given up when tests had been set before her. At least he had tried. The proof was there in his mouth.
What sacrifices had she made?
His hand shook as he offered the soul shard towards her.
Only when his hand had ducked into his maw and slipped the shard from beneath the wreck of his tongue did Amavia realize he was naked. Hours ago she had longed for him in such a state of undress but now it made her mouth dry and her throat squeeze even tighter. Breath came in shallow, shaky intakes through her nose and she weakly pointed at her wardrobe.
“There’s a robe of yours in there. Shoes bought too. Jeffrey clothes for when you’d spend the night here with your wife.”
Your wife.
What was she now beyond damaged goods?
His offering made her shake and she fumbled for something on her desk. The pictures of Editha were held out to him as well as another of their wedding photos. This one was of their kiss - the first and one of their only as husband and wife.
“I have more but it’s expensive to get copies made and I was going to make a book for us to look at.”
To show our children.
None of Jeffrey-Ellis Sangrey’s seed would take root in her now. There would be no auburn haired babies with his blue eyes and the clever mind of both their parents. Only the ghosts of dreams she’d accused him of caring little for.
Dreams he’d told her he wasn’t sure he’d shared.
Had he been lying then too?
“No matter what happens, Jeffrey, no matter what befalls us, a part of me will always be yours. I do love you.”
But I don’t love what you are.
One hand still offered her gift and she took the shard quickly from his.Hers. A part of her he’d taken without her consent. It felt good to have it back.
He shook his head and did not reach for the offering. At her words, he shook his head even more. The word ‘no’ was mouthed at her, and he painfully shifted into his human form as he headed for the wardrobe. His scars were few and far between save for his chest where the pink lines made a tangle web.
The fel had done this to him, to them. The fel had destroyed their love.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, green eyes shining behind long black bangs. The colors and lines were reminiscent of the stitches in his mouth. He willed to himself the smell of burning candles and leaves, and to soothe the heartache envisioned her family’s precious orchard in flames.
It brought him grief and comfort all at once.
In her grasp, the shard was warm. It felt softer after a moment in her hands, as did the pictures that she had been holding out to him. The breeze didn’t seem so cold and the scars at his chest seemed to blur out of existence by the time he’d reached the wardrobe.
The robe was retrieved and he slipped it on with as much dignity as he could muster (which wasn’t much), but the fumbling was endearing. Under all of the ash lingered the man she loved. He solemnly closed the wardrobe and went back to her. If she allowed now, he took the pictures and set them on the dresser, then reached for her hands both.
What would it hurt to let him touch her hands? He had the opportunity to break them many times before and there was no wildfire in his eyes. There was no howling or rage, not even heavy breath. Was he breathing at all? No monster stood before her.
Only a vulnerable man asking for the simplest of things.
And the simplest of things was so easy to give to a dead man walking. Fingers laced between his and at the contact of their bodies both rings came into view for the once lovers to see. Silver with fireworks as they had been so special to them. Each time she saw even a sparkler her lips had twitched into a smile and her heart had skipped a beat.
She had been thinking of him every time.
Her baby.
Beneath his band and rubbing against his skin was the same words she’d said to him while he left his cell today.
Quill loves Lantern. Always.
And wouldn’t she? In her heart wouldn’t she always hold him dear? That sweet boy who’d thrown her a party because he had wanted to see her smile.
“Friends do nice things for each other, Amavia. I’ll do nice things for you anytime you ask.”
Light, he’d been so sweet it broke her heart now to see the shell of the man he’d become.
What he’d become on account of her.
No matter what spin George Worthington put on it she would always feel guilt and to blame for the corruption of Jeffrey Worthington and the birth of Jeffrey-Ellis Sangrey.
Smooth fingers squeezed his hands and she smiled weakly at him.
“We really fucked up, didn’t we?”
He didn’t smile back at her. The pads of his fingers curled to the back of her hand while their fingers were still laced. They touched down one at a time, tingling and sounding out little string notes in the air. Or maybe she was imagining things. He drummed his fingers slowly like that for a moment before guiding her left hand down to her waist and letting it go.
More notes were drummed up her arm and he gave her a very simple twirl with their right hands vaguely touching now. He felt like he was tugging at puppet strings, and in a sense he was. It felt good to dance though, lifting the spirit and bringing back all those memories of Darnassus. The good ones.
A few steps were taken and he lead her, bringing her into another delicate spin over there. He glanced down once to watch her nightgown and wished it had the full skirt of a gown so he could see it flare. But sight was only worth so much and he already considered her so blind.
He brushed his nails against her thighs in passing and left the sensation of billowy cloth and air there. She saw so little, what would it hurt for her to feel she was in a dancing dress? The sadness was a heavy weight on him, but he knew what he was doing. Even looking away from her, he was able to lead her in their sweet dance.
He’d wanted to save such lessons for their wedding day, when he could teach her without resorting to things like this. He had wanted to teach her to dance as elegantly as any noblewoman should know how. The idea had been gone from him that day, but it was here now. And then now was all that mattered to her, wasn’t it?
She didn’t care what they had been.
What he had been.
To her he was only a monster now.
Still frowning, he tilted his head and lifted her up slightly with his hands on her thin waist. He carried her in a spin of his own and when he set her back down again the floor felt like the grass on that Darnassus hill. He’d carry the sensations with him even if she chose to forget. Even if he had to use this black magic to make her remember.
Once he’d set her down, he pressed his fingers to her lips for just a second in the feel of a kiss he could not bring himself to actually give her. More illusions were gifted to her neck and shoulders as he wrapped her in close with her back to his chest. He didn’t want his heartbreak to mar such a carefully designed seduction.
They swayed for a moment and he held her sweetly. In the flow of movements, he brought her hand that held the shard to her own chest and guided her to press the shard against her heart. Warmth and joy radiated from it, the tickling of feathers and lovers’ lips ghosting over the skin. All the recent sorrow seemed to wash away as if it never was.
Things could always be this simple.
He loved her. It could be felt in every little gesture.
Before he spun her the right way to face him again, he brushed her eyelids down. He would not stare into those amber suns. Colors warm and dazzling flashed there instead of his sad expression. She hadn’t really loved him, had she? She had only loved the good times. The things he’d gifted her with.
But not him.
The colors sparkled and swam, the illusion of fireworks in the night sky.
Her mind had struggled against the illusions initially but the past two days had worn down her defenses to nothing more than cracking walls and paper thin barriers of flagging willpower.
And somewhere, in a distant recess of her mind, she wanted so badly this carefree and tender moment. Her little girl mind had dreamed of a dance on their wedding day. How many times had she painted the picture of that joyous day in her mind? She couldn’t even imagine the number but those sweet thoughts had steeled her will on the bleakest of days.
One day she’d be his bride and together their loved ones would bear witness to the beauty of their hearts joining forever.
No loved ones had stood there when he’d fumbled through his vows and slipped the ring she’d made on her finger. There had been no candles, no soft violin music calling her down the aisle to a man who had dreamed of the same.
But here and now she had him and a taste of what her heart had longed for.
To be wanted by him as much as she craved him.
From the first feel of skirts against her legs she was wholly his and as they danced she smiled and laughed in a shy way when he lifted her. Never had she truly shared a dance and it was the final first he’d give her.
Bare feet found the feeling of grass passing beneath them even more pleasant and she smiled as in her mind they were on that shadowed Darnassus hill where they’d shared their first moonglow stained kisses. When he’d told her how much he needed her.
When had he stopped needing her? What she wouldn’t give to go back in time and change that very second.
There in his arms she leaned her head against his shoulder as together they swayed with the gentle music and whispered the words that had tumbled off her lips so many times and never without truth guiding them.
“I love you.”
Dark magic and illusions didn’t inspire the three soft words nor the feeling of it. She had been speaking truly when she told him a part of her heart would always be his.
As the shard pressed over hers she knew that she’d always be in his too. She’d never felt more loved by him than in these moments and with every explosive firework he magicked into being she gasped and smiled a little wider.
Somewhere in her head she knew and understood what was happening but that part of her mind was stretched too thin and too tired to care. It only wanted more of these things that made her so happy that her heart felt swollen and overflowing with it.
“Baby, don’t forget me.”
How could he ever when each day that passed would hold him in each thought?
‘I wish I could.’
He wished in that moment that he could stop caring about her. He wished he didn’t feel a damn thing. That he could cut her throat and steal her coin to secure one less hunter on his trail. That would have been the clever thing to do.
It was the clever who survived. Not the good. Not the evil.
He leaned down and kissed her deeply then, his lips sweet and bubbling like moonglow. Sparkles of blue and silver danced around their kiss in a mystical fashion. As he kissed her harder, it would have seemed to envelope them completely.
‘I’ve given you so much.’
His hands wandered to her hips and hitched up the already short edge of her nightgown. In that fairytale world he spun for her it would have seemed he was holding up the train of her bridal gown. The one he’d worked so hard to give her. The one he’d feared she wouldn’t like because it was less than half of the things he’d once envisioned for it.
‘It is time I take my dues.’
As the music carried on, he felt all over her and guided her towards the bed. She would want him, more badly than she ever had (if she ever had, a voice taunted him). Let her bemoan what a wretch, what a monster he was, but she would desire him with every bone in her body. Each touch lingered, instilling the trembling want there as he tried to lay her back on the bed.
‘Want me, Amavia.’
Moonglow kisses enveloped her senses and her lips pressed back against his with equal passion. They both knew it was a farewell but she drew out each kiss and tried to cup his cheek.
My ever lovin’ baby.
She trembled now and the weight of the imagined dress seemed so important. Such a pivotal moment in a girl’s life that she cried a joyful tear.
This was what she’d dreamed of for them. This was what their poor hearts had deserved.
His hands and magic did their work as he intended and she gasped beneath each touch, her body shook with need of him and she sought to kiss him. Her hands wandered his chest and she sighed against him. There wasn’t a fiber of her being that didn’t sing along with the music he had enchanted her into hearing, crying out a song of desire and need.
Here, in his arms, she felt more whole than she ever had.
Together they were one and she tried to show him with touches and kisses how deep her love for him went.
Nothing she did could make him smile. His eyes beheld her with nothing but disappointment, and it carried over in how he created barely noticeable distance between their body. He’d made her want him so badly.
‘Want me. You do want me, don’t you?’
He righted her hair around her face as she kissed and felt him, but he gave her nothing in return. Well, nothing but more longing. For a few minutes it was teasing and exciting, but he dragged it on with a straight face until it became almost painful.
Almost painful.
‘I love you.’
Almost.
‘We’re almost there.’
And then it was.
It was painful.
Every tingle turned into an ache, every tremble into a soreness. The weight of the imaginary dress was crushing and the fireworks were far too bright. They were blinding and as painful as everything else. He lifted himself away from her completely and moved to find the quill and paper again, her body free but her mind trapped exactly where he’d left it.
Familiar surges of pleasure rushed through her body and she smiled with each kiss and whispered sweet nothings against his lips. It didn’t matter that nothing would ever be as splendid as these moments because right now she was taken in fully and enjoying the ride.
Till it started to ache and pain her, till his blank face scared her and she clawed at the sheets when he moved away. Her limbs felt heavy and she was certain her bones were surely cracking beneath the charmed garment he’d crafted for their fantasy. A weak-spirited cry left her throat and she took a breath that sounded more like a sob.
“Jeffrey, please, stop it. Please make it stop?”
Her clever mind could unwind a curse and steal a spell and phase away from enemies but she couldn’t escape this. It was in her mind and though she knew it wasn’t real she didn’t know how to escape what her mind told her she was feeling.
How do you just stop feeling?
The light burned her eyes and she struggled to sit up, to try and slip off her bed but it hurt. Everything hurt. Each patch of skin, every bone and muscle.
She had wanted him to her very core and now she suffered to it.
Finally he found the quill and paper. With one in each hand, he stood a few feet from the bed and tapped the page with the plumage in a beckoning fashion.
‘Come get it, Love.’
He almost smirked there, watching her suffer, but the tragedy of seeing her like that far outweighed his minor victory.
‘It won’t stop until you come here.’
Like his thoughts promised to himself, it only continued. She would have to earn her respite. What could he possibly want? Did it matter? He wouldn’t relieve the agony and be hers again until she proved herself.
‘Come to me, Amy. Need me.’
She tried to refuse him but a sharp spike of pain blossomed inside her and she cried out for the intensity of it. Stars swam in her vision and she was certain it wasn’t the fireworks that half blinded her creating them.
Unsteady hands pulled her towards the bedside and she made a terrible, sad sounding cry or hiss with each slow movement. She felt weighed down and was fast becoming nauseous. Nothing was without pain. Even the brush of her hair across the bare skin of her back was like shards of glass scraping her overly sensitive skin.
Her body spasmed when she reached the edge, a gust of wind caressing her skin and creating nothing more than torment enough to make her tumble into a little heap on her stone floor. The wound in her thigh felt on fire and she sucked in a great, wheezing breath as she tried to right herself. Standing up was too much, the dress weighed too much for her slim form to support and it crushed her back down to a floor that felt like grass beneath her hands.What had been a soft carpet of pleasant sensations to dance upon stabbed into her palms and knees now as she crawled towards him. Pain spread and built and welled within her but there was no ending, there was no release and as she reached his feet she groped for the hem of his robe.
Just as his creation had looked like a faithful worshipper she now looked like a beggar, sobbing into the hem and struggling to breath for how much the finely woven black thread ticked againt her fingers and cheeks.
He knelt down then, trading the quill to the hand that held the paper. Free of anything but hateful intentions, the hand caressed over her body and provided instant relief. Not just relief, but pleasure. Not even wanting, teasing pleasure.
Genuine love and relaxation as only magic could provide.
‘Stand up, my love.’
He took hold of her arm after running his hand all over her body, even the places that she had sworn would never be his to touch again. There was carefulness in how he tried to get her to stand, turning her stomach towards the desk and slipping the page and quill before her.
There were already many words there from his new letter to her, but he placed the quill in her hand and guided her to write in the generous space beneath it. He moved slowly, spelling out one letter at a time and using his other hand to slide up her nightgown.
I
L
O
V
E
Y
O
U
The momentary mix of extreme love and extreme pain made her scream once as she leaned heavily on him. His hands were poison, his hands were wine. Her body felt sickened for an excess of both.
She tried so hard to read his words but quiet sounds were leaving her throat and her eyes couldn’t focus.
It wasn’t until the last “u” on the first passing of his hands guiding hers that she realized what he was making her pen over and over.
It was then she understood those sounds were sobs of relief and the paper was fuzzy and hard to read for the tears in her eyes.
“J-Jeffrey, please.”
Please.
She didn’t even know what she was begging him for now.
He guided her hand some more, spelling out his denial of her blank request.
I DO NOT DESERVE YOU. I DO NOT LOVE YOU. I AM A PROMISER OF FALSE THINGS. I HAVE BETRAYED YOU. I HAVE BROKEN YOUR HEART FOR THE LAST TIME. I AM NOT EVEN WORTH THE TIME IT WOULD TAKE TO USE ME. I DO NOT LOVE YOU. I DO NOT DESERVE YOU. I HAVE ONLY TAKEN. TAKEN. TAKEN.
I DO NOT LOVE YOU.
I DO NOT LOVE YOU.
I DO NOT LOVE YOU.
I DO NOT LOVE YOU.
He forced her to repeat the last words again and again, even when his hand let go of her own. It began to drill it into his own mind, to see her ‘admit’ that she didn’t love him, as he had feared all along. But it didn’t ease the pain of his own love.
Still standing behind her, he pricked his finger deeply and expertly drew a few more thin words in blood along the constant repetitions.
“You said I was your first, your only. I would say I will ensure this stays true, but Light knows your cruelty knows no bounds. Sleep with whom you will, Amavia Hawkins, but you will not get to keep the good things you have stolen from me. I will not share those memories with you.”
When he drew the bloody finger up, he traced it across her lips and rubbed it over her teeth so she would taste the blood he’d shed for her. Then he left her standing there, repeating those words even once the page had run out of space. The enchanted quill continued on the desk inside, spilling the inked words on wood instead of paper.
As she continued her task, he busied himself with searching the room for any evidence that they had been together, that they ever were. Pictures, tokens, letters. Even the secret things like baubles and love letters he’d hidden in the hopes of brightening some dim day of her future. They were taken and stolen away into a bag.
He would leave her with nothing.
‘I DO NOT DESERVE YOU’ glared up at her in giant letters, penned by her own hand and burned into his mind for how he’d seen it.
As his final act of spite, he returned to her and brushed his hand across her thigh.
He was her first. That night she had promised he would be her only.
It would serve her well to remember that.
At least he smirked, kneeling down to kiss her knee just as the enchanted quill moved from the desk to her hands and arms. All the pleasure slowly drained from her limbs, replaced by the sharp stabbing pain of their first night in the Swamp of Sorrows. Though eventually it would roll into mild pleasure, he kissed her knee three more times so that it would repeat just as her hand continued to move.
She would remain that until the soul shard burned up all of its fuel and was nothing but a shiny husk. By then he would be long gone. Long gone with all the mementos. It was only when he was at the window that he remembered her wedding ring, and he stared her in the eyes as he pried it off.
His split and sewn tongue was visible for moments at a time as he mouthed four words as his farewell.
‘I still love you.’
As quickly as he’d come, he shifted and stole away into the night with his bag.
With each forced word she sobbed a little harder and shook her head. It wasn’t true. She had meant what she’d said and she resented each stroke of her own had across the paper. It wasn’t her that had betrayed but him. He had played her for a fool and let her love an illusion.
That illusion was dispelled entirely now, torn from her mind by a web of pain and shrill screams of fear that sounded in her mind.
“No no no NO!” They were wails at the end and she struggled to jerk her hand away from the paper.
From the Quill.
Eyes didn’t need to see her hand move to keep scrawling what he’d commanded of her and she watched him with a tearful look. As he touched the locket in her bag she gasped and it almost seemed for a moment in her hopeful heart that her hand would stop and she’d be free of these bonds.
But it wasn’t to be.
The quill scratched on and she cried out. “Jeffrey no please not that!.”
The wedding photos.“Please, just one, please?!”
All his love letters in her enchanted tome, the twin to his confiscated one.
“Not that, please? Please!?”
Tokens, ribbons, baubles.
“Just one thing?”
One thing to remember him by. To steel her will and harden her resolve.
Jeffrey-Ellis Sangrey was the monster he protested against.
And she would never be his again, thank the Gods.
Choked sobs left her as he kissed her knee and try as she might she couldn’t pull away. That sharp, stabbing pain filled her and she struggled not to scream. He would gain no more pleasure from her. Nothing he could carry away and enjoy in the dark moments he was alone and without her to comfort him.
She’d beg no more for his mercy.
Sangrey didn’t know what mercy was - she witnessed that today in the Hold, what made her think she was special?
Pain petered out into a mild pleasure and she caught her breath, sucking in deep breaths as the nib of her quill dug into the thin skin across the back of her finely boned hand.
The hand he practically tore her wedding ring off. His glowing green eyes met her pain dulled amber and she glared as he mouthed a final endearment to her.
“You never understood what love is. May you die forgotten and miserable.”
It was a quiet curse but she knew he hadn’t yet left. Only when she heard the creak of his bones and the rearranging of his muscle did she look over her shoulder, watching as he disappeared into the night and out of her life.
Another intense lance of pain wracked her in the most intimate of places and she felt her knees grow weak and she crumbled to the floor. Arms remained on the desk and her and kept at its pace and words.
With her torturer gone none she could weep without guilt and did just that. Her forehead pressed to the edge of the desk, Amavia sobbed as the pain built in her and faded away to the lukewarm pleasure he’d inspired in her innocent body that first night.
She shook and sniffled between her sobs but the grip on the pen didn’t wane and moments later she was wracked with the pain that was becoming all too familiar. Her body felt worn, skin sanded down to raw nerves and flashes of pain more intense than the burning she felt througout.
If there was a higher power that cared for her, the girl didn’t think they were watching her right now.
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