colder than my heart, if you can imagine.
05-23-2014, 03:08 PM
Epiphron hadn't expected him to return to her quite so soon -- but their goodbye had been so strange that she no longer knew exactly what to expect. How long she lay here, she did not know, but she found some form of solace in the intensity of the waves crashing against the shore. Their ferocity was alarming, but she found comfort in the sound and the cold. His voice came before his scent. It had been masked by the salty stench of the ocean. She was surprised at his arrival, and slowly she turned her head to face him. Somehow, she knew that he was not the man she had been with for these last two years, but someone entirely different. The woman's face was placid for a moment, her nose wrinkling, taking in his scent -- he stunk strongly of another woman and had not bothered to hide it. Her face contorted after a long moment, confusion and anger brimming in her sapphire gaze. He looked like a child again, like the cocky young prince she had fallen for, carefree despite the obvious hesitance that was written plainly on his face. She had never cared about being honorable, nor about being dutiful, but family came above all else. Even Maverick, the man she had wed, she had considered family. For him she had left her own blood, she had stepped from a throne into a pack she was unfamiliar with, to forge an alliance that all of Alacritia would remember. And they had both failed, the alliance crumbling to dust as the Kingdom of Seracia had fallen -- she could only wonder what might've been if he had never been in the picture at all. But he had never lied to her, and even now he didn't. He explained everything, and she watched with a red-hot gaze, waiting and wondering. His words were rushed and confused, not explaining as much as he surely thought he was. From the moment they had met, she'd thought that he'd been so perfect. So sure of who he was, and what he wanted, and here he was -- saying that he was as clueless as a child, helpless and unable to commit to her, or so it seemed. "You are pathetic," she uttered softly, seething. "After all I have done for you -- all I have sacrificed for you..." Slowly she moved to lift herself from the stone, her voice raising against the crashing waves, mirroring her own anger. "I left my family for you. Against the advice of my father, of my brother..." She remembered Cairo being unsure of her choice, but he had always given her freedom, even when she was making the wrong decision; that was what fathers were for. "...I loved you, and I wanted to rule with you. You couldn't even do that. Couldn't even keep the throne that had been all but handed to you..." Her eyes were liquid fire, her voice a low hiss as she found a growl bubbling from deep within her throat. Epiphron had never felt anger like this before, but she had never been betrayed by someone she had loved so deeply. "And you aren't even man enough to deal with a few months of boredom and uncertainty... you sound like a child who has grown bored of an old toy..." she spat, images of Maverick's uncle suddenly bursting into her mind. The Mathias men had been born into a tradition of polygamy, she remembered all too well; had she been too stupid to forget? "...not at all like a King. Do you forget what you are?" Or perhaps that was not him at all. Had she been tricked? She was a Queen, with or without a throne -- she belonged on the top of the hierarchy, with or without him, and she was beginning to slowly realize he had been holding her back; at least it seemed so, in her mind. "Don't worry, though... I don't mind reminding you..." They had been so complacent and quiet for months, and although the intimacy had not entirely faded, it had grown dull and subdued. But now she felt anger coursing through her veins, a fierce need to punish him for betraying her filling her soul, a raw intensity that she didn't know she possessed so fully. With little hesitation she loped forward, moving quickly but stiffly. Her jaws suddenly parted as she leaned in, aiming to snap at his face, aiming to make him suffer the way she had suffered. She didn't care where her fangs landed, only that they did, and that he felt them to the core. She knew that such a betrayal would cut deep, but not like this -- there were no tears of sadness, no, not yet at least. Perhaps later she might cry in solitude, she might mourn his loss and wonder where she would go next. For she truly loved him, and had not wanted this at all. But right now all that she felt was raw anger, consuming her and turning her into a vicious creature. She would not let him ruin her, but she was more than happy to remind him that betraying her would haunt him forever. The taste of his blood would not satiate her anger. Unlike her brother, she had never been interested in violence and pain, but she believed he deserved it. Finally she filled away, her gaze leaving him, not wanting to look at Maverick for a moment longer. "Go," she snarled simply, unaware of whatever injury she might have caused him, blinded by feral rage. "And do not come back." She had a million choices now, a dozen family she could find, a hundred men she could seduce and make her own -- but all she wanted to do now was to be alone and away from him. |
