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13 ON THE SHORE OF FOREVER
—THE female's hands rest upon her chest, on the ribs that protect her diaphragm and lungs. Through them, she can feel her erratic heartbeat. Through them, she can feel...something stitching itself back together.
She thinks about stopping it, cutting those golden cords as they desperately form and weave together into tight and almost indestructible coils. It's habit, to shear at them like loose ties until they're too scarred to heal themselves. It's habit to pull away from the comfort of their existence, from the comfort of what could be. But, unconsciously, there must be a part of her—a part of her far stronger than the rest—that resists. Selfishly, it yanks control out from underfoot, leaving her stranded and helpless to cease the mending process.
It scares her more than she is willing to admit that she cannot stop the healing bond. It scares her into horrified silence.
She does not fear the heartbeat on the other end of this tether; there is nothing but love and happiness there. Instead, she fears the loss of restraint.
The time Under the Mountain has made her weak. Weak to primal urges, to temptations—carnal and destructive.
There is a warm and familiar swell in her chest, yes, but there also brews a violent darkness driven by monstrous desires.
She fears it more than anything.
—WALLS. Always, he is hindered by walls of impenetrable rock.
As a young faeling, entrapped in the darkness and alone; forever silent, except for those precious few blinks where his mother was wrapped around him or when his brothers found themselves in want of a victim to torment. As a teenager, coerced into strict obligations for the High Lord. Locked down in that dungeon, learning to be the torturer when he was born to be the tortured. As a growing male, blocked on all sides by soldiers in the bloody war. No escape from their wrath nor his own. Cornered in his festering bloodlust.
When those walls crumbled down in their surrender, he thought it over. He thought himself free at last.
And then he found a cage of his own making. He found himself locked in chains, in binds, in servitude to fate. To her.
He was a thrall to her very being.
But instead of searching for his way out, he only dug himself further in his captivation. He tunneled holes, buried deep into the world sustained wholly in her name. A willing hostage to all she was, all she is.
However, he should have known that things were never promised—especially not happiness and comfort. Especially not to him.
Walls, he found, could do far worse than confine.
All too suddenly, he found himself locked out of her intimate world; impenetrable fences on every side, barring him access to what he once considered sanctuary—what he once thought was forever. Her domain became unreachable, surrounded by treacherous mountains and canyons. And he was stranded on the outside, desperately awaiting the day he might dare to traverse them when—or if—ever she beckons. So, there he sits, always toeing the edge of those cliffs, staring down the limitless peak as if it might crumble at his will.
