Chapter Text
“You’re being unreasonable.”
He never told her how beautiful she was when she was angry.
How brightly her cerulean eyes shone when turned on him with ire. How impassioned the bell-peal song of her voice rang when she raised it at him.
He never told her, but sometimes—when he wasn’t careful—he gave himself away in the form of an upturned mouth or delighted laugh. These, of course, only served to make her angrier.
He didn’t slip now as he shot back, “I’m being unreasonable?”
“Yes,” she exclaimed, and proceeded to expound on all the reasons why.
But the argument, like all the others, was an excuse. And so, when she reached the end of her tirade, he gave his reply in the form of a kiss.
She met him fiercely, searing and fervent, and soon, their bodies tangled together beneath the full moon’s holy glow.
Later, afterward, he watched her features settle as she drifted off to sleep—peaceful like a candle’s flame protected from the breeze: static for the time being, but always burning.
It had always been her fire that he craved.
It warmed something in him to be near her, eased the persistent chill that had taken up within his bones.
But she was a queen, forged in flame and ash, and he was…
Something broken, still, despite the Cauldron’s efforts to piece him back together beneath its ice-dark waters.
It was senseless, the two of them.
Freed from her curse, her kingdom restored, there was nothing left he could give her.
He didn’t sleep.
When dawn broke and the sun rose upon her, human, he committed her form to memory.
Outlined in glowing gold, she was incendiary.
He brushed a coiled lock back from her face, and laid reverent lips upon her forehead one last time.
Then he slipped away.