"I am no one's queen. Is that so? Then you have no idea how much power you hold over me."
"You seem to forget that I'm completely powerless, Prince." Her words hold an edge, as though her breath has become a blade she drags along my neck.
"So be my weakness, then."
"I don't know if I'll survive this."
"You've already survived worse," I remind her sternly. "Besides, you seemed to have no problem handling that man in the throne room."
"As did you," she counters, and I can perfectly picture the steely look accompanying those words. "I don't need you to fight my battles."
"Oh, darling," I murmur, "I know you don't. But if I am to be your Enforcer, then you better get used to it."
I am the monster who hunted her down. I am the beast who delivered her to this doom. And I am afraid I'll become so much worse when I'm no longer striving to deserve her.
I thought I'd known torment until it wrapped around her finger. No, torment is tangible, and it gleams atop her tanned skin.
I stare, unblinking, at the symbol my brother slid onto her finger. It is binding. It is in Infinite. It is my undoing.
A laugh threatens to slip past my numb lips. It's not as though she hadn't promised to be my ruin, hadn't already become my demise. She is the single most destructive thing I have ever desired, and yet, it is the diamond on her finger that will destroy me.
Death is the only constant in my life, like an old friend who hones every one of my dark secrets into a weapon. He calls me weak and all I hear is Ordinary. He calls me doomed and all I hear is an earnest promise. His is the hand my bloody fingers reach for because there is comfort in his imminence.
The more she came to
know him, the harder it was to behold him, for he was like the sea,
unfathomable.
“I will say this once, angel, for I feel you should be warned. No man alive has ever loved a woman the way that I love you, and I would rather
die, damned as I am, than disgrace us both with the pitiful, unrequited performance of my heart.”
"Do not take from me what you cannot offer me in return. You need not ruin me utterly,” he said, nearly shaking. “You need not reduce me to ash simply because you can. I beg you to know your own power. Show me mercy even if I don’t deserve
it. My life, my heart, my blood—they’re already yours. Heaven knows I have nothing left to give you that isn’t already in pieces.”
“How does it
feel then? To know that she chose you?”
Cyrus had been struck silent by the gall of question.
“I don’t mean any harm,” the stranger had clarified. “It’s just we’ve all been wondering.
“Have you ever killed a moth?” Cyrus said faintly.
“Killed a moth?” The young man had frowned. “I beg your finest
pardon?”
“A moth, yes,” said Cyrus. “Have you ever killed one?”
“Are you taking the piss?”
“They have actual bodies,” Cyrus went on. “Wings and legs and eyes
and antennae. Yet you need hardly touch them to kill them. The lightest
pressure and they turn to dust.”
The man regarded him then as if hwere a lunatic.
“That,” said Cyrus, “is what it feels like. In her presence I am
easily killed returned over and over to dust.”
Cyrus was wretched as he watched her, as she looked gently into the
distance, sunlight choosing to know her eyes, her nose, the elegant grace of
her neck.
He wondered what she wondered.
It was dangerous, what he was doing.
Alizeh’s life was so colored by suffering that she was often surprised
by her ability to carry on. Injustice raged at her from every corner of the
earth. It was indeed astonishing to her that the pain of life itself had not
already killed her.
And yet—
She’d begun to realize that it was pain that had built her; pain that had
both softened and scarred her; pain that had prepared her most for this
moment.
"Master yourself so that you will never be mastered. Know yourself so that you might live with conviction. Live with conviction so that your steps never falter." He paused. "The mastery of self means never fearing the consequences of doing what is right."
"You must not resist life when it becomes inconvenient to live. You cannot outrun fear. You should not ignore pain. You will not outlive death."
Cyrus felt a strange sense of foreboding. "What do you mean?"
"You spent three hours in a state of distress focused solely on one emotion hoping to discard those hours from your life as if your discomforts might expire with them. But life cannot be experienced one
emotion at a time. It is a tapestry of sensation, a braided rope of feeling. We must allow for reflection even when we suffer. We must reach for compassion even when we triumph. If you spend your days waiting for your sorrows to end so that you might finally live" - he shook his head - "you will die an impatient man."
He only closed his eyes against her hair and fought the desperate crush of his chest, the violence of his affection for her. How she managed to disarm him even now, on the brink of death, he could not understand. She'd wept for his pain, wiped the blood from his eyes, taken an arrow in the back for him. She'd shown him more loyalty and tenderness in
two days than he'd ever felt in his life, and he knew then, with a force that drove the air from his lungs, that he would never survive her.
That day, Cyrus had learned cowardice was a luxury.
Only the privileged few could afford to run away, to lock their doors and close their eyes to ugliness. The rest lived in homes without doors to lock, looked through eyes without lids to shut. They confronted the dark even as their hearts trembled, as their souls shook - for even strangled by fear, there was no choice but to endure.
No one would be along to slay their demons.
So many desires, to manage and extinguish.
"And then?" he said softly. "Will you kill me then? Is this the order in which you intend to annihilate me? Will you tear out my heart first, rip off my crown next, and end my life only when I'm on my knees, begging you to end my misery?"
From
"Alizeh-"
"You know, you say my name a lot."
"I say your name," he said tersely, "a perfectly normal amount."
To
"Let's go back to bed, Alizeh."
"Cyrus"
He laughed a little, like he was drunk. "I do say it a lot."
"What?" she said, going briefly still.
"Your name," he said, and closed his eyes. He nearly fell over, catching himself at the last second. "I didn't know your name for so long, angel. I love the way it feels in my mouth."
🖤
There was something decidedly fascinating about Cyrus; something potent and complex, and prodding him for truth felt a lot like prodding a sore muscle; the results were both painful and pleasant. She pitied him even as she detested him, understood him even as she scorned him. He was a series of mystery boxes she wasn't certain she wanted to open, and whose hidden depths tempted her even as they scared her.
She didn't know what she wanted from him or whether she wanted
anything at all.
الیس الله باحکم الحاکمین۔
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