"All silvered gold and the smell of pine oil. Witchfire, and oak."
Her body hadn’t quite caught up with her mind yet, still loose and warm, steeped in him, heavy with the quiet wreckage they’d made together. Still raw between her legs. His words, all poetry, poured out on her skin. Breath caught halfway up her throat when she felt his hands trace the lines of her old wounds.
“Scars like the eyes of a birch tree.”
“Blinding, even when it’s closed.”
She stared at him.
Not because it wasn’t beautiful. It was. It made her skin itch, a little. That much tenderness.
She let him finish. Let him say the word again, Wildfire, like it was a thing he’d always known.
But the truth was, Garrod did not know.
Didn’t know that Ul’Varek had not been some petty bloodsucker haunting cellars and crypts. He’d been old when kingdoms were young, an ancient thing that crawled out of the dark between ages, fed on empires, turned saints into monsters and monsters into saints. A whisper in bloodlines. A god to the hollow-eyed wretches who built temples from bone in his name.
And she had killed him. Had driven silver, ash wood and salt into his heart until his scream tore the stars down around her. Watched him collapse in on himself like a dying sun. Felt the terrible weight of his age die with him.
But that hadn’t been enough.
So she’d taken her sword and hunted down every last one of them, The Red Mouth. The priestesses who claimed to be mothers of night. The priest with their sharpened teeth. The children born under red moons. The starving pilgrims and even the ones who had run, who hid in cellars and prayed to be forgotten.
She found them.
And she killed them.
Old, young, innocent, wicked, it had not mattered. She could not leave a chance. Not a whisper of his bloodline. Not a single soul who remembered his name with reverence. Because even one survivor was enough for resurrection.
And that was not even half of what she had done... How she had scorched the world. So when he said Wildfire, all soft and aching and warm with some lover’s shine in his eye, she nearly laughed. If he did know, would he still hold her like this?
“…You’re good with words.” she said. “You sure you weren’t meant to be a bard?”
Her body hadn’t quite caught up with her mind yet, still loose and warm, steeped in him, heavy with the quiet wreckage they’d made together. Still raw between her legs. His words, all poetry, poured out on her skin. Breath caught halfway up her throat when she felt his hands trace the lines of her old wounds.
“Scars like the eyes of a birch tree.”
“Blinding, even when it’s closed.”
She stared at him.
Not because it wasn’t beautiful. It was. It made her skin itch, a little. That much tenderness.
She let him finish. Let him say the word again, Wildfire, like it was a thing he’d always known.
But the truth was, Garrod did not know.
Didn’t know that Ul’Varek had not been some petty bloodsucker haunting cellars and crypts. He’d been old when kingdoms were young, an ancient thing that crawled out of the dark between ages, fed on empires, turned saints into monsters and monsters into saints. A whisper in bloodlines. A god to the hollow-eyed wretches who built temples from bone in his name.
And she had killed him. Had driven silver, ash wood and salt into his heart until his scream tore the stars down around her. Watched him collapse in on himself like a dying sun. Felt the terrible weight of his age die with him.
But that hadn’t been enough.
So she’d taken her sword and hunted down every last one of them, The Red Mouth. The priestesses who claimed to be mothers of night. The priest with their sharpened teeth. The children born under red moons. The starving pilgrims and even the ones who had run, who hid in cellars and prayed to be forgotten.
She found them.
And she killed them.
Old, young, innocent, wicked, it had not mattered. She could not leave a chance. Not a whisper of his bloodline. Not a single soul who remembered his name with reverence. Because even one survivor was enough for resurrection.
And that was not even half of what she had done... How she had scorched the world. So when he said Wildfire, all soft and aching and warm with some lover’s shine in his eye, she nearly laughed. If he did know, would he still hold her like this?
“…You’re good with words.” she said. “You sure you weren’t meant to be a bard?”
