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Night. Cold wind, fast rolling clouds. A field of silvery grass, dancing with the breeze. Smoke prickling the throat. Winter’s here, the front line close, and yet the Alliance’s lands haven’t lost their beauty: the gentle slope of its hills, the crisp sound of nearby springs…
A stain. The Kingdom’s camp. Washed-up greys and muddy browns. A scream, a howl.
Prince Dimitri is not better.
He tears the silence like he tears through Imperial soldiers: endlessly. Pointlessly. Even a wounded dog knows when to stop, but he never does. On a good night, he will scream until he passes out, fall into a restless sleep. On a bad one… much the same. Only longer. Louder.
They are used to it. His men. His friends. Some roll their eyes, some mumble a curse, say a quick prayer – to appease their minds. The Goddess has long given up on this man. So have they. It’s cruel, heartless even. They made peace with it. They close their eyes, exhausted, and dream of bygone days.
And yet a girl is still awake. Pale and blue, silent and gloomy, she looks nothing like a daughter of Leicester… and every bit like the ghosts plaguing the crownless king. Her steps are light, oddly so: her skirts make no sound as they brush the ground. Her hair, undone, trails behind her; a mourning veil. If anyone saw her, they’d think she is floating. A peaceful apparition…
But behind the curtain of her hair, Marianne’s eyes are wide open.
The moon’s smiling at her. It’s a sharp, knowing grin, casting a cold, crude light… Yet familiar, painfully so, much more than the mellow glow of torches. As the camp disappears behind her, small tents traded for ancient trees, it becomes pitiful: an attempt to ward off shadows, made by men who crawled from them, and refuse to remember it.
Marianne has not forgotten. She can’t, as much as she wants to. And the moon, no, the Goddess knows. She watches her from the heavens, always, and tonight her kindness has turned sour.
Marianne lost.
Yet it had felt like victory, a few weeks ago, when the Wandering Beast – no, Maurice – had been put to rest. The mist swirling around them, the smell of coming rain… A gruelling fight, monsters on all side… Their teacher’s orders their only saving grace, before the fatal strike finally landed… His parting words, his relief… His body dissolving into strands of ash, carried by the wind…
The forest, at last, blessedly quiet.
When her hand first found Blutgang hilt, she’d felt… freed. Here was the proof she was no monster; here was her triumph over the curse that had plagued her family for a thousand years. A drop of hope in a sea of uncertainty.
Because they were still at war. Because Dimitri was still lost. Because she was in Leicester, her home, with a foreign army.
Her gentle peace soon revealed fleeting: night after night she’d lie awake, recalling familiar names. Lysithea. Claude. Leonie. Raphael. Ignatz. Lorenz. Hilda. Always following her, pouncing from their scouts’ mouths, from every village they crossed. She had betrayed them, betrayed their homeland for a kingdom she had barely seen, fought for a man who did not care whether she lived or died.
Crest of the Beast. Biting the hand who once fed it.
To forget, she strived to be useful. Healed, cooked, prayed, smiled as much as possible, until she ached with it. Until the Professor told her to sit down, let herself breath. Until Ashe came to her, eyes full of worry. Looking for something, anything to appease her guilt, she made a mistake.
She turned to Blutgang.
It started well enough. The drills had calmed her swirling thoughts, had tired her enough to sleep: with the Professor by her side and Felix as a training partner, there was much to learn. Her adoptive father had forced her through the basics, and she had continued in Garreg Mach, but it had always been with much reluctance. The weight of the blade, the thought of another’s blood covering it, of how close she’d have to be to strike… Now, after everything she had seen, it came easier. And although she never came close to landing a strike on Felix or the Professor, holding her relic, training with it, left her strangely giddy.
One day, someone joined their sessions.
Prince Dimitri was a rare sight outside of the battlefield: Marianne had yet to see him eat. He’d come and go, unseen and unheard, a living shadow. No one bothered to search for him: his thirst for blood, his need of them bound him tightly to the camp, and tighter to their teacher. He would use them, he had said, until the flesh fell from their bones.
When the prince had walked in there, it’d been as shocking as blood on snow. He would not meet anyone’s eyes, nor would he acknowledge how unusual his presence was. He’d simply began the same drills he’d practiced back at the Academy.
Perhaps that had been the worst part. The glimpse of who he once was, of what he couldn’t be.
They’d moved on. Tried to. It’d been impossible not to notice the tension in Felix’s shoulders, or the slight tremor in her teacher’s hands as they corrected her form. Still, they’d reached the end of the lesson. She’d sat down on a nearby bench to catch her breath. Tiny muscles had pulsed in her arms and thighs, proof of her efforts. She’d closed her eyes.
Opened them in alarm as Dimitri howled.
Later, Marianne had gotten the details, barely able to care. Felix’s eyes lingering a touch too long. A sigh from their teacher, betrayed by a whisp in the winter air. A brush of fabric against the prince’s black armour.
Somehow, that had broken him.
As he writhed on the ground, seven men struggling to pine him down, Marianne should have felt pity. The kind prince who once sat with her, baring his heart in hopes of opening hers, reduced to this wild thing. Sadness would have been kinder; fear, logical. But instead…
She wanted to bite into his neck and pull.
To twist and shake her head, feel tendons strain and break, let warmth ooze in the cold, cold air, over her face, down her throat. To bury her claws into matted, faded gold and force him to the ground. To watch dirt cake his too-pale skin, drag his teeth into it. Wanted to pull and take and break until he let out a long, long whine, and at last, at last–
She wanted him ruined.
In her hand, Blutgang had twitched.
She fought. With all her might. Biting herself bloody, pulling at her hair, praying with renewed fervour as Dimitri screamed himself hoarse a few tents over – her own savagery staring back. Night after night after night. The same vow, desperate, aching.
Take me with you. Before I break, too.
But the Goddess spurns beasts, and Marianne lost. The forest calls upon her now, offers a meagre respite: here at least, she will not be seen.
Above her, branches claw at the sky, reaching and reaching. Their fallen limbs crack under her feet, their rotten leaves hide treacherous roots. The forest doesn’t give itself freely: thorns catch on her clothes, mud splatters on her skirts, she falls on a slippery rock and cuts her palm. The smell of blood chokes her, excites her, make fangs out of teeth and claws out of nails, whispers of forbidden joys…
She walks faster, runs, panting all the while. Puffs of white in the icy air. Thinks of hounds roaming after game, frothing at the mouth. Of their crazed yellow eyes. She’s scared – she’s envious. Her father’s words echo in her mind. We must contain ourselves, Marie. We must. If we atone, the Goddess will release us. Words she had held onto as long as she could, until she caught him clawing at his throat, his Crest burning in his veins. They were hounds, yes, damned to gnaw at their leash. Destined to die, either by letting it cut their throat, or if it broke, by a hunter’s arrow.
She had prayed the Goddess wouldn’t make her choose.
Ragged sobs climb out of her: the flame is in her veins now, a flicker soon to turn wildfire. She falls to her knees, trembling against the trunk of an old oak tree. The scent of wood and earth brings thoughts of caskets and freshly dug holes.
Goddess, she should have…
“Marianne?”
No.
Sylvain. Red hair, smiling mouth, distant eyes. Casual words, thrown without much care, later seeped with warmth. Sylvain. The smile he had brought to her lips so long ago, in a sunlit classroom.
A friend.
A witness.
A prey.
“I know you’re there– well, whatever ‘there’ is…” A breathless laugh, quickly cut off. “Anyway…”
Footsteps. He’s getting closer, making no effort to be discreet. How did he sneak up on her? Was she that distracted? Doesn’t matter. Now she tastes his scent in the air, a mix of sweat, hay and traces of his soap; a prelude to flesh. Saliva fills her mouth.
“Felix says you’re on edge. Something about the way you hold your sword? I swear, he’s the only one who can say things like that and sound sane.”
He leans against her tree. It ripples up her spine. No sounds of metal, and with such light steps… He ditched his armour. Likely his lance, too.
“Normally I’d laugh it off, but… I did notice. You haven’t been the same since we killed the– Maurice.”
Silence, then a sigh. It lingers in the air, mingles with her own small, strained breaths and she cannot look away. She cannot stop heaving. He’s close, he’s so close, and a faraway voice pleads for her to speak, to warn him, to save them both.
“To think he was human, once…”
Was he? Or was he like Marianne, pretending? She digs her nails in her palms, tries to calm the reckless beating of her heart, the ache in her lungs. Instead, her mouth falls open and drops of drool land on dry, dead leaves.
“It got me thinking. About Crests, and all the terrible things that keep happening because of them.”
Her Crest, yes. It burns bright now, high flames pooling in her belly. Or is it hunger that twists it so? Something terrible is about to happen, and Sylvain’s as clueless as she’s powerless. Tears fill her eyes again.
But they’re not born of despair…
“You suffered a lot, right? It was nowhere near as bad for me, but I can understand.”
… only of acceptance.
“So if you need to talk, I–”
The words are lost forever, never to be spoken: she broke them when they collided, both arms thrown around his middle with all her strength – hers or the thing in her veins, don’t know, don’t care, leash snapped. Shards of a sentence and fragments of sympathy. Sound’s dull, heavy, meat on meat and meat sinking into the forest floor. The earth sweels at the promise of blood.
He doesn’t scream. Prey rarely does.
But he struggles and struggles hard, a lifetime of training refusing to be undone: digging his heels in for leverage, hands scrambling for a grip, trying to push her, wrench her off, anything. He’s tall, strong and fear has only strengthened him, but she’s hunger and despair and fury. She claws and growls and holds him down down down as she tries to climb up his ribs – the throat, the face, the eyes, soft and fragile and easy.
For a moment, there is nothing more than this. The need to overcome, to survive, to kill. Nothing but a strained breath, a heartbeat, the rush of blood in their ears. They are a tangle of limbs sinking into the ground, kicking rotting leaves up in the air, and the musty scent sticks to the back of her throat.
A knee to the stomach breaks them apart.
She heaves, gasps, grits her teeth, tries to regain her hold. Too late. Using the scant space he created, Sylvain pushes himself halfway up and out–
Their eyes meet.
A second. A second for him to recognize her, for grim determination to morph into shock, then confusion.
She lunges.
He’s too slow: the sluggish beginning of a movement. She slams him deeper into the soil and his head bounces off a buried root, mouth falling open. Air leaves his lungs, an aborted sound that could have been her name.
There, straddling his chest, she grabs his throat.
And squeezes.
The flesh is warm. White under her grip, dough-like. Rises and caves and twists in her hands. The flesh is warm and alive and vibrates with his frantic pulse, with each terrible chocked up noise. Squeezing harder makes them stop. Body writhes like a bag of worms.
His hands feebly wrap around her wrists.
She’s screaming.
Or sobbing, or wailing, or maybe all three. Doesn’t know when she started. Cannot stop. He’s alive, full of the blood she shouldn’t want, and she hates him. She hates him, them, their blood and their flesh, their eyes and their tongues and their words. Hounding her every step, ready to pounce at the slightest mistake, robbing her of her mother, her father, a life basking in the sun. She hates them, she envies them, she wants to be nothing like them. She screams and cries, head throbbing. An open wound.
Through her tears, her prey moves less and less.
Here it comes: the point of no return. Tearing flesh, gushing blood, shattered bones, squelching organs. No more shame, no more hiding. No more Marianne. No Maurice, either, or whatever he had become. She won’t stalk the woods, won’t wait for the hunter’s arrow: she’ll free herself as she frees the world. Relief douses the flame…
Her mistake. Had she ever honed her instincts, she would have known.
There’s nothing more dangerous than a cornered animal.
One moment she’s about to crush his windpipe, end it once and for all – the next she’s blind. Breathless. Helplessly falling backward.
Pain shoots through her arm and neck: she landed on her elbow. Hard. She’s tangled in… legs, his, can’t quite get up. The ribs, her ribcage, something has… rammed into it again and she. Struggles through a breath and. Coughs up a storm. Her world is a swarm of dark, purpling spots.
Yet a shape lingers, branded on her pupils: a twisting circle, thorns sticking out. It burns. She blinks once, twice and it doesn’t leave but her mind clears.
He pushed her again, somehow. With a strength he didn’t have before and should not have now. Especially now.
Sylvain’s a mess. Red face, eyes wide open, spit flying. Each cough lifts him from the ground, each breath rattles in his chest: he chocks before the air can fill his lungs. Running would be impossible, even without Marianne’s weight on his legs. With it? Twice damned.
She crawls over him. His eyes grow impossibly widder at the sight of her. Where has that strength gone? That desperation? All she sees is an oversized fawn waiting to be eaten. She should strike now, a fatal strike; learn from her mistake.
And yet… that light. That wretched form, faint now but still present.
She tugs at his gambeson, black with the trimmed red fur on the collar – foppish, Felix had called it, why does she remember that now? – to get to the skin. The fabric protest. She tugs harder and the neat little clasps keeping it close break at once. A canvas of pinks and reds appears, vivid under the silver moon: Sylvain’s fair, a true child of Faerghus. The months spent away are nothing next to a lifetime of grey skies and heavy snows. He marks easily. Sweetly.
Marianne grabs him by the hair, bares the abused throat, and bites.
The sound he makes… isn’t one of pain.
His pulse runs wild under her lips, crescendos on the tip of her tongue as she follows an artery. She didn’t bite deeply. Just enough to pierce, to know. To taste. Wine-heady, iron and copper, but something… odd, underneath. The aftertaste of spells woven too fast, of depleted magic.
You know what this means, an old voice says. A Crest. Sylvain’s Crest. How could she forget? The Goddess’ blessing, corrupted. Sin made current, made light, made power. Burning in her veins, smouldering in his.
Kin, the old voice claims.
… yours, it whispers.
A different hunger knots her insides.
Unfamiliar, though not unknown, it pulses between her thighs: the soft Leicester summer, rolling low in her belly. The ache in her wrist. How she rocked into her hand, mouth open in a silent scream, the smell of her old prayer book as she pressed her clammy face to it. How bold the darkness had made her feel.
Beneath her, Sylvain’s panting, eyes wet and bloodshot. Struggles through a swallow.
There’s saliva at the corner of his mouth.
“… arianne,” he croaks, whizzing, unrecognizable. “Marie…”
We must contain ourselves, Marie. We must.
Marianne first kiss is iron and clashing teeth.
No amount of shameful daydreaming could have prepared her: another body, colliding with hers. As foreign to her hands as the handle of her first sword. Wherever she touches – his face, his neck, his chest – Sylvain’s desperately still, eyes wide open. Staring. Hands at his side, fingers buried in the dirt. Her owns are trembling.
Yours, the old voice repeats, urgent, but Marianne has never done this, and the immensity of what she could do, what she wants to do, it’s…
Like the leather wrap on the grip, Sylvain warms to her touch.
His shoulders slump, chest caving in; a silent sigh against her lips. Dark eyelashes flutter close – were they always this long? – and she closes her eyes, too, when his hands find her waist, her back, when he tilts his head to better join their mouths.
This is how it’s done, right? This must be what Hilda giggled about in the quiet of their dorm rooms: the press of lips, the tip of a tongue, a permission eagerly granted. Here, the iron grows heavier. Where’s the wound? She seeks it, answers Sylvain’s groan with one of her own. Their teeth hum, echoing. Sparks of discomfort when they click together. Saliva pooling, oozing between sealed lips. Tongue finding the cut, pressing down, drinking the hurt sound and the fresh iron. No, this isn’t what sweet Hilda meant.
This is better.
Aching lungs force them apart. They breathe to the same rhythm, quick and hoarse, eye to eye. He’s blushing all the way to his chest: each finger-shaped mark around his throat is that much darker for it, and despite her restraint, the bitemark’s stark. A brand.
Sylvain’s watching her. Calm, steady, no longer the wide, frantic eyes of a prey. Why? What does he see in her now? If she could sneak behind those eyes, feel the shape of his thoughts…
Focus. Who cares what he thinks?
He’s hers.
As a child, Marianne wanted to be a ghost. A kind ghost: no longer bound to her sinful flesh, she would have floated endlessly above the world of men, guiding them through the struggles of life. A silent protector, with birds and critters for company. What a good life it would have been. No burden, no shame, no secrets…
Now, she’s kneeling in the mud. Wailing.
No. ‘Wailing’, that’s a human sound. Those noises – ragged whines and sobs, hiccups, half-growls turning into cries of distress – don’t belong to humanity. They come from Its stomach, climb out of It, incessantly.
“Marianne?”
It lets out another sound, shivers all over. It is a beast: it deserves no name, no gentle voice calling for them. It digs its claws into its skin, drags them, again and again, like it used to; but it’s too much. No pain of theirs will ever be enough to atone. It tries, it tries, scratches at its arms until they are numb, until all of them is numb, and still, still…
When Sylvain holds her, she almost does not feel it.
Then it comes, slowly, a wave: warmth, above all, his breath, his skin. The weight of his arms around her, his chest, pressed flush against her back. His heart, thumping through her bones. His stubble stinging her cheek.
His voice. Low. Rough.
“Don’t cry, Marie.”
I love you, Marie, her father says, and the sound she makes is horribly human.
When Marianne wakes – how did she manage to sleep? Only the Goddess knows – the moon is setting behind mountains. Daylight crawls through the branches as birds sings familiar tunes. A cold breeze flows through the grass, silver ripples with pearls of dew. Her breath dances with mist.
Peaceful. Ordinary.
… well. Almost.
Sylvain’s combing Marianne’s hair. With his fingers, since he has nothing else. He must think she is still asleep: he holds her as though she might fall any second, tucking her against his chest with one strong arm. He works through every knot, every leaf, every twig with surprising ease… and a gentleness she should have expected of him. He’d been the first of the Lions to try cheering her up, the first to compliment her efforts when they all met again. And last night, too… When… When she…
She whines, and Sylvain pauses.
“… good morning.”
He… Goddess, he sounds exhausted, voice rumbling shakily beneath her ear. She opens her mouth but no words come out. Too many to say. Apologies, explanations, pleas to not forgive her, to see her for what she is and allow her to repent.
And she wants to forget, too. How wrong it is to feel good. Because she does, despite the growing ache in her limbs, the soreness slowly awaking. She’s warm. Safe. Being tended to.
She gave him none of that.
Her tears burn when she wipes them, fading heat on her cold skin. If only she had the strength to talk, to prove she is alright, somehow, and not thinking about all the terrible things she did to Sylvain. She should smile, like he taught her. Make him proud. Marianne owns it to him: even in the midst of war, he stays bright, he jokes, he teases. But…
“A smile, it tells you who someone is.”
No. Not here, under the sun, where the darkness won’t hide his fear.
Sylvain says nothing more. He keeps carding through her hair… for now. His movements are sluggish, his touch lighter; as if, as soon as she woke, he too realised how surreal this is. They are sitting in the dirt, barely clothed, in the middle of nowhere – no, in the middle of Leicester. Who they are fighting. In a war. And Marianne, quiet, prude Marianne, pounced on him without remorse. No one would believe him. Such is her deception.
Eventually, he runs out of knots, or the situation overwhelms him, or he finally remembers what Marianne is… Eventually, he backs away, if only slightly. He’s still close, still radiating warmth, but now she sits on her own.
A drawn-out shiver courses through her: it’s cold, cripplingly so, in the way only dawn can be. They need to move, she knows, but–
Old blood on her nails. Under her nails. Everywhere. Sylvain’s blood, mixed with her own.
Marianne sees it all, then. The mud cacking her skin. The searing red lines on her arms, still swollen. Her bare breasts. Bruises where she had groped herself. Her thorn knees. The pale blue of her pubic hair, peeking from the scraps of her skirts. And… And dried…
Grotesque.
Sinful.
Beastly.
Somewhere far, far away, Sylvain is talking to her.
“Look at me?”
She does. There’s a cut under his eye. Red blooming on his cheek, purpling in the middle. Dried blood under his nose. A busted lip. Bite marks and finger-shaped blurs around his neck, a savage collar. She looks down and finds no respite: clothes barely hanging on, clawed open, shred to pieces, angry lines on his shoulders, arms, chest, stomach, echoing her own. More bite marks, more bruises on his hips and thighs. Her lip wobbles, her vision blurs.
Sylvain cups her face, guiding her back up.
“Look at me, Marianne.”
He holds her there, traces patterns on her mud-caked cheeks, wipes tears clinging to her skin. She urges herself to hate it, to tell him to stop: she must not let Sylvain’s kindness wash away her shame. But he’s serious for once, deadly so, mouth a thin strained line, and Marianne can’t help but stare. It’s his eyes, she thinks. Amber and steel, lashes gold under the rising sun. There are flickers of blood underneath them, almost lost in… Freckles? She had never noticed…
Or perhaps his hair. Wild, unruly, a stark contrast to the man she knows. For all his philandering, Sylvain has always been clean, well-groomed – something a younger Marianne had envied, wretchedly so. She wants to reach up and smooth it down; she wants to yank him down and mess it further.
He’s… beautiful.
“It was good.”
She blinks. Her confusion must be oblivious: he laughs, warm but unsure, a hint of shyness that pleases the beast within.
You made him like this. You, and no one else.
“I mean, it was scary at first, since you were in pain. But once we figured it out… You know…”
He trails off, half a smile on his lips: a familiar expression, seen a hundred times in the Blue Lions classroom.
Now she knows how it feels against her thighs. Between them. The barely-there graze of teeth where she is most sensitive, his clever tongue tracing apologies as she shakes. And his hands squeezing her waist, callouses against her skin, the tremor of his chest as he stutters a quick breath, the sounds he makes when she pulls on his hair–
Good. The heat rushing to her face certainly agrees.
“You get what I mean, right?”
She doesn’t want to. The thought is there nonetheless, wriggling its way in and burrowing deep: another night with someone who knows her, truly, and has not run. Who’ll let her get close again. To be welcomed, no matter how terrible…
Her stomach aches from the greed.
“It… It was good for me, too,” she confesses, eyes downcast, voice hoarse from disuse. The first step to an underserved absolution; a plea to forgive the lie that follows.
“But I don’t want to hurt you again.”
She can’t. She won’t. To be human is to abstain: they’re sinful creatures, who must cling to the Goddess’ teachings for redemption. She fell deep, deeper than ever before… but the light is still within reach. It must be. She’ll climb and climb, sew her leash back together with iron threads, wind it tighter around her neck. Righteousness is a bleeding fist and a purple throat.
Sylvain lets go of her; she does not chase after his touch. The wind picks up, almost stealing his next words.
Later, Marianne will wish it had.
“Even if I beg?”
She stiffens – at his words yes, but mostly his tone. Half a joke and half… she’s not sure what. She raises her head.
Sylvain’s smiling again. A large, cocky smile, with a hint of teeth.
It’s a slap in the face. All her grim determination, her sincere repentance… Does he… Is this… Is this all a joke to him? Ever since she woke up Sylvain has been eerily calm, and Marianne went along, relieved… as if this was normal. Has her rot spread and taken roots, blinding him to what happened? She almost killed him! She wanted to! If not for his Crest–
… his Crest.
He talked about that. Before she lost control. Something about… about understanding, and not having it as bad as her, yet wishing to be there anyway. A burden they may lighten together.
But that hadn’t been the first time, had it?
“I’m the same way, you know.”
For the first time since she woke up, or perhaps for the first time at all, Marianne looks at Sylvain.
Stiff back. Stiffer shoulders. Tension coiling deep, seeping into muscles, bracing for impact. Stomach barely rising with each breath, his chest just as still. A smile in place, but a faint tremor at the corner: a snarl trying to form, lips struggling to hide teeth. A muscle jumping under his right eye. Eyes too still to be natural. He stares, unblinking, smiling and smiling.
Lying.
“Come on, it was a joke! You should see your fa…”
His voice fizzles out, vanquished by a single touch: her hand, cacked with both their blood, cradling his face. The smile, the mask, waver under the slow drag of her thumb.
Sylvain handed her the key half a decade ago; now it clicks into place, finding its purpose.
A smile tells you who someone is, and Sylvain’s is a call – but not for help. To be acknowledged, heard, seen. Understood, maybe. Perhaps accepted. He’d tried to tell Marianne but she hadn’t caught the clues, unsubtle as they were. Too busy drowning in her own despair. And so he went back to the order of things, never to bother again… Until last night.
Oh, what a fool Marianne had been. The beast had claimed kin and she did not think it twice. In the cover of the night, in the mad boiling of her blood, she did not see.
“Marianne…?”
She leans in: his eyes widen, pupils blown out. Her eyes dart to his throat, all the blues and purples she put there, the indents of her teeth. Her nails dig into his jaw, cuts his cheek; but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t dare speak another word. For all of Sylvain’s antics, obedience has been beaten into him.
Don’t be afraid, she doesn’t say, for she knows better; for she, too, has scarcely known anything else. For his fear is too beautiful to behold. Anguish and panic and guilt and a hundred flickering thoughts, each too brief to name, too feeble to hold on to. She has lived through them all, she has shed the tears he now struggles to contain, as begged the Goddess as he begs her: please help me. Please love me.
Please take that choice away from me.
Marianne offers him her kindest, cruellest smile.
“Beg.”
A better man – a selfless knight – would have struggled against his desires. Would have cut himself on his morals, made of the purest of steel, would have clawed his way back from the brink. Then he’d carry her out of the woods, bridal style, to a white castle on a sunny hill. The great beast defeated, leaving behind a gentle maiden. A curse broken at last.
But there is no maiden. And this…
“Please, Marie,” and defeat has never sounded so eager. “Please.”
… is a beast who seeks not to ruin, but be ruined.
She kisses him.
No, that word is much too sweet. What Marianne does is stake her claim: hand twisting in his hair, nails scrapping the scalp, all to better bring him down to her cruel, hungry mouth. No room to breathe or lie.
And Sylvain…
Eyes closed in pure bliss, he gives her everything, a lost soul ushered to the Goddess. She licks old blood and bites for new, delights as the thin skin breaks once more, and he lets her, bound to her by a collar of bites and bruises. Submission born not of fear but relief and oh, how benevolent she is, how divine is this filth…
His lips part; you could think it’s in prayer.
A low whine betrays his true nature.
Dawn has come at last, setting the sky ablaze. Stretched clouds dappled in pinks. No more stars hanging above; no more knowing moon. Just them, laying together under the rising sun. Him, half-awake; her, committing this moment to memory. His breathing, slow and steady; her hand on his skin. The faint glow of her healing spells.
He’s silent as she heals him – only his face, she promised. In exchange, she’d asked to take care of the wounds that might bother him in battle. He complied easily enough… but refused she’d touch his throat. The surge of want that brought nearly made her undo all her work.
They will have to go soon: it’s still early enough to sneak back into camp. Hopefully. Sylvain doesn’t care for his reputation, but he cares for Marianne’s. He also cares a lot about their comrades’ wrath. Ingrid’s one thing, but Ashe? He’d die for sure. Or so he said.
The last bruise fade from his cheek. So does her magic, tingling her fingertips. Sylvain wakes, blinking up at her.
In his golden eyes, her reflection stares back.
“Smile for me?”
And she does. She can still taste his blood on her teeth, on her tongue, down her throat. Iron and honey both. A savage thing.
But when Sylvain looks at her, it’s in awe.
“Perfect.”