Are you ready for this?

Are you?

Reprehensible, disgraceful, malicious.

There were many things she was in want to call herself, and these were just the beginning.

Still, went her heart--thump, tha-thump.

Still, it beat, it leapt. It felt a roiling tide of joy, a frothing of excitement knowing just how crude and unbecoming it all was. Yet, a promise was a promise. A vow, a vexation against whim that invited her back into folly. Back into that shameful world of scandal. She was careful as she went, her eyes keenly ensuring there was privacy along the way.

Still—the world seemed rent by chaos.

Still—her peace had yet to return, still kept from her.

Still, she was without her child.

Without sight, scent or sound of her child’s presence back in Amaryllis, the Queen wandered. She wandered, and wandered until the moon lay high and the hours waned from twilight to the dead of night. The stars yearned and ached for the blossoming of inky black from sweet, soft indigo. Their candlefires bright, in spite of their moon-mother that shone so brightly. Her fullness lit the way, and the striped figure of Aidoneus slipped beneath thicket and bramble until the Grotto’s entrance lay clear ahead. And with a sweeping stride, she found herself within it—basking in the glimmer of fallen golden stars. Their twinkling fluttering brought a wistful smile as she delved further into that secreted place.

Her eyes turned to the way she come, seeking that familiar face in her wake. Not yet finding it, she peered about the Grotto.

A holy place, so she felt.

A place not meant for sinners.

Or, perhaps, the exact place for them.

A place for penitence.

A place for atonement.

the grotto. From her lips the words had spilled, from her lips they had been born in to the air and he had listened. He had listened. Casual, meaningless, and yet... And yet ripe with more meaning than any other words he had known -- pregnant with promise. I will find you. She had, and now he would find her. Now he would come, carefully, hiding his tracks, dipping in to water and washing away his scent. Invisible, a specter birth in to existence for one reason and one reason alone. Oh, but specter's do not have hearts that leap in to throats and threaten to choke them. Hearts that beat impossibly fast, as if a hummingbird trapped in a bony cage. Could she mean it? Did she mean it? He feared -- feared -- that he would come and find nothing. That he would come and she would have lost her nerve and left, a fragment of his imagination, a breath on the wind that stirred goosebumps across his flesh. Kissed by the mist of the waterfall he came, breaching this tucked-away place, a maelstrom of tangled emotion. Pausing in shadow, his pale coat truly ghost like, and finding his true north. He is frozen, stunned, as he spots her bathed in the light of fireflies. Flickering in and out and casting her in an unearthly glow. He wants to bow before her, to kiss the ground at her feet and plead with her to spare him a mere look. She, this ethereal creature -- she, his reason. Alaric moves, softer than he has ever been, careful steps to bring him behind her, beside her. Side to side, his gaze on the grotto as hers is, imagining the electricity that zaps between them, feeling the tension that sparks to life. He draws in a breath and releases it slowly and with it a mere whisper -- "my queen."

She had hope – hope that the absence would have her forget, that time would erase the sentiment from heart.

She had hoped, it would have diminished. But as his arrival was made clear, the reveal of his figure from beneath that hazy shroud, alarm touched her face. Manifested there in her expression, the eyes brightened, the lips slack. Panic. Swift redolence, whispers of their last stolen moment. Stirring traces of not that she was right, but that she was wrong.

And that she had craved for him.

That she wanted him all the same, if not more.

He approached, and every step was made far too slow, too long. To find him there, at her side, was a slow death—and one she was in want of again and again. An enigmatic smile reclaimed its place, touching the rose of her lips so subtly, so softly. It was a ghost itself, in this new haunt, beneath the high cathedral ceilings, with naught but the low groaning of the grotto’s doorway and their hushed breaths weaving together.

Living but on the scent of him, surviving on the palpable heat of his manifestation, those diamonds found her eyes again. They were selfish, yes. But still, beat her heart that hopeless drum of guilt. Their fates guilty, and the future in tatters. I will be the ruin of you. She would be the ruin of them both. And now I'm covered in you.

Still, the smile would not falter.

Still, that smile remained.

Because in her heart of hearts, still, she wanted this. And hearing his voice crawl against the low din of the grotto, she found herself pulled deeper into his orbit. Not yet touching, but almost so. In those pews, in the quiet serenity, a whisper of her own passed to @Alaric in the dark, low enough to be heard only by him. I've missed you.

tucked away in his heart of hearts he had imagined not coming. marked by the mud of the mire, considering that he was not fit for a queen (even he, a king!) such as she. imagining that while she may ruin him he may also ruin her -- and how dare he mar her life with his stain? it would have been impossible to stay away. as quickly as he had considered it he had known this to be true, no matter how he might have tried to argue or talk himself out of it. chalking up the spark to wanting what he could not have, even as he knew it was so much more than that. a seed planted, growing in the shadows, hiding away until it was too late to uproot. he had thought of her every since since they had parted ways. her face in his minds eye, a statue carved from marble, and he had ached for her. yearned in a way he had never yearned before, counting down the minutes until he might see her again. the challenge that had pulled him from the mire, knowing that she might be there and he might steal a glimpse of her to feed the growing tree. and to be gifted with words! pretense, masks, and dare he say he liked the game? the facade of pretending that there was nothing there, that they were naught but two prior pride-mates, barely friends, almost enemies. only to slip away, here, now, and bask in this secret glow. was it his imagination, or was it stronger? the electricity that crackled between them, the pull to touch, to take, to worship. "oh aye?" husky, with a half-smirk that holds no weight. instead as his green eyes turn to hers (turned emerald in the dim shine of the shadows in the grotto) they hold a heat that turns them molten. "i've yearned for you," he admitted, and he cannot help himself. alaric is a weak man, and he purposely sidesteps to press his flesh against hers, to feel her small form against his own. with only the fireflies as witness he turns his head now and seeks to press his lips near her ear, to feather the lightest of kisses to her brow. "my aphrodite." giving voice to the thoughts and a name to the ache. @Aidoneus

Of all the things chosen—this would be the worst, an entanglement woven by their own hands.

How could fate allow this to happen? What divine right did it have to falter, to slip so low to allow her to choose this fall from grace? But, he says all the right things, digging against all fortitude.

Chiseling away at it all. Chastity was swept away in the billows of his exhale. And she fell into him, her weight braced by his closeness, held together by only that kiss. Aidoneus let slip a sigh, and with it went everything else. Every notion of conviction, every want for fidelity and honour. With that soft sound, came finally a sense of release.

Of relief.

In their stolen Eden, a house of stone and ivy.

So have me.

A challenge, assenting lust and cruel cruel cruel adulation.

Take me.

As if the waterfall had washed away thought of all else -- of the outside world and the weight of this reality -- he falls in to her. She becomes the center of his universe, the light in his life, and he wondered if she left would he forget how to breathe? So consuming was this feeling he imagined that she was his puppeteer and without her he would crumple to the ground. It was a strange feeling, to be so powerless. For her he would bend the knee and kiss the earth -- for her he would give up everything he had worked so hard for. She would never ask him to do it, he knew, but a very large part of him wanted to offer it all the same. Give it all up and run away, together, or perhaps carve out an existance in this very grotto. @Aidoneus melted in to him and here, now, there were no longer two. "Always," he murmured, as his kisses trailed from her ear down the curve of her jaw, tracing her as if he were an artist and she were his muse. From her jaw to the lines of her neck, where he bares his teeth and pinches the skin and thinks for a second that he might want to tear in to her the way she has so effortlessly eviscerated him. For she holds his very heart in her paws, there is no question about that. He moves, then, and drapes a leg over her shoulders, slides his teeth to her scruff. "Mine," he says again, a callback to their last meeting, a husky declaration that comes from between teeth and fur. And then he takes the gift she has offered, and his hands unwrap it layer by layer. Piece by piece. -- fade to black -- After -- the first of many 'afters' to come -- he is breathless. They are both on the ground, now, and he seeks to draw her closer, closer, his nose buried in the crook of her neck. Again, he wants to say. Again and again until he has consumed every sliver of her flesh, until he has sunk in to her very pores and taken up permanent residence beneath her skin. "Aido," he says instead, and there are a thousand things buried in that one little snip of her name. An aching, a yearning, and a deep satisfaction, all wrapped in four tiny little letters.

To sanctify their degeneracy, she was in want to gift him more, more.

As though this would cleanse the act, as though this would purge such wickedness, bathing it in the pale light of something more pure.

Less carnal, less selfish, less inconsiderate, less debauched. No, by twining their fates beneath fallen stars, Aidoneus wanted nothing more than to see it be unsullied.

Alloyed by his presence, she felt her face seek the warmth beneath his chin.

Tell me of your Before.

Before Amaryllis, before wives and thrones and children and politics.

The Before, where all of this would have been all the things they needed it to be. He’s only had what others have known. And in the afterglow of their sin, she wanted him to have the pieces she’d yet to give. Aidoneus had only given him partial truths, still shades greater than what Elvira had known, of what Amaroq could have known, more than anything else she’d given.

And in return—she wished the same from him. And in that selfishness, in that greed, she gathered him up in herself. Searching the quiet for answers she hoped only she would receive. As though, by revealing themselves, bare, this would be more than it was. As though, by shedding this skin, would mean to see that World they so wished for.

She breathed him in, bathed in the heat seeping from his embrace, pilling about every inch of his essence. A closeness she had always wanted.

A closeness she’d always needed.

Mine, he vowed.

And finally, as though this would be the price she were willing to pay, as she waited for him to pay his, Yours.

they lay as lovers do, curled in to each other, impossibly close and yet always needing more. more flesh to flesh, more breaths to entwine, more everything. this was different than anything else he had -- different than the passionate tangle of limbs he knew so well. this was gentle and for a fleeting second he wants to run from it. this could ruin him, could tear him apart and rebuild him in to something new, and he was afraid. where his blood might run cold she was there to heat him and he was there to greedily drink the warmth she gave. to take and take and hope that what she got in return was enough to keep her satisfied. Yours, she says, and he breaks down the last line of defense between them and gives her everything. "I was born in a desert," he begins, as he tugs her tighter to his chest and trails a paw across her side, "far from here. It was a very different place than this, more.... simple. Basic. Where the King was the King and that was the only thing that mattered. A pride was a King and his lioness' and the cubs were his and his alone." An existence she might have heard of, a whisper of days gone by, times of old. "My father was killed in a challenge when I was young -- I lived alone with my brothers until I was strong enough to take back what was mine." His birthright, his home. Would she hate him to know what it was like? To know the blood he had shed and the lives he had ended? There are pieces that he cannot give even her for fear that she would shun him forever. "I ruled for years -- until I caught the wrong end of a horn." A faint gesture to the scar that ran the length of his side, the twisted knotted thing that had nearly killed him. "I nearly died, and there were those that would take advantage of my weakness. I could not fight, not properly, and I lost my pride. I lost...." A hard swallow, because he will never forget that day. He will never forget the screams, the blood, the death. "By the time I was recovered enough to return my children were dead... so I didn't bother." Tighter, he grips, as he shares this weight with her.

She would have fumbled the moment—with a joke, ill-aimed at his hunting prowess, at ascending from sand to swamp.

To call him funny things and make light the woes of yesteryear.

Instead, she lay her chin at his chest. Taking in the tale with a pensive expression, yearning to do everything it would take to salve such wounds, to heal the tragedies of the worlds before this. Hers weren’t the hands to untangle that knot, to erase and eradicate from memory. They weren’t hers to undo, and so instead she purled herself ever nearer into @Alaric.

Her brow rested in the starless night of his mane, to weave herself into his smoke and ash. To mourn all the loss he’d known, all the struggle and the climb he’d had to make.

The determination he’d had to know frightened her, understanding all the more how dangerous of a game they’d begun to play. As he tightened, she gave a small yet heavy inhale, burrowing the aroma of him deeply into her chest.

Knowing no words could do the things she dreamt for him, to soothe the aches, she instead gave him kisses. Her lips reached in the darkness, seeking each eye, his cheek, and his chin. First of sympathy, the second from want, and the last out of need.

All the while knowing, all the while feeling, that they had both crossed oceans of tragedy to find this one perfect moment of peace.

He did not give voice to the shame that swelled when he thought of his failure -- the guilt that he carried even now, as he told her his story. He could not speak of the trauma because he had learned so long ago that men do not cry and trauma was not valid -- this was his lesson as a boy. There are no words to tell her of the screams that haunted him -- he does not tell her how he should have gone back but was not able to face them. Alaric had loved his wives (one in particular) in his own way; how could he expect them to forgive them after he had caused them so much pain? @Aidoneus does not give him pity, and thank the gods for that. There is no judgement, no meaningless and empty words. Instead she gives what he needs and he allows her touch to burn across his flesh and turn him in to ash. Sympathy, want, need. "You next," he rumbles as he returns her kisses with his own that gradually morph in to something more insistent. Claws unsheathed to trail along her side and prick at her skin, gently and delicately, careful not to ruin the canvas he only wants to worship. "But first..." the grief turns in to fire and he does not fight it, pulling at her, moving her to where he wants her, a question in his eyes and on his lips. "Again..." asking her even as his teeth tangle in her fur and he strikes the match against her skin.