A sheep in need of a shepherd.
Well, maybe I wanted to be the wolf instead.
Something inside of me snapped, or maybe it clawed its way out of the darkness where I'd been hiding it.Maybe, fed on a diet of misery and pain, it had finally grown strong enough to bite and snarl its way free.But wherever it came from, however long it had been waiting, it surged to life then, free from its prison.Unstoppable andwretched.
I blinked and found myself on top of the sephear, pinning them down while my fists pounded into their face and throat – relentless.The pain which had been hounding me was far away, a distant memory, an echo, a dream.I hit them again and again, their body wet and mucousy beneath me, their ruptured eye spraying viscera into the air between us.My knuckles split as I struck them, again and again and again, my mind fuzzing out to nothing but the heady rush of violence.In the distance, I could hear screaming and I thought it must be the sephear.
But as I felt hard hands on my shoulders, pulling me back and saw that the sephear's face was entirely concave, nothing more than pulp, I realized that they hadn't been the one screaming.
It was me.
Elethenn hauled me back with steady hands, shoving me down to a seated position several paces from the sephear's body.Wind gusted over my tacky skin as the paledrian ran down the alley – I struggled to get up, but Elethenn pushed me down again, crouched in front of me and saying something.I couldn't hear him, couldn't hear anything except the pounding of my heartbeat and a shrill note that cut through anything else.
I blinked, and the sephear's corpse was gone.There were ward guards.One loomed over me, scowling, and my hands flexed and tightened and the beast in me snarled and Elethenn pressed a palm to the middle of my chest and –
I blinked, and I was seated in a ward shuttle, partitioned from the front.I looked down and my hands were covered with yellow and green blood; my knuckles were split, smears of red peeking through.Everything hurt.Everythinghurt.I was shivering, trembling, and I didn't understand why.My mouth tasted of copper, my head throbbing.
I blinked, and I wasn't in the shuttle.I was sitting in a room somewhere else, small and brightly lit, curled up in a chair that was too small for me.My legs were folded up, heels resting on the edge of the seat; I was cradling one arm hard against my chest and it throbbed and burned.I’d been been hollowed out, nothing but pain and emptiness now.My shoes were spattered in a technicolour miasma.My mouth was dry, and I felt like I might be sick.Goosebumps prickled all over my skin.
I blinked, and across the silver table, smeared with fingerprints and the rings from mugs that had been set down and picked up, I saw Araxis.I looked at him – his pale face, washed to matte white, so stiff and still it was like a mask – and I heard, in the distance, a soft keen of distress.
Familiar.I let myself blink, just the once, and when I opened my eyes, he was still there, watching me, body curved forward just a little."Hi," I murmured, and my mouth tasted like blood.
"Sashen."He rose to his feet, stepping around the table to draw to my side.His fingers threaded through my hair and he tipped my head against his chest.I could feel the rumbling beneath his skin, and all at once it was like I could breathe.
Except the breathing came as a gasp, desperate and shocked."Oh fuck," I hissed.One hand – still streaked with blood, a mix of mine and the sephear's – rose and scrubbed my face."Fuck, I – Did I –"
"You defended yourself," Araxis said, firm.His fingers dug harder against me, the pressure reminding me to stay here, to stayherewith him."The ward guards had to verify what happened.I madesureit was done properly.It is done now.You can come home.All is well, beloved.You defended yourself."
My eyes were squeezed shut, my hands shaking when they dropped to the dirty silver table in front of me."My hands –" I started, voice quavering, staring at my knuckles, then rotating my wrists so that I could look at my palms.There was a tiny scab at the edge of my pinky where the sephear had threatened to take the finger off.
"Let me," murmured Araxis and he must have spoken to someone who was listening, because a bowl of water and a cloth appeared in the time it took me to lick my lips and swallow against my dry throat, all while he just held me and stroked my hair and rumbled against me, soothing, and I continued to stare in horror at my bloodied hands.
But was it horror at what I'd done?Or horror at what I'd had to become, what I had unleashed?
The wolf, I thought distantly.
Araxis carefully set the bowl on the floor and knelt down in front of me.He pulled one hand into my lap, supporting my elbow as he moved it, and then set to gently washing the blood from my skin, tracing the cloth along the broken hills and valleys of my knuckles, swiping the gore from my calloused palms.
He'd washed my hands once before, after our dinner on the ship before we'd fallen into bed together.Back when he'd been lying to me.Back when I'd been falling in love with him.I watched him do it now, and I felt sick for a reason I didn't understand.Was it the line of tension in his jaw, the edge distress I could still hear in his throat?Was it the way his stare darted away from me, like he couldn't quite look at me?
"I'm sorry," I said, breathless, my voice so small and quiet that I didn't even sound like myself.He shouldn't have to be here.He shouldn't have to see this.He shouldn't –
Araxis finished with one of my hands and pulled the other into my lap."You have nothing to be sorry for," he murmured, gently dragging the cloth over the back of my hand.Rinsing the blood out.Raising it again to continue the slow work.
"I should have –" I stopped, unable to find the next words.
WhatshouldI have done?I didn't even know why this hadhappened, and – and I'dtriedto talk my way out, I had, and then they'd pinned me and hurt me and they might have killed me, if – if –
My thoughts ground to a stop."Where's Elethenn?"I mumbled, needing to know.How had he been there?Whyhad he been there?
Araxis's hands paused, just for a moment, before he turned my wrist so that he could rinse the final bits of viscera from my palm."He had to speak with the guards at some length, but he has now been released.I’ve sent him ahead to the creche, where we will speak."
There was an edge of tension to his voice that made something throb in my chest, unpleasant, but I couldn't put words to it now.Instead, I scrambled for details, anything that would make sense while Araxis finished wiping every fleck of blood from my skin."But – whowerethey?And why did they –Why?"
Araxis set the filthy cloth into the bowl, still kneeling before me.His fingers traced the split skin of my knuckles, his touch cool and soft."We will speak at home," he said after a long moment, during which all I could do was stare as his unblemished fingers traced the broken skin of my hands, as he touched me with reverence despite the thing I'd become.Araxis leaned forward, then, and pressed a kiss to each knuckle, one after the other, then rotating each hand so that he might press a kiss to the centre of my palms.He turned his head and rested it there, cradled in my upturned palms, and breathed in deeply, shakily, his eyes drifting shut.
The moment had the weight of something left unsaid.My fingers tensed, just a little, where they cradled his face; I wanted to trace the pointed shape of his ear; I wanted to undo his braid and thread my fingers through his unbound crest; I wanted to sink down to the floor beside him so that he could wrap his arms around me and hold me tight.
