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You make your move at the tail-end of the banquet, right as parting hour draws near.
Dance with me, you whisper, an offer to spar.
Sunflower eyes widen, an objection laced with confusion. You can tell he senses the challenge in your tone.
A gauntlet-clad hand lands on your outstretched palm. Through the metal, you feel a comforting heat; the prince destined for a greater fate granting you a final audience before he departs at the crack of the next entry hour.
You guide his left hand to rest on your shoulder, and hold the other in yours.
He nods as you settle into position. Your hand hovers above his back, at the point where the ribcage intersects with the spine. He leans back, as if seeking your touch.
In complete acceptance, he relaxes, and you feel the shift of muscle beneath your fingertips. The raised lines of his tattoos send heat through your clammy skin, and if you press a little closer to chase warmth, well. That is one more secret you keep to yourself.
You look forward.
The man before you—his soft features framed with hair reminiscent of the wheatfields you grew up in, meets your gaze. Squeezes your hand, an assurance.
Trust, in whatever becomes of this competition of yours.
You give his hand a gentle tug in return. He is no scarecrow standing guard in the farmlands of Aedes Elysiae, but he will make an excellent dance partner all the same. Your lips curl at the thought. Best to keep this in your head as well, lest you— oh, he’s seen through you again, it seems, a tug at your cheek pulling you back from memories of whimsical fairytales shared in the late hours of the night.
A romantic story, is that right? For your sake,
(the tarot card on your person trembles)
for all our sakes, I’ll make sure of it.
You step forward, and as if your movements are one and the same, he steps back.
Thus begins a seamless series of transitions:
alternating shifts of your bodies,
legs playing an intricate game of tag,
hesitant steps light like raindrops on puddles,
skittering until you're teetering on the edge of a dip.
pulling your partner close, his weight on your chest grounds you
to the swinging,
swaying,
sauntering to a rhythm thrumming between your heartbeats,
his every breath mingling with your heated exhales.
Your first dance ends with twin smiles as he assumes the position you did just then.
A hand on your back, the metal of the gauntlet radiating adrenaline-induced heat that seeps through your armor, piercing your vertebrae, merging with the blood thrumming through you. You guide your own hand to rest on his bare shoulder, thumb resting against the dip of his collarbone, near the pulse radiating the same life you feel.
A beat, synchronized, and the scene continues.
You're led through the same moves but in reverse, and the thought of surrendering control like this should terrify you but instead you feel at ease, as if the weight of the world has disappeared from your shoulders for a fraction of a second. Momentum tethers you to this moment, this sequence of motions merging into a novel blend of an age-old tale retold by blades followed by quiet whispers and quieter gestures.
Gravity shifts, your vision spinning as he dips you once more, as quiet as you had guided him earlier.
And again, your mutual movements harmonize into a crescendo the choirs could only hope to achieve, punctuated by your body being lifted off the ground.
Strong hands cradle your waist as if you were made of glass instead of raw ore,
you feel the setting Sun prick your neck as you are held up against the light like a jewel being examined.
And like a fabled celestial body in orbit you do not resist the pull, the pull of fading light reflected by your equal too strong to resist.
You graze a fingertip against his temple, the distant memory of woven marigold crowns flashing before your eyes as he leans into your touch. A final shifting of your bodies, and in your vision he is surrounded by the last remnants of dusk.
The gold of the Sun is a better crown for him than one made of blood, you muse, and if you could forge light then you would have crafted it for him in a heartbeat.
Mydeimos, you whisper more to yourself than to him, are you ready for tomorrow?
The answer is hidden in his gaze, and you find yourself leaning down to chase it. The warmth of his body has become a furnace, raw power simmering beneath. How amusing it should be, that a simple dance brings out this much in him as it does to you.
Cradling his cheeks, you lean forward. Surrounded by the heat, this aftermath of yet another competition, you allow your eyes to fall shut as your partner's exhale touches your lips.
You know how the story goes by now, and like the hero in the fairytales you read growing up, you let yourself fall into the motions, letting instinct guide you to meet him in the middle. Adrenaline builds with every collision between you two, over and over again, culminating in an extinction of all the emotions you've burned away throughout this journey...
the first coreflame you ever seized felt like heated iron through your veins,
lighting the pain your extinguished emotions are telling you to have.
liquid fire ignited your blood for a while, kept you warm for a while,
until the next one million sparks forced lava out of your every exhale.
the final coreflame of this cycle sends heat to your eyes, vapor clouding your view,
golden flecks of blood blurring with the silver of the crumpled titan before you.
become the dawn, deliverer, he said, in the tone of a promise you have been keeping all these millenia.
and as the first rays of light illuminate the hilt of your blade, your vision clears.
you take in the sight of him, the fallen titan, no, demigod of Strife,
who gave himself to you once more, a thousand, no, ten thousand—one hundred thousand times over.
the lifeless hand that you hold over your ribcage is sharp as a shard of ice,
claw-shaped fingers piercing through your heat like Dawnmaker through your spine,
pressing the air out of you as you
choke and
scream and
mourn for a time,
for many times,
for the first time in a long time.