Duskfire Glacier blood in the snow

— his breath fogs thick where it breaks from his ribs, a slow exhale that tastes of iron and age, and it curls between his tusk-bitten teeth as he moves, a black-blooded weight against the pale, the grind of his paws dragging through shallow crust.

blackfell walks the corpse of darukaal, a son raised on violence and veneration both: his head low, eyes red, and the twitch of his tail cutting his path wide along the spine of the western ridge.

he presses into a pillar of ice, shoulder-first, scenting it with the drag of his flank and the scrape of thick ruff. it’s been two nights since the last mark and the wind has thinned it to nothing. he pisses, lifts his leg, snorts once and moves on.

the crownore stops and stares out over the vast silver plain below, past the black rocks and sunken rime, toward the broken teeth of the eastern crags where the ice caves begin.

he drinks in the wind. looking, watching, waiting.

maybe @Jokul or @Morwenna !

her body was a husk.

what little strength she’d clung to had been leeched by the dark mouths of the lanzadoii, by their gnawing cold and the constant hunger that rattled her bones. when she stumbled down the slope, it was not with grace but with the desperation of one who had survived only to fall again.

snow clutched at her limbs as though to keep her. she tore free only to collapse lower, sliding, her ribs sharp beneath the ruined sheen of her dappled coat. her breath rattled from her throat in shallow bursts, curling white against the stark air.

when she crashed at last into the basin’s edge, she lay still for a moment, a ghost spat out by the glacier. the starlight, thin and pitiless, showed her scars too fresh, too many, her muscles trembling as if even the earth rejected her weight.

she lifted her head once. and in the blurring dark above, through the sting of wind in her eyes, she thought she saw him.

blackfell.

her voice cracked, a rasp torn raw by thirst and silence:

blackfell,

and then morwenna, star eater, once-queen, fell forward into the snow again.

— it is unmistakable.

the scent that wires through him stalls him mid-step, the brute's breath catching within in his chest. a snarl half-forms and then dies before it exists within his throat. and blackfell turns, slowly, and for a heartbeat—

his heart stops.

his name upon her tongue is haunting, a chilling refrain that brings his onyx fur to a bristle. suddenly, she is no ghost. she is real. real, terrible, raw; and blackfell moves. thick laws churning through the fresh snow fall upon the glacier.

great haunches driving through the powder, steam flaring from his nostrils, all caution shredded in the space between heartbeats. when blackfell reaches her, he does not hesitate in coming to her side, nose finding its place within the fur of her throat. head sliding beneath her neck to lift her.

morwenna, his voice is of grit and ice, but melting with a serenity for her. for his queen. i have you.

her body trembled beneath him, too thin, too worn, but still hers. still alive.

her throat quaked with the effort of breath, and when his muzzle pressed into the hollow of her neck she gave a sound—half sob, half laugh—that cut sharp into the frozen air. she leaned into him, every ounce of her weight surrendered to his shoulder, his strength.

blackfell, she whispered again, this time less ghost, more woman. her lips brushed against the coarse fur of his ruff as if she might anchor herself there, as if only his solidity kept her from splintering into the snow.

tears burned her eyes, hot against the ice-wind, but she refused them. she had been taken, broken, starved, but not erased. not while he stood here.

i thought… her voice cracked, words breaking apart. i thought i’d never breathe free air again.

her legs buckled, but she clung to him still, her muzzle buried into the shadow of his chest, where his heartbeat was steady, certain, alive.

don’t— she rasped, as if he was the gods themselves. don’t let them take me back.

—they won’t, it is his vow to her.

they won’t touch you again.

he means it with the kind of certainty that built blackmarch, the kind of oath that crowns are forged from. but this is no court. this is bone and ice and breath. this is her.

while she grapples with him, clinging to her breath, to her life, blackfell's head raises. crimson eyes sweeping the length of the snow expanse, the heart of the glacier. protectively, rising, and settling upon four thick, muscled legs above her fallen form.

he howls for @Gjalla.

and then his head dips once more, nose brushing along the sides of her face. nosing past tears, a tongue rasping thinly over a scar that nicks her ear. she has been branded by the lanzadoii, her purity stolen. and his heart burns with wrath for his queen.

i am sorry, morwenna. blackfell rumbles to her ear. i failed you.

her mate's call carried her forward before thought could catch her, the sound of him—of need—pulling her like a tether. she did not understand the urgency until her scent touched gjalla's nose.

morwenna. the sight struck her like a spear to the gut, stole the air from her lungs the moment she tried to catch her breath. for a heartbeat, she only stared at the bristled shape crumpled in powdery white, chest heaving.

"wenna," her voice crackled like she might weep. she crossed the last stretch in a few swift strides and dropped her haunches beside them, crown bent toward her sister. her gaze flicked once to blackfell—burning and wordless—before they anchored on morwenna again, softer. "you're safe, my heart, you're safe."

another look to blackfell, this time speaking in their mother-tongue, "what has happened?"

morwenna shuddered at blackfell’s vow, the sound of it settling into her bones like heat after endless cold. she wanted to believe him—needed to—but the memory of lanzadoii teeth and chains still gnawed her marrow. she could only bury her face harder into the dark wall of his chest, her body trembling against his.

then—gjalla.

the name alone split her open. her head jerked, raw eyes finding her sister through the blur of tears and frost. her lips parted, a broken sound scraping free, something between relief and grief. she reached, paw trembling, scrabbling toward gjalla’s foreleg until she felt her, warm and solid in the snow.

sister, she rasped, voice little more than a gasp. they— her throat closed, words tangled, so she swallowed them down and shook her head, sharp, desperate. i am here now. with you.

she leaned, pressed herself to both of them, weak but clinging. as if their nearness alone could knit her soul back together.

you must not look upon me, she whispered, shame flooding her chest, burning hotter than the cold ever had. i am… ruined. her gaze darted up, catching blackfell’s crimson, then gjalla’s storm-lit eyes. but i am yours still. both of you. if you will have me.

— his breath burns hot in his chest, thick billows into the winter air. founded upon the rage stemming from morwenna's state, the tragedy that has befallen her at the hands of heathens.

and still, she tries to speak. no, he could not bear it, he would not let her speak another word that shaped her mouth around unworthiness.

do not speak, morwenna. he rasps. save your strength. and so he shifts, carefully, so not to jostle her. he gathers her across his back, adjusts her paws so they won’t drag, so she’s cradled against the rise of his spine. hackles rising at the feel of her tremble against him.

his gaze cuts to his mate, tight with fury but tempered now by worry, by helplessness. he knows that she shares his same sentiments. we will bring you home.

he turns, shifting his weight to bear morwenna better, and begins to move.

when morwenna reached for her, gjalla lowered her head at last, black-tipped ears canting back as she let her sister’s paw find her foreleg. her touch is undoing, and gjalla has never felt so weak.

she had imagined this reunion a thousand different ways, but none of them had looked like this. none with her spirit-sister small and trembling, none with shame in her eyes like some crime had been committed.

a low sound rolls out of her throat, a warning and a plea. "enough," she said, nose brushing into morwenna’s crown, "nothing will ever ruin you. nothing ever could." she says the words and she means them. she was as beautiful as the day they lost her.

after a heartbeat she rose just enough to give space to blackfell as he bore morwenna’s weight. her eyes were on him now, cold and cutting even as her jaw worked to keep her voice steady. "home," she echoed.

her body trembled as it shifted against blackfell’s spine, frail limbs sliding into place where he set them. every breath came shallow, a soft whimper pressed into his dark ruff. she did not fight him, did not answer, her voice a thing long broken and left somewhere in the dark.

eyes closed, lashes wet, she let herself be carried. the weight of her own bones too much, the press of his strength beneath her the only tether. gjalla’s words sank into her, a balm she could not yet believe but could not let go of either.

so she said nothing. curled tighter into herself, into them, into the promise of home.