Qeya River do i wanna know?

a wildfire rips through all he has tried to bury, all he has tried to quell. he does not flinch when she spits at him, does not recoil when she bellows her fury into the night. run. the word is a blade, not for its truth, but for the way she wields it against him. as if she has any right! as if she was not the one who had gone first, left first, chosen first! his lips curl. teeth flash in something close to disgust.

do not speak to me of what was taken from you!

the words are guttural, ragged, torn from a place he does not wish to name. his voice lowers, the edge of a blade to a throat. i have lived my life in the wake of you, morwenna!

her name falls from his tongue like a curse, like a prayer, like something he does not know how to let go of. his voice, once strong, once powerful, now weakened by the affairs of the heart. cracking flimsily with the ambitions of the soul. let her see him, for what he was! what he had been.

years! he whirls on her, eyes of crimson bearing the fruit of his soul, laid out for her to see. he meets her scoff with one of his own, but this laden with pain and a tortuous agony that has claimed him longer than he can remember. years you have tormented my mind. a confession wrapped in the cloth of a madman's bleeding heart. and now you have the nerve to accuse me a disloyal man. he takes two steps backwards, tail a lashing arc above his pelvis. eyes narrowing as he looks upon her with not disgust but something clothed in a similar fabric. yes! it has been discussed.

he is quiet for but a moment as the storm gathers between them, dark clouds full of tempest and sorrow. gjalla wishes for something more. veksar wishes for something more. his voice now is filled with sarcasm dripping with anger. what about what he wanted? what about—

blackfell spits. forget all that he had said to them! all that he had thought. the woman before him only ever brought up second guesses, drawing him to question what he thought was ever true and what was. he tells gjalla one thing, he tells veksar another. but what is it that he truly wanted?

i fill my mind with thoughts of duty. with thoughts of love for stormrift's great heiress. but it is—... he shakes his head. looking to morwenna as if something might change. her mind, perhaps! her loyalties, maybe. but there is fear—fear that that is far too late. that they have went down paths that they may never return from. but it is— another long, dramatic pause, as he searches morwenna's face. as he looks upon the tears that sodden her cheeks in graceful, crystalline pools. he stalks towards her once more to close the distance between them, a slight tremble in each stride as if he might be overwhelmed by his emotion and urges at any moment.

morwenna...