Larksong Grotto done running

You killed him because you liked the way it felt.

Wasn't that just the bitter, cruel truth he's been running from this entire time? Spoken by a man who disgusts him, as much as he enthralls him. Spit with venom that leeches beneath his skin to settle and rot. It serves to enrage him all the further as his metaphorical hands reel Erys closer, only to then slam him back against the tree trunk with enough force to knock wind from those weak lungs. Adonis was the one who craved the kill, who lavished in the glow that came after. And he isn't like his father. He isn't, he isn't, he—

In his peripheral lay the dead rogue. Mangled, bloodied. Those dead eyes leering at him. Something wicked curls in his gut.

Is he?

"You know nothing!" Emýr bellowed with rage and fire. "Fucking nothing! I should rip the tongue from your jaws!" His anger threatens to consume him whole, and red threatens to blot out his vision. He trembles in his attempt to fight it, but it's a battle he'd never won before. The possessive, cruel part of him writhes like a worm beneath his skin. A parasite, ready to assimilate the host. He doesn't want Erys, he doesn't need him to bend. So why does he wish for him to break beneath his palms?

The shoves are weak, useless. He couldn't escape, as the Crownore simply would not allow it. Not now, not when they've gotten tangled into this mess and not when something white-hot inside of him craves to either kill or claim. He isn't himself, or at least that's what he tells himself, as he lunged forward to sink the blade of his teeth into that frail neck. Jaws squeezing that throat with just enough pressure not to crush, but to constrict. The wheeze beneath his teeth and the frantic pulse beneath his tongue drive him wild. Feral.

Erys was not his. But he could not be anyone else's. Emýr would carve his mark upon his skin to serve as a grim reminder.