"The Devil asked me how I knew my way around the halls of Hell.
I told him I did not need a map for the darkness I knew so well."
t.m.t
- x -
Jax was running his bare finger under one of the leather braces of his armour, light as he was in the castle but still just as needed. The black was stained red in some places evident that he was the killing machine that everyone spoke him to be. His tall frame was even more tense and agitated as he saw his bride to be's face flit from his yet again, even though the celebration was downcasted by the month old scar that was his father's death Jax had expected her to go back to being the simpering wallflower that did everything he expected her to be.
A snap of his fingers and she was bowing at his feet kissing his boots, or loosening his chainmail from his body begging to see more of it. But she sat there in her seat that sat next to hers, the plump velvet cushions more decadent than his like there wasn't a care in the world. One of her legs was tucked under her bottom and her elbow of the same side rested on the table while she drank the heavily scented wine of the evening. Blonde hair touched by a long ago worshipped sun tumbled out of her crown made out of braids, woven by the women that wanted him. Ready to slice her throat at the slightest indication that he wanted them instead of Calla.
If they only knew the truth of the woman whom he was to marry.
That he had snatched her from her home because her and her dearly departed Papa had killed his father. The old man's head had been lopped off just like Jaxon's father's had during the ritual that would have left him in peace with his final days, Jax in charge and the winter eternally ongoing. But Calla's rebel lot had decided they didn't like the harsh winter, slathering blood of their own on castle walls that the Frost would end. As if they controlled it.
The Dŭrovs would never again sprout from the ground with their almost total control of the world, no more green, no more birds chirping or the sounds of insects buzzing around. It was the cold chill that was heard in the bleak evenings, the crackling of warm fires to keep beings that were born of the cold and doom from losing their minds, it was the crackling of ice emotions that people heard as a constant tick of their pathetic lives.
"Are you ready to fess up lyubimets?" He purred at her, his dark locks slipping from the slicked back perfection that it normally was, streaking his fingers over her chin down past her throat into the slight dip of her dress that exaggerated her form even more than it normally was. As her heart stopped for a brief second and then slammed back into existence Calla's blue eyes turned toward him and narrowed. She wasn't a pet and he was to know that soon, he knew it and she knew it. Only a matter of time until she bit back.
Calla's tongue was copper in both blood and the copper deposits that she had fed upon earlier in the day, the glittering frost that adorned her arms and up around her throat like a high necked collar moved in revolution as Jax touched her. Plucked like the flower she was named after Calla Liliya wanted to tear her nails into his throat and start digging in until she pulled muscles and sinew out to chew. She was a Neprimirim, a being that once worshipped death so much that they became the frost, Skeletal beings that fed on the earth and ruined they touched, but Calla and the small band of rebels that she had grown up with under her father's leadership missed the tales of the warmth, of how things used to be that they could exist with others. No wars, no horizon that would mean they would either start inbreeding or dying out.
Prims weren't made, they weren't born as healthy or strong anymore Calla and the people smart enough to read the signs saw it looming. But assholes like Jax and his father who had lost grips of his own mind long before the Prince's birth had made the harsh winterland that was their ancestral home nothing.
Wasteland. Corrupt. Frigid...The Frost meant death to all.
"Not a pet, not yours nor anyone elses Jaxon Stomana...you are named after the highest thing we can eat and yet you aren't steel. You have nothing in you but hatred and disease, these women want you but they don't know the truth, I am a prisoner in your bed and your...filth." She hissed leaning over her seat and elbows on his throne. To anyone looking they were in love, couldn't keep each other out of their hands or minds.
"You plucked me from my bed, cut off my father's head and took everything from me I am the Queen of Waste." Calla whispered to him and then leaned in, her lips curving around his and her tongue darting out to meet his. Prims weren't prim, they weren't proper they were excess in everything. So even when Calla hated her enemy she would want him and Jax in his 6'5 muscle bound warrior body made her want him.
The smirk, the glinting eyes that promised ecstasy. Just like Calla's bow shaped lips and figure invited a man into her bed so that she could devour them after she was done.
"We didn't murder your father, he was better than you ever-"
Jax had her over his throne and straddling his lap so that he could cup her throat hard enough that ice cracked her her visage dropped; gaunt mask of skeletal features clinging to frost, eyes slicking perfect ice blue and red lips as blood on the snow Calla knew her mistake.
"And yet you continue to act like a murderess...be kinder with your words dear before the council walks up and realizes that I keep you alive for how you warm my bed." Another vicious lie, twisting what little truth there was to his own disturbing uses. Debasing her and her virtue. When she looked behind her to the council they both stiffened. Another meeting to discuss the same old and tired thing as ever. That Jax wasn't worthy, that he himself had finished off the King before so that he could gain rule quicker and because of it all he had doomed them all.
Because the Frost was melting.
"Ah if it isn't the same old men who act like lechers over my bride and then lecture me about how to behave." Stroking Calla's hair she smartly put her head against his throat, keeping him safe.
If Jax was safe and in charge no one worse than him would come to the rule, that her people were safe under his deal. Strange bedfellows they made because he had dominated her one evening while she had slept. His pet, his flower, his captive.
"Prince-sorry King Jaxon." the eldest of the council doddered on and then gave a pathetic excuse for a bow. His smile missing teeth, the skeleton more than the man like what became any of them when they greeted death's door. Jaxon's father had looked utterly frightening even as the hardened warrior that he was. Feeling Calla stiffen under him more she twisted her head down.
A warning? The council had flocked his small table with their bodies forming a circle as if they could decimate him? Get him to behave?
Rolling his wrist and telling them to go on with their tired old breaths so he could continue torturing Calla's misery to an all time high he just widened his eyes, the smirk dripping in malice and hatred. He hated people stepping up to the plate to back him down with they brought nothing to back him down with.
"The Dŭrovs..."
"Are DEAD!" Jax hissed loud enough that several maids who were starting the feast dropped glittering jewels down on the ground and backing away. The stupid mushroom living creatures of the fucking forest. As if they had anything left in them after 35 years of Frost to come out of their holes and claim the right to anything. Jax's hand tightened on Calla and he felt her wince from the pressure of it, somehow he pried his hand lose and then went to send his hand over her hair soothingly.
Nobody gotta see the truth.
Calla knew the second the old bastards came forth that whatever hold on his temper would be gone by they started to talk to Jax. Her blue eyes focused on the hands that were covered in rings. Dipped in poisons and other deadly devices, rumor was that he could use the metal on his body as weapons something Calla never quite planned to ask.
But she would protect him. He was pathetic as he looked down as others as, when he slept he cried for the father that never loved him. Just like she cried for the father that hadn't gotten to see her live free. Clawing tooth and nail to keep the bile down she somehow did, pushing to Jax's knee and lifting her head up the sharp spikes of frost on her throat dug in like tiny pinpricks, blood beading up slightly so that she was aware of just how tense she was. The dress like her whole wardrobe was silk and gossamer lace clinging to her form like most Prim's, making them the object of affection when most men would slip in and create pools of blood. Calla's gaze narrowed on them dangerously and she was every bit the Queen Jax's people were teaching her to be.
"If you have something more important for your King then say it if not where are my gifts? Is it not my engagement celebration? I signed my life away in literal buckets of blood." As was tradition the blood of the common family had been drained from Calla as she lay in a grave of silver shards, gold fragments and other elements of the earth while Jax poured his blood down her throat, hand massaging her skin as she wanted to vomit it all back up.
Calla would receive these treatments her whole life from the point of marriage, to be without them would make her weaker. It was how the Prim's made sure that no one left them, how bloodlines weren't tainted. How children were made, only the strongest survived and incidents in the past had made it so that the unclean or unwanted were cast out. How many people had wandered out of the castle walls forgotten and confused because they weren't cold enough?
Her own mother.
Neprimirim's were cold, they had brought the Frost because they no longer wanted 3 months out of 12. They had decimated entire populaces of humans, animals and the world to be in charge. No longer torn apart pieces of the world; the Frost had pushed ice caps together and melded everything together to form the wasteland that was the Earth.
History lessons had told of their glorious rise to power some 35 years ago.
When Jax's father had lost his sanity entirely at the end of his reign, killing Jaxon's own mother for some slight that had never been announced, locking up his son and himself in the tower and encasing everything that was in ice.
Some said it was a mistake, some said it was supposed to be by the way of untold words, some said it was deserved.
Calla knew it as the truth. As she had always said it was a death sentence.
Jaxon decided that maybe he wouldn't kill her, maybe he would keep her as a pet or a concubine as he married someone worthy of having his heirs, as it was when he slept next to her in sleep he felt her skin just a fraction warmer and he saw the pale features pinken with something that he hadn't seen. Even his own olive complexion ran cold. The light blue veins prominent in the ghoulish light of day. His whiskey colored eyes were flickered with glass.
Even his smile was a pearly white reminder of the world.
"Ah my Queen has a backbone gentlemen. Do what she bids or I am afraid she'd have something of mine." As if he was afraid that he could give her a piece of his mutated and grotesque heart. When they ate from the literal earth Prims made it thickened tar like they would eventually bleed out as death claimed them. That's what Jax knew his heart was made out of, tar encased with a thick shell barely pumping out red blood.
He lived in a world of bitingly cold frost colored lashes and crimson essence.
With Calla's knowledge she was a force to be reckoned with, something that knew how to act because he had beat it into her skull enough. His power, her brain they became a perfect pair if he could allow himself to think that way.
"They are a real threat Jax. If you are too naive-"He broke off in a gurgled noise as Jaxon pulling Calla along with him clutched the old being's throat, eyes narrowing and the muscles banding together. He was strength of a mountain that he would normally never equate himself with, as the sad facts were ice wasn't always the strongest but the mountain that it entombed was.
The living creatures had claimed strength in their trees and fortitude in the smallest things they could turn themselves into. Flurries were good for traveling and the heat of battle but how could you beat vanishing totally? Jax knew his weaknesses while not many in number were detrimental to him and his people. To be a good leader like Jasper had once been, leading them to safety and another millennia of being in charge.
Trying to pull Jax's hand from his throat he just eventually stopped struggling and it was only then that Jax let the idiot go. Tossing Calla back to her original chaise, the wine spilling as throne knocked against table. Blood images spilled out across her stomach, down her legs and spilling in dark colored drops. A horrible flash covered his mind and Jax for a single moment actually cared about Calla.
And then it vanished like footsteps in snow.
Calla gasped as she was tossed back and then the warm wine spilled down her in a furious and glorious rush; it was like she had been slashed clean open with everything to be seen in front of her. Hands stained red she just pushed back her corn silk hair out of her face. Let her be the savage Jax claimed her to be. The killer, the rebel filth that he slept next to. Hand always reaching up over her shoulder to clutch the dagger that dipped just under her pillow.
Inches away from death at any given time.
If they pushed much longer Calla would bear the marks of what their bold news brought.
He never beat her, he always got close enough to threaten her but he never touched her.
The threat was always enough.
"Gentlemen of the council, my King if we do not have any accusations to hurl or news to bring may we continue our celebration of two Kings? I had my song to sing, and we have the feast after all we didn't dig deep into the core for sapphires and diamonds for nothing did we?" She was covered in blood for all purposes needed but Calla wasn't going to back down. Tired of being slighted by her sisters who thought she wasn't anything more than the baby of the family. Another mouth to feed, another cast off in rags that made them look bad. How ever would they get husbands because of her?
Calla Lily, the reminder of all things that should die.
She didn't sing well but what she did came from her soul. Instantly Jax pulled her up and started moving her roughly to the stage and then slammed his fist to the nearest table filled with elements of the earth, all looked at her with disdain. Suddenly feeling like she couldn't breathe Calla tried to find her voice, find the ground beneath her feet, the chains of silver and ice creating shoes for her bare feet as if she couldn't meet the snow covered ground and be fine.
It was all for show just like their fanciful clothes.
The song was about loss and anger; two lovers meeting in a cave as one became lost to the sun that had broken out one fateful day embracing the woman in a touch that the man had never been able to get again. He had been off to war during most of their marriage even missing the birth of the child that was lost itself. The song was achingly beautiful and had been passed around as long as the frost.
When she was done there was cracking ice sounds on most people's cheeks, their hands raised in memory of King Jasper, of the marriage of his only son and future daughter in law.
They celebrated a lie and mourned a killer.
Calla choked back a sob herself and felt the intense heat that came from her crying, soon she would start feeling ill and she knew she had to go. Feeling emotions wasn't foreign to Prim's they loved and felt losses but none of them embraced it like Calla did, falling asleep to stories like her songs from her mother.
Dreaming of a dark love to save her from the misery of being hungry and laboring for the royal family and those in better positions. Of sleeping in a single roomed home upon everyone else or seeing someone waste away to the tar because they were too hungry or weak. Calla in her path knocked things aside, the table clattered and wine goblets did too. Her feet tore on the ice covered ground until she was in the open air.
Gusts of air spilled from her lips making thin coverings of frost tinge her lashes and lips, her cheeks already made cooler by her tears clung to ice and other unforgiving elements.
If it had been any colder she knew her whole body would have become surrounded by frost.
Boots heaving steeled stomped toward her and Calla somehow sensed the hand was coming and she yanked it away just as he went to pull her. While the action made it so that she fell onto the ice with a sickening sound she was staring up at him blonde hair finally free of all clasping pins.
Her chest heaved up and down still disgusted by his previous touch and she just pointed at him.
"How can you not sense the change?!"
Jaxon had been touched by her effort to protect him and the care she gave, the song that she had sang but she was out of control, bending down to his knees to follow her he clasped her ankle and dragged her in to his embrace so that he could pin her to the snow, but as he went to do it a tiny little sound of hooves too light to be a horse or whatever their version was made Jax look up. There in the mist was a pure white deer, red eyes blinking as it came close. Innocence in it's being.
Forbidden in it's being, with the vine wrapping a collar and a note attatched to it. Snagging it forward and keeping his hand on Calla's throat he made her read it to him, her tongue slipping lyrically on the page, husky from all the emotions she didn't want to feel..
We live.
We breathe.
We are warm where you've caused bereave.We do not yet seek war.But a call for peace.If you've set this Frost upon us then it's an end you will meet. Come forth with your council. Meet us in three dawns. We will discuss a treaty, or shake hands over none. The mass in the center of the broken lands. Where sun meets horizon and green meets bland. We will wait no longer than a day's time.If you do not come,We will take that as your surrender In due time.
Dŭrvos.
The manly scrawl was scratched in the bark and the blood of whatever idiot who had dared to spring forth from the ground. As Calla breathed out at the very end he had gripped her tighter and then shoved her out onto the snow where she lovingly traced the deer's outline. They couldn't touch it and he was smart enough not to want to.
"Surrender? Tell the council to gather their kone we go to meet some fucking trees." He said sneeringly only touching her again when she went to kiss the deer with a lovingly soft touch. Snagging the kiss for himself he gave her a crude taste of his anger. Wiping his mouth with anger he watched as she and the deer split ways waiting until she was long gone to stalk and slaughter the creature a message of his own. So he wasn't as smart as he thought, at least he was showing he wasn't weak enough to be scared by a deer.
If they were back...then Jax's world really was about to crack into thousands of pieces. The ice beneath his feet shifted and he wondered if his kind even knew where to stand anymore.
"Please guide me father...I don't know what to do anymore." Jax whispered his tears rolling down his face as the Neprimirim in him took over for the evening.
To wander in the lost and eternal Frost.