Taking her hand back, she watched him for a long minute. "You sure you're not doing it for a certain blonde?"
Cesare smiled, unwilling to answer a question they'd only fight about. It wasn't that he didn't know gods existed. The school had proven beyond a shadow of doubt that something existed out there.
No, it was simply that he didn't need them. Friends, and enemies, those that needed to live, and bastards better left dead made sense to him. Things that lived beyond this world in some other place outside reality, could never understand what it was like to be him. This world that bled him dry, the moon that called to his soul, and the rotting flesh of his body was good enough. He didn't need anything else.
They finished the rest of the games in silence. Picking up his duffel on his way to the door, he stilled when he heard the scrape of her chair. "The last time you left here, a group of psychopaths hunted you down and carved you like a Yule pig. I think I'll walk you back this time."
A flash of anger spread through him, a thing of twisting shame that curdled his stomach. He'd done fine without her. They'd fucked him up, but he'd walked away while they'd been carried.
Knowing brown eyes bled the anger away, leaving only shame. Maybe, just maybe, she was using this as an excuse to spend time with him. Was it so bad she wanted to walk him back to the dorm? He spent his weeks looking forward to being with her, and the days always seemed to blast by in a blur of work.
Looking away, he cinched the duffel tight to his body. "Thanks." The word was quiet and twisted with emotion, dark and gleaming like wet muscle, it warped the air with its passing. Longing, guilt, shame, and a cutting crawling need marbled the word like veins.
Turning away from him with color climbing her cheeks, she pulled the door open. With disgusted caws, the ravens roused themselves. They were used to going back to their roost in her apartment, not tramping about campus after a hard day of insulting Cesare.
The moonlight shone down from a cloudless sky, silver shadows dancing across the earth. Reality blurred under its mystic eye, trees warping into capering monsters reaching greedily for soft flesh. Hungry eyes flashed in the blackest of shadows, seen out of the corner of the eye and never seen again.
There was a beauty in the darkness that the sunlit world could never have. Velvet soft shadows caressed the two scarred souls that walked with only the night between them. Quiet and still, the moon offered sanctuary for the lost and broken. It was the reason the shattered and hurt craved the dark, only in its silken embrace did their demons loosen their claws.
Cast off and thrown away, beaten, raped, and abused, they ached for the touch of her silver fingers. Healing was beyond her fey love, she offered only illusions and sweet lies. The moon only ever promised the night, her illusions lasted only as long as sable folds clothed the land. For a time, the forgotten could lose themselves in the illusion they were whole, good, better than the maimed, crippled thing the sun showed them to be.
Skeletal hands stretched out above them; moon beams mangled between branches, casting spider web shadows across the trail. Darker than sin, the ravens rustled through the branches, flowing from tree to tree, feathers dusting the night with their sound. Wicked ebony pits of cruelty flashed when eyes caught the holy light of Luna.
The day had been hot but with darkness holding the land, a cool breeze brushed aside the heat of the day, leaving it just right for a late-night walk. "I like the world like this." His quiet words were barely a whisper.
Avoiding her eyes, Cesare watched the small shadows of winged malice dart through the trees. "Hidden, close, and dark, without the burning eye of the sun. The cold of night and the silver shine of the moon. It's cleaner, safer than the day."
Elizabeth nodded, eyes turning to the trees that shrouded the path. "I used to walk the woods when I was younger, day and night I'd run into the forest that guards the Chthonic's. Sanctuary, no one would come for me, the powers of the wood too fey and other for them to chance. But for me, it was the only place I could just be. Sometime between when I was a kid and when I became an adult that changed. I started spending more time inside and less time in the woods." She sighed with a vague sense of loss. "I wonder where that girl went to."
Cesare watched her eyes turn inward, unwilling to break this rare moment of openness. "I had so many dreams back then. The woods were my true home, a place to plan for a future where my people would grow into glory, when I'd be more than title. I'd carve a place for them in the shadows of the Umbrae Lunae, something beyond outcast mercenaries that die in other men's wars." She stopped, lost in her past
Betraying ourselves is the one betrayal we never forgive. When the world breaks us across its knee, we don't hate the world. We hate ourselves for not being stronger, failure the one thing we can't forgive, especially in ourselves. The betrayal cuts over and over as we fail to measure up to our expectations.
"They wanted me to be like the girls." Her words were the ghost of an old pain cut fresh and new. "To shine as brightly as they do. To be a woman that enchants by simply being." Bitter and caustic, her laugh violated the quiet night. "All I ever got for being myself were stares of disgust."
Cesare slipped his hand in hers. Starting at the sudden touch, she shied away, pulling her hand from his. "It's not over. You can still have it." The words came soft, a foil to hide the lance of pain that pierced him at her rejection.
"It's over Cesare, I'm old now. It's dead and gone." Gesturing at herself, she continued, "No one's going to be drawn to a middle-aged teacher with a big ass and a belly, I'm decades past my prime. If there ever was a time when I could inspire anyone, it's long past."
Cesare looked away from the raw defeat on her face. "It's done when you stop working at it. When you give up on victory, it gives up on you." A cold more of the soul than the body pulled a shiver from her. "A single warrior, no matter how strong, is lost in history. But the weakest warrior with an army at his back rewrites the world in his image," Cesare said grimly.
Walking silently through the shadows, the shades cool fingers caressed across their faces. It was always the ones that had butchered their dreams for an uncaring life that told you to never give up on the slithering things. Agonizing to hold, tormenting demons that clawed your guts in the dark, dreams were only ever sweet torture.
You tucked them close to your heart and nursed them with sweet words and gentle love. We never see the truth of the monstrous things raised out of our deepest desires. Hitler had a dream, Stalin had a dream, Alexander the Great had a dream, and all those tainted souls that prey on the weak have dreams too. Dreams disfigure your soul as you give yourself up to them.
Knowing the price is always more than you're willing to pay, adults stop dreaming. The true mark of an adult were the scars laid upon their souls by broken dreams and shattered hopes. Yet we're less for not having them, the world graying a little at the broken acceptance.
"You really think I can do … something." It was a strange mix of disbelief and hope.
Stopping, Cesare met her eyes. "You were a kid. What kid thinks they'll need anything but determination to win. You went to slay a dragon with a toy sword. The people that change the world have money, backers, armies, and influence. That's what you needed." He captured her eyes with his intensity. "It never mattered who you were or who you thought you were."
Swallowing, Elizabeth's eyes shone with wetness. "Really?"
Unable to take another rejection, Cesare resisted the urge to take her hands in his. "It was never your fault. They wanted to use you, when you failed to fall in line, they feared you too much to let you in." The certainty in his voice drew a shaky sigh from Elizabeth.
He was the first person that didn't blame her for failing. Such a small thing, but it meant the world to a person who'd never had it. We accept the labels others place on us, nailing them into flesh with gleeful savagery, willfully accepting the lash of the masses. We're our own sacrifices, we cut and carve our souls with a vengeance as pure as snow.
"Money, supporters, and a firm base of power, wedded to a basic idea of how to move forward. There was never an incentive to make the changes you wanted, no reason for anyone to do what you wanted them to. The people at the top don't want change, their help is nothing but sabotage by other words. They've already cut out a place for themselves, they don't want change. Those with power dictate the song while the rest dance." Cesare's words were soft over the midnight tainted campus.
"I have power." Elizabeth's sureness spoke of years of study.
"You have personal power," Cesare corrected. "That's not the power we're talking about. You're a teacher in a school, not the leader of the faculty. You have no supporters, no power base in the Umbrae Lunae world, no groups backing, no armies to command, no economic powers to bring to bear. You don't even command the full backing of your people."
Elizabeth nodded slowly. "I have the Scythians. You made sure of that."
Smiling, he looked away from her knowing eyes. "Better to have power and not use it, then not have it at all. The Scythians are the perfect allies for you, they want women in power and don't care what they use it for."
They were silent for a long time as she studied him. "You want me to take power." It was a statement without a shadow of doubt in it.
Cesare picked his words carefully; aware he was getting close to what her parents had tried to do. "I think you could do a lot with your life, but only if you want. I think you should chart your own course instead of letting watching others play games around you."
Cesare left her there with inward turned eyes. Dreams, it all came back to those treacherous things. You could put a bullet in the head of your most treasured dreams in a desperate attempt to cut the parasitic thing from your breast. But they never truly died, they slunk through the shadows of your life, feeding on cast-off desires. Crawling over the shit and gold of your life, the malformed things stared with unblinking eyes, necrotic stars shining in the darkness of your soul.
He knew how hard it was to put down something that meant everything to you. The kind of dreams nurtured on tears, blood, and violence, the precious little demons who'd cradled you through every broken day and shattered horror show of a night. Because whenever he looked at Elizabeth, he felt the jagged teeth of his own dreams bite his soul.
Walking through the corridors of the Serpens Lacum a low tension wound his body tight. It was the weekend and that meant more students were up and about. During the week he had his run of deserted corridors due to the late nights he pulled. The weekends were always a toss up, if he'd be walking quiet corridors or facing the disgust of the others.
Stretching out to either side, the corridors were big enough for a car to drive down with room to spare. That didn't stop the kids from moving away from him, enforcing a bubble of space hammered into place by peer pressure. The rumors about him hadn't shifted the boundary an inch.
Dangerous, disgusting, hated, or feared, it amounted to the same. No one wanted him near them. He was always in trouble, too much of a lightning rod for anyone to chance getting close to. Even those he helped were happy to keep their distance, better to observe the storm than go out and feel the thunder.
He looked inside the Great Room more out of habit and paranoia than anything else. His eyes locked on the titans facing off in the middle of the room. Still in his black uniform, the dragon was dressed in shades of shadow. Heat waves rose from the incensed figure, bending light in a haze of tortured air. Ebony fingers wrapped around the werewolf's pale throat, he throttled Blaez with dark relish.
Standing around in various states of fear, the crowd watched with a sick, almost physical need. The Thagirion were nightmares given form, unstoppable, merciless, and evil. Centuries of power wrapped around the two boys, walking death waiting for meat to get close, no one would get between them.
The back ring of boys turned at Cesare's approach, anger flashing through their eyes until recognition turned to fear. Shying away from him, the crowd made way for the tainted one.
"You betray me," Abraxas said, fingers tightening on the werewolf's throat, flesh reddening under the dragons scorching heat.
The wolfs hands pried at the serpent's fingers in a desperate bid at freedom, but while a werewolf was deadly strong in Kveldulf, the human form was birthed in weakness. "I didn't …"
"You went to the reject for training." The air heated with Abraxas contained fury. Blaez stared up at the dragon's implacable face, beads of sweat rolling down his face.
"I had … no choice." The husky rasp was cut off by fingers closing his windpipe.
"You should have died," Abraxas said simply, skin burning under his fingers. "That was your choice. To die or betray me." Wisps of smoke rose in tendrils from his nose. "I trusted you. A wolf from a good family, known for their loyalty, and you betray me by serving the damnati." Hot as white steel and as cold as black ice, it was fury hammered, compressed, and pounded into words that shone with rage.
"Let him go." The command sent the boys around Cesare scurrying away. Wicked as new sin, pure as the unholy heart of butchered innocence, the words crawled with maggots of cruelty.