Recent content by Galen

"Hmm?" She pulled away, leaving Galen blinking at her owlishly, his eyes wide, pupils blown. Dragons below. The way he'd felt her laughter trembling in her throat with his lips pressed up against it. Stirring awake a yearning part of him. He really couldn't think quite straight and his hold...

“Oh?” So… she… she liked bein’ scandalized? And she tilted her head for more in surrender. Galen’s cheeks grew hot and a thrill crackled like lightning through him, setting his limbs all tingly. He felt his heartbeat thundering in his ears. Sounded louder to him even than the rattling of the...

Fingers tightened reflexively as the kiss lengthened, thumbs brushing over the fabric of her clothing and the curve of her hip. His boots shifted in the rug, smearing the yuck of the street as he found his footing, eyes screwed shut. The feel of her arms around his neck, her hands in his hair...

Not a nobody. Not to her. Oh. And she wanted him to stay. His eyes stung a bit. That wasn't normal was it? "No regrets..." he repeated her words, softly, then Galen moved forward, as if in a daze, and wrapped her up in an embrace. Still unsteady on his feet, still hollow eyed, but his...

The barrage of words pummeling him sent him stumbling back, just as much as the shove and crackle of fire. He quailed beneath the verbal blows. He was shit. He knew it. Always ruining everything. First with his apprenticeship to Telemachus, who wouldn't even bother to talk to him - his worst...

"Ow! You..." the coin purse bounced off him, then she offered the box. He stared at it, sitting up from where he lay on the ground. "You think I'm here for your money?" His grin disappeared and he scowled, "No. No. That's... that's not it at all." He gripped his head. "I said the wrong things...

"Phew," Galen had sense enough to whisper from where he lay on the ground, arms spread eagled, "That was a close one." He meant both the maid checking on Ciana and his own encounter with Valkyr and Sons. The mage started to sweep his arms and legs back and forth, as if he were making an angel...

"Mmmnh." His eyes fluttered, the world fading in and out of view. Heat on his chest, as if he'd shed his tunic and basked beneath the noonday sun - a life-giving warmth that flowed through him and melted the frost on the clockwork of his soul. And as this warmth poured into him, Galen felt a...

“Nothing,” he mumbled, swaying in the seat, his head nodding. “Just a shadow. A book’s curse… can’t - can’t hurt you.” He’d poured out his heart and here she was talking about his shadows. Damn that grimoire of Wyrms. It wrought changes in him every time he used it. He felt so empty… and so...

Wordlessly, he nodded, not trusting his own lips. She hadn’t said she felt the same way, hadn’t told him that that kiss in the night market kept her awake past the chimes. A dagger of despair stabbed through him, the pang more frigid still than the midnight air outside. Pulling up his sleeve...

"It doesn't matter," he rasped, dropping into her bedroom, then turning, he closed the shutters behind to shut out the cruel chill of the wind. Gooseflesh rose across his bare arms and he felt as though warmth might never return to his skin, the night air had leeched away his very life...

He watched her go and felt a deep and cold ache clutching at his heart, like a fist squeezing tighter and tighter, spreading a numb chill through his body. Galen rubbed his forehead and let his head fall back against the wall behind. What had he done? * * * The next day, she heard nothing...

“I…” he started again, thoughts evaporating every time they tried form like mist in at dawn. The way she melted into him. The way her lips felt so soft against his. Not fair at all, this thing that could not be. Her forehead pressed to his, he could smell the scent of her skin, her hair, an...

Those eyes of hers wandered and he watched them wander with a sudden tightness in his chest. Oh. Oh no. Her fingers, intertwined with his, felt warm and soft. Not the feverishness they'd possessed in the library at all. And... why did he have the sudden urge to press his lips to each of those...

“Look, these seers…” he lowered his voice, conscious of the sightless eyes somehow boring into his back, “They’re all hacks, ok? Your father’s right about that at least. I mean, what did she even tell you really, if you think about it? That you might find someone, that your life might be...