- Messages
- 374
- Character Biography
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She watched him - silent, unmoving save for the faint shudders still rattling his large frame. The antidote would work, eventually. The venom would leave him with every nerve tender as a burn for a time, but it would not kill him.
Nym shifted to sit on the ground, her back resting against his workbench, booted feet pulled in close. She sat close enough to hear the rasp of his breath as her thoughts turned over and over like coals in a dying fire.
The dagger in her hand was so fine and well polished that her own face looked back at her, warped slightly by the curve of the blade. Eyes of jade, ringed with weariness. Her lips, faintly parted. And behind all of it, that quiet, nauseating question:
Was she proud of any of it?
She’d meant to kill him. She’d wanted to erase him from her life, from her paranoid mind that believed one day, he, and everyone else would come to kill her. She had coated her blades in venom for that exact purpose. It had been her right. Her justice.
But five fucking words…
And suddenly the rage that had fueled her began to feel... brittle. Hollow. Her justifications, so carefully laid out in her mind fell apart like dust through her fingers. They sounded so much like her father’s now. She could hear his voice again, the frantic muttering in the palace corridors as he paced and whispered about enemies no one else could see. How many times had he whispered that they all wanted what he had? That no one could be trusted?
She remembered nodding. Believing him. She had been four the first time she'd killed for him. Four. And it had never stopped.
Now she heard those whispers too. And she’d taken heads for it. Innocents. Old friends. Those she merely suspected.
And worse - she’d had Settra do it. The one man who’d given himself to her without expectation. The one she'd sworn not to use like her father had used her.
But she had.
Her reflection blurred as her eyes did. She blinked, wiped quickly at her cheek with the heel of her palm.
Then came his question, and her glassy eyes turned to him, the scarred wreck of a man who had once ruled the world with flame and might. Now laid low by a scratch. How fragile power was. How easily it could rot.
Her throat clenched as she swallowed.
“As you said,” she murmured, voice roughened by the storm within, “Be free.”
A beat passed. Her lips curled into a faint smile at the cruel irony of it all. Then, with no further warning, she drew the polished dagger across her wrist in one clean stroke.
Nym shifted to sit on the ground, her back resting against his workbench, booted feet pulled in close. She sat close enough to hear the rasp of his breath as her thoughts turned over and over like coals in a dying fire.
The dagger in her hand was so fine and well polished that her own face looked back at her, warped slightly by the curve of the blade. Eyes of jade, ringed with weariness. Her lips, faintly parted. And behind all of it, that quiet, nauseating question:
Was she proud of any of it?
She’d meant to kill him. She’d wanted to erase him from her life, from her paranoid mind that believed one day, he, and everyone else would come to kill her. She had coated her blades in venom for that exact purpose. It had been her right. Her justice.
But five fucking words…
And suddenly the rage that had fueled her began to feel... brittle. Hollow. Her justifications, so carefully laid out in her mind fell apart like dust through her fingers. They sounded so much like her father’s now. She could hear his voice again, the frantic muttering in the palace corridors as he paced and whispered about enemies no one else could see. How many times had he whispered that they all wanted what he had? That no one could be trusted?
She remembered nodding. Believing him. She had been four the first time she'd killed for him. Four. And it had never stopped.
Now she heard those whispers too. And she’d taken heads for it. Innocents. Old friends. Those she merely suspected.
And worse - she’d had Settra do it. The one man who’d given himself to her without expectation. The one she'd sworn not to use like her father had used her.
But she had.
Her reflection blurred as her eyes did. She blinked, wiped quickly at her cheek with the heel of her palm.
Then came his question, and her glassy eyes turned to him, the scarred wreck of a man who had once ruled the world with flame and might. Now laid low by a scratch. How fragile power was. How easily it could rot.
Her throat clenched as she swallowed.
“As you said,” she murmured, voice roughened by the storm within, “Be free.”
A beat passed. Her lips curled into a faint smile at the cruel irony of it all. Then, with no further warning, she drew the polished dagger across her wrist in one clean stroke.