MythoxRue

Siegfried could recall the jagged brush of Princess Kraehe's lips against his own; a fractured touch certain of nothing but how she would lose him, a kiss pressed painfully close, because at least pain wasn't loneliness. He recalled it in fleeting moments, the pain of his princess that he still saw in her blood-drenched eyes sometimes, when the shadows were thickest or when stormclouds blossomed. Her lips would part with something she could never say, her own memory, and he was be drawn to the perfect curve of them. He slipped the tips of his fingers beneath her chin and lifted her gaze, meeting it for an instant that halted both their hear

"Mmm... is it...?" But Siegfried did not really desire an answer for his vague query. The prince pressed his eyelids together tightly; there was most likely a day to be greeted, with all the pomp and circumstance of a muted sunrise. He had no quarrel with matters in the day, of course, but sleep was a difficult allure to overcome. This looked to be one of those mornings where prying his eyes open was harder than lifting his sword, but never failed to manage it, and he was determined for this to remain true. So as darkness instead met his misted glance, he was stricken with the clarity of shock, but no true alarm to his own faint surprise. W

As often as she had come to be told of her beauty, Rue would always have to despise a piece of it, whether she could bring herself to believe any of it or not. Like ravens' feathers... Whispered as she passed, often with wonder and never with fear- though the people of her prince's kingdom would have every reason to fear ravens, his return seemed to have banished their troubles- she found the comparison sickening. That it fit so well only made it harsher. So it was a surprise for her one evening, when her prince, sitting beside her on an elaborate garden bench that looked shoddily made compared to his features, turned to her and said, "I h