Stained glass wings shred like gossamer under their claws. Hoots and hollers, screams and shouts. The sounds of their glee, their raucous joy, fade to static in her mind.
Gone. He was gone?
He can no longer see. Craters in place of … periwinkles uprooted. They’d plucked his bluebell eyes. They polish them like trophies. She’ll never see them again.
Wet — thick, viscous wet — slides down her back as they strip her flight.
Missing bluebells. The crown of hawthorn lays shattered around him. A broken halo. Her nails sink into the ichor-stained soil. She claws her way to him, drags on her stomach until fingertips brush the fractured branches.
A noise scratches through her, the mourning screech of a rook separated forevermore from her mate.
“Come back,” she rasps, fighting tears. “Come back! You promised, matchstick.” Her voice breaks on that last sentence, like the wood of a dam splintering under the pressure of the current.
Her fingers drift lower, caressing his cheek. Delirious, she prays this is a story. A tale from the books he loves so much.
She presses her lips to his, willing something — anything — to happen.
Only ice meets her.
He who is as warm as the element he was born from, as the fire he forges with, has never been cold. Not even in the darkest pits of Winter.
No. Nonononononono.
Laughter meets her sobs as the hordes of the Pit’s vilest creations gather to watch. They chitter and screech, a cruel mocking sound.
A tether snaps in her mind.
The dagger pain of her back is nothing compared to the dull roar slowly consuming her. She punches to her feet, swaying listlessly. The ice slips through her lips, down her throat and settles behind her sternum. Where it begins to fester.
There had always been something slightly wrong with her. Something wild, rotten. Her siblings had all been born from the dewy moss of Summer. She had clawed her way out of the rotten wood of an old aster tree. She had tried to hide it, to carve away the corruption and blend in with her glorious siblings. Nothing seemed to work. Until him. Her firestarter.
For the first time, someone loved her. Not in spite of the rot. But because of it.
With his voice, the festering slowed. Under his burning touch, she began to bloom.
Flint is dead. He has taken his warmth with him. And the blight is hungry.
She stumbles forward, towards the Pit Bugs. They jeer at her wobbly gait.
Her hand plunges into the one nearest, sinking through the bark armor into that fleshy rot center mass. She pushes it off, clutching a heart in between her fingers. She studies it, idle curiosity. It is smaller than she expected. She drops it, bored.
There is silence — blissful silence — as the camp stares. Struck dumb at how easily a broken fairy has killed one of their own.
She grins, feral and vicious. Licking the blood off her palms, she watches in glee at the rage bubbling within their ranks.
She beckons them with her stained hand.
Here, in this torn, stained battlecamp she makes a promise. A vow she will keep until her last heartbeat.
The earth will scorch, their kin will burn. Flint has struck Aster and I will ensure their ruin.
