emo-steppe-falcon: Art by the unbelievably talented @ankalime, whose commission info can be found h
emo-steppe-falcon: Art by the unbelievably talented @ankalime, whose commission info can be found here. Because it was so beautiful, I had to write a story to go with it (crossposted here to AO3). — ☽ — ☾ — Too late. It was all too late. His world had ended before it had ever begun. Bohun had ridden back to Devil’s Gorge with his whip lashing red stripes into his horse’s flanks to make it keep pace with his hammering heart. He was so full of joy to return to her that he could have sung. He was so full of fear to see the hatred in her eyes again that he could have screamed. When he saw Horpyna’s body he did scream. He did not even know what it meant then. Her body lay on the open ground before her house. The witch’s dark hair tangled around her shoulders, framing a face already falling to decay. As he reined up hard, jagging the bit against his horse’s foaming mouth, he saw something which stirred a dread he could not yet name: there was no mark or wound on her body. But Horpyna did not matter. Bohun threw himself from the saddle, running to the door with such desperate speed that he fell sprawling when it swung drunkenly on its broken hinges. “Princess!” He did not expect an answer, not from such a scene as he now saw before him. At first he only stood reeling amidst the desolation, trying to make sense of chaos. All the wealth of Bar, every treasure he had brought to gild her cage—all had been destroyed as though the hand of God had struck against this carefully-hoarded treasure trove of all his hopes. The bed had been obliterated into shattered timbers and tumbled drifts of down. Gold and silver ornaments showed in twisted heaps in corners, while others had been cast with such force that they stuck from the walls as if driven there with a hammer. Heavy silken tapestries lay in ragged shreds, their jewel-bright threads straggling in a tangled chaos across rough-hewn floorboards. Overcast light fell coldy in through a window in which no shard of glass remained and through which one of the priceless brocades had been half-thrown. And of his greatest treasure of all, there was not even a sign. Czytaj dalej -- source link
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