eleven
"stop looking at me like that!"

When Loki opens his eyes, he's immediately blinded by the morning sunshine pouring though the open window. His arms are still wrapped around the one and only Volkov Princess with the divine dark eyes and haunted mind caused by her unsettling past, wrought by flames and moulded into the woman who now slumbers beside him from iron, tooth and claw.

Her head rests on his chest, moving as he breathes in and out. Her own breathing was deep and peaceful. He found she looked just as beautiful when she was asleep as she did when she was awake and burning with furious energy, except that now he couldn't see her ardent eyes.

As Loki admires the sleeping girl, she begins frowning, her lips turning down and her eyes screwing up tightly. Loki thought that it would pass. He had hoped it would anyway, but it didn't.

Hopes unacted upon often drifted into the void.

He brushes a hand over her forehead, pushing the shining dark hair away from her cheek. His movement seems to disturb her even further for now Lusine begins to move in her sleep. Her arms and legs strike out viciously in a state of panic Loki had never seen within the Volkov.

She's having a nightmare, He suddenly realises.

His hands go to her shoulders in an instant as if waking her up were going to decide between life and death. His eyes were clouded by a sense of worry that he had never encountered on such an intimate level before.

The beads of sweat on her forehead, the deep creases caused by frowns along her face and the brash thrashing of her limbs made his worry course deep.

Lusine Volkov was unresponsive. Unresponsive to Loki's every effort to awaken her from her terror ridden slumber.

Gasping for every last breath of air, Lusine's eyes shoot open. Her clammy hands clutch onto Loki, her nails digging in without a second thought. Her blue eyes dart around the room, searching for comfort, until two hands forcefully grab either side of her face.

Her eyes fall closed, breathing in deeply as she realises just who is holding the pieces together. Her breathing remains rapid as the image runs over and over in her mind, burning itself into her memory.

"You had a nightmare," Loki tells her gently, running his thumb over the smooth skin of her cheek and along her luscious lips. Lusine nods her head as the sarcastic, bitter words she so badly wanted to spit in his face gets stuck in her throat. "Can you tell me what your nightmare was about." His curiosity getting the better of him.

What could possibly have made the fearless Volkov quake in her boots?

"I- I can't tell you," She untangles herself from her new-found lover, her head swimming as her involuntarily let the nightmare memory replay in her mind.

Lusine always knew that she would be the death of Lycus. She knew from the moment they planned their first act of mischief together. But Lusine never could imagine that she would be torn between two of the few people she held dear to her in such a deadly fashion.

Loki was dangerous. She knew that from the moment he'd asked her to dance with those flattering, pointed glances and his smirk that should have made Lusine's heart flutter right out of her chest and into his palm.

She never knew one man could make her feel so powerless.

Lycus Volkov at the mercy of Loki made her stomach churn. With a bloody lip and a bruised eye Lycus looks up at Loki hovering above him and then to his estranged twin.

"Lusine, please," Lycus begs, his lips trembling with fear of death and the inevitable unknown. "Make him stop. You know you can." Crimson blood ran down his lip, to his chin and down the white skin of his neck in rivers of deceit.

Lusine's lips part slightly as she fills her lungs with smoky air, the flames licking at her feet. "Brother I-"

"She can't," Loki cuts in, his words laced with the deadliest kind of poison: betrayal. The pleasure upon his expression was undeniable, even to his lover who would always see the best in him. Always see the light, even as they shed their skin in the shadows. "She can't move a step."

He takes a dagger from his belt, smiling as he holds it in his firm grasp. His nostrils flare as he strides toward Lycus. The familiar crinkle in the corners of his eyes that Lusine loved so dearly, the smirk that caused a craving to be wrapped up in his arms with his lips and his fingertips running over every inch of her being. He excited the danger within.

But now? Not now.

But now was too late.

"Loki, what are you doing?" Lusine screeches, her once graceful tone gone with the wind. "Why are you threatening us?" And, when she tries to take a step forward to play the hero she finds that Loki wasn't lying when he said she could not do a thing.

From the neck down, she was frozen. Frozen in time and wishing that she were able to take the dagger from Loki's hand and drive it directly through his eye.

"No one can save you now, Lycus Volkov, warrior prince." Were the final words before he violently and heartlessly drove the silver dagger into the wolf prince's throat.

The agony and the shock of the violence made Lycus' planned final words disintegrate into a corrupted dust. And then he was gone. Loki ripped the dagger from his neck, letting the blood splatter onto the stone floor.

Lycus' body slumped over, falling to the floor, into the mess of his innocent blood.

Lusine's hand flies to her mouth as the pain-filled tears begin to wash down her face. He was gone and there was nothing in her power she could do to save him.

"You killed him," She says with her voice muffled by her hand. Her tears meant nothing. It had all been for nothing.

"I did it for you, Lusine. Don't you get that?" Loki lets the dagger fall from his murderous hand, clattering to the floor beside her brother's corpse.

"You killed him."

Not knowing made Loki grit his teeth as he says, "Lusine, you can tell me anything."

His persistence was admirable, but his methods not so much. Lusine found herself squirming as he placed a sloppy, emotionless kiss on her cheek in a last-ditch effort to find out what she was dreaming of.

As his lips run down her neck she lets him enjoy his moment of simple intimacy.

"You know you're going to have to work a lot harder than that to get information out of me," She tells him as she feels his hand running up her bare thigh.

His flirtations made Lusine warm up to him a little after her traumatic nightmare scene. Let the exciting danger swoop in to chase away the caution and remote fear that had begun to settle.

"I can definitely get it out of you, Volkov, those lips are not as tightly sealed as you hope and pray."

"As much as I'd love to stay and have sex with you, I have to go and speak with my father," Lusine lowly murmurs, pressing a sweet and simple kiss to Loki's cheek as the lust-stricken duo untangle from one another's impassioned embrace. "I apologise," She tells him as he places a hand on her cheek, admiring her undying beauty.

"As long as you come back to me."

"I will always come back to you."

-

Light and airy clothes of dark colours seemed like a contradiction to Lusine. She felt under dressed as she knocked on the door of her father's chamber.

Upon the room she sees him in his usual habitat; his desk with papers sprawled all around him and his hands in his greying hair, glasses on the end of his nose.

Lusine's fingers curl around the wooden edge of the door in frustration when she sees Lycus stood beside her father's desk looking down at his feet as if he had just delivered bad news.

When he looks up to see Lusine, he gives her a sympathetic smile as if that's going to solve all he damages between them that had taken years to build up.

Reminding herself of this deep rift, she lifts her chin up and spits at him, "Don't look at me, Lycus."

Quickly, he averts his eyes looking back to his father, swallowing the lump in his throat.

"I shall come back this evening," He says, placing a hand on his father's shoulder before leaving without another word. Lusine doesn't move out of his way. She stands as a solid rock until he is gone and only once he's gone does she allow herself to give her father an affectionate smile: a crack in the armour.

The door slams carelessly shut behind her as she saunters across the room to her father's side. He looks to his side at her, disappointment apparent on his face. Yet, he is pleased that she did not damage too much on her warpath. That's a start, at least.

"More is happening to me, father," She tells him, her eyes glistening as she talks to him. Admiration was clear in her respect for Bulan. Though, he was respected by many, not just her. "My ability to teleport myself from place to place has grown. Now all I have to do is visualise where I would like to go and I appear there. Everything is changing. No longer do I have to see where I am teleporting to. Life is so much easier now apart from the minor issue of the nightmares I have begun to have..." She trails off, looking away from her father's prying eyes.

"Even despite the spell to prevent your nightmares?" Lusine nods at his question. "It seems to have worn off. Funny that. It was supposed to last until you died."

He sets down his pen and pushes back his chair. When he rises from his chair suddenly Lusine is twelve again. Being scolded for some mind game she had played on one of the guards of the palace, sat beside Lycus, who would inevitably be talked into doing it all over again as soon as they were released from the lecture.

He takes her hands into his, a sorry smile painted on his expression that sent a chill rushing down her spine.

"I fear for you, my dear," He says, "I fear that things are going to get worse for you. Lusine, you must fight he darkness within; surface to the light and drink in the sweetness of being good."

"Father, I am already as dark as it gets," Lusine says, though this time there is no ego or pride or performance behind the words. No need for that in the presence of her father.

"No, with a fight you can be good. The fight to come is long and hard, but you can do it, my sweet child, I know you can." His honesty only makes Lusine recoil, from herself more than from him.

"It's too late for someone who has taken as many lives as I have to become good." Her eyes lower to her sinner's hands, dripping blood onto her bare feet.

"It's never too late to change your life. You changed after Regina, I believe you can change because of Loki," He points out, the argument valid.

"Nothing can save me now. Not even a little bit of sympathetic love," She replies hopelessly.

If the darkness was to be her home, she would decorate it with glory and gore, floor to ceiling. Never relenting. Not until death came knocking.

-

1718 words

this is such a long chapter for me and im so happy but I have another chapter planned that's going to be longer than this. im kinda dreading writing it but also so excited to.

love from your bud, lau <3

edited: 9.8.18

new word count: 1975