( from the perspective of aeris rothscus )

you are seven and bright-eyed and the world is at your feet. you are one of three, forms yet unbroken wherein warsong blood runs scarlet-strong.

you are seven, so mother gives you a knife for your birthday, like she has with rosanna and areli those previous years. she presses cold metal into your hands and tells you about those who have fallen before, and those who will rise after. she teaches you that the broken weapons of your ancestors will turn to daggers in your hands; teaches you to strike only twice.

the first, to set fear in the hearts of your enemies. the second, to silence it.

you are new and sharp with many teeth, and you hold names heavy in your mouth. you are a trident, a chimebera, a third of a new dawn. if rosanna is the lioness and areli is the ram, then you are the snake, you are the dragon, you are fire-bellied and furious. you are one of three, and the three are one.

your ancestors carve cathedrals out of splintered spine and bone; your family sinks its claws deep into the flesh of the mafia and it doesn’t let go. it twists, turns, engraves omertà in your bones. tells you, like a whisper in the purple shadows of the twilight hours: all of this will be yours.

at seventeen, father takes you into the heart of the kingdom. and you know what will happen, because you have witnessed the metamorphosis of your siblings before you: they have learned to rage like wildfire and they are gold gold gold ( one step away from god god god ); they have learned to scorch the skins of hearts yet say they are safe, say their fangs are dulled, say they are weak and so try and strike me down.

so maybe you don’t get it perfect on the first go. you get better at it. you nail it on the second try, then the third, then the fourth. then walking hand in hand with the divine and the monsters and every sorry soul that has fallen through the gaps of this noble empire comes as easily as you breathe, perfumed lungs and star-lined bones. your blood is wine beneath your fingernails and your armor golden light; the chimera lives and breathes and thrives, its fangs dipped in the night sky.

it is storming on the day you meet deidre, because you remember the way the lightning striking in the far distance gives her an angel’s wings for a quarter of a second. and you remember how you only knew her as a nameless assassin and you didn’t believe in love at first sight and how you still don’t, but the truth is this: you were carnivore incarnate and you found her teeth to be just as sharp as yours.

and you remember your confession like a heart laid bare; remember her laugh sharp and high when you tell her; because you have always loved her best with the hair falling into her eyes and her lips red with blood, knuckles raw from punching, shoulders bruised from the recoil of a gun. you have always loved her angry, bold, on the offense. you know that you ought to love the peace, the quiet, and you do, but there is beauty in the ferocity and you know you’d follow her to the end of the world -- god, it’s hell to love a fighter.