How lucky you have your sister to breed, then. You won't be needing me anymore.
( it's immediate, biting at the exposed heel paul has left for her. you don't expose your bleeding wounds to a wolf and expect it won't scent the weakness, won't rend its angry canines through the skin. cruelly, she hopes it hurts — hope it elicits the same flinch he had earned in her, hope he feels the fanged bite of her love the way she had felt his. not the petals she had dreamed it to be, the first time she had imagined paul whispering the words to her — but all thorns, slicing her open, the girlish fantasy he trampled carelessly. )
But we both know neither of you have ever waited to have my permission. You've already done that, haven't you.
( she doesn't need the confirmation, doesn't leave him the room to wriggle like maggots do, eating away at whatever rotten love she has left in her chest. part of her feels vengefully nauseated, every time she imagines it: paul murmuring the same promises into alia's ripe womb, sowing the same seeds of a family he had planted in alina's mind. her eyes burn with it — the one connection alia and paul will always have, the one special part of one another alina could never hope to leave her prints on — forcing alina into a furious, battling blink. she's wasted enough water on paul atreides without spilling more, even if every immature part of her is tempted to coat his shoes in vomit, in juvenile revenge. )
Yes, I felt guilty. I've felt guilty lying to your face about your own family, about hiding things from you. But I see I was lashing myself for no reason while you were fucking her behind my back, the entire time. You were visiting her bed and mine when I only ever visited yours. You are the only one I've chosen to be with, without tricks or — or stupid ploys, in that stupid place.
( it's infuriating — the lack of remorse when alina had been prepared to fall on the knife, eviscerate herself for his forgiveness, the guilt he can't pretend to spare her. the obvious truth, then: alina has always been the one doomed to care, far beyond what mal, or paul, or aleksander has ever been able to return. never the captor in love, but forever the captive. she scoffs, a harsh expulsion of breath, some inexplicable heat in the air — an anger that rolls off of her like a sweltering desert, thickening the layers of oxygen around them. )
And do you know what the funniest part is? Do you know what she told me? That she was happy I gave you back to her. Like she wasn't the one who had you all along, from the start.
( alina had cherished the sentiment, then, thought herself powerful enough to tap some space inside of paul that alia herself hadn't been able to bleach with sunlight. now, she just feels — cheated, shaping paul back into something loving, boyish. a boy meant for someone else, not alina starkov. quick-handed, she wrenches the knife from his hand — ignoring the stinging slice it cuts through her in the process of wresting it away, tossing it down into a nearby flowerbed. some sacred object made a mockery of, the way he's making a mockery of her now, offering his toes, his fingers — not the organ in his chest, no piece of it privately alina's, nothing she can touch that hasn't been held already.
her hand squeezes back into a fist, ignoring the trickle of warm blood that drips from it, watering the grassy ground. )
I don't want anything from you. From either of you. Tell her she can have you now — all of you.
no subject
( it's immediate, biting at the exposed heel paul has left for her. you don't expose your bleeding wounds to a wolf and expect it won't scent the weakness, won't rend its angry canines through the skin. cruelly, she hopes it hurts — hope it elicits the same flinch he had earned in her, hope he feels the fanged bite of her love the way she had felt his. not the petals she had dreamed it to be, the first time she had imagined paul whispering the words to her — but all thorns, slicing her open, the girlish fantasy he trampled carelessly. )
But we both know neither of you have ever waited to have my permission. You've already done that, haven't you.
( she doesn't need the confirmation, doesn't leave him the room to wriggle like maggots do, eating away at whatever rotten love she has left in her chest. part of her feels vengefully nauseated, every time she imagines it: paul murmuring the same promises into alia's ripe womb, sowing the same seeds of a family he had planted in alina's mind. her eyes burn with it — the one connection alia and paul will always have, the one special part of one another alina could never hope to leave her prints on — forcing alina into a furious, battling blink. she's wasted enough water on paul atreides without spilling more, even if every immature part of her is tempted to coat his shoes in vomit, in juvenile revenge. )
Yes, I felt guilty. I've felt guilty lying to your face about your own family, about hiding things from you. But I see I was lashing myself for no reason while you were fucking her behind my back, the entire time. You were visiting her bed and mine when I only ever visited yours. You are the only one I've chosen to be with, without tricks or — or stupid ploys, in that stupid place.
( it's infuriating — the lack of remorse when alina had been prepared to fall on the knife, eviscerate herself for his forgiveness, the guilt he can't pretend to spare her. the obvious truth, then: alina has always been the one doomed to care, far beyond what mal, or paul, or aleksander has ever been able to return. never the captor in love, but forever the captive. she scoffs, a harsh expulsion of breath, some inexplicable heat in the air — an anger that rolls off of her like a sweltering desert, thickening the layers of oxygen around them. )
And do you know what the funniest part is? Do you know what she told me? That she was happy I gave you back to her. Like she wasn't the one who had you all along, from the start.
( alina had cherished the sentiment, then, thought herself powerful enough to tap some space inside of paul that alia herself hadn't been able to bleach with sunlight. now, she just feels — cheated, shaping paul back into something loving, boyish. a boy meant for someone else, not alina starkov. quick-handed, she wrenches the knife from his hand — ignoring the stinging slice it cuts through her in the process of wresting it away, tossing it down into a nearby flowerbed. some sacred object made a mockery of, the way he's making a mockery of her now, offering his toes, his fingers — not the organ in his chest, no piece of it privately alina's, nothing she can touch that hasn't been held already.
her hand squeezes back into a fist, ignoring the trickle of warm blood that drips from it, watering the grassy ground. )
I don't want anything from you. From either of you. Tell her she can have you now — all of you.