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"We haven't been introduced"

Liraz and Ziri from Daughter of Smoke and Bone

by @lainitaylorbooks

Commissioned by TeddiBarez

#my art #fanart #laini taylor #daughter of smoke and bone #dreams of gods and monsters #liraz #ziri #digitalart #dosab #dosab trilogy

Karou and Akiva

Daughter of Smoke and Bone -by Laini Taylor

#laini taylor #dosab trilogy #dosab #Daughter of smoke and bone #karou #Akiva #karou and akiva #my art #artists on tumblr #Illustration #fan art

I’m currently rereading the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy for the umpteenth time, and imagining this scene early in Dreams of Gods and Monsters from Ziri’s point of view was keeping me awake all night. So I had to try and write it. Hope you like it ☺️

*****

Dreams of Flying

Exhaustion weighed heavy in his bones, almost too much for even the White Wolf’s body. Yet Ziri lay awake, watching her. He’d been quietly watching her ever since her brother had left for the caves, telling himself it was to prevent any trouble that might arise between her and his soldiers. Telling himself it was to protect them from her. That icy, dark anger, ever present despite the flaming heat of her wings, was something he needed to keep an eye on.

And what if, in his watching, he saw the flashes of other emotions on Liraz’s face? What thoughts softened her features in between the irritated glances to the sky, waiting as Karou did for Akiva’s return? Her beauty, as with all seraphim, was undeniable, even as she’d leveled a forbidding glare at him when he’d first spoken to her in the desert of another world. When she’d asked about...him. The true him. The him he was increasingly afraid of losing to the wolf.

What should he make of her hands, so covered in kill marks as to make them almost black? Hands that clenched and unclenched in a rhythmic manner, never once straying near her weapons. Ziri wondered how far the marks extended up her arms. The thought made his stomach lurch. And then he flushed with shame, remembering the smiles he’d carved into seraphim faces, the orders to abandon their people in favor of committing atrocities. If not for the defiance of Balieros, he would have followed those orders. Not happily, but that was little consolation. Any judgment he felt towards the tattoos on Liraz’s hands sank away as the memories of his kills rose in challenge.

Suddenly, she stopped her pacing. With one last look into the night sky, Liraz moved through the camp. Ziri feigned sleep when she looked his way, then tensed as she stepped, wraithlike, around the other chimaera. An unexpected disappointment seized him and he slowly reached for his sword.

Liraz stopped where Karou’s human friends lay huddled together. In his watching, he’d seen the boy approach her earlier, desperate enough from the cold to ask a seraphim soldier to share her warmth. The literal cold shoulder she’d given him had sent a spike of disappointment through Ziri then too.

But what should he expect? Liraz was Misbegotten. Born and raised to fight, to kill. She knew nothing but war. Like him.

But not. He knew love too. Did she?

She must, he thought, remembering the despair, the emptiness in her red, raw eyes as she’d fallen next to her brother’s corpse. Both she and Akiva were destroyed by their loss. But where Akiva still harbored hope, Ziri wasn’t sure if he saw that in Liraz. Maybe it flickered beneath the cold, stoic surface. And maybe not. Maybe she was simply following Akiva in a haze of grief and pain.

And yet, she was here. And yet...as her eyes swept across the camp, making sure no one saw, she spread her wings out wide over the shivering humans.

Ruffling her feathers like a preening bird, the light of her flames intensified until they glowed like a small sun. Until she glowed like the sun. Ziri’s breath caught at the sight of her. But then her wings guttered slightly, as if touched by a soft gust of wind. Her face hardened and for an instant, he thought he’d been seen.

Liraz twisted to look behind her. Karou sat on a ledge, overlooking the scene. Without a sound, her tilted head the only acknowledgement of what she’d witnessed, Karou lay down and left the seraphim to her task. Liraz’s irritation from earlier returned, but she didn’t move except to boost the fires of her wings again. Ziri almost laughed at the silent exchange, the gruff soldier caught in the act of mercy by her formerly sworn enemy.

He would have laughed, except the sight of Karou flooded him with the heartbreak he’d momentarily forgotten. He would have been curious about the forgetting, if not for the renewed ache and his desperation to fly. Continuing to stare at Liraz, he longed for wings, any wings that could help him escape this place and this body, this pain and responsibility.

It was some time before Ziri nodded off into a restless sleep filled with dreams of flying.

Ughhhhhh Thiago literally sounds like one of those slimy “religious” creeps who act all penitent and like they’ve “seen the light” or the “error of their ways” or whatever other bullshit they spew, but you know that it’s all a front. DON’T FALL FOR IT, KAROU!

#rereading dobas #days of blood and starlight #thiago #dosab trilogy

moodboard: karou (daughter of smoke and bone series)

“i am one of billions. i am stardust gathered fleetingly into form. i will be ungathered. the stardust will go on to be other things someday and i will be free.”