Ooooh, Marinellis for the shipping thing? :D
Ahhh, okay okay okay, let me just vomit words at you real quick –
Where oh where to start with those precious dolls, those children of kings, those bloody-knuckled wanderers? Well, let’s start at the beginning. Let’s start when she was a wild girl with twigs tangled in her blonde hair, and Ellis let his lungs go raw trying to keep up with her, scrabbling over empty hill and quiet forest (“I’m faster than you!!” “No, I am!!” He would spend the rest of his life running after her; he would beat his feet bloody chasing her shadow. But this is a story for another day). She had always been a force of nature, the hurricane that bats aside a concrete wall as easily as a child scatters toys, and so she had ever crushed his apathy, grabbing his hand and marching him out to see how many frogs they could find before sundown (the first time she stole a ring from his finger, she slid it off and said she wanted to keep it; he went red and told her he was too young to be married, and she laughed at him until he ran away, cheeks burning hotter than the sun that sank slowly below the horizon behind them).
When they are older, he is thin and broken, making his bed in gutters and coughing up all the blood and hope and filth in his veins. But she is vital and radiant and half-divine, glowing softly even under red lights. He thinks she is the daughter of some forgotten lord, born to be bowed to, heiress to a broken empire and beholden to none. He calls her star-lit even when her eyes are blackened and her ribs are bruised and the underside her fingernails are crusted with the blood of other men.
(The only time he kisses her is on the seaside, in the rain. He tastes of too much wine and ashes; she tastes of chocolate and sea salt. He carries the memory like a stone in his chest, regretting he had done it at all, regretting he hadn’t sooner. She left the next day, anyway.)
(She would always been a queen in his heart, her court of cohorts and assassins and spies, her laundry list of suitors, her crown of roses and her matter-of-fact sense of ownership, always simply, “Well, hello, Ellis.” He thinks himself a jester, good for a tumble and a laugh.)
(He doesn’t see the way she looks at him, the sharp intake of breath that precedes the smile that could light a room. He calls her a star but to her he is a sun, the golden-eyed vagrant prince with scars on his arms and light for a smile. If she has a throne it is because he built her one, every smile worth more than jewels, every touch better than a crown.)
I love that they have ever crowned themselves, these bruised children of dead and dying empires, cast-off from halls of power they make an island out of their bodies. They will always rule a kingdom, even if that kingdom is only measured in two hearts.
Well, I love them (and why your beautiful daughter is willing to settle for my trash son, I’ll never know :p)
