TERMINUS
Written on October 9, 2024 (♏︎)
Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2024 for prompt No. 9: Obsession (Broken Window).
The chase had lost its course, and Rafa had come to the room of her second childhood–the chamber she had thought herself finally severed from when she’d fled the fortnight prior.
It surprised her little to find it unaltered in her absence.
None of it touched: the bottle of Romandan perfume on the inlaid table, the abstract leadglass window of tessellating crimson and gold, the gauzy canopy atop a stale, unmade bed. If the Grand Duke had ever come here in the weeks prior, he had not set anything out of place. All was as it was on the day she left… as it had been on the night prior.
Rafa steadied her breath, let the wild beating of her heart slacken. She tried to remember the direction from which she had last heard footfalls. She felt her fingers grow numb around the grip of her sword. There was another flash from the storm.
Her eyes opened, narrowed as she saw a shadow pass somewhere beyond the glass, and without thinking, she pushed her blade and the tight-balled fist holding it through to the other side.
She would not slacken or stop now. All things were coming to their terminus.
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