(a short excerpt from what I've gotten done today...been writing nearly nonstop since 7 this morning...and its nearly 5...still a few more hours to go :D)
“You do not love me.” He was certain of that. Long ago he had concluded that no woman could ever love him, and what he sensed from the princess did not feel like love. He found a short tunic and awkwardly attempted to don it while trying to maintain the covering around his hips. “You do not yet know love, Diona. To love is not to force, not to act thus. You desire me in a physical capacity of which I…” “Of which you are not capable? Is that it, Lord Cliáth?” She drew near again backing him against the bed post, attempting the only other tactic she could think of to convince him to have her. Her hands found the bare skin of his belly. He shook violently, not only from the intimacy of her touch but from the emotions he felt from her, there was anger behind her play for passion, and not just anger at him for not being what she wanted him to be. Yet how could he be anything other than what he was? He felt nothing for her then except a growing fear of her ever increasing wrath but he could not even respond to that. When he did not kiss her back, would not touch her, she withdrew abruptly and struck him across his face. “You are a pathetic waste of a man,” she spat. Her expression hardened, a darkness descending over her face that Kavan had never seen on any other woman. “Any other man would be begging for what I have to offer, but you…you do not even know how to…I do not think you could please a woman if you tried.” He shrank back from the force of her words, their barbs striking deep in his soul. “My lady,” he started, but she was beyond listening to him now. “I have often wondered why you…such a handsome face…you do not know desire; you are as cold as the Kármár. You sing of passion, your music is filled with it, but you know nothing of it. You have all of the physical attributes of a man…” she ripped the sheet from his hands, living him uncovered before her cold gaze, “but that is all. The outward appearance…and more of a child in appearance at that. You do not even look like a man now Even your voice betrays you. You are a fraud, not a man at all. Coward! I will make certain that every woman in the Five Sovereignties knows that you are nothing. A stature, heart of marble, beautiful to behold but dead in every other way. No other woman will ever seek your bed, my lord. You drive me from it, now no one else will ever have you. I will see to it. It is not that I am who I am…it is that you are completely incapable of ever giving a woman the one thing she wants.” Her words stung him in a way he had not thought possible to feel. Was it true? Was he incapable of knowing that bond? No, he had felt it once, with Gabrielle. But he had fled anything more intimate than a single kiss and had not felt those soul consuming stirrings since. And he knew that feeling the passion was not the same as completing the union. Perhaps he had known he would fail and that was why he had fled Gabrielle. White. Marble. Beautiful. Thoughts swam in his mind; he could not sort them out, could not think straight. There was only a great ripping pain in his chest, in his soul. Not a man. He heard those words over and over. It was the one thing he had never wanted to hear, the one thing he had always feared, the affirmation of his complete separation from all that he truly longed to be. Not a man. But if not a man, what? Fake. An imitation. Cold. Unfeeling. Dispassionate. Dead. Not a man. Mind and heart screaming, he pulled the tunic over his head and fled to the oratory, away from Diona’s knife-like words, past Captain Delamo without seeing him. Not a man. Dead. Coward. Into the k’dhín bhólibh, the Chamber of Purification, which housed the Gate, where he pulled upon all of the energy he could command and reached for the first point of contact he recognized.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Kestrel Harper excerpt
Date: 2008-11-01 11:49 pm (UTC)“You do not love me.” He was certain of that. Long ago he had concluded that no woman could ever love him, and what he sensed from the princess did not feel like love. He found a short tunic and awkwardly attempted to don it while trying to maintain the covering around his hips. “You do not yet know love, Diona. To love is not to force, not to act thus. You desire me in a physical capacity of which I…”
“Of which you are not capable? Is that it, Lord Cliáth?” She drew near again backing him against the bed post, attempting the only other tactic she could think of to convince him to have her. Her hands found the bare skin of his belly. He shook violently, not only from the intimacy of her touch but from the emotions he felt from her, there was anger behind her play for passion, and not just anger at him for not being what she wanted him to be. Yet how could he be anything other than what he was? He felt nothing for her then except a growing fear of her ever increasing wrath but he could not even respond to that.
When he did not kiss her back, would not touch her, she withdrew abruptly and struck him across his face. “You are a pathetic waste of a man,” she spat.
Her expression hardened, a darkness descending over her face that Kavan had never seen on any other woman. “Any other man would be begging for what I have to offer, but you…you do not even know how to…I do not think you could please a woman if you tried.”
He shrank back from the force of her words, their barbs striking deep in his soul. “My lady,” he started, but she was beyond listening to him now.
“I have often wondered why you…such a handsome face…you do not know desire; you are as cold as the Kármár. You sing of passion, your music is filled with it, but you know nothing of it. You have all of the physical attributes of a man…” she ripped the sheet from his hands, living him uncovered before her cold gaze, “but that is all. The outward appearance…and more of a child in appearance at that. You do not even look like a man now Even your voice betrays you. You are a fraud, not a man at all. Coward! I will make certain that every woman in the Five Sovereignties knows that you are nothing. A stature, heart of marble, beautiful to behold but dead in every other way. No other woman will ever seek your bed, my lord. You drive me from it, now no one else will ever have you. I will see to it. It is not that I am who I am…it is that you are completely incapable of ever giving a woman the one thing she wants.”
Her words stung him in a way he had not thought possible to feel. Was it true? Was he incapable of knowing that bond? No, he had felt it once, with Gabrielle. But he had fled anything more intimate than a single kiss and had not felt those soul consuming stirrings since. And he knew that feeling the passion was not the same as completing the union. Perhaps he had known he would fail and that was why he had fled Gabrielle. White. Marble. Beautiful. Thoughts swam in his mind; he could not sort them out, could not think straight. There was only a great ripping pain in his chest, in his soul. Not a man. He heard those words over and over. It was the one thing he had never wanted to hear, the one thing he had always feared, the affirmation of his complete separation from all that he truly longed to be. Not a man. But if not a man, what? Fake. An imitation. Cold. Unfeeling. Dispassionate. Dead.
Not a man.
Mind and heart screaming, he pulled the tunic over his head and fled to the oratory, away from Diona’s knife-like words, past Captain Delamo without seeing him. Not a man. Dead. Coward. Into the k’dhín bhólibh, the Chamber of Purification, which housed the Gate, where he pulled upon all of the energy he could command and reached for the first point of contact he recognized.