**Patirally taken down for querying!! Just a heads up. If you give it a ready anyway, I'd love to know your thoughts. <3**

Warning: This story is decidedly dark fantasy. It deals with emotional, physical and sexual violence from many different angles. The worst of the gore is roped off with trigger warnings. But you have been warned if that's not your thing. 0.0 <3

The city was grey and inky with night; the sea a spill of black satin. She'd taken a basket of laundry to the roof (sleep hadn't come easy those days) and the chilled breeze brushed the hair from her neck in a thin-fingered caress.

Blood.

She sensed it like a stain in the fabric of night and set aside her basket with a medic's steady hand.

Her brother had returned to her covered in blood.

He was in lion-skin, collapsed on the slope of shingles that spread from the terrace wall. His massive paw hung down the side, leaving a red smear on the chalky paint. The glimmer of his eyes followed her in the darkness as she moved closer.

"Easy," she crooned. Lest the human side of him be too lost to recognise her. "Just me, hey?"

The lion lifted himself from the wall's ledge and descended to the terrace, his movements a spill of oil. He approached her and pressed his muzzle to the soft place between her shoulder and neck—seeking comfort like a cub. The soft fur of his nose was wet; his mane, slick.

It was dragon blood. She could smell smoke beneath the copper taste in the air. Dragons were always feuding; people were always dying. Stalwar the Black Hunger had already scourged their life once—what was a second time?

And their lion pride was peace-vowing; sworn against violence. So, of course, she first checked him for injuries. And if her hands shook, they shook with anger.

He rent back to human-skin for her inspection. His bloody gold mane became matted black dreadlocks, blacker still with gore. The blood on his skin seeped through the linen of the shirt he'd been wearing the day before.

  She sat him against the wall, crooning softly. He said nothing. Merely sat there, staring at his hands, like a folded house of cards. So far, the only blood that was his came from a gash on his side.

Those big hands began to shake while she checked them for breaks.

"I've done it," he said. His voice was congealed with shock. "I've done it, El."

"Sh." She wiped the worst of the gore off his cheek with her sleeve, staining its hem. "What's it you've done now?" she asked gently.

He looked at her then. His eyes had been empty, but now they refilled themselves with someone foreign to her. A new orbit tilting in her brother that she knew, even then, would take him from her.

"I've killed him," Siman said—his words now as clear and clean as a sharp knife.

Eleos withdrew her hand. Her voice barely wrung from her throat. "You've what?"

The baby cried. Then Romna (the mother) began to weep softy in turn. Eleos had left their window open to the night to listen for them while she worked. Her hands shook with panic now. She thought to ignore the cries.

But that foreign orbit in Siman's eyes was locking into place. Rebuilding him like the blood he wore was a new skin to don like armour. Armour that fit; fit far too well.

"Don't move," she told him tremulously, folding up the sleeve of her shirt so the cold blood wouldn't touch her skin.

"Eleos," he tried, more himself now.

But she fled.

Two flights below, Eleos found the child and mother. Romna was curled into the wall, staring at nothing. The babe was squalling next to her, desperate hands grabbing at the dim for comfort. Siel was barely half a year; the breast milk was still wet on her lips.

"You finished feeding her?" Eleos asked, relieved at the emptiness of her voice.

Romna didn't answer. She drew the thin blanket over her shoulders and tucked deeper into the wall.

Eleos picked up the wailing child and small fists wrapped in her long hair.

For the first time since everything fell apart, Eleos was glad her sister was despondent. Romna had little left to take. And this uprooted everything at the heart of the Pride. Already shock had rendered Eleos a mere tangle of veins and vows.

She closed the window as she left. The hall was dark and comforting, so she leaned against Romna's door to soothe the child.

Those vows she'd taken alongside Siman. They'd knelt before the Pride and sworn—sworn with the solemn weight of the sea: no harm to life by their hands. And here in the smear of night, he'd come to her. A killer.

The squirming child bucked her head and the small tips of the horns growing from the babe's scalp hit Eleos in the chin. They knocked a tear from her eye.

Eleos pressed the child closer—horns and all—and climbed the stairs to her blood-soaked brother.

Above them, night clung to the cracks in the sky. They splintered overhead like black grout, the sky plates between them a pallid grey. The moon watched too, her eye wide and white.

Siman was sitting where she'd left him, his shirt off to sop up the blood.

"You'll have to clean up yourself," she said, wiping the milk from the baby's chin.

"The kit alright?"

Eleos didn't answer; Siel had the hiccups and still whimpered. Sometimes she felt two moments with Romna's negligence was enough to undermine the endless nights of soothing care from her and Siman. Just from her, now. His hands were sticky with blood.

Siman stood.

On the opposite side of the roof's terrace were the baths, covered in a tent of blue curtains. The charcoal strokes of night made the blood he washed off indistinguishable from the water. On his dark skin, it looked like nothing but sweat. Eleos' throat twisted.

She must have been in shock, because his hands were clean and dry when they touched her cheeks.

"He'll never hurt anyone again, El. Not Romna, not the Pride, not you," Siman's hand went to Siel's head and Eleos flinched the child away. "The dragon is dead, Eleos. Finally dead."

Eleos backed away until her spine pressed against the wall. "The overseer. You killed him." She could only whisper. "Our vows?"

His temper stirred at her disgust. "Our vows meant he could take Romna without fear of repercussion. I've made us safe."

"Safe," she echoed. The word was stringy and decayed. She slid down the wall.

Siel began to cry again, afraid.

Siman crouched before them. "No one else had the courage to do it," he said, soft as a promise.

"Because it's wrong." Eleos sounded herself again. "All those hours you lurked around his estate..."

"We lurked around his estate," Siman corrected, that foreign look in his eye. "You wanted to kill him too. You sat here and you told me so."

"I wanted to. But I knew it solved nothing." She wrapped her hand in the neck of his shirt. "We're just like them if we don't believe that."

His fingers found hers. "Easy, El. I shed his blood to staunch ours. He'd have come for his young one day." His hand returned to the child. "A hybrid desecrates his entire bloodline. He'd kill her."

Eleos pushed his hand from her, something like a sob catching in the twist of her ribs. "Blood does not staunch blood!"

The child wailed in earnest now. And Eleos was crying too, silent tears falling without her consent. "Are you sure he's dead?" She was a better medic than Siman. She could patch up scales; heal a dragon-skin—she felt sick at the thought. "I could go. Save him."

"Save him? The snake's a monster! Do you hear yourself, El? You're the biggest dragon-hater I know."

Eleos rocked the child. "But he was alive just a few hours ago. And now, he's... he's not."

"I shouldn't have told you." Siman pulled back and ran a hand through his hair. "Should have washed the blood off in the sea and come home like nothing. But... the kill." His hand covered his face. "I needed someone to know."

His words found her like a compass. "Hedren. He should know."

Siman looked to her, shocked. "He'll excommunicate me."

"What did you expect, Siman? You broke your vows." Eleos found her footing. "The Pride's Head should know."

Siman stood, the panic in his eyes resurrecting the brother she'd known. "I don't have anywhere to go," he said. "What would I even say?"

"That you killed a man." Eleos wiped her tears with the edge of her sleeve unsullied by blood.

"A monster."

"Blood is blood." She resituated the child. "Get changed. I'll wake Hedren."

The trial and excommunication were held that night, rushed and messy like an amputation.

Siman had let her stitch up the gash on his side before he left. He was quiet. She was quiet—the whole pride was quiet. Excommunications were rare and tragic. And never so sudden. But Stalwar's men would come asking soon.

Eleos retreated to the rooftop, avoiding the shingles he'd stained. The child was in her lap, nestled in pink wool. The breeze stuck her hair to her cheeks. And sunrise spilt over the sea in apricot gold like a cracked yolk.

It was the first dawn she faced alone.

______

......

i feel like an authors note will ruin the moment.

*whispers*
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dedicated to LittlePringleGirl and all the hours we spend spinning tales. You're a gem of a friend and an inspiration to me. Love you! xx