#HOOOOO tents hands in front of face and attempts to recollect my own composure

[magnifiico]

Most days, most circumstances—most of the time, when the world was upright and everything lined up neat and perfect—his queen’s laugh was a melody of which he never grew tired. Her smile was his reason. Her voice was his just cause. Her warm and steady gaze was his strength. Magnifico would sooner find a way to bring a halt to time itself—tear the entire universe to pieces, one star at a time—than he would exist in a place absent of any of that. Absent of her.

But this time, the warbly sound leaking out through trembling lips—echoing pathetically and as hollow as the chest once containing it—only established itself as a red hot knife plunging into his sternum, through flesh and bone, twisting, biting— He’d do anything. He’d do anything. He had done anything and everything to try to protect… 

Her. She came closer to him, now. The distinct rattle of keys coaxed a sidelong glance, an instinctive, yearning look as that face drew near. And yet, by the time Amaya was right in front of him, holding herself in that elegance Magnifico knew contained entire storms of anguish, he’d averted his gaze again—feeble (feeble!) efforts to gather his own composure to a shred of hers before meeting her eye.

She spoke. Something in him bent again, farther, tighter, quaking in all endeavors to not break—

Her words were a pick against thin ice.

“Faith?” Magnifico barked, a sudden thunder that reverberated through his every limb. Finally, he spun to look at her detached, piercing stare. That something in him cracked. “Y-you…” He emitted an agitated growl in place of any words, and the shake of his head ended with another surrendering of that eye contact. (She was stronger than him. She always had been.)

Silently, he quelled the fires that had begun to lick and feed at his temper; he exhaled loudly, slowly—like she had always told him to do. “Surely you understand why I did what I did,” he countered on a forcibly level tone, teetering so dangerously on that edge of self-control. “We agreed to keep that book for emergencies, Amaya. Against threats, against… anything that would so much as try to ruin what we had built— As King, I did what needed to be done.”

Her composure was well-practiced, but even she had her limits. Standing there, hanging off of her beloved's every word, waiting for him to betray any sign of the forbidden book's corruption...

Amaya was terrified. She had no idea where to begin or what to expect. As Magnifico bemoaned both of his newfound prisons in that childish huff she knew so well, she still didn't know if it was truly him, and her aching heart was terrified to hope.

But then his question broached the stagnant dungeon air. So gentle and full of concern. So simple, yet so absurd after all that had happened.

How was she supposed to answer that? How could he possibly ask her that after everything he'd done?

But... Hadn't he always been the one to take care of her when no one else—including herself—would?

A watery laugh slipped from her lips: a thin, fragile sound that shattered against the unforgiving stone floor. That question only made an answer to it more impossible to find. Even if he was somehow free from the book's thrall, it didn't change anything. It didn't undo the damage that had been done or heal the wound left behind.

Finding that words had abandoned her, Amaya could only shake her head in helpless sorrow. But she forced herself to move through the ache: withdrawing the cell's key from her sleeve, she unlocked the door and strode forward until she stood a mere pace away from the mirror.

As poised as she appeared, a keen once-over would betray the tension stringing her frame and the quaver in every exhale. A hand returned to her chest after she'd tucked the key away, fingers curling atop her heart in a futile effort to contain its erratic rhythm.

"You must be yourself again to ask me such a thing—" Amaya began, "—or at least, that's what I want to believe." The queen's gaze, sharp and wary, studied him even when Magnifico looked away. "Surely you understand why I'm having difficulty placing any amount of faith in you right now."