Lights Flicker And Fade : Kol Mikaelson [3]

242: This Woman's World

a/n: sorry about the wait, please remember to comment and vote, I lowkey hate this chapter fml, but I can't keep staring at it any longer, so enjoy!

1002

Maci jolted up.

She was still in her dress, now a deep and damp crimson colour, every inch of her body itching. Stickiness. An intensity that made her want to rip her flesh off – a cough ripped from her throat as she became aware of the flames across her bedsheets. Her fiancé's body was slumped over the vanity, all the candles previously there knocked to the floor and catching. Smoke seeping around her like a cloak.

How was she alive?

Patting her back and chest down as quickly as possible, Maci found no wound.

Instead, a sharp piercing hitting her gums. Digging into her lips as she stared at the puddles around her. Her own blood. A smell she'd never experienced before, skin burning under the direct light she'd been left in, cracking yet not igniting – not yet.

"Kol."

He'd taken Elijah's vial.

He'd given her the drink.

He'd said he'd handle it!

"How – how – "

Maci started to pant all over again.

The kindness she'd thought she'd felt in the middle of her panic was ripped away. He hadn't been helpful – he hadn't been acting as a friend – he'd arranged her murder.

And he hadn't even made it gentle.

Maci had no beating heart, yet it was like her chest was going to explode, pounding like the army drummers beckoning war – and her fiancé –

Her father's safety net –

Her plan –

"What – what – "

Kol was back, "Are you meant to do?"

Standing in the doorway with a woman.

One of the servants Maci knew well.

"Well," He tapped the woman's shoulder, "You drink."

Maci shoved to her feet, trying to think.

He'd tricked her.

He'd let her die like that?

He was gleaming, "Ready?"

Staring at how her face changed.

The pressure she could feel in her cheeks, not letting herself touch it. Knowing the black orbs his eyes became and not wanting to picture them on her face. Not risking turning towards the mirror – knowing it would momentarily break her. Determined to never give Kol that satisfaction.

How dare he?

Her lungs were trying to fail – they had already failed.

She was dead.

She'd died.

She'd been murdered by someone she had grown to trust, orchestrated by a man Maci viewed as one of the few real friends she could ever truly have despite the weight of the crown on her head.

The weight that was still there.

Not on her head, but her shoulders, craning her entire body into a shape closer to that of a reptile than a human. Meant to be shed. Not meant to walk the earth. Not meant to be so ravenous that the corpse of her fiancé suddenly seemed like the thing to dive into and lose her senses within as she feasted until the pins and needles and panic and fear and upset and vomit desperate to escape her throat at the sight of Kol's smile could be forgotten. Let it all out rather than feel the choking of an invisible rope around every joint in her body, tightening slowly. Itching. Shedding itself against her skin –