#like ‘this man wrecked all the childhood of my wylan’

[catdoingblep]

[confused-as-all-hell]

as widely requested, here is the era of peace between the couples who have subjected to my misery and doom. rest assured i’ll stop causing you all so much pain. first, as always, comes nina and matthias serving enemies to lovers. i would love it if you reblogged, because it makes such a difference

tagging everyone who stormed my dms and notes looking for kinder endings: @thebonecarver @crazywritingbookworm @holding-shan-back-from-murder @highfaelucien @saltyfortunes @queer-bookwyvern @smol-satan @quintessential-octessence @nightshade3465 @murderbabies @wafflesandschemingfaces @dreaminginvelaris

@black-like-my-soul to you, ofc, because you make everything brighter

Matthias Helvar hadn't always loved her.

Once upon a time, he had simply been a boy from the countryside, his fingers stained with blue ink, the curve of his mouth slow and deliberate.

Once upon a time, he had spent his days closeted away in the university library, poring over texts and thick tomes snatched from the very highest shelves.

Once upon a time, he had slept peacefully in his bed, and woken to the sun rather than a star-bright laugh, and his evenings were dull but he knew their rhythm, their beat.

Once upon a time, his name had been eight letters, three syllables, one simple intonation; the first time he heard her say it, breathless and gasping with her head thrown back against the wall, he lost his fucking mind.

They had just been two students, too determined and arrogant and convinced of their own pride. Nina Zenik was raucous and gorgeous and so likened to the sea, all lush curves and storming tempers and glittering surfaces and unknown depths. Matthias Helvar was quiet and furious and easily compared to the ice, all shining facets and cold beauty and unforgiving resistance and inflexible anger.

They danced around each other, at first, a solid series of cautious steps and mocking inclines of the head.

Sometimes he glimpsed her running around the fields, her straight dark hair slick with snow, spluttering as a tall young man tossed another handful at her. He watched with mounting fury as she stretched out during lectures, her head tipping back, soft rosebud lips parting.

Matthias hated her.

Hated the exquisite sprawl of her body, the graceful curves and elegant concaves and sharp angles.

Hated that when the night grew dark, darker, darkest, she was all he could think about.

Hated her eyes, brightest summer green, like dewy leaves and eager flower shoots and grapes stolen from his sister's plate.

But he had never glimpsed anything quite so ethereal as her gaze, and her lovely, secret smile. The smile she turned on her dearest friends, the smile he so often wished to experience, the smile he thought could turn the coldest dregs of the world warm.

She was fucking stunning, and brilliant and wise and glorious and he wanted to kiss her so badly it ached.

She was fucking awful, and loud and insouciant and miserable and he wanted to hold a knife to her throat and listen to her beg.

But she was Nina Zenik, after all, and he never managed to do much more than ruin himself with his fantasies and hopes and wild dreams.

When Matthias lay on someone else's bedroom floor, staring up at the ceiling with eyes that couldn't quite focus, all he could hear was the soft lilt of her laugh, the dulcet cadence of her voice.

He heard her whisper, Matthias Matthias Matthias as if his name was her religion, and she was kneeling at the altar.

And if Matthias spent his nights imagining the press of her hands, the furious set of her lips, the slide of her clothes against his bare skin, he could blame it on his hatred.

He found excuses to watch as she bickered with Kaz Brekker in the corridors, shouting over her shoulder and grinning all the same. He studied at the same table where she was talking to Wylan Van Eck as he sketched with limber dark pencils, preserving her smile in charcoal and paper. He couldn’t keep himself from listening as she laughed with Inej Ghafa, both of them doubled up, arm in arm. And when he glimpsed her trailing her fingers up Jesper Fahey’s arm, her eyes blurred with ecstasy, he nearly lost his damned mind.

Sometimes he reminded her of a hurricane, fierce and indomitable and unforgiving, and then he saw the shade of her eyes and all he could see was flowers flowers flowers.

Winter roses, shrouded in snow and cloud and mist, regal despite every attempt to make them bow.

Spring cherry blossoms, their branches slender and elegant, every little flower a bouquet of rosy jewels.

Autumn sunflowers, veiled in dusty light and the dying cinders of day, the sprawled petals a beacon of hope.

Summer hydrangeas, sweet and bright and prismatic with their precise hues, resting in a crown upon her head.

She was every blossom in the world flowering at once, a determined tide of unfurling colour, undaunted and unbothered.

Nina, Nina, Nina. Even the lilt of her name was a blessing in his mouth, though everything he longed to do with her was godless.

Matthias wanted to watch those rosy lips part, wanted to hear the breathless moan that escaped her, wanted to taste the sound on his lips. He wanted to watch the famous Nina Zenik come and come apart on top of him.

She was a song, and he could have listened until the downfall of the world. He had never heard anything quite so exquisite.

Her voice felt like redemption.

And suddenly, Matthias was seeing her everywhere.

She was in the little cafe across the street, her dark hair unbound, her lipstick the colour of fury, leaning across her table to better reach the sugar bowl.

She was dancing in the club his friends dragged him to, her hands tangled in a pretty girl's hair, and they were both kissing, moaning breathlessly, and all he felt was jealousy jealousy jealousy.

She was unwrapping a cherry popsicle and sucking on it idly, her head in some boy's lap as he braided her hair, and he had never known such hatred.

She was in his messages, in his kitchen, in his bed.

When Nina was drinking at a club, her lips around a twirling straw, her red velvet dress hitched around her thighs, all he could think about was the daring cut of her neckline, the precise slash across her breasts.

And maybe it was because he was drunk and tired and ecstatic that he asked her for a dance.

It wasn't the slow, sweet, serious waltz he had always imagined undertaking with his future bride.

It was furious and frenzied and fearless, his hands on the curve of her waist, her lips tracing a hot path down his throat.

It was Nina angling her face to stare up at him, long lashes low, her mouth parted ever so slightly.

It was Matthias sliding his fingers into her hair, gazing down at her, kissing her.

When she sighed against him, a breathless exhale, he lost his fucking mind.

His hands were tracing up the tight velvet of her dress, ghosting across the flare of her hips, faltering at the graceful curve of her breasts, and then she was whispering and smiling and her fucking green eyes were fluttering closed.

Matthias never saw the colour green the same way.

They never spoke of the kiss, or the dozens that followed, each one occurring beneath the strobe lights of their nightclub and a haze of ecstasy.

His evenings began to play out like a movie one had watched thousands of times, and yet every single twist was breathtaking, ethereal.

Nina's warm, sweet mouth. Her wicked hands. Her secret smile. The press of her lips against his own. The curve of her body tight to his own. The brilliance of her, so incredibly staggering that he felt the need to turn away.

She was Nina Zenik and sometimes when Matthias realized he was the one she was kissing, the one who felt her clever touch, the one who was witnessing her delighted grin.

And in those moments, the world could have been hewn of gold for how exquisite it seemed.

The very first time Nina kissed him outside of their club, he could barely move.

She had simply bounded up to him, dark hair ribboning back, and suddenly she was kissing him, one warm hand through his own.

All Matthias could do was stand still, stand still, stand still.

He still dreamt about the wicked, determined, furious look in her eyes as she collided with him. That single spark in her gaze could have lit cities aflame.

Their relationship was never the brutal, raucous wreck Matthias had imagined.

It was Nina with her arms around his neck in the corridors, leaning onto the tips of her toes, smiling up at him.

It was Matthias leaving a bouquet of sunflowers in her dorms, because something about their undaunted bright stand reminded him of her.

It was Nina tangled in his bedsheets, her hair a dark halo on the pillow, sunlight slanting across her soft skin, smiling just so slightly even in her sleep.

It was Matthias waking up to a series of drunken texts and shaking his head, because of course she was out drinking at three in the damned morning.

It was Nina skating across the lake of his childhood, her arms held aloft for balance, smiling softly as she whirled; a wraith of the cold, a sylph of the ice. Her cheeks were red as cherries in the winter air, and every breath was a cloud of warm air past her parted lips.

When she threw her head back, dark hair shaking loose, he thought love might be his death after all.

And on the single night when the sky was clear, and the clouds were softer than spun silk, and they were laying intertwined in the meadows, Matthias wondered if it hadn’t already.

If he could have captured the stars, they would have been hers.