Mania
They called it love, but they were wrong. It wasn't love. It was the slow and mutual destruction of two equally deadly creatures, addicted to greedily consuming one another. It was the gradual unraveling of humanity to reveal the twisted faces beneath. It was sweetness of the kind that scorched everything it it's path, leaving nothing living behind. They walked into the darkened chamber side by side and the tortured candle flames flickered in fear of the destruction they would wreak.
She could feel madness blossoming in both of them. It stretched, slid sinuously over her skin, grew roots in her thoughts. They were married while they were still able to wear the pretty masks of sensibility. But even that night she could taste the delicious fever in him as he tore the white silk from her skin and ran his teeth against the places where where her pulse beat. They were made to walk among men like wolves in disguise, ripping the world to pieces, biting into its pulsing flesh and drinking their fill. She had never seen anything so magnificent as the twisted pleasure in his eyes when the world saw his madness and ran screaming from it. It drew her in until she drowned, choking on the soulless beauty of it.
They knew the taste of pain. It was metallic, rich, thick and wet; it slithered and undulated. When he pressed his lips hard to hers until her breath was forced out in a dry, wretched gasp, she tasted it. It lived in their senseless contradictions: beautiful and evil, warm skin and cold wrath, his hand pressing, sliding against her skin and his teeth at her neck and the hateful words she gasped to him while she pulled him closer.
Everyone around held so tightly to their control, and only she had found that the real secret was to let go of it. She rejected control, threw herself into chaos and confusion, relished turmoil, destruction, decay. She did not ask questions to which there were no answers. It did not bother her that he was equally repulsed by her as he was addicted, nor that she loathed him as much as desired him. They fed from one another, ripped each other apart and in turn grew stronger on one another's stolen blood. And then they turned to the rest of the world and drank, frolicked, bathed in its fear together. The sky rained fire and they walked the blood soaked streets hand in hand.
He watched as they marked her, his eyes dark and shining. She hissed in pain at the burn and she could see that he enjoyed hearing the noise slip out of her. When they were done he ran his hand over the Mark, hunger apparent in his face. He pressed her to the wall and kissed her greedily, and their marked arms touched, scorched flesh meeting like star-crossed lovers. It stung. She bit his lip, hard. She thought she tasted blood.
He smiled.