The blood hums in his veins. Phillip tosses in his sleep, his peaceful dreams of golden hair in sunlight and scarlet lips turned up in song fading. Another dream rises to take its place. Castle walls build around him, and he can't help but feel insignificant beneath their weight and the haughty gaze of the crowd. There's a whisper of excitement in the crowd, and the soft feel of magic rising like a breeze to fill the room.

The whispers fade, and the breeze dies away, leaving nothing but silence and a growing tension in their space. Phillip can feel hands grabbing at him, pulling him against the skirts of the Queen. The air feels like it does before a storm, full of possibility and lightning and disaster waiting to strike. He doesn't understand, and he tosses again in his sleep, and the dream shifts.

Once more he's in the forest, and he can hear the nightingale singing its song in the human tongue. But the air feels different, the scent of lilac and honeysuckle fading away as it smooths over his skin like a thousand caresses and whispers of bad intent. And then he can hear her voice, hear its rise and falls, hear it catch on words he can't make out. Just the promise of them, the laughter and the mockery of them, that have haunted him for so many years.

The storm breaks, and he wakes with a start. He had hoped the girl in the forest would let these dreams die away, let him wake one morning without the arousal brought upon by the phantom that haunts him. Since he had been a child, the rising power of a storm had stirred in him a strange sensation that he didn't understand. As he had aged, the sensations had changed, bringing him hot shame and arousal he didn't want nor understood.

Pushing himself from the tangled bed sheets, he moves to the window, letting the evening's air cool the sweat on his face and chest. In the distance he can see heat lightning, flickering over the mountains, and for a moment, he imagines he can feel its power washing over him. The thought only raises his arousal, and he shakes his head to dispel it. It isn't right to be so incited by a ghostly voice that whispers of destruction.

Instead he tries to think of the girl in the woods. Of the way her sun warmed hair would feel wrapped in his hand, of the smoothness of her skin. It does little to deviate his thoughts from their usual course. He stays at the window till the sun rises, painting the land he will one day rule in various shades of colour as it peeks around the mountains and breaks apart the storm.

The rising sun does little to end the storm within him.


Originally, this was supposed to be longer, but it kind of petered out. So there you go. Have a strange one-sided Maleficent/Phillip ficlet?