A/N: I meant to have this up ages (and ages) ago. Blaming illness and life for that. An eternal amount of love to @seastarved who helped me with manipping this bottom image, and who made her own gorgeous images of chapter 1 for my birthday :3.
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Bird of Prey (2/3)
Swan Mythology/Fairy Tale AU. Part 1 // FFnet // AO3
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Five for silver Six for gold Seven for a secret, never to be told
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That night never really leaves him.
It plays as familiar in his recesses as the stories, a sonorous pierce like the violin, words of warning humming in their resonance. It is the thrum of a chord expertly hit – a danger foretold, a memory rewound and replayed.
He should have taken more caution, more heed, less abandon, he shouldn’t have gone to the lake.
Beware the bathing swans.
But he cannot stop thinking of it, and although it stays with him, it never really does so with any accuracy.
If you asked Killian, he would have said that the rain never made any noise at all, that the thick mud had not drenched through his boots leaving with it a chill that lasted for days. No nervous beating heart, no mute and violent lightning.
No cruel confusion.
He remembers the scream, though.