isolt griffin

I'm more alive than I've ever been

Everything about him alluded in no subtle manner to the dismay that had drug its viral rot into his heart: the intensity of the furrow digging into his brow, the painful rigidity of his jawline, the telling distance that left the brilliance of his eyes beneath the cloak of a damning shade. It was a tangible thing, something that could be smelt, could be tasted as it seeped with such fervor from his every pore. It was putrid and unfamiliar coming from the man who had, even as they all had labored beneath the despotism of Risque and her brigade, been a beacon of consistency. Steadfast and strong, a savior in his own right. In his own way.

But now...

He slithered and stumbled around the true answer to her query, dodging it with such hurried avoidance that the curiosity and dread that had begun to set their roots into Isolt's heart only spread further still. Surely there existed so very few circumstances that would have found him upon her doorstep at so odd an hour in such a troubled state, though she is absent any consideration of what the said circumstance might have been as she settles upon the wood slab of her table to tend to the lesion that marred his stoically handsome features. The string of questions that tumble from his lips, though, find her relunctant to admit the truth that had long ago nestled itself into the pliable flesh of her heart: that she had no knowledge of where Damon had gone or when it was that he intended to return... if ever. She had, heretofore, dared not speak this aloud to any soul for fear that to do so might somehow seal the prophetic end of her greatest worry. Though as she parts her lips to indulge one of her closest companions with this disquieting confession, he barrages her with a maelstrom of hurried words that only her brow furrow ever deeper.

"I don't know where he went, and wh-... Tet, stop. STOP," she commands with far more authority than she is given to feel in this moment, pressing a falsely delicate hand against his shoulder as he moves to rise from his seat. The auburn-haired woman heaves a breathless sigh, azure eyes meeting the emerald ones of her companion in a glance that is naught else but beseeching. "Keep me safe from what? What is going on?"