Solbi grinds her hips against Chanyeol's pelvis in a slow rhythm, testing to see if he would go any deeper.

It was mindless experimentation, both of them lost in hazes of pleasure, but still coherent enough to want more.

When she cards her hands through Chanyeol's hair, she looks down at him, really takes a good look at his face.

Honestly, he's so attractive, he makes her heart hurt a bit.

Would she be trapped here forever? In gilded cages and too warm arms, breathless pleasure, and empty, cracking hearts?

What a stupid question. Solbi is never trapped. Nothing dulls her edge. EXO should have known that.

The next morning, EXO finds Chanyeol dead upon his own bed, mottled purple bruises spidering around his throat.

He'd been suffocated. The irony is not lost on anyone.

xxx

Solbi is driving down the desert, the steering wheel in her hands felt as much like control as anything in the world.

She needed a little bit of that, she thinks, after she's lost control of everything else in her world.

What a spectacular show.

The hovel she pulls up to is nothing glamourous, nothing like what she was used to, flitting from the arms of wealthy men.

But maybe, just maybe, it is exactly what she needs.

When she steps inside, dust kicks up from the doorstep. A subtle hissing sound emanates from her left, and she turns just in time to see a snake unfurling itself, lazily uncoiling itself.

The sinuous, unhurried way it moved reminded her of the too many dangerous, lithe, sinister men in her life.

An efficient flick of her wrist, and the snake is pinned against the wall, a dagger embedded between its eyes.

Her surroundings are sparse, but clean enough. The dry air of the desert causes dust to settle into her lungs, and so she takes to wearing a shawl against like the locals.

There is an oasis near her home, as she's taken to calling it, and she goes there daily for fresh water.

Slowly, the heat, sand, and dust seem to scrub away at her sins.

xxx

On the eighth day of August, when the heat of day is slowly simmering into the frost of evening, Sehun finds her laying in a hammock by the cool waters of the oasis.

She really is beautiful, he thinks, as he approaches her. There are some women that lose their beauty the more y