The mystery of the wild-maned stallion did not last for very long.
Morozko’s silver-eyed gaze was a solemn, still counterpoint to the rest of the scene, even as it sharpened on the other stallion as he spoke. His voice was as easy and pleasurable a roll as the waves below, and the unicorn fell into listening, his straight, almost rigid posture (more force of habit than intent) belying his curiosity. He caught
Reichenbach, and
Sovereign, and his attention sharpened further —
and then came the first arrival.
He recognized her immediately, by sight and scent and voice, and was immediately struck by the similarity between the two. No, not in anything physical, despite their wild hair and the careless way they carried themselves; they both were
alive, marvelously and unapologetically, in a way he seldom saw in Hiemsterra. If they were flowers, he was frost; if they were the sea, feral and lovely, surely he was the cliffside they dashed and danced against. It was a foreign kind of grace they both possessed, and Morozko kept his silence as the young mare - little more than a girl, really - curtsied and spoke.
A king, then, and if the pale unicorn dipped his head in response to the discovery, it was out of respect and surprise, not obligation. He watched with faint amusement as she tucked a flower into the sovereign’s hair, but when the girl turns to him, he keeps his stillness and his silence. He quirked a brow at her comment on his mane, and forced himself not to protest - not to move at all - when instead she laid it around his horn. The brush of its petals against his forehead felt soft as a butterfly’s kiss.
“It suits you better,” he said, soft and half unwilling to speak at all, but she has already turned away.
He does not feel jealousy at their easy manner, or their reference to festivities - so he tells himself. And yet he is pleased when the talk moves on, back to business, back to things he knows and understands.
“I am not so charming as she,” he said,
“but allow me to welcome you, your Majesty, to the Dusk Court. I am Morozko.” The unicorn paused, wetting his lips to continue, but they were once more interrupted. This time it was the dark colt from the gathering, a striking figure in his own right, whose lengthy tail trailed him like a robe. Morozko flicked an ear at the interruption, though he betrayed no outward displeasure. It seemed this Reichenbach was well known and as well liked, an observation that ought to comfort him.
But it suddenly felt quite crowded on the cliffside, with the breeze that pushed them seaward and the waves that leapt up the rocks. The winged colt’s arrival drew the former soldier’s attention to something else - and at the sight of Rannveig, the unicorn does drop his head in a bow. When he lifted it again, it’s to turn his gaze back on the bay king. He doesn’t notice when when another gust tears the flower from his horn and tosses it out to sea.
“It seems you needn’t wait long on that introduction.” He angled his head, looking with something like pride toward his queen, again marveling at how she had grown from slender filly to proud sovereign. He could not guess what else the Dusk Court might hold, but she at least would be easy to protect, to serve.
The thought, at last, drew a smile to his features, though it was as lean a thing as the rest of him.
“I suppose I needn’t warn you that you’re being watched,” he said, a laugh in his silver eyes, for the Night King was well and truly surrounded, now. With that he stepped away from the cliff and toward Rannveig, turning so that he stood alongside her.
But Morozko stopped short of carrying out the actual introductions. For this, his gaze cut to the flower-maned girl, their Emissary. The winter-forged unicorn was nothing if not obedient to titles and the duties that they bore.
@Rannveig @
Florentine @Reichenbach @Damascus SORRY FOR THE NOVEL
