H
e senses her well before before he sees her.

It is sheer luck that he is downwind, so that her scent drifts like rosepetals towards him while he remains as elusive as a silver-eyed falcon.

But it is unmistakable, the smell that tiptoes like a cloying memory across his onyx muzzle. Scales. Vectaeryn. Kirin. It awakes a darkness in Caine that he’d thought had dissipated with the rising of the sun — a chained, slavering terror revived once again when the midnight bells tolled the hour like drums. He has less control over himself than he thinks.

There are more of them here, besides the ivory prince? Agenor has never told him.

Caine scowls at the thought as he banks into a sharp descent, the air as sharp as needles against his satin skin. He doesn’t know why he ever expects anything but snarling lies from his master’s blackened lips.

If there is another, though, then today is a day as fine as any to greet a fellow denizen —  and an ascended one at that.

His hooves glide across the slippery moss as he alights upon the peak like a dark Raziel, seconds before the violet-scaled kirin makes her own hard landing. After a wincing recovery, she swivels her noble crown once, twice, across the land, her ember eyes as keen as a kite’s. Caine folds himself neatly behind a jagged boulder, the tips of his raven wings barely escaping her detection.

Not yet. He can’t reveal himself yet, not before he puzzles out who she is. His brow furrows in thought as he watches her, silver eyes narrowing as the pieces slowly align. From the numerous books Caine had read about the royal family of House Solaris (as he’d never even laid eyes on any of the gilded kirins before Isorath, as per the wishes of the ever-pleasant Agenor), winged kirins were solely of royal blood.

A princess, then? he ponders, as he regards those reptilian wings with slow-growing interest. A cousin or a sister of Isorath’s, he supposes — she looks young, too young, to be anything but. As Caine mulls over each possibility like tarot cards, a pleased smile lodges itself deeper and deeper against his lips the more certain he is of his conclusion. The boy is sharp enough to snatch an opportunity by the teeth when he finds one, and meeting another Vectaeryn royal is a rare encounter indeed. Much too tantalizing to pass.

He approaches her slowly, a knight swathed in black. A boy draped in a starless sky, with eyes of lunar light. Lovely. Deadly.

“You are far from your palace, Princess,” he remarks, voice as soft as a nightingale’s song.

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@Vaella | "speech" | notes: he will definitely be turning on the charm