Asterion

 



Asterion is waiting when they arrive – the mentor he’d once wished for, the broken body of his sister and queen, and the monster that carries them both.

Cirrus had known of them first; hours earlier she’d been idling the thermals near the coast when a great disturbance of birds had come crying from the west, shrieking, singing, warning monster.

Asterion, she’d thought down their long bond, something is wrong. I’m going to see. And from his place in the capitol the Regent had fallen still, his ears twisting back, each nerve shivering like a racehorse at the gate. Florentine had vanished not long before, taking with her the letter that Raymond had sent, anger flashing in her eyes.

That was worry enough, but there was, too, the warning from the gods - change is coming.

Be safe, he bids the bird, and tries the best he can to busy himself while he works.

But oh! No tasks could keep the gnawing worry from him, and it was with near relief when he heard the voice of his bonded some time later – though any comfort vanished at the cold bite of her tone.

It’s Florentine. She’s hurt –

And so Cirrus had filled him in on what she could, no more than a seagull insignificant as a wisp of cloud as she watched the beast bear Flora home. At once Asterion raced for the hospital, thinking how the dread-drop of his stomach, the icy blood in his veins, had become such a familiar feeling. This time, at least, he did not have to run all the way to Denocte.

--

Cirrus had reached him first, and rests on a wide wooden rail when the ground begins to tremble much the same as his flesh had. Asterion stands his ground, dark and grim, and inclines his head in a nod to the healers he had prepared.

But nothing could ready them for the sight of the monster. Even Asterion, having heard of its appearance, felt his heart pale when it came stomping, ruining through the swamp. Any lemurs who had not scattered at the first shake of the earth fled now, and swamp-birds cried as they took to the air. Still the bay stallion does not move – not until the monster lowers its mighty hand and he must step aside as it lays down the golden body of his sister.

His heartbeat threatens to stop entirely when his dark gaze falls on her, a quick list of each terrible wound, but she lives, she lives, and that must be enough for now. “Take her,” he instructs the healers beside him, and so tenderly they do, easing her onto a litter and away, to perform the work that they are known for. Asterion prays they are as good as their reputation. He knows they will need to be.

Only Cirrus remains beside him, and her eyes are dark as slick black mussels and her feathers are all fluffed. Asterion spares not a glance for the beast that stands before him, nor for the damage it has caused the swamp; his eyes are only full of red.

A heartbeat, two, and an image flashes again through his mind – a letter with ink that gleamed like the dark blood seeping from Florentine’s leg.

"What happened?” he says, and his voice carries all the coldness of an arctic sea.






@Raymond

Asterion

 



Asterion is not prepared – not prepared for the anger that he sees reflected in the red man’s gaze, a colored-glass reflection of his own.

Anything else he’d steeled himself for, even up to his sister’s death. How many times, as he waited, did he wonder if the magic was in her dagger or herself? Could he, sharing some part of her blood, wield it well enough to go back and undo whatever terrible thing had happened? (No, his subconscious had whispered, of course not, what use have you ever been? Her magic is not for you, saving is not for you.)

But this – oh, Asterion seethes. What right, what right had the red stallion to be as wrathful as the Charybdis that whirled within himself? His was not the queen now broken, presumably at the claws of his own monster.

The bay stallion’s dark ears twist back at the response, and he feels his mouth draw a thin line. The red man’s words are meaningless to him, nothing more than empty air. Nothing at all what he’d asked for. “Enough of your lessons,” he says, almost hissing the words, and his tail lashes against his hocks. Oh, how he wishes now he carried such a weapon as Raymond does.

Instead he only stands his ground, as undefended as he’s ever been.

Florentine had left with the letter almost as soon as it had arrived, but he had been there with her in that sunlit courtyard, and he had seen enough. A champion should be loyal to you and your people. I am not.

If Asterion had expected the red’s next words to calm the raging waters of him, he is once more disappointed. “You—” This time he does step forward, heedless of the hulking beast, heedless of his own companion, who flaps her wings and cautions him through their mental bond. His thoughts are only wrath, only clouds that twist and promise such a storm. 

Isorath's betrayal had not felt to him so treacherous, so personal, as this.

“You left us. Did you find a better position for yourself, then? And then you do return, carrying the broken body of our queen, who you dare call friend.” It is as though his body thinks him in battle, the way his blood rushes like rivers beneath his dusky skin, the way each breath is quicker than the last. He can feel stormclouds gathering like bruises and realizations batter him like waves, and the ugly water keeps on rising.

Oh, how many lessons will it take for him to learn? Every hero he makes for himself only fashions him into more of a fool. And now, and now -

“You had no faith in us. And now you will answer me – what did you do to my sister?”






@Raymond

Asterion

 



They are a strange match, there in the huddled grey-green of the swamp: the bay whose features looked so much less like a boy’s with his mouth a drawn line and a hospital at his back, and the red man, battle-hardened and all cutting edges, with a monster at his.

How very long ago Ravos seems. Surely that evening in a windswept field happened to Asterion in a previous life, one where he was only ever an unwanted twin, a starry-eyed dreamer. It is too unlikely that fate should have deposited them both here, that golden Florentine should be so irrevocably entwined with them both.

But it is hard to deny a beast bigger than the trees, hard to deny the steel of Raymond’s gaze or the color of his coat, bright and vital as blood.

Like the bladed man, Asterion makes no move to interrupt. Like him, too, his face does not change from stony wrath, does not rearrange to something softer.

Even when Raymond steps back the bay keeps his silence and his stance, though his black gaze moves to meet the bright blue eye of the creature. A kitten, the red man says, and ordinarily Asterion knows pity would cover him like a cloak. What a terrible thing it must be – he can feel the creature’s whine reverberate through the hollow spaces of his chest – to think a friend lost and have it come back so changed.

But he can summon no understanding now. Not with Florentine, less golden than crimson. Not with Raymond having so recently abandoned them, so soon after all the strange chaos of the summit, when Asterion most needed someone steady, someone sure.

His gaze sweeps back to the red stallion’s in time to catch the impudent arch of his brow. Oh, how the black thing inside him wants to bring the man low, no matter the words still echoing in his ears. Asterion is sick to death of hurting, sick to death of being made weak. Novus has carved at him, carved at his Court, carved at the new pieces of his heart just as he discovers each one.

He carries no scars on his twilight skin, but his heart is becoming a map of them, silver and hard as a dead star.

As Raymond’s final words die away to nothing, the bay only stands like a thing carved from driftwood and the granite of the cliffside, but within the waves keep rising, and they eat away at every part of him. His anger, his sureness, his faith and his trust.

What can he believe in, after this? Not the gods, not his queen, not the man he would have called his friend. (And then, below everything else, worry for a man he had never met and owed nothing – if the rift had such terrible teeth, had it by now consumed his father? A father that Flora had told him was red, as red as new blood, as red as this soldier who’d tried to teach him what he could – )

At last he breaks the silence that crickets and bullfrogs had not dared to fill.

“Then it seems my sister has some explaining to do, should she live to share it. I hope she has bled enough to pay for her sins.” A deep breath, the air warm and wet as he pulls it between his teeth in what is almost a hiss. He does not doubt the sharp edges of his words will only dull themselves on the iron of the man before him.

“Leave us,” he says, and though he does not add she cannot stay here it is clear in the glance he cuts to her. Just as clear is the fact that it is no question but an order, spoken by a Regent who must finally play King. But then, oh, then, another thought occurs to him, blooming black and heavy in his heart, thick and real enough to choke him.

When he looks back to Raymond then most of the fury is gone from his gaze, and what remains is terribly hollow.

“But before you do, tell me this – is Calliope going, too?”

He already knows the answer. It is better, he thinks, to cut out his heart and his hope all at once, and leave nothing left to bleed when he finds himself alone.




@Raymond

Asterion

 



He tries not to think as he watches Raymond prepare to go. He tries to keep his face a thing of stone, pictures the granite cliffsides that the sea dashes itself against again and again and always fails to move. Asterion wants to be steel, wants to be strong.

Oh, but he is only ever water – sometimes furious, sometimes merely foam to fade away to nothing.

The red stallion gives him no straight answer, only a gaze that cuts and burns, and the Regent knows he should never have hoped for anything else. It is enough, anyway. What help he’d had from a lifetime ago is help no more; the black unicorn’s coming here had been a false hope.

But she had never been his lionheart, anyway.

It is not until they turn away, not until the brackish swampwater is seeping into Ruth’s prints, not until the rumble of each monstrous footstep has faded to only a tremble, that Asterion blows out a long breath and drops his head. For a moment he stands like a wounded thing, muzzle almost brushing the mud, and his sides rise and fall quick as a rabbit’s as he fights to keep himself together. Cirrus only watches him in silence until he straightens again.

The bay offers her a long, dark-eyed glance, and then a single nod. The gull takes to wing, beating her way out of the dark canopy and up into the sunlight, and Asterion turns and begins to climb the wooden steps to see what has become of his sister, and each step echoes with a sound that is hollow, hollow, hollow.





@Raymond