She is not the only one to lose her breath as she plummets; he holds his too, watching her, her dark wings tucked and the pale marks on her skin and foam-colored hair spread out like moonlight on water. There is something thrilling in watching her fall (and then, of course, spread wide her wings to catch herself), something that makes his heart ache, beauty and wildness and longing.

Oh, what he might trade for wings.

He tries to watch her, as she inspects the cliffs from the rocky beach, small as another stone against the breakers from his height. Cirrus is watching, too, until she returns to his pacing figure, settling with a flap of storm-gray wings onto his back. She’ll find it, the gull says, and the king only nods and leans again over the edge, the wind whipping his black hair.

Then Camillia is returning, and Asterion steps back, giving her room to land. They exchanged few words, but he could tell her interest has sharpened, and her excitement causes his own heart to quicken. Yet again he’s waiting, longer this time, long enough to begin to worry -

Until she’s back once more. He has just a moment to take her in, black eyes inscrutable, horns pale as moonbeams and smelling of something more than sea and wind - something dank and somehow ancient.

And then she’s speaking, and he’s listening with his dark lips drawn in a thoughtful line, his gaze straying between her and the sea. It’s not until she says cell of a prison that he turns back, and the surprise is clearly written on his face.

“A prison,” he says, and at once a sense of foreboding grows in him like a vine unfurling. Cells carved into the cliffs of the sea - oh, how much history this world has, how many darknesses and dreams. The search feels real, now, in a way even the graves hadn’t, and he begins to understand Marisol’s urgency and concern. “I will be sure to - thank you, Camillia, and well done. I’m lucky you’re with me.”

The bay is as restless, even if he doesn’t join in her pacing; he turns the riddle over in his mind, and flicks his gaze back to hers. “Yes, I was thinking of the sea from that line. But the black of heart, and the great eye…” It frustrates him, not to know; when he shakes his head Cirrus takes off again from his back, to search from a vantage point he cannot. “Southwest of here is the capital proper, and the land around could be called a greensward…perhaps we begin there.”