if i can breathe, i'm fine

Autumn was drawing to a close and Novus had been tossed into the midst of winter. With the winter solstice fast approaching the days were getting shorter and the nights longer. A blanket of cloud obscured the stars that night, the sky a dull grey-black that bathed the night court in eerie gloom. Where normally Castalla took solace in the unending darkness, tonight she couldn’t tell the shadows from her demons.

It wasn’t often that Castalla found herself in a bar for leisure. Not that she counted it as leisure in that very moment. But it was usually only work that forced her to endure the uproarious din of revellers and merry makers as she met with targets and informants alike. Where she could, the rogue would avoid consuming alcohol lest it cloud her senses but often meeting with hesitant informants meant plying them with liquor and that in turn meant joining in.

Tonight however, was a different story. The aftermath of Halloween was rarely an enjoyable time, not when reminders of him lurked in every shadow, in every brush of a spirit’s touch. Then there had been that strange voice, calling in fear form among the darkness of a mysterious forest. And the mist creatures that had assumed his form. To see his face once again, to gaze upon the eyes that had once held her whole world… her heart had broken anew.

No, tonight was definitely a different story.

Tonight she needed that burn at the back of her throat, that numbness that blanketed all the pain.

But, after only one shot of whiskey, she was beginning to reconsider. She was surrounded by strangers- not necessarily threatening strangers- but strangers nonetheless. The princess hardly wanted to make herself vulnerable in anyway, even if she was rather good at holding her liquor. Perhaps she’d buy a bottle of something and head to her room. But there was something utterly lonely about the silence of her rooms that deterred her from leaving the comfort of the rowdy tavern.

"Speaking."

caine

—
« last year we abstained »

e had begun nursing the bottle sometime in the middle of the night, and when finally he reached the bottom of it, the day had aged into a sour, blustery afternoon. 

The sky was of an indeterminate shade of grey, sullen and faintly threatening—though of what, Caine could not tell; gilded Sunsyia had not taught him the finer points of weather.

Sunsyia. It lingered, sometimes, in the space between memory and dream: the drowsy golden summers of his youth, where his sole companions had been rare tomes and empty inkwells, the monotony of study broken only by the tap, tap, tap of moths stunning themselves against his lamp. He liked to recall that rose-stained scene whenever he was particularly miserable; there was solace to be found in the fictive versions of truth. 

Arching his neck towards a grimy, potlid-sized window, Caine was disappointed to discover that snow had failed to soften the bite of winter in the night. The vintner's prediction had fallen as flat as his champagne. Wearily he fell back upon his bed, wincing into the stale sheets when pain, fluorescent bright, blossomed from the puckered scars gouged at his shoulders. His temples throbbed like a gong as he curled forwards, repressing a violent need to be sick. The empty bottle, swan-necked and crystal blue and really quite exquisite, fell to the floorboards with a dull thunk. A dribble of liquid leaked from its unstoppered mouth and eddied in a whorl of wood, red as blood. 

Dusky sunlight filtered weakly through the pinhole window and enhanced the hollows of his eyes, his cheeks, his clavicle. Exhausted, stupidly drunk, and desperate for reprieve, Caine stared numbly at a spiderwebbing crack on the low ceiling until the walls fell away and the room faded to a womblike black.

He did not wake until it was deep, deep night.

------
He could not remember why he had come to Denocte but found he was in no hurry for an answer. 

He was now apart of that exalted class—men of leisure—where whims were followed with religious fervor and reasons mattered not at all. Truly, he thought it an uncomfortable fit and even drunk knew with cold certainty that it would not last. Yet the signos he had found bound in hefty stacks of ten, left in a cloth satchel at the foot of his hospital bed, had proven more difficult to burn through than expected. 

He had no one to spend it on, least of all himself. The common vices of the leisure class—gambling, feasts, pleasure as sport—disinterested him. So instead, after a suggestion by an old, possibly senile doctor extolling the medicative qualities of alcohol, he dedicated himself to dispassionately drinking his liver into the gutter. 

The doctor had not lied; it was the only way that worked to deaden the pain, if only for a muddied, disorienting few hours. It was reprieve, at the cost of lucidity.

------
The heathen sky, wild with stars, cloaked Caine in utter dark as he trailed listlessly through slick streets and market squares thick with smoke. Nothing interested him yet he bought things with dead-eyed abandon: a black mother-of-pearl circlet; a chipped scarab beetle brooch; vials of perfume like jewels. A stiletto made of bone, nymphs and satyrs carved into the hilt. 

The stiletto had not been a purchase. It had been pressed into his grasp by a passing shadow, veiled, headily perfumed, and jingling like a slim-ankled dancer. He had accepted it without restraint—almost meekly. He had not looked back at the giver, before wordlessly sliding the slender blade into place besides his silver one.

Bone pressed cold against his hip.

The moon, half-waned, hung like an ornament in the velvet night by the time Caine's hooves carried him through a tavern's well-worn doors. He was famished, aching for a fix, and wedged into the first empty spot he saw. Before he could settle a guffaw of laughter exploded to his left; grimacing, he turned away and found himself staring into a girl's pale, guarded face.

Her eyes were a shocking blue, so bright that they magnified the fine, translucent angles of her face while muting everything in the tavern to background. Somehow she intrigued him; a near-empty shot glass occupied her part of the scar-faced bar table. 

After a pause, he inclined his head. His eyes flashed bright and silver-cold. 

"Wine, if you please. Dry," he said in a low clip, turning to the barmaid and rolling a newly minted coin onto the countertop. When glass slid roughly across the wood not a moment later, he brought it to his lips, tipped his throat to the sky, and drank from it deeply as if parched. 

His hair, loose and skimming his knees, pooled in the space between his wings.

Why are they all afraid of you?

Castalla could remember a time when she could dive into someone’s mind, into their heart. Hear their thoughts and feel their emotions. To be wrapped up in someone’s ecstatic joy, their immense love, was both pleasure and devastation. For a while now it felt as though it were the only way to experience such wild emotions, to breach someone’s privacy and envelope herself in their abandon. But she’d left much of her powers on the shores of her homeland, even as the ghosts of her past had made the treacherous journey to Novus with her. Now she could all but guess the thoughts and feelings of the patrons around her, attempt some cruel fake of the joy that lingered in their calls and shouts, their singing and chatting. Skender had been her one chance at a life like that. Her one escape from the bloody battlefield of her past, from the promised future that she could never achieve. Her one escape from the beast in her bones and the monster in her mind. But he had been torn away from her by the bloodied teeth of the betrayer, Adrian. His life ebbing out from the gash in his chest, from the blow meant for her. The White Wolf had been the symbol of her people, the sword of her kingdom, but Skender had always been better than her, a flame of goodness that light the shadows of her demon-infested heart.

Her thoughts began to wander like seeds in the wind as her gaze jumped from horse to horse absentmindedly. The dull roar of drunk patrons and happy merry-makers faded into monotony, a soft symphony to the thoughts that chased themselves into fatigue in her mind. Despite being surrounded by so many equines she never felt more alone. It was at these times, perhaps, when she felt most alone. When the rest of the world was happy and cheerful, chasing away the cold winters day with the burn of whiskey or the sweet caress of wine. Such innocence, such carefree pleasure was not a luxury the Wolf would ever afford. Of course she was no fool- she knew the sorrow and misery a trained smile could hide, the pain each drop of alcohol could chase away. Sometimes the saddest voices could be the loudest. But there were few who could understand the life she’d had, the life she would always lead. And even fewer who would ever know what it was like- to stain your soul beyond recognition, to suffer the worst mortal-kind could offer in the desperate hope that it might make the world a better place. Only to fail, to find out that it hadn’t made a damn difference, that you had lost so much, given so much all for nothing. Oh but you are a hero! They would chorus, singing the songs that romanticised her infamy, painted her misdeeds in rosy colours.

She had once been in a tavern like this one, filled with melancholy and alcohol and pestered by so many who wanted to know how it felt to be a hero, how she had in fact killed the Tyrant King. She had answered them then, the raw truth in a hoarse voice, her gaze distant and her tongue poisoned. 

Being a hero is taking the hit meant for someone else, charging into battle knowing you may not make it out alive but that at least you can save people. There is nothing honourable and romantic about being imprisoned and tortured, having your ankles broken one by one, mauled by daggers and swords, ruminating in toxic fear and living in your own filth for weeks. There is nothing beautiful about stabbing someone in the back as they do unimaginable things to a helpless child or liberating slaves chained to the ground with no food or water. Being the hero means seeing the darkest parts of the world, continuing on in the face of death and inspiring those stories that portray it as such chivalrous work. Listening while people sing joyously of your deeds, even as your soul is stained by yet more death. Being a hero is giving up any chance of sleeping without nightmares, accepting that you will never live a normal life, never feel whole again. 

They had stopped asking her after that, unable to deal with the truth behind the legends of the White Wolf. A princess, a warrior princess like her, should be a beacon of life and light. And she could be- she was both wildfire and coldest ice, burning and veracious. Untameable. Uncontrollable. Unchecked. Dangerous. But she was not what the stories told, not deep down.

Castalla was torn from her thoughts when a winged stallion clasped in shadows and burning umber settled himself into the only available seat, coincidentally next to her. Many had avoided taking it, perhaps because the scars on her skin, the dagger at her leg and the dark look upon her face perturbed them from getting too close. But the ebony steed seemed not to notice her, not until he twisted his head suddenly in her direction and their eyes met. Icy cold and burning amber congealed and despite herself, Castalla felt a flicker of his fire in her gut. Surprise filtered through the dull tangle of emotions in her chest, though her face remained, as ever, impassive as his gaze rested on her for a few moments. Though she held his stare, she noted the runes across his nose, the scars at his shoulders that were so reminiscent of the dragon-shifters in Alanaris that had suffered the removal of their wings. When at last he broke the look she almost felt bereft of the fire in his eyes. Yet, that he was here drinking alone, suggested he was far from the lively happiness of the majority of customers. Castalla couldn’t help but wonder about his story, his reason for gracing the uproarious tavern.

When the barmaid returned with the steed’s wine she made to take the glass before Castalla, now empty after she’d downed the rest. “I’ll have the bottle,” she offered, placing coin before the other mare who did not take long to return with the mostly full bottle of whiskey. Mind made up, she settled a little deeper in her seat, intending to stay for a while.

“Not here to sing and celebrate?” She didn’t look at him as she made the remark, instead raising the whiskey bottle to her lips and taking a swift draught.

"Speaking."