It does not feel too much like pride for Asterion to think that this is his favorite part of the Midsummer Event.
It is only that everything here fits him so perfectly. The lit-pearl pathway sets the stage for the dream, soft reflections of the stars that blaze above, and they cast strange light along the false-glass walls. Behind them the water shifts, blue deep as a secret and purples like jasmine blooming beneath a new moon. The tents glow warm as bonfires and Asterion thinks that he has never seen the lake so lovely.
Never mind the memories that surface then - another midsummer night, nothing but fireflies and still water and the fading perfume of wildflowers. And her. Oh, the king wonders if it is Aislinn he still misses, or the way he had felt his first night in Novus, when everything was still an adventure and a promise.
But tonight he is not alone. Though he walks, for the moment, by himself, there are faces all around him, some laughing and some still with wonder. The bay drifts along the tents, glancing at the wares, marveling at the artistry. He smiles at each face whose eyes catch his, he passes soft words with the vendors. And then he breaks away from the small crowd and walks back out onto that pathway of wood and dark gold, as full of quiet awe as he had been at the building of it.
There in the darkness, where the only light ripples over him in waves of green and blue like an aurora, he falls to stillness, only watching. For a moment he lets his mind drift with the water, thinking of nothing but color and the promise in a summer night’s breeze.
no one calls you honey when you're sitting on a throne
Vendetta is a collector of things. She collects knives, ornate ones, ones with wooden handles or blades of something other than steel. She collects trinkets, made of gold and pearl and iron, that she finds on the blackmarket and keeps to herself. She collects people, to work for her, to do her bidding, to follow her word like law.
She collects souls, taking them for herself in the shadows of the night.
When the unicorn finds the vendor on the shore of the lake selling the strange knives made of glass the color of blue fire, she cannot help but purchase one. It sparks like lightning and is smooth as ice and she holds it with a smirk that tells of unspeakable things, before tucking it away safely to take it home with her.
Then Vendetta stands at the shore of the lake, where the water has been made to defy gravity, held up by some strange material clear as glass but not nearly as thick. Beneath her hooves is a floor of wood and gold and her red skirt is a splash of blood against it. She still wears her mask, velvet and black and made of filigree and lace, covering much of her face but for her eyes, piercing and red when she spies him. A lone man, a stranger to her, but he stands there staring into the water and she wonders if it might swallow him. He looks like the sky, dark skin splashed with twilight and the fading stars chased by morning.
She has no reason to approach him, and yet something about him intrigues her. Perhaps it is that here, at this festival surrounded by so many, he is somehow still intrinsically alone. Vendetta approaches slowly, each step a soft knock, knock, knock on the wooden boards. “Take care not to gaze too long into that abyss,” she says as she comes up beside him, wicked and beautiful.
When the sound of her steps come knocking like knuckles on a door, at first Asterion does not turn. But his body is aware of hers; the whisper of silk on wood and gold, the warmth rolling off her when she stands close, the low sweet music of her voice.
For a moment he says nothing to her words, only considering them, and as he does he reaches out with his magic - just a little, enough to cup a handful of the cool dark water, to lift it and spill it like sand through fingers. As before, he wonders how far his magic goes, how deep.
But tonight will not be the night he finds out.
“I helped to create this one,” he says, soft as star-shine in the new silence, but he is smiling when at last he looks to her. “But that is wise advice all the same.”
The first thing he thinks, seeing her in the blue-cast of the suspended lake, is that she looks the way her voice sounds - a velvet scabbard over a knife. Asterion has never seen her before (he knows this despite the mask she wears), but he recognizes the desert heat that clings to her skin, and it is not hard to imagine her beneath the bright watchful eye of the sun. Oh, her horns and eyes glint wickedly, no matter how she smells of roses.
“The masquerade suits you far more than it will me,” he tells her, still wearing that slight beginning of a smile. Asterion is rarely so quick to speak, but there is something about the night (the way he feels a little like he is hosting, the way it seems their troubles are done, if only for today) that has him feeling a step outside himself. If not bold, it at least makes him more talkative. “Have you found the evening to your liking?”
no one calls you honey when you're sitting on a throne
Vendetta watches him play with the water, grasping at it as much as one can grasp at something so frustratingly tangible. To be able to touch it but not able to hold fast to it, it felt away, dripping, spilling back into the rest of the lake.
He smiles when he looks at her and her answering one is that of a wolf's. She might be your friend, showing you that you have nothing to fear from her. Or she might be preparing to tear open your throat. The unicorn has no quarrel with this man, though, and he is safe for tonight. From her at the least.
"Is it not the abysses of one's own making that keeps them the most captive?" Vendetta has no abyss, no gaping nothingness that threatens to swallow her up. She is in completed control af all the pieces and parts of her life. But, she thought, perhaps he did, this man of dusk and stars.
"The masquerade offers a measure of intrigue that I find... exciting," the woman of pearls and roses responds, a curious glinting in her ruby red eyes. Secrets, smoke and mirrors—there wasn't a lot of that to be had in her position, though she would never give up the infamy she had created for herself. No, she just got her thrills through different means. "You might be surprised to find how much a mask suits you, if you find the right one."
If she is talking abut herself she makes no indication of it, and her smile, as sharp as it is, does not falter. Perhaps that is all the indication that's needed. And when he asks her if she's found the night to her liking she thinks of the strange dagger hidden beneath her skirt, and how she cannot wait to hear how it sings against the flesh of another.
Vendetta holds his gaze when she answers.
"I've found many thing that have caught my eye," and vagueness of it is perhaps as unsettling as the way you can't quite see her eyes completely in this lighting, hidden beneath the shadow of black velvet. "And you? Surely there is more for you here than a dreamer's world, even if you did help to fabricate it."
There is something familiar about the way she smiles back at him - but it is nothing like a smile he’s seen from Marisol, or Isra, or Florentine. No; it is the stranger in the mangroves by the sea-side he thinks of then, and wonders that the similarity hadn’t struck him before.
Both of these mares are beautiful, both of them clothed in different finery, both of them grinning at him like predators. But Asterion is no more prey tonight than he was then, no matter how soft his eyes are with starshine, or how his voice is like seafoam on the beach.
“For some, perhaps,” the bay king answers, but as if to bely his words he is already turning away from the water, focusing entirely on the stranger. Beneath the dusky light her eyes are almost the color of old blood, and it makes him wonder.
“Intrigue,” he allows softly, “is not something I’ve had much of in my life of late. What suggestions would you give me, to find a mask that fits?” If there is something intentional about his question, something almost sly in the way he indicates her own dark velvet mask and the lupine smile below it, he shows it no more than she had. If his heart leans into a quicker rhythm, well, that doesn’t show either.
He does not falter from her gaze when she speaks again, but his chin dips, his dark muzzle dropping toward his chest. Asterion tilts his head, unable to help the way the corner of his mouth curls, and he feels more reckless, more boyish, than he has in months. “Wonders abound tonight,” he says, and oh! he is glad Cirrus is far away, sleeping near the shore. There is no one to see how his eyes shine at the game of it, at the sense of danger she wears like a fragrance - no one but herself. “I’m not sure where the night will take me - it feels more for others than myself.” It is the closest he will come to claiming his kingship; his smile fades as he glances away, back toward the shoreline and the horses wandering there, limned by lamplight. But when he looks back to her he wears it again, small as something new-blooming. “Of course, it’s only just begun. Only the fortune-teller in the market could say where it might end.”
no one calls you honey when you're sitting on a throne
“Ah, but intrigue is the name of the game, is it not?” she says and the corner of her lip curls and maybe there is the faint sound of a laugh in those words. “I would think that Denocte’s new queen knows a thing or two of intrigue if she throws masquerades in the night and asks of others to make walls of water and mazes that defy all reason.” Vendetta knows little of this queen, though she has heard many refer to her throughout the night. Isra, they had called her, and Vendetta again found herself wondering what sort of utopia that woman longed for.
“The perfect mask is one that, when you slip it on, it releases you from whatever holds you back.” Vendetta’s voice is liquid and rich like a dark red wine, and she answers like she knows what his question really means, but ah, are they not just talking about the masque? She sways a little, like a dance, and her skirt of blood swishes across the wood as a whispering breath would across another’s skin. “The perfect mask lets you be yourself.”
When he drops his chin to his chest she thinks of all the men she’s made bow to her, though she made them get down on their knees and beg. This man though, his roguish smirk and the impish tilt of his head, they do not belong to her or her wrath. Still, she cannot say she would not like the taste of his blood on her lips. Something about the way this interaction makes her feel, the way it plays her charm and wit like a piano, it reminds her of the day she walked out of the doors of what had once been her master’s home. Powerful, liberated.
He looks away and she takes a moment to observe him more closely. Her eyes take in the night sky of his gaze, and the star nestled between it and she thinks the evening is more for him than he believes. “Just begun indeed,” she agrees, and Vendetta takes a small step closer, decreasing the space between them by mere millimeters and yet, when she too lowers her head, it feels more than that, “But whatever that old oracle says, we can do with the night what we please.”
“What is it you are searching for?”Have you found it yet? Intrigue is, after all, the name of the game.
“There are many games, I’ve learned,” he answers her, and if his tone turns a little dark with memory it is because he remembers another summer night, not so long ago, and a gathering not so different than this one. Only there had been a kirin, then, white and gold and searing with cruel laughter in his eyes, and Denocte had been led with a different ruler, one who wore the darkness more like a weapon than a cloak. And a pegasus, with stars in her eyes and hair like snow-fall, and when he thinks of her he thinks of saying love.
Asterion’s guilt is gone, washed clean by time and all the other things that have befallen him. With it is his anger, and his sorrow, and the tangle of feelings he could never cut through - but he remembers all the same.
“Queen Isra is a storyteller,” he says to the stranger, and though the words sound almost like a defense there is only wonder in his eyes as he turns again to look across the night. There is moonlight on the water, and firelight on the shore, and starlight all above; it is high summer and wonders are waiting. So he believes, so he tells himself. “The best stories never concern themselves with reason.” Now he smiles at her, though he wonders when the magic of it all will fade - a week, a month, or with the first silver touch of dawn?
The bay listens with all seriousness as she describes what a mask ought to be, as though their discussion were a grave thing. Still, there is a smile faint across his dark mouth, even as he lets himself be lulled by the richness of her voice. Ah, a hundred things might hold him back, but a mask could never ease his fears of failing his people. “Are you often different, then, than as you are now?” he asks her, with the catchlight of the moon in his eyes, with the sound of the water sighing at his back.
Her step nearer is not unmissed, the whisper of silk on wood and the scent of her drifting nearer, sweet incense from the desert. But Asterion says nothing of it, only turns his head toward her own, and it is as though they stand before a raised and waiting sea.
But there is nothing but peace around them, and only merriment on the shore; what is it, then, that has his blood running so hot, his dreams growing hungry? At her question he tilts his head, considering. “Nothing,” he says first, and then grins wryly. “Or at least nothing I expect to find. Perhaps just peace - a sense that the worst is over. That we survived, and can find joy in our survival.”
It sounds so foolish to him, so unlike what he sees in himself, that he laughs and shakes his head. Unlike her careful coiffing his own mane is careless and tousled, the wind its only comb; when he laughs he is a boy again, and not a king. And then he looks at her, and reminds himself that the night is not for contemplation, alone by the water.
“And what do you look for? Surely not lonely and underdressed men who have forgotten how to celebrate.”
no one calls you honey when you're sitting on a throne
Vendetta listens to him speak and she thinks. She thinks that there is more to this man who does not make abysses out of aquariums that defy gravity. She thinks that games do not come easy to him but they come to him all the same, seeking him out in the night. Dragging their claws through him and claiming him as their victim. Most of all she thinks that he is not all that he appeared, standing and staring into the water, alone.
He speaks of the queen, and if she hadn't already known that she had presumably called upon him to help make this attraction, his tone would speak volumes more. He is fond of her, admires her, even, perhaps. “The best stories,” she adds, “know how to create reason out of chaos.” And he smiles at her and she regards him strangely for a moment with eyes bright like blood.
“The only secret I am hiding is what the rest of my face looks like behind this mask,” and there is the barest of whispering sighs on her lips as she says this. A wry curling to the corner of her mouth. She doesn't lie, however, in saying this. Vendetta might be playing a game, toying like a cat might with a mouse, but this is who she is. She does not ask permission nor forgiveness.
He turns to look at her and she can feel the heat between their skin, even on this midsummer night. She thinks she can taste the ocean on the air around him and it's a sharp and pleasant smell. The ocean is her birthright, her history, and if the desert weren't her home she might like to know where it is that he calls his.
“Never look hope in the eye,” she says then, and if there is a dagger's edge to her voice her eyes are no sharper for it, her muscles no more tense. Hope is like a siren's call, luring you toward her with sweet promises of something more, until you've found her and she has taken everything from you. Including your life.
Vendetta knew she had felt hope once, perhaps had felt even love or trust. She chose not to remember those times, for they had only ever been her ruin. It was best not to hope but to take more, take better, for yourself.
He laughs and she watches the way he does it, the way his mane is tossed slightly as he shakes his head. The darkness of his eyes, perhaps, a little bit brighter and more like stars. There is a girl inside her who never knew a boy, never knew anything but the pain that became her anger that burns like ice. There is a girl inside her that she thinks, maybe, rears her head a little bit when she says, “Perhaps just men with life in their veins and boys in their hearts who want to learn how to celebrate again.”
Asterion considers her remark about stories, a counter to his own - and after a moment he nods, his lips a small hook of a smile, conceding her point above his own. If a moral counted as reason, then he couldn’t help but agree — though he isn’t sure all of Isra’s stories contained those, either, or if they were worse off without them.
His smile only grows at her next statement, and though he wants to laugh at it he puts on an expression of mock-seriousness instead. “Then it is no secret at all,” he says, “for I am sure it is as striking as the rest of you.” In truth, as curious as he is, he had not felt the urge to take the corner of her mask and tug - mystery was a rich part of the night, and all secrets could wait til tomorrow for discovering. But still he regards her, boldly, the rich red arc of her horns and glint of her eyes and the flowers she wears, petal tucked in petal, layered away into some dark and secret center.
He wonders whether a creature like her could hide at all, even if she wanted. Some tigers wore their stripes too boldly to be taken for anything other than what they are.
Never look hope in the eye, she says, and there are no games in the tone of her voice then. Again he agrees with her, and again he answers nothing - but thinks of how hope is like a bird, wild and wary and gone as soon as you twitched your fingers to catch it.
The bay is well aware of her gaze on him, can feel the heat of it more certain than the summer’s. Even so he is surprised by what she says next, and quickly his eyes meet hers. (Perhaps he is used to girls like hope or birds, who never look him in the eye, who are not bold in ways like this). Asterion can feel his heart in his chest now but though it is a quick tattoo against his ribs it is not a bird but more like a soft-mallet drum, something asking him to move.
“Then let us go,” he answers, and his words are neither promise nor dare but only a hand extended to dance, “and see if we can find what we are looking for. The abyss can keep itself company for one night.”
As he turns to go he ghosts his muzzle along her shoulder, never touching but so near - and his steps along the wood-and-gold with the water caught suspended at his back do not sound solemn at all when he glances back to see if she follows.
@Vendetta I am not sure what this post is but they make a fun pair! thanks for the thread <3
no one calls you honey when you're sitting on a throne
He is not wrong when he says it, for beneath the obsidian mask she wears, velvet and delicate, are eyes of red, faceted like precious stones. A wash of ivory, pale as the moon hanging low over Denocte, with bold swathes of deep brown like the night sky. But the most striking thing about her is not her eyes like freshly spilled blood or the medley of her skin. It is what’s underneath, visible only to those who look closely. The keenness of a predator, the slow burning fire of a thousand suns, the glimmer of power and control.
And, despite all of these things. Despite the many reasons she can think not to take this man’s offered hand when he extends it to her, she does anyway. With a curl of her lips and a glittering to her eyes does Vendetta take his offer. And when his muzzle near brushes against her shoulder an arc of lightning travels along her spine, and the heat of his closeness lingers along her skin until it has her turning and following him. Their steps combine on the wood and gold, two different pulses whose paths have crossed, as they leave the lake and its illusion behind.
