Cyrene she spun herself a crown of gold,
thrones of bones and citadels.
—
The night sky was a dazzling miasma of diamond stars and velvet clouds. How quickly the heavens forgot. How cruel for the sky to be beautiful, when the earth weeps scarlet with the blood of a thousand.
Cyrene turned away from the light of the moon as she drew her black cloak tighter over her autumn curls. She couldn't risk being recognized tonight, not when she was attempting an act akin to treason.
Silently, she crept through the ransacked streets of Solterra like a shadow. Every inch of her body was as tense as a tightly drawn bow, her senses as sharp as knives despite the fatigue that clung to her bones like dew. She paused for a moment to stare into a pool of glassy liquid. Blood or water, she couldn’t tell — though the latter seemed far more likely. Her reflection stared back at her with hollow eyes, and mutely Cyrene studied her bedraggled self like an artist might study his paintings.
Amber eyes that had once danced with the flames of joviality were now sunken and dull with exhaustion. Patches of dried and flaking blood covered her skin like snow, and the planes of her face were too sharp to be considered elfin and delicate anymore. A fallen angel. Her wings are now as bent and broken as her heart, she thought, bitterly poetic as she stepped over the puddle without a second glance back.
Her loyalty to Dusk, her abidance of the newly-forged alliance, had cut into the Emissary’s flesh like iron shackles. It bound her limbs tighter and tighter, a constrictor that whispered to her which lives she should see as worthless, and which lives deserved to rot in the sand like animals left for slaughter.
She couldn't agree with it. No — before she was Florentine’s emissary, before she was even Cyrene, she was a healer of Pelion. It was in her blood, ingrained into her very bones. And Cyrene Ioannou would rather be labeled a traitor than turn her back on a life that could’ve been saved. This had been the only way, operating under the cover of night. Sneaking from the infirmary's tents like a thief to tend to the ones she had been ordered to ignore, to leave for dead, in the light of day.
The sudden sound of hoofbeats rang through the arid air like thunder, and Cyrene dived with uncanny speed towards the shadow of a crumbling pillar. Her heart thudded in her chest as she dared not breathe until the Solterran guards' footfalls melted into the night. That was too close.
Before she could stand, however, a low groaning drew her wary gaze towards a crumpled figure hidden amongst the rubble. A Davke soldier. The hilt of a sword stuck out from his side, buried so deeply in him she wasn’t sure how he was still alive.
“Perhaps the Davke have magic of their own,” she muttered, as she made her way carefully towards him. It had been like this the whole night — a Davke with a mortal wound, lying in the shadows as they waited for death to claim them at last. They were too weak to startle, too disoriented to attack, when she'd appear before them and yank them back to the land of the living. "Try to keep still — this will hurt a bit."
She was so focused on extracting the blade from the man’s flesh as carefully as she could, that she didn’t hear him approach at all. Not when she wrapped the last of her bandages gingerly around the soldier's bloody chest. Not when she moved him, panting from the effort, from sharp rock to soft sands. Not when she lifted herself to her hooves, nearly toppling back down again from a sudden wave of nausea.
Not until she steadied herself and turned.
"Who—" Her hood fell from her eyes as she stumbled back in shock, only to be met with golden eyes as bright as the sun. Those eyes. A hundred days and nights, they had lingered always at the edges of her memory; she had never forgotten him, not even for a second.
“Velorca?” Her voice was barely a whisper, her expression unreadable. Something was wrong. Why was he here? And— “You’re hurt.”
@Velorca | "speaks" | notes: if it tagged you again, i'm sorry! O: wanted to change the table c'x
Nightfall had brought with it an infinite silence out in the dunes, for it was the city that moaned and groaned with the dying breaths of soldiers and the sobs of those left behind. The Desert was the same as it had always been — ever shifting, unchanged by what blood stained the sands. It held him, stroking fingers of warm air down his elegant spine as he felt each grain of cooling sand shift and slide underneath his neat hooves... shifting because he was moving like a shadow toward that crying city. He had to see — had to see the suffering, the aftermath.
Lorca wasn't entirely sure if he was returning for satisfaction or for guilt.. his guts had been churning since the bloodshed stopped. He had no issue with blood or gore, the Davke were raised on such sights, but to see familiar faces crusted in dried blood, frozen in a mask of shock or fear... some of those faces stayed with him.
Slowly and silently he moved through the shadows of his home, a slip of silver in the night — sometimes barely that. He hadn't bothered to clean himself off or unbraid his hair, and for the first time in a long time he looked considerably unpresentable. His long argent hair, usually loose and flowing, remained braided into a singular ridge along his serpentine neck, now somewhat bedraggled and stained in places. Bloody strands clung to his neck, now dried and rusty, a strange contrast to his still-soft skin. Perhaps worse was the flecks of blood decorating his sharp cheeks like freckles, casting him in a distinctly different light — as if he had, perhaps, some innocence left in him after all.
Velorca doubted that. A lot.
Yet...
As if summoned by his introspection, she appeared.
The lion-eyed girl.
She hurried through the streets, glancing furtively around corners, making as little sound as possible as she crept through the war stricken city. It was as if he'd been stabbed — such a flush went through him, like terror and hope and heartache all at once, chilling his limbs as he sucked in a quick breath, golden eyes watching her ruby red curls bounce.
He couldn't help it — and it wasn't as if there was any other choice but to follow her. What if one of the Solterran's attacked her for helping Davke? What if a Davke attacked her? His mile-long legs moved of their own accord, following silently, for he was practiced at keeping himself hidden. He would have stayed hidden too, if she hadn't swayed and stumbled.
Without intending to be, he was behind her, ready to catch her if she fell — only she steadied herself, leaving Velorca feeling foolish. "Who?"
Her hood fell back and it was all he could do not to burst into a smile of all things, all of a sudden feeling quite giddy and altogether not himself.
He didn't smile though, only sucked in another quick breath at the long lashed eyes looking up at him in concern, her voice leaking through the silence in a beautiful whisper: "Velorca?"
Lorca took every moment to drink in the fierce girl before him, saying nothing as her gaze drifted to the blood colouring half of his chest crimson. It was nothing — a flesh wound, really, the slice of a spear that had glanced off the side of his neck and left a shallow cut that had bled far too much.
"Cyrene,"
He managed, though his svelte voice sounded strained against the heady night air. Each line of his face was pronounced despite the shadows, razor-like, elegant, frowning.
"You shouldn't be here."
Not the welcome he had wanted to give her — but he didn't want her throat cut either.
Cyrene she spun herself a crown of gold,
thrones of bones and citadels.
—
The surprise lasted for only a second, before Cyrene schooled her features back into a mask of guarded — albeit just barely — concern. Amber eyes lingered across the planes of Velorca’s quicksilver frame, narrowing at the blood that covered every inch of him like crimson dapples. A mirror of her own.
"Cyrene.” Her name slipped from his lips like satin, dark and smooth and sharp all at once. Her thinly held composure wavered, suddenly as fragile as a gossamer thread as she stared at the boy in front of her. He was all angles, all strength and fury and pain, wrapped in a body as fine and lethal as a sword. He was her undoing.
Yet she remained as motionless as a marble-hewn statue. It took all the strength left in the Emissary’s trembling limbs to keep herself from falling forwards and collapsing into him like a wave against the shore.
“You shouldn't be here.” A weary smile played across her lips like a fleeting shadow, as she shook her head softly at his growing frown. “I did say I would come to Solterra, you know.” Her smile lasted for no more than a moment, before it too faded into nothingness.
To reunite under these conditions — how could she feel an ounce of happiness? Yet still, Cyrene felt it pull maddeningly at the edges of her heart. A moonflower, blooming and blooming despite the flames of grief and agony that sought to ignite it with every breath.
“Many things have — changed, since then,” Cyrene spoke, her gaze moving away from Velorca's aurum eyes to gaze mutely at the wound that still dripped warm blood from his neck. Since then — how far away that night spent under the stars seemed now.
When they stood in silence under a suffocating night, their bodies drenched scarlet by the blood that spattered them both in a gory imitation of constellations.
Solemnly, she drew her eyes over the armor that encased him from neck to stomach, lingering upon the spear that hung loosely by his side. She'd seen it too many times to be mistaken. The armor of the Davke.
How much did she truly know about him?
Nothing.
But does it matter? It scared her, how little she felt at the revelation. It scared her, how little she cared what he was. If this boy, drenched in the blood of a burning kingdom, told Cyrene that he was a monster — then she was the girl who would protect that monster with the fury of a thousand suns.
“Please let me heal your wounds,” she murmured, her voice quiet yet uncharacteristically firm as it echoed through the arid Solterran night. “We have many hours until the sun rises. I will tell you all that has happened since last we met.”
And I ask the same from you, spoke those eyes as fierce as a lion’s, as she waited for his answer.
As she studied him, he allowed himself to do the same, carefully savouring the sight of her soft skin and supple lips. Some might have looked at her and seen fragile limbs and breakable bones.. but Velorca saw nothing but strength. It bloomed in the determined set of her rosy smile, in the ever-glowing gold of her lion eyes. Her slim spine held it's own scars and yet here she was, amid all this blood and fury... and still she found the strength to smile.
“I did say I would come to Solterra, you know.”
His lips curved grimly — almost a smile. He'd wanted her to come, truly.. but to see her set foot upon the sand of his unpleasant childhood was too much. This was the place that had ruined him... Davke or no. Visiting Terrastella had shown him as much. Their court thrived, swollen with healers and do-gooders — while Solterra had withered all these years, lost to a time where a King could kidnap young boys for his bed with no reprimand. To see her here was like going back to the past — as if he was that same innocent boy, fierce in the face of his captors but terrified of what they might do. Now he was terrified again... but for a wholly different reason.
“Many things have — changed, since then,”
He was reminded, starkly, of the night that kept appearing over and over again within his dreams. The taste of her lips pressed close to his, sweet with alcohol but sweeter still with the essence of her behind them. Lorca loathed to wake these days, when waking meant opening his golden eyes to sand and sun rather than stars and Cyrene.
But she was here, now.
He saw her gaze loiter on the spear hanging at his side and was reminded, too soon, that they were from different worlds. She was strong and kind and good, using her healing skills to aid Solterran and Davke alike... and he.. he'd suffered too much to be anything close to that.
“Please let me heal your wounds.. we have many hours until the sun rises. I will tell you all that has happened since last we met.”
Velorca stared at her in silent appraisal, his golden eyes slipping helplessly to her supple lips before he sighed and nodded sharply;
"Fine. Follow me.."
He turned fluidly, gritting his teeth against the scent of congealing blood as he found his way easily through the shadowy streets. A doorway loomed and Lorca slipped inside, waiting for Cyrene to follow before closing the door after her. They stood in an old room... his old room, part of a series of permanent dorms where Zolin had kept his pretty things — it had been Lorca's home for a time.. Before darker things had progressed. It was pitifully bare now, illuminated by the single window set high in the wall.
Velorca turned, feigning disinterest in the room before setting his long lashed eyes on Cyrene. He sucked in a quick breath as he saw her against the backdrop of his despair, her vibrancy leaching all the darkness from the room, all the pain. How could he think when the moonlight bloomed on her full lips, stroked the edges of her flyaway curls? His heart clenched as he looked at her, then loosened, sending a warm rush through his slender body. Sometimes she was so good she made him forget he wasn't.
He set his golden gaze on hers as he settled comfortably upon the floor — it was sand. There were few luxuries for slaves. Lorca had preferred it as a child, though, so used to sleeping in the dunes with his Davke tribe.
"So tell me, is this the Solterra you dreamed of?"
@Cyrene Sorry this took so long, I've been writing it on and off for three days cx
Cyrene she spun herself a crown of gold,
thrones of bones and citadels.
—
“Fine. Follow me.."
There was no hesitation in her step as they slid into the gaping mouth of the fallen castle. Cyrene said nothing as she trailed after him, her eyes straying from the gold that flashed in his braided mane to the gold that gleamed in the torn tapestries that lined the walls like skin.
The moon’s glaring glow bathed them in slivers of silver light, cold and bitter through the shattered windows. The click of their hooves echoed like chattering skulls against the slick, blood-soaked tiles. If Cyrene had not seen the bone-white smile of Death for herself, she would have shivered at it all.
But she had, and her dull eyes turned from the congealing blood like it was nothing more than wine spilled from a careless glass.
Velorca paused suddenly — so suddenly, that if Cyrene’s hooves had not been so quick to catch, she would’ve fallen into him with a stifled gasp. Tensely, he stood in front of a room, its wooden door torn from rusted hinges. She tried to see what he saw in the abyssal darkness beyond, but it was something that lived only in memories and the stench of history.
The sand that cushioned her footfalls was a welcome relief to her weary legs as she stepped in after him. Besides the most basic of furnishings, the room was bare — not a trace of its previous occupant, if it had ever known one, remained.
Though the room puzzled her, Cyrene’s gaze returned always to Velorca. To eyes of the brightest gold, reduced to embers by the ghost of a king and the weight of a war. She held her breath as he returned her stare, an intensity she had not seen before burning like a red sun against a black ocean. Slowly, she drew towards him like a lamb to a lion — though she wasn’t sure who was who, wasn’t sure why she felt that if she touched him right now, he would crumble into sand and smoke and ash.
"So tell me, is this the Solterra you dreamed of?" His voice was painfully light, painfully controlled, and Cyrene looked down as she lowered herself onto the floor like he had, tucking her wings against her sides like a fledgling.
“If I passed judgement on her now, I do not think it would be fair.” She swallowed a bitter laugh, and merely smiled weakly. It was maddening, how she wore her smile like a shield. A shield that cracked with each body that cooled beneath her touch. “Solterra… is a hungry land, savagely beautiful. Nothing is ever permanent in a kingdom made of sand. They are resilient. They rebuild, time and time again.”
As she spoke, her voice a rhythm to the slow beat of her heart, Cyrene nudged open the flap of her satchel and drew out her last bandage. Sable curls, bleached silver by the moon, fell across her eyes as she leaned forward and pressed it on the wound that still leaked fresh blood from his neck.
Her telekinesis, normally swift, was now hesitant. As white stained to crimson, her brow knit as she silently willed for the blood to slow its conquest. Because once she was done, she would no longer have an excuse to stay so near.
A request pushed at her tongue, heavy and insistent. “Will you tell me?" The bandage stilled against Velorca’s chrome pelt as she tilted her chin up towards him, her lashes a fan to conceal her gaze. “About your people.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. There was so much more she wanted to say. About you. About what happened to you, to the Davke.
Cyrene did not believe that hearts turned to darkness as easily as day turned to night.
@Velorca | "speaks" | notes: THIS DELAY PAINED ME, so sorry for the wait ;__;
His heart clenched as her eyes wandered the room, then stilled as she drew toward him. Every move she made was measured, her slim body wreathed by that soft ebony cloak. She was so achingly beautiful against the moonlit room, her auburn curls catching slivers of silver light as she lowered herself to the ground. She was grace and fire tucking her wings in tight, those faint glittering gold scars a subtle reveal of her strength.
“If I passed judgement on her now, I do not think it would be fair.”
He shared her bitter smile with a joyless one of his own, his supple lips barely curving. It was a strange feeling, to know without experience that when she smiled, it hid her hurts — to know that each body that had fallen underneath his spear would have added a weight to Cyrene's soul. Bastard.
“Solterra… is a hungry land, savagely beautiful. Nothing is ever permanent in a kingdom made of sand. They are resilient. They rebuild, time and time again.”
Now it was his turn to hold in a bitter laugh, blowing air out of his shaped nostrils in the semblance of sharp amusement.
"Resilience grows tiring."
He held little care for the Kingdom they stood within — in truth, he'd never been faithful to Solterra, only the Davke. The only family he had known. For so long he had yearned for a time he barely remembered, and had perhaps fallen into the fantasy that his life with the Davke had been... prosperous for him. In reality the Davke were as savage as the King and the memory they fought against, only savagery was their way of life... their kind of savagery wasn't likened to cruelty but necessity. The Desert was a harsh place to thrive, and somehow the Davke had done so... until they had been all but wiped out by greed and jealousy.
He watched through wary eyes as she pressed a bandage to his neck, his angled nostrils flaring ever so slightly as he breathed in her scent. She was so close... the memory of that bitterly cold night returned to him, the warmth of her soft lips pressed to his... her breath mingling so close with his own, tainted by drink. Velorca swallowed as desire surged through him, insistent and fierce. How he wanted to thrust himself against her, press his lips to hers and lose himself in her sweetness — to run fingers through her sable curls, to show her that she was a Goddess.
“Will you tell me?"
He felt the words hesitating on her tongue and set calculating eyes upon her own, unable to help noticing the way her lashes hid the flame of her golden eyes.
"About your people."
The gentle pressure she kept upon the bandage was distracting, but all thoughts were wiped from his mind as he slightly... ever so slightly.. dipped his head in acceptance. His razor-lined jaw tightened, the sharp lines of him almost appearing to grow sharper still as he turned his thoughts to the Davke, to Zolin... to the boy he'd been and the man he'd been forced to become. He took a shallow breath... and then his elegant voice filled the room, lower and rougher than it had been before.
"The Davke have belonged to the Desert for generations... before castles and battlements, before there was a King or a Queen. They.. lived off of the belief that what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.. life for them was simple but strict, brutal. When the first outsiders came and claimed a part of the Desert for their own, there was conflict. They were seen as invaders... and so began the War between Davke and Solterran."
"Things escalated when Zolin," he spoke the name casually, though it was difficult not to bare his gleaming teeth, "ascended to the throne. Davke began disappearing.. some were culled, others..." Velorca trailed off, looking around the room as his heart bled. He had never spoken the words aloud — never truly told anyone what had happened to him. The only one that had any idea was Avdotya, his Queen — and that was because she had been there. She had seen Lorca dressed in gold, draped in gold and kohl, Zolin's favourite toy. Was his Queen even alive after the attack? He cleared his throat, words escaping faster than he'd intended, clean and crisp.
".. others were used as slaves and whores."
His gaze lingered upon the window, a weight settling upon his shoulders. He didn't want to explain which role he had served, though he likely wouldn't have to... not when his skin was like satin, his bones regal and elegant. If Cyrene was to slide her fingers upward... his eyes flicked back to her, feeling the presence of the many scars criss-crossing the ridge of his neck. There so that they would be hidden underneath his soft ebony and silver hair. Velorca used his telekinesis to gently push Cyrene's touch from his skin, leaning forward intently as he asked;
"What are you doing here, Cyrene? It's not... The War still rages. There is more blood to be spilled yet."
Cyrene she spun herself a crown of gold,
thrones of bones and citadels.
—
His luminous eyes pierced her like a beam of brilliant sun, so full of longing and pain that Cyrene was sure they would set her alight. Her own gaze, leonine and sharp, never wavered. A part of her wanted to burn in that unholy fire, burn until their ashes mingled in a rain of soot and smoke.
The moon slipped behind a silver cloud as he began to speak. There was no other sound besides his voice, low and soft in the wings of his sorrow, and Cyrene listened. She listened, as he told her of the Davke. She listened, as he told her of their suffering at the hands of Solterra, at the claws of a boy-king who had bathed in the blood of a nation.
And most of all, she listened to the memories he didn't put into words. Amber eyes traced the lines of his chiseled jaw, the slopes of his elegant shoulders, as the pieces began to assemble like shards of broken glass. Why had Velorca chosen this room, out of the dozens of doorways that still stood whole and undamaged down the receding hall? It only truly sank in, when Cyrene recounted with widening eyes how he had paused before stepping in, how his golden gaze had ghosted over parts of the room that had been bare. Only to me. Only I couldn't see what this room once held.
“This… is your room,” she whispered, as the revelation fell upon her like a torrent of crushing stones. And then her eyes flew to him, twin flames, as she took in the beauty that had dazzled her that night under the stars, that still dazzled her this night. At the gold that mottled his skin like splatters of blood, at the ring that looped through his nose like the link of a broken chain. He didn’t have to tell her, which role he had played.
Fury crashed upon her in waves. At the injustice of the world, at the suffering that spread across it like plague — at the vile creatures that had been allowed to live like kings, laughing as they drank blood like wine. Her people had been taken by a thing intangible, the sickness something she couldn’t cull in howling retribution. But if they hadn’t — if there had been someone to blame — Cyrene would’ve damned herself to hell if that was what it took to avenge them. His need for vengeance... she felt it painfully well.
She was trembling, from exhaustion as much as anger, and barely registered his next words as Lorca leaned towards her once more. The bandage fell, heavy with blood, to the sand.
“What are you doing here, Cyrene? It's not... The War still rages. There is more blood to be spilled yet.”
With the last dregs of her strength, she rubbed the anger from her eyes like red paint as his question brought reluctance to her tongue. “I — am the new emissary of Dusk.” She didn’t let it sink in, before plowing blindly forwards in a tangle of words. “I accompanied Florentine to Solterra to greet the new queen, Seraphina, but we had barely exchanged our greetings before… all this began. Solterra was short of healers, so instead of fleeing I offered to stay and help.” Her brow crinkled as she leaned forwards, closing the remaining distance until their noses almost touched. “But I won’t pretend like I had nothing but selfless intentions. I knew you were here, Lorca, and I couldn’t leave until I knew you were still alive.” Her voice ended harshly, and she didn’t realize how she had called him until it had passed her lips. Lorca. Of all the times, a blush colored her cheeks that Cyrene raced to conceal by drawing away too quickly.
“This is not the first time I have seen blood, you know,” she said as her heart struggled to settle, and she coughed as her voice caught. “I told you before that I was not from here. My home is far away, a place called Pelion — it doesn’t exist anymore, I don’t think. My people were all but destroyed, not by war, but by plague. My mother, my father… my sister, Cygnus, she died in my arms.” Her voice wobbled and she turned away, so he wouldn’t see the tears that threatened to fall — with a hiss of frustration, a scarred wing glided across her cheek in a flash of red feathers. She didn't even recoil at the sight of it anymore — what a mess she had been reduced to. “Sometimes… sometimes I wish there had been an enemy. So I would be filled with revenge, with anger, with something other than this… emptiness that exists instead.”
Golden eyes refused to meet his; she could not look at him. Not when he now knew of the darkness she was capable of. The way Velorca looked at her… like she was light and goodness and purity — he did not know, of the atrocities she was willing to commit. Of the depths she was willing to fall.
@Velorca | "speaks" | notes: -throws self into the fire-
