The library is not particularly interesting to me.
I am in Delumine often enough that it has ceased to be novel. At times I find it hard to remember why it is that I come here at all, seeing as I have read a good portion of its books, though I am not quite arrogant enough to say most. Many of the volumes have been copied into our own shelves in the palace; I have taken particular interest in tragedies ever since I was a child. Yet I keep coming back. It is a weakness, I know. But these people are quite captivating. So quaint, and often apolitical—or ignorant, even, not of the stuff inside their books but of the changing world around them.
Perhaps it is that which draws me back. In Solterra, I am not often awarded a respite from statecraft. Here, although there are volumes upon volumes of war tactics, of Court history, the origin of government itself, I owe nothing to anyone.
Here they do not know they are beneath me. I think I find it charming.
There are many of them in the library with me today, even more than usual. But, as always, the hallways are quiet; people do not speak, only whisper; do not run, only walk; the only real distraction is how intense my urge is to watch them, as if observing a science experiment, and the faint, sweet sound of leaves rustling overhead as the wind passes through with a wintry bite.
I am at peace, watching them, as if through a microscope. The many scholars with their nibbed pens, their wide, curling scrolls. Women with moony eyes picking through the romance section. Many children, reading fairytales and curled up on cushions, and all of them surprisingly well-behaved; I understand now why no one has ever said Delumine was lacking in manners. In my own corner the world is quiet. I am splayed over the floor, alone, and watching the crowds over the rim of a book I am only pretending to read, because I already know it by heart—Crime and Punishment.
So of course I see him coming, from farther away than anyone else does. I am the only one in this godforsaken library who is paying attention to anything.
He is small, actually, but so am I. It would be hypocritical to complain. In the dappled light coming through the leafy roof his coat is dusky, perfect black, save for a few threads of white on his wing, under his lip. I sit up straighter. Now I note, for the first time, that he is wearing wire-rimmed glasses, only just visible thanks to the glare the light makes on the lenses; something in my stomach alights, or maybe it is inside my chest.
When reason fails, I think to myself, amused, the devil helps.
and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding
Poachers. Crime. Investigation. It's all starting to feel like a dream, or a nightmare, one day running into the next into the next into the next with no definitive beginning or end. Though they turn the dirt it has surfaced nothing but more, bones, more bodies, more bullets to add to his growing list of things to do and people to tolerate. He has stopped counting days without sleep. It doesn't seem to matter, anymore.
('Go home,' someone had said, 'get some god damn sleep. You'll be no use at all if you die of exhaustion.'
Andras had sneered, 'Then let it be a swift death,' crackling with bolts of blue light. There was a pregnant pause, before Andras conceded (a word which, used here, means felt so tired, all the way down to his marrow, that he could not even conjure the strength to fight), brushing out of the room in a flurry of black feathers and an electric hum.)
The library is bustling, much to his chagrin, in the quiet way that libraries do - the tick of hooves on the worn wood floor coming and going, the voices that, though numerous, never rise to more than a quiet murmur in the background, and always, always the birds and the wind. It is the song of peace, the gentle chime of patience, and for a moment he can hear it and only it, over his electric hum, over the murmur in the halls, over his pounding heart singing hunt in the back of his head. Hunt. Fight. Bleed. He does not know why.
Andras floats past the crowd, gathered to read stories of war and strife and adventure, into a quieter hall that branches toward dark, even more silent study rooms where Andras will fall into his bed of pillows amid his cluttered paper and spilled pens and be asleep before he hits the ground.
Or, would, if there were not the moment where he passes a stranger, dressed in a fine, clean linen, hung here and there with elegant gold jewelry, and meets his eyes in passing, but the stranger does not look away. A static arc crashes down his back, popping like fireworks. He turns to the boy, expression ineffable behind the glare of his glasses.
He says, through clenched teeth, "What."
It does not sound so much like a question.
Ieshans are good at waiting. I was raised to be patient, and made for it, too; being born into a house of priests does not lend itself to irrational sins like an intolerance to biding one’s time. So it doesn’t bother me, that he takes his time wandering over, through the dim-dark and the quiet and the whistling of leaves. It doesn’t bother me that I am watching him for so many long minutes before he really appears.
I stretch out, like a cat. There is a hissing in my ear; the snakes are waking up from their midday nap, stirring against my cheek, my neck, blinking their hard, sleepy eyes open wide as the stranger approaches. Watching. Letting out a little whistle. I don’t mind the noise. It’s a little better than the stupid bustle of the library. It is much, much better than sitting in silence, especially the kind that makes me start thinking.
He is floating toward me. Nimble-footed, I note, maybe because he is so small. Or maybe it’s because he has wings. I have always been indifferent to pegasi: I don’t find it charming, the overwhelming arrogance that comes with belonging above the earth, nor am I enamored, as some land- or sea-dwellers are, with the idea of flying.
There is plenty to conquer, here on the ground, without adding another, even messier variable. Besides, no one in my family has wings. Which means they can’t be all that great.
I close the novel. Toss it aside. It lands with a soft thump on a pile of blankets, cover-down. He has stopped in front of me, as expected, but what I did not expect is that he is literally bristling—crackling with a thin bright arc of electricity; his shoulders are hunched, his blue-gray eyes, when they meet mine, hard as black ice. They burn.
Though no more than his voice, when he asks, what?
I blink. There is no lying about it—I am caught off-guard. But not startled so much as bemused. Usually I am irresistible; usually I am adored at first sight, snakes, amber eyes and all. Usually people find me tempting.
Oh, but perhaps this is why you are being so abrasive. I wouldn’t be surprised—you are so interested, so shamefully, instantly seduced, that it is hard to react with any semblance of normalcy.
I smile, slow and lazy. “Nothing.” I only say it because I know it will infuriate him. But it feels good in my mouth, anyway, savory, luxurious, if only because there is a part of me—wretchedly satisfied, in the way a peasant having gotten away with a stolen loaf of bread—at the thought of keeping his attention, positive or otherwise.
“Why?” I tilt my head at him. Innocent. I debate adding something else—what were you waiting for? why do you ask?—but I don’t. Because I know he will still ask.
and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding
Of course--the snakes.
Now that he sees them, round scales glinting coldly in the lamplight, or the cold winter sun, it is all he sees--their bodies swimming from sleep, curling lazily about the stranger's cheeks, glancing off the sharp curve of his jaw. Andras draws half a breath, watching them with pursed lips, wide, wide eyes and a body as stiff as a corpse.
The man says, Nothing. Why?
For a moment the hiss of the snakes meets the hiss of his magic and Andras has to swallow hard to keep it from pouring from him, faster and faster. He could fill this whole library with his magic, bring it down brick by brick, root by root, shelf by sturdy shelf. He thinks, now he is dangerous, enough to blow this man's wicked smile from his beautiful face, but not in the way that lions or gods are dangerous--like the queen of Denocte and her black hatred--but the way caged animals are dangerous, all claws and teeth and rage.
Teeth. Teeth that close tighter, but never tight enough. Claws. Hooves that root him to the wood floor that reflects his own ugly anger back up at him and his magic is banging, banging, banging at his doors like a rabid dog, all foaming jaws and bloody fangs. Rage. Rage that discharges in waves, pulsing down his spine, a pirouette from shoulder to shoulder, rib to rib to rib, hip to hip.
(Someone on the other side of the room gasps. There is a hurried sound, the bustle of several bodies fleeing at once. Those that don't are likely Deluminian, peering boredly over their books at their Warden, accosting another tourist in another dark corner of the library. Andras neither hears nor cares.)
Nothing. Why? Andras bites down on his tongue and snarls, "Perfect." This close--so close he can practically smell the white linen, the exotic spice of a wealthy Solterran household-- the light of his magic is reflected back at a thousand different angles from each scale on each bobbing snake and also the scales on the man's brow. The light in them shifts, a thin crescent rolling from one side to the other as the head tilts, the muscles stretch, and Andras' eyes slide up, up, until they are met with another pair, like molten gold, pupils like black holes.
He stares a little too long. Just a little. The hall casts long shadows over his dark back.
Andras asks, barely audible over the hum of his skin: "Why were you staring at me?"
There is plenty of magic in my family. Hagar has charmspeak, which she uses with abandon, and a complete lack of remorse; and Adonai, before he—well, there was a time when he was noted across Solterra not only for the power of his water-magic but the irony of it. My mother, they say, made us from sand. (Most of the time I don’t believe it.) But I… I am lacking. There are the snakes, sure, but I cannot control them. They are their own beings, attached to me not out of duty but necessity. If they could survive without me, I know that they would be gone as fast as possible. I know they would leave without a glance backward.
All this to say I was raised around witches. The way he looks at me—with his eyes burning, with his brow furrowed, his lip curled; with wide, sharp arcs of crackling blue running the length of his wings, then his spine, rib to hip—does not scare me.
So, though I am surprised that such a short interaction between us has already brought out so much of his ferocity, I do not flinch. I do not blink or turn away. Instead, very deliberately, I raise a brow; I am entertained, my eyes calm almost to the point of sleepiness, expression schooled to neutrality. I am careful about this because I know it will inflame him; and I know it will inflame him simply because I know him. Or I know his kind. Full of rage, and the thought that that rage is righteous. He thinks he is the only man in the world with a pain in his heart. He thinks he is the only one of us who has a right to be furious.
It is pathetic. Childish. But I understand the allure: the world is much quieter when you are the only one in it.
The snakes are fully awake now. One nips at my ear, which stings but in a brief, wake-up! way I have become completely used to. They are saying what I have already surmised, which is: he is your type.
Dark and brooding. Tortured. No matter if it’s self-inflicted.
There is a scattering sound, like birds from a shaken tree. Behind him, a few of the more touristy-looking library-goers have fled for the hills, exchanging panicked looks, the sound of their hooves clicking quick over the hard-packed dirt. Perfect, the boy snarls. Suddenly he is surrounded by an aura of flickering energy, blue and pink and then all shades of rainbow.
I shrug. Turn my eyes down to a new book. Pretend I’m not interested at all. For a moment I am reabsorbed in something else. I am uncaring and unfeeling.
Why were you staring?
At home we have many servants. A few of them I flirt with so often it has become regular, and they have become bold enough to meet my eyes when I do so, and smile, or even come upstairs with me. It would be much easier to go back home with one of them. For a moment I think about it—saying no, turning around. But where is the satisfaction in wanting someone who wants you back?
“Why does anyone?” I flip a page, lazily curl a leg closer toward my stomach. “I thought you were worth a stare. Never mind.”
But I look him up and down again, almost-but-not-quite slow enough to be slow.
and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding
Andras is not selfish. He is not in pain. He does not stare at himself in the mirror and think, why? He is not prideful. Andras is exactly who he wants to be--and maybe that, after all, is the problem.
His magic is up to the ceiling of his heart, now, clawing at the underside of his mouth, the back of his teeth, digging at Andras' tight-lipped frown with fingers like batteries. It rises like bile, searing his throat, burning his tongue--and then, when its fists hit the ceiling and its howling rage is so bright and so hot even it cannot see its dirty hands, suddenly there is nowhere left to go. He is surprised when he doesn't combust, far more surprised when he steps forward and the rest of it discharges, and the quiet that fills the room is bone-chilling.
Pilate shruggs. It is silent, and dismissive, and muscles of his neck tighten and contract in a way that makes one last wave of static roll down his own. He wonders why he notices.
He thinks back to Isra in the yellow glow of the lanterns, surrounded by spice and bent metal and sharp edges. He remembers the look in her eyes that said yes the same way his does, the same way Andras prays for swinging fists and spitting blood on the ground. Her magic had risen like a sword and she had swallowed it down. He cannot see his as a tool, cannot see himself as a vessel, or a prisoner, or whatever he is.
His magic is just a thing that happens. He, himself, is just a thing that it happens to.
Someday Andras will realize, what it means to be powerful, and deadly. Someday he will putt his grubby little hands on the wheel and pull. For now the thought doesn't even cross his mind.
Their eyes meet again, molten gold like the heart of a volcano and some color that is not quite steel but is not quite a thunderhead, something like the dark rock in the hearts of mountains. And then, as if they had never met at all, the Solterran turns his down to a new book, and Andras is standing as the crossroads, naked, angry and, in a word, stunned. A road diverged in a yellow wood, and so on, and so on. This feels like a game Andras doesn't want to play, one where there are just two pieces and no winning moves. One that Andras isn't any good at. The only reason he sees the eyes roll back to him and stroll toward his own at a pace that makes him dizzy, is because he is looking, himself, with this dour, long-suffering expression on his dark, dark face. It only gets darker.
Why does anyone? He wonders, narrowing his eyes. Thought you were worth a stare, Pilate says, and Andras' frown only deepens until it is more of a grimace of disbelief than anything else. He had expected--something? Anything? Fists? Teeth? Literally anything but the unholy hush of the library when he makes a quiet, frustrated noise and turns his head away with a huff.
Why does he want it? "Convincing." he says, eyes fixed on a wall of shelves stuffed top to bottom with identical, leather-bound books. "Who are you?"
His complete lack of control is interesting but not endearing. I look at him like a scientist looks at something under a microscope, like a biologist labeling the cross-section of a newly-discovered animal: perplexed, with deep focus, mostly objective. Like my interest in him is entirely scientific. Partially it is; I find it utterly fascinating that I have seen dirty street urchins with more control over their emotions (and their magic) than this, a man my age. Perhaps his growth was stunted as a child—emotionally, physically. Perhaps he was one of those urchins. Perhaps—
It does not even occur to me that this may be the way he wants to act. It is unthinkable that a person could be so uncontrolled on purpose.
But I am getting tired of observing. There are many reasons I did not become a scientist, and a lack of real care to wait and see results is one of them. Over the edge of the book, though I watch him: eyes bright, like amber clear and still, the pupils narrowing into concentrated slits. His magic has finally begun to recede, less lightning and more ripple. It sits on him thin as a veil.
Because of the way the light streams in overhead, I, and Andras, and all the world between us, has become a painting: oily and slick and warm, dappled by the pattern of shadows from the leaves, a shifting mosaic pushed around by the wind; I am normally not privy to such soft feelings about the beauty of the world—the desert has a way of beating it out of you—but for a brief moment I am quite enamored by the way it all looks, as if we have been taken right out of the Romantic era, where everything is soft and gauzy with suffused light.
His huff is cute. Although that is not typically a word I like to use. Endearing, or maybe it just strokes my ego—that with a few lazy words, an averted glance or two, I have managed not only to trap his attention but make him dependent on the attention I am giving to him. Now he won’t meet my eyes. His gaze is fixed on a bookshelf to my right, though there is nothing of interest to be found. It is entirely obvious that the only thing he wants to look at is anything that’s not me.
Slowly, deliberately, I climb to my feet. Smooth steps. A little roll of the shoulders, readjusting the linen on my spine as I stand fully and then stretch, playing at being feline. My stomach is helium-light and turning in my stomach like water over rocks. I feel a little light-headed.
But when I finally come to a full stand, still and straight-backed, chin jutted out stubbornly, the feeling falls right through me and disappears. I find myself a little disappointed.
“Pilate,” I say. Then I flash him a wry smile, a knowing, teasing, curl of just half my mouth, as if I am still deciding whether he is worth a whole grin. “I’d ask you yours but I know you’ll bite my head off.” I tilt my head in mock thoughtfulness. “No, wait, don’t tell me. Something like Romeo, or Prince Charming, since you’re so… sweet.”
By the last word I am half-laughing. There is too much space between us. I am beginning to itch, full of sharp desire, uncharacteristically impatient.
I step forward, just a little, because I am almost sure he will not push back.
and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding
The last dregs of electricity slough off his skin in lazy sparks, bouncing along at his heels until they, too, are inevitably snuffed out. Andras remembers now he is tired, marrow-deep fatigue that, now that he is not propped up by his anger or his magic, leaves him cold and spent, like so many rags on the ground. The shelf of books is a dreamy blur, much too far for Andras to see even with his glasses, but he reads them as best as he can, looking at something--anything--that is not this man with his heavy orange eyes and a smile like his snakes. Enticing. Dangerous. Andras wonders why he thinks words like enticing and why it is not then but when he thinks dangerous that whatever shoddy scaffolding is holding him up starts to creak under his weight.
There is nothing in particular that screams 'dangerous' about Pilate, no defining feature that Andras can point to and say 'eureka,' not the incalculable patience or the gold of his eyes or the white winter light on his scales. When there is movement out of the corner of his eye, either as small as a blink or as large as an inclination of the head--to watch Andras now that Andras is not, in turn, watching Pilate--he does not think that he is of any particular danger.
Danger, his heart says, lying. Maybe he wishes it wasn't. Maybe it isn't. He cannot find it in him to care.
The man unfolds his legs and rolls to a stand, the bones of his lurching shoulders peeking over the fabric that falls to the side, floating momentarily on the cold winter air. He stretches--languid, catlike--with each dark leg straightened like a prayer, or a sin, or some entirely other entity altogether, a god he doesn't know with a name he can't say.
He doesn't realize he is staring--not so much like a lech as a person reading a particularly intetresting book or drinking a particularly tasty wine--until it is far, far too late, and even though Andras knits his brow and looks away he cannot deny that it happened.
Pilate, he says, with one side of his mouth curling into a wicked sickle. It sounds like the dry desert sun, like courtyards and servants and the ungodly fire of his eyes. He is coming closer now, so slowly that Andras stiffens when he takes the first step, smiling the way dogs smile, unkindly and full of teeth. A challenge? A threat? He cannot tell.
"Sweet?" he says, slowly. He has lost track of his eyes. Are they staring? Does he care? "I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic." The laugh that comes out of Andras is unexpected and tense, the way children laugh in a purportedly haunted house. He has never felt more like a haunted house in his life, with every ghost singing yes in unison, but instead of the drum of his rage he can hear only his heart. Pounding. Pounding. On its own walls, its own door, everywhere.
Something is rising in me: heat, darkness, a weightlessness sort of like helium tingling out from my chest, into my throat, down my legs like (I hate to say it) an electric current.
It is excitement. I think. It is thrill mixed with satisfaction: I am half-waiting and half-sated, pleased by the way he stares at me but wanting more. I always want more. I have never learned how to be satisfied with anything less than all, everything, entire. But I don’t think that’s a fault. It makes me persistent; it gives me purpose, beyond the next lavish feast, beyond the next piece of jewelry. Fine. Perhaps I can be tenacious, perhaps some people find it irritating, but I know nothing else.
It is in my blood. The royal curse. I was born wanting for nothing, and I will die the same way. And I plan on living the same way all the time in between.
He is watching me. Intently. A little shiver of pleasure rides up my spine, I feel indulgently smug. Lotus-eating is what my sister would call me. But life is hard enough: why not enjoy the little pleasures while they last, lean into hedonism—sink your teeth into the soft, warm thing while it’s still brave enough to stand near you, bask in the satisfying weight of Andras’ stare like a sunbathing cat?
A sound like a purr builds in my throat but doesn’t escape. I am warm all over, warm to the bones. Sweet? the stranger says. His eyes are on me, and they aren’t moving—hot and dark and heavy, boring holes, never flinching but only half-focused. As if he is looking not at me, but through me. Or perhaps it is both. But then he laughs.
Laughs.
And it is tense and rough around the edges, strained as if he does not know how to laugh at all, but I am still pleased: I flash a grin at him, instantaneous, amused. “I would never call you sweet. Handsome, though, I might.” And my eyes are growing dark, I think, as my gaze narrows; he stiffened when I stepped forward but did not, so I do it again, moving up another half-pace.
I want to touch him. Badly.
I think about it—what I might make him feel with just a brush of my nose against his ear, a sliding of shoulder to shoulder—
and i was a hand grenade
that never stopped exploding
Pilate grins, when he laughs, like it is a precious thing, one to be held carefully, and close, and Andras has never felt longing so great or so terrible in his life, an ache straight down to his marrow that is not asking to touch him so much as it is begging, like a sinner at God's feet. At first it confuses him, the intensity with which it hits him, as if he were standing in the tide with the waves all around him and he is struck in the chest, the shoulders, the stomach, until he is lost in the undertow. He swallows again, an attempt to untie the knot in his stomach, but it sticks in his throat and comes out as some strangled, helpless noise that is too quiet to hear across the room.
Oh fuck, he thinks again, oh no, as if he does not drop his own voice down to little more than a murmur, heavy with the weight of whatever it is with its hands around his throat. "Do you think so?" he asks, lingering a little too long on the legs that draw Pilate closer, inch by painfully slow inch. Andras tries to will his muscle to uncoil, tries to think warm thoughts, calm thoughts, tired thoughts, but finds that all that is there is eyes like a snake's hot and bright, and a heat that pools in the dark of his black, black pit.
There will still be poachers when he wakes from this stupor. There will still be their powderkeg council and their king with his ghosts. There will be murder and strife in Delumine and it will all still be singing his name as if Andras is a warden worth his title and not a miserable little rat with a bad attitude. It will hunt him until either he finds it first or he is so tired that he can no longer see the path he treads. It is not going anywhere. It will not wait for Andras, standing on the opposite side of a long walk with his eyes trained on Pilate's throat, savage as he has ever been.
Sleep can wait a little longer. One more minute. One more hour. One more day.
Time can have it all, he doesn't care.
Andras steps forward now, one slow motion at a time, graceless in a way that only the truly feral can be, until he has halved the distance and can see whatever it is in Pilate's face that spurs him on. When Andras grins it is not like the sun, it is like caves and dark holes and wicked things. He huffs. "Prove it."
