[P] and the only thing a gambler needs— || party

[Adonai]

mother, tell your children / not to do what I have done / don't spend your life in sin and misery / in the house of the rising sun

❦

I

think I used to like the desert.

Think, because I am always unsure, now, of what—precisely—I had liked in my youth. Since I could walk I had nursed to maturity an unfortunate habit of dropping my favour like a hot coal. I could like something one day and disapprove of it the next, my opinions forming and breaking apart again like waves against a seashore.

My mother had thought me serene. My tutors had thought me meek. Yet close on the heels of those traits invariably came the fickleness of a prey animal. Could a lamb truly love a lion? Did she not only claim to love him, so he would spare her? When he died, she would step tragically over his body and proclaim her love to his weeping brother before his body was even cold. 

You cannot feel love when you are constantly afraid of being eaten.

Ishak, Ruth's red-haired assassin, reminds me of the desert.

Though my family is desert-bred, heirs to sand and rolling dune, neither of us looks like we belong to where we claim to rule. Pilate looks like a museum piece. I look like a marble cast given life, a statue in Medusa's garden. Miriam's hair is as red as war, and as soft as roses in summer. Corradh is a jungle animal, Delilah is devilish in a city-slick way, and Ruth—

Ruth is the bedrock before it ever erodes down to desert.

I did not mean to run into my sister's assassin (turned guard). I did not mean to run into anyone, when I had stepped into this dim, empty hallway to collapse raggedly against a tapestried wall and cough until my lungs ached with soreness. There is something warm dripping down my lips and it is not wine nor is it the memory of Vercingtorix's skin. 

It is blood, and when I see this, and when I turn towards a lone chandelier and see Ishak seeing this, I stiffen. I had forgotten to take my cloak when I had left the armoury so there is nothing for me to draw against, nothing for me to feign interest in. There is only Ishak and me and the gaping absence of Ruth.

My cheeks are flushed. My eyes are swirling pools and I catch glimpses of red hair, red paint, red. I wish to turn away, to leave, to find another empty hall to collapse against and bleed into—I do not wish to have an audience while I do it. Not, especially not, when it has been less of an hour since Vercingtorix melted back into the throng of guests and already I am frantic to find him again, to find him and to demand from him when next he is going to visit.

So I do not turn. So I resolve, darkly, to use Ruth's Ishak to keep myself from descending into a vortex of madness. (Is that not what she uses him for? I do not know. I do not know either him or her enough, in this moment, under this sallow lighting, to come to any more enlightening conclusions.) 

I force my mouth into a hollow smile, and prop myself stiffly against the tapestried wall. Blood coats my wing. I see it and tuck it smoothly behind me, my lips clean, my chin clean, my shadow under the chandelier a stronger impression of me than the one printed in flesh. 

"Ishak," I say, wincing when it is punctuated with a cough. My eyes are dark and cold. Goading for him to say something about this. 

"I don't think I have ever had the pleasure."

@Ishak

[Ishak]

☼  ISHAK  ☼
اسحاق

"So here we are, escaping from the world outside"

As a general rule, you often find yourself in empty hallways.


It is enough, at times, to make you wonder if their owners are aware of just how much space they’ve given themselves and just how little they use it. Now, when you walk down them you’re looking for trouble to stop, but it wasn’t all that long ago you were the trouble.


You see Adonai before he sees you.


You watch, distantly, as he coughs. Just like every time you see him, you are reminded that seeing people at their worst as Ruth heals them is never quite the same as seeing someone on the way there. You remember Adonai, before he was sick.


(Before he was poisoned, but you’ll keep your own counsel on that.)


Watching him now, it’s really a pity. Of all of them, and you keep a careful list, he’s the one who’s second to Ruth. Miriam, once, you’d have ranked higher, but she seems to fall further apart in her grief by the day. You liked Miriam because she seemed to care about her siblings; you like Adonai by process of elimination.


You’ve had no interaction with him, preferring as you do to avoid any Ieshan that isn’t named Ruth. Instead, you have stacks of gossip, comments by servants and Ruth. You weigh them; weigh all the other Ieshans against them. Then, you tip the scale slightly because Adonai is ill and it isn’t causing more work for Ruth.


(You know, full well, that this isn’t tenable forever. Ruth wants to investigate, needs it. Her identity is wrapped up in healing, and she is being denied. You hate it. Fallout you can’t predict is lying in wait.)


You watch as he props himself against the wall and wonder absently what exactly he’s doing. And then —


He says your name.


“Prince Adonai,” you say mildly, evenly in return. Perhaps your surprise is a little uncalled for; it’s been years and your entry to the household wasn’t exactly conventional. Reason enough to learn your name.


“I don't think I have ever had the pleasure,” he says.


You are not exactly a fan of the challenging stare he has trained your way, and you’re not convinced either that you shouldn’t say to hell with it and get him some medical attention. But you’ve also known desperation, and if he wants conversation that badly you can oblige.


“No, you haven’t.”


There are several paths you could take from here. The cruelest would be to ask after his health, or perhaps if he’s been by the bar to see Pilate. Less cruel would be to note that you have seen him with several guests but not with his siblings. Least cruel of all, the weather. You pick something in between.


“Hosting duties treating you well?” you ask, though the answer will decide just how inane a question it is.


(There are some things you cannot help but to think; it is part and parcel of being an ex-assassin. In this case, it is the list of breathless questions you could have had asked were he a target. Who was the architect of this house? What is its history? Tell me about the paintings, the interior design. What’s it like to have wings, to lead ceremonies? And it is also this, with every cough he seems weaker than before.)

---

@Adonai | AHHHH | “the waves” - bastille