The tips of Leto’s hooves tap over the heads of the tide-sunk mirrors. She is suspended by the sea, cradled in salted, autumnal waters. Her hair peels out darker than an oil spill. Through moon-wide eyes she watches how he cuts a lone, dark figure upon the shore of lead and glass. The sea whispers secrets into her lips as they tip into a smile. Starlight gleams white across the shed-star’s satin soft smile, it dances lively as a flea upon the water.
The tide carries her closer to the shore, pulled in, magnetised by his magic. Stardust gleams across her lashes, wet by the water when she blinks. The droplets gleam like crystals strung between her lashes. They roll like tears down the slender path of her cheek.
Tap, tap, tap, over and over the sharp, submerged edges of mirrors her feet drift. The sound is a symphony of strange, feral magic. Soon solid slick glass rises beneath her feet as the ocean grows shallow pushing itself up the mirror beach. Leto rises from the ocean as her Ilati kin rose from the fables whispered upon enchanted tongues. She is magic and myth ascending out of inky black. Over the mirrors she steps, nimble and predatory, lithe and celestial. Bells chime and bones clink in her hair, chants and spells breathe over her slender spine. Her movement is magic, her every step a beautiful, tribal savagery.
She does not look at the mirrors who bear for her a never ending number of Letos, each from another world, another time. She does not care for what could have been. Not any more. Star magic alights within her veins. The cold of the ocean falls away and steam rises from her skin. Its idle mist rises like prayer from the black of her skin. Ancient religion and sacrament breathes across her painted skin. Sigils, Ilati and shed-star and ocean-born alike gleam silver and gold over the curves of her slim body.
She was made for chants woven in magic, for dances tribal and savage, she is made a creature of the sea and she moves celestial, enchanting, a siren born, a priestess forged. She might be the wildest thing the sea has yielded that day and she slinks after him with her hair tousled, bangles of bone, strings of pearls, the bells, the unwinding plaits, the moon-limned leaves, they all chime, they all toll their achingly beautiful warning. She knows how wicked she has become, how her beauty has turned feral and ever more enchanting. Leto knows too how her hot, white star-blood is no longer the most dangerous thing about her. I am coming Those bells warn her once king. Do you remember me? They sing. Come, beautiful boy, let me drag you out into the sea. They enchant.
Her siren song sings, and if he does not hear it, if Asterion does not feel the way her gaze presses like fingertips up the curve of his spine, then he will know she has come when at last she touches her lips to his flank. I am here. She trails the constellations of stars that draw across his sides. She knows his every one, Leto counted each of them as he too counted the feathers in her hair. Within her, are the names of every constellation that finds art and life across his skin. Oh, beneath her touch he is again, so real, and the constellations, even drowned by his water magic and choked by his sadness, still they sing as pearls gleam from the bottom of the ocean.
Leto laughs, low, expressive as a poem, that presses its words of holiness and desire into his skin, into his bones. They are each made of stars, made of the sea, the earth of Terrastella once bound them and now they are each free. You left again. I was so angry with you. I was so hurt. She might have said if she had not been changed between Anandi’s teeth. Unmade, remade, rekindled, reborn.
Instead, the kelpie breathes, “I always wanted to paint you,” lightly, longingly, her gaze trailing moonlight like paint across his skin, drawing out his constellations in the wake of her lips. His magic trembles beneath her mouth, it beckons her as the sea calls her back wild and wicked and open. “You are a free man now, Asterion.” Leto says, at last drawing away from him, the salt of his skin upon her. “So why do you still walk like Atlas? Have you not learned how to share?” And then, oh then, how wild her smile turns, how wicked and delightful. She laughs, as her teeth gleam with tribal starlight. Her gaze tips down to the mirrors at their feet and the thousand pairs of mahogany and nebular eyes that gaze back. Oh, Asterion, the Ilati-girl thinks, do you let yourself be tortured so in every single world?
What could be for him there, that place that was only a reminder of failure and loss? Even the magic he wanted nothing to do with - not after Ravos and the riftlands, not when he knew what such chaotic power could do. Better gods, who could be reasoned with and rallied against. Better if should have stayed sunken below the waves, even if it meant he would not return.
But Asterion has always been a glutton for punishment, and oh, that thing inside him now is hungry.
It was moonrise when he reached the island, and even in the cold the smell of it was strange - smooth, and cold, and other words that were less senses than feelings. Over all that was the more familiar presence of the sea. This side of the island it is protected from the open ocean, and the waves are no more than a whisper over the sharp, glass-toothed surface of the beach. Given time, the water could wear those edges town to curves - but Asterion knows it won’t have the chance.
The darkness is a blessing. With the moon only a crescent above, there is no light for his reflections to watch him by; when he cares to glance full in one of the dead-star mirrors there is nothing there but a shadow without even a suggestion of starlight. Only when his forelock blows back from his brow and the pale mark there is revealed does he look like himself at all - and whatever drew Asterion back, it was not shards of memory, or potential, or regret.
He thinks that this darkness is less dangerous than the one he returned to - the one with stars that trembled and fell, and blackness that ate up everything, and Thana, hunting. He think it until Leto climbs from the sea.
Asterion hears the bells chime his name. He feels the eyes on his back. And still he does not turn toward her (though he stops, and a dozen shadows fall still around him) until the ocean-musk scent of her rolls over him and her touch brushes cold against his skin.
There is something different about her laughter, but then, there is something different about his gaze when it moves to hers, even as his mouth dips to touch her sea-slick shoulder, black and gleaming as the midnight glass beneath their feet. He licks salt from his lips as she says his name. He had known that guilt would find him here, and so it has - in the shape of this woman who he failed as both king and servant. There could have been - should have been - more to them, that night they’d parted with smoke billowing on the horizon, the island a baleful red eye of fire blinking awake. And there is a sorrow trembling in him, a shame, even as that other seeks to drown it like sand on embers - until he catches a glimpse of her teeth.
And then his mouth curves into a smile, too, and he ignores her questions, and the things they both might have wanted. “I see that somebody taught you how to swim, Leto. I’m sorry I didn’t keep my promise.”
In the ocean washing off
my name from your throat;
I see that somebody taught you how to swim, Leto. I’m sorry I didn’t keep my promise.
She has become a monster and a priestess and a witch and yet none of those things has erased her feelings. Regrettably. Even now, made primal, wicked and wild she still feels. Even when she does not wish to care, even when the song of his blood is enough to make her want to taste him, when the trembling stars are enough to set her blood alight and imagine what transcence is (above the sea, the earth, the clouds). Even when she does not wish to care, his words steal the brilliance of her smile. It grows dimmer, darker. Unfettered joy becomes chained by aching memories she thought she had long ago let loose.
She has changed, yes. She does not wish to linger in the past, yes. The twinge of her stomach, the piece of her that still feels like a woman, not a monster, feels foolish and sad. She has always expected more of him than he was prepared to give. She destroys herself with the hope. He disappoints her at every turn and yet, she searches him out and turns to him when he searches her out in turn. The monstrous parts of her strangle her sorrow; she is reborn, content and alive in her fateful rebirth. It should be all that matters…
Leto laughs, rough and lyrical as the tide that pushes ashore. “Should I accept your apology, Asterion?” In a thousand watching mirrors and worlds she turns to him and tilts her head, watching with eyes vast as galaxies. “Do you deserve to feel shame for not keeping your promise to me?” Leto prowls to him and her sigils ripple, coming alive as light refracts from black glass across her skin. The air fills with magic and fire. The salted air lays itself across her painted lips. Leto does not flinch when he touches her. But her gaze watches as he licks the salt of her skin from his lips. She burns, the air hisses with the heat of her star-fire blood. She glows and glows and glows. “Do you want me to be angry with you? Will it help?” Beneath the bells and bones of her hair she watches him, his smile. Is the curve upon his lips remorseful? She laughs at last, her smile beautiful and hungry. So many questions she asks him. Always she expects from him. Always he disappoints. But not now. Not ever again.
Leto slinks closer still, feline, tribal, hungry. She presses her hot cheek against his and whispers, giving him an answer in the wake of her questions. “You were never meant to save me, Asterion. I was destined to drown and be reborn into this gift.” The gift that sings in her blood, that turns her into the sea, that seduces and enthralls and captures prey as deftly as any mythological siren. Leto has become creator and destroyer. So she does not draw away from him, not as she once had when she had been a forest girl unused to touch. Now she yearns for it, craves its softness, its heat, the way it lifts a delectable pulse to fluttering wings beneath the skin. Her eyes close, his taste sweet across her lips, his pulse a wet hum in her ears. She desires…
If there was more she wanted from him, things he disappointed her by - ah, he should have told her. Then, he would have been eager to listen. Then, he was always ready to change, quick to think himself wrong and vow to do better.
He is not that man, that dreaming boy, any longer. Just as she is not a young priestess, sigil-painted beneath a bower of autumn branches.
Her questions have teeth and claws, smooth and sharp as the jagged, flawless rows of glass that reflect the pair of them in a thousand shatter mirrors and, behind that, the unbroken sea. The once-king is still calm, cool as the winter air, and yet below the surface the dark waters are gathering. Out in the water, each lap of waves sounds like a questions, too. Do you? Do you? Do you?
“You wouldn’t be the first not to. As for shame - well, yours was not the only promise I broke.” Around them, in the reflections of the glass, little flares of light grow - her sigils, blinking awake like fireflies, a hundred patterns whose meaning he doesn’t know. But Asterion isn’t watching these; his eyes are still on Leto, dark as the water beyond them, save for the glow of her magic, the pearly light of distant stars burned upon her skin. “Yes. Be angry.”That is easier, he does not say. Better than disappointment, better than regret.
He is glad to be consumed by flames of wrath. Better, even now, than drowning.
Once, he might have parted from her; might have put distance between them, so that even their dozens of reflections stood apart, with starlight between them. Now, his posture doesn’t even stuffed as she comes near; now he leans a little toward her, as though hungry for her touch, and leans his cheek against her own. As she speaks he breathes softly, quietly, and watches his own reflection; there is no trace of the relief he feels, to hear her say you were never meant to save me.
How could he argue with prophecy, with belief?
There is salt and brine about her, and her skin is cold despite the star-fire emblems that blaze across it. She smells of the sea, of the parts of it he’s never seen; he wonders if he could control the tides in her the way he could draw a wave up over their heads now. His wisdom warns him to step back - that she is a predator now. And that black thing in inside him that wraps around his heart wants her to close her teeth around him, so he might bite her back.
“I always thought it was a gift,” he says, to break these thoughts, these midnight, new-moon wants. Now he does curve his neck away, and step delicately beyond her reach (so she is beyond his own). His voice is genuinely curious; there is a new hunger in the words, an older one that whatever sickness has seized him. “That’s how you see it too, then?” It’s almost longing, the way his voice drops, and his gaze strays to the sea, and he asks, “What is it it like - beneath?”
In the ocean washing off
my name from your throat;
Leto does not know as they stand, cheek to cheek, how he wonders if he can control the tides in her. If she did, she would laugh and dare him to try. If he did she would let her magic loose, let it boil from her every droplet of moisture until she is nothing but ash. It would kill her, yes, but better than than to let any man think he has control over her. Maybe that is another reason why her fate was to drown. It was her choice, her Making carried out within the jaws of a woman…
He has never stood like this with her, with no part of him tense and no part of her tense. They lean in together, like two galaxies bending close, pressing, pressing, pressing. Their joining is the heat of stars and the bruise of planets. The sea bubbles through the windows of worlds and her gaze dips low to peer into the nearest, where a star presses close, where he is something so utterly other. But here, now, they are already something different. Leto does not think, now, upon how he is changed. How he is pressed against her skin in ways he never has before. She does not think of his differences for she is changed too.
Asterion yearns to bitten and to bite. Neither know how the other is changed, not truly. They do not know how they stand pressed together keen to bite to spread, to change the other. Him with disease and her with a feral need to make more kelpies like her.
She laughs, low like the purr of a panther, it trembles between her ribs, sets her bones to rattling. “Then it is your turn to be disappointed,” the priestess says low, amusement turning her voice to satin. Pressed as they are, cheek to cheek, it is easy for her to turn her muzzle to jaw, to trace in ways she had thought of before yet was never truly bold enough to touch. Now, wanton, her lips trail up to the tender space between his jaw and neck. It is warm there, dark, filled with magic and life. The scent of him there is sweet across her tongue. Her lips part, teeth grazing as if to cradle his throat between jaws and teeth. If she does, it is only for a moment as she slowly closes her mouth, teeth grazing over his skin. “It is a gift.” She whispers to him then, still pressed at the juncture of his jaw and neck. “A gift you could never have deprived me of. I have nothing to be angry at you about.”
And then he steps away. Leto tilts her gaze to him, her mane dusted with salt, the bones and bells there chiming as she smiles. It is easier to give in to instinct, she thinks. Easier to slip away from the hurt yet she lets that pain speak now, even through her black-night smile, “Except your leaving. Always leaving.” Finally a small part of her is sad, it is there in her nebular gaze. “I was angry at first,” She says and thinks of a room full of dancers and her, come to draw him back home. “But now it just hurts.” Her eyes close, black lashes pressing upon her cheek - the softest darkest thing about her. “Shame on me for wanting you to stay, not as a king, but as a man.” Her eyes close then as she looks up at the sky, lets the stars sing into her blood. Lets their light fill her mouth, her soul, her heart.
And then he is looking out to sea, with longing and want in his eyes. How can a man who controls it never have sunk into its depths? She studies him as he looks forlornly at the sea. “It is still.” The kelpie whispers and no longer does she let herself be ruled by simple desires and simple feelings. Now she hands herself over to the instinct of sea and stars and Ilati ritual that sings into her bones. “It is dark life and untameable living. The sea demands instinct and respect and love. But you already know that, don’t you?” Leto says still as middle-night as she watches him with her head tilted, her eyes lit by the white of her painted cheeks. “Shall I teach you how to swim, Asterion?”
Maybe that is the fate between them - maybe some god of hers or some ghost of his laid a curse long ago, that they might tangle together like roots but never let the other in.
“I am always disappointed,” he says with a shrug - although for once it is a lie. This Asterion, this soul-sick man - he doesn’t carry the guilt, the same self-shame. Somewhere he has lost it. Maybe the sickness has eaten it, maybe it is consuming other things in him now.
As her velvet skin touches just above his pulse, as her mouth wanders and her teeth graze his flesh, it is her whisper that raises a shiver along his back. It is not only that he wants that gift - that he yearns for it, the darkness beneath the surface of the water, the kind of hunger that can be satisfied. But if bothers him, to think - “Do you think I would have stopped you?” His voice is dark, almost an angry, almost hurt.
Maybe there is something in the magic of the star-mirrors, in their twin reflections endlessly watching them on the shore, for there is anger and hurt, too, in what she speaks. Asterion turns back to face her, his brow creasing, but he does not move to touch her, not even when her eyelashes brush her cheek.
Oh, it is not her fault that he has heard this before - and it is his due, to hear it again and again, as a man and a king. But his conversation with Samaira is too recent, and it makes him angry, shamefully angry, to wonder what gave them the right to claim a piece of his love, to hold him tight enough - without telling him so! - that he could wound them.
He has learned better than to respond. Instead he only watches as she tilts her head up, as the starlight baptizes her. The way she looks at the starlight is how he does at the sea, and he listens hungrily as she speaks of it. Asterion would give it anything, anything it demands - hasn’t that been all he’s ever wanted, is to have someone ask everything of him, so that he might give it?
But nobody ever asks. And he has never done well with the wondering.
He turns back toward her at her question, echoing over the star-glass and the quiet waters. Lit by sigils and starlight, she is as captivating as the water.
“Yes,” he breathes, and it is almost begging. And that dark unmaking within him says yes too.
In the ocean washing off
my name from your throat;
