THE MOON IS MY SUN
THE NIGHT IS MY DAY
THE NIGHT IS MY DAY
S
he is snatched cruelly from her world of dreams like a little cardinal thrown to earth by the wind of the heavens. He has never before been privy to such a moment of vulnerability.
Pale eyes follow every twitch of her limbs, every flutter of her lashes, like a slender-fingered musician admiring his lyre. Caine does not avert his gaze in courtesy, nor temper his interest with modesty. For once, he is not bound by a reason to be proper, a wolf dressed in the skin of a lamb. For once, he does not have to play the game of coyness like a spider weaving its silken web.
For once, the mask has been plucked from the Illusionist’s eyes and left, forgotten, by the side of the door.
“I don't drool.” He lifts a brow at that, silver eyes gleaming with amusement, but she unleashes the full storm of her vexation before he can reply. “Isn't there something about how it's rude to wake another who's sleeping? Or were you raised an awful brute with a pretty face?"
She is certainly awake, now. He watches as her irritation spills from her in waves, her sleep-numbed eyes sharpening to thorns. “I don’t think my face has ever played a part in how I was raised,” he replies with a tilt of his head, the sharpness of his grin softened by the moonlight that drenches his pelt in liquid silver. He speaks the truth, however casually he says it. Even an angel’s beauty would not have kept Agenor from corrupting the heavenly messenger with sin.
The snapping girl’s unbidden compliment is pleasing to hear, but only because of the reaction it elicits from her. Vanity has never been a trait of Caine’s (as vanity requires adoration, and Caine has never been adored in his life) but the appeal that beauty carries is something the boy knows well. “They will never suspect you of anything, with a face like that,” his master had murmured to him once, as he examined the delicate angles of his student’s solemn visage. Agenor had nodded, as if in satisfaction. A knife as pretty as it was sharp — he had chosen well, this time.
“It's quiet here is what it is," Caine hears her mutter, and his attention turns fully to her once again. “I suppose it is. Not much for privacy, though. Denocte’s castle harbors some interesting fellows, I’ve heard — to leave yourself so unguarded was a rather bold thing to do,” he says, his voice lowering with the lightest of warnings. It is gone as quickly as it comes, before he can mean anything from it. He looks instead to the tomes she clutches tightly with a guarded glare.
“Are you a healer, perhaps?” he asks, after easily making out the worn titles of the books, upside down as they were. His gaze is steady in her golden eyes, and his wings droop to skim the marble floor like a cat’s drowsy tail.
If she had wished for him to simply leave her be, then she is in for a sour night indeed. Caine is far too bored, far too keen, to resist the crimson girl and her ire. A life of isolation has led him to savor with relish even the most mundane of things — let alone emotion itself. Whimpering and begging aside (he felt he’d seen all the world could offer of that), the way they felt, the way their passions spilled from their hearts unfettered, was a phenomenon the silver-eyed boy could never — would never — understand.
Not to say, however, that Caine will ever stop trying.
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