[P] God went North.

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow*   They are a strange match, there in the huddled grey-green of the swamp: the bay whose features looked so much less like a boy’s with his mouth a drawn line and a hospital at his back, and the red man, battle-hardened and all cutting edges, with a monster at his. How very long ago Ravos seems. Surely that evening in a windswept field happened to Asterion in a previous life, one where he was only ever an unwanted twin, a starry-eyed dreamer. It is too unlikely that fate should have deposited them both here, that golden Florentine should be so irrevocably entwined with them both. But it is hard to deny a beast bigger than the trees, hard to deny the steel of Raymond’s gaze or the color of his coat, bright and vital as blood. Like the bladed man, Asterion makes no move to interrupt. Like him, too, his face does not change from stony wrath, does not rearrange to something softer. Even when Raymond steps back the bay keeps his silence and his stance, though his black gaze moves to meet the bright blue eye of the creature. A kitten, the red man says, and ordinarily Asterion knows pity would cover him like a cloak. What a terrible thing it must be – he can feel the creature’s whine reverberate through the hollow spaces of his chest – to think a friend lost and have it come back so changed. But he can summon no understanding now. Not with Florentine, less golden than crimson. Not with Raymond having so recently abandoned them, so soon after all the strange chaos of the summit, when Asterion most needed someone steady, someone sure. His gaze sweeps back to the red stallion’s in time to catch the impudent arch of his brow. Oh, how the black thing inside him wants to bring the man low, no matter the words still echoing in his ears. Asterion is sick to death of hurting, sick to death of being made weak. Novus has carved at him, carved at his Court, carved at the new pieces of his heart just as he discovers each one. He carries no scars on his twilight skin, but his heart is becoming a map of them, silver and hard as a dead star. As Raymond’s final words die away to nothing, the bay only stands like a thing carved from driftwood and the granite of the cliffside, but within the waves keep rising, and they eat away at every part of him. His anger, his sureness, his faith and his trust. What can he believe in, after this? Not the gods, not his queen, not the man he would have called his friend. (And then, below everything else, worry for a man he had never met and owed nothing – if the rift had such terrible teeth, had it by now consumed his father? A father that Flora had told him was red, as red as new blood, as red as this soldier who’d tried to teach him what he could – ) At last he breaks the silence that crickets and bullfrogs had not dared to fill. “Then it seems my sister has some explaining to do, should she live to share it. I hope she has bled enough to pay for her sins.” A deep breath, the air warm and wet as he pulls it between his teeth in what is almost a hiss. He does not doubt the sharp edges of his words will only dull themselves on the iron of the man before him. “Leave us,” he says, and though he does not add she cannot stay here it is clear in the glance he cuts to her. Just as clear is the fact that it is no question but an order, spoken by a Regent who must finally play King. But then, oh, then, another thought occurs to him, blooming black and heavy in his heart, thick and real enough to choke him. When he looks back to Raymond then most of the fury is gone from his gaze, and what remains is terribly hollow. “But before you do, tell me this – is Calliope going, too?” He already knows the answer. It is better, he thinks, to cut out his heart and his hope all at once, and leave nothing left to bleed when he finds himself alone. @Raymond