A S T E R I O N
in sunshine and in shadow*
He loathes the way he loves this place.
Once, Florentine had tried to describe to him what it had been about Denocte and its gypsy-thief king that had so stolen her heart – and oh, hadn’t some part of him (a part that had been captured by a girl with storm-blue eyes, with a constellation set into her skin) already understood? But he had only shaken his head at her, then, and gone out into the soft and golden fields of Terrastella, and down to the sea on a path that had already memorized the feel of his feet.
Now, though, he sees it in a way he hadn’t before. The City of Starlight is wild in a way that the Dusk Court can never be, so in love as it is with the idea of duty; each laugh, each ring of coin and scent of wares and wail of string tells him to let go, let go, let go. The night says he could be anybody, could change his name and change his life tonight – right now – if only he let himself.
The king (though nothing marks him as such; he wears only the small pale star on his brow, and what is a king who abandoned his court, anyway?) leans toward a table of maps bearing shapes of worlds he’s never heard of. Islands that have yet to be explored written in thick ink on paper that smells of a spice he’s never tasted and the sharp cedar of a new ship. Shadows dance like waves across empty expanses of sea and he could almost forget Novus entirely –
Asterion.
As he turns the guilt settles back in his belly like a familiar yoke. Such thoughts were not for him, not anymore, and he knows it as he turns toward Marisol with the quick smile of a boy caught shirking his duties by his governess.
“Commander,” he returns, and his heart pangs as she folds her wing once more. Even in the dim (and didn’t they always meet like this, beaches in silver fog and streets in cool moonlight?) he can read each sharp sketch of her muscles and line of her face, and her anger, her disappointment, is all the worse because he knows he deserves every measure of it.
He wonders if his distance from her lately has been intentional, a subconscious avoidance. Asterion keeps his expression smooth as he meets her eye, but it feels strangely like a sin to not be wet, or shivering, or wounded.
He wonders, too, if she will slip Vespera’s name into conversation as is her wont. Lately it feels more like a curse than a blessing.
“Are you letting yourself some enjoy time without drills, or doing reconnaissance?” He frames it like a joke, knowing she hated to be idle more, even, than himself – but already it feels like the wrong thing to say. Too frivolous, arrogantly light, not just for the moment but for the people they were.
Though with Marisol, in this moment, he thinks that anything would be the wrong thing.
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