“Perhaps I should have,” he agrees softly, and it is a strange kind of smile he wears then that carries little true happiness but is also not a lie. That is one of the many things he has learned, in his time in Novus - and he is learning still.
But that is not all she has to say on it, and he listens to the queen, as new-made a sovereign as he is himself. He wonders about that, too - he had heard that Caligo herself had chosen Isra, when Asterion had only been appointed because Florentine had been broken both in body and mind.
Who, then, is the truer ruler?
He knows the answer, and doubts not at all when she speaks of fear.
“I’ve never heard someone say anything like that,” he tells her, and for the first time in days there might be the reflection of starlight in his eyes. He is no stranger to his sister’s whimsy (they share a little of the same dream-stuff blood, after all) but even Flora does not speak like this unicorn, like the words have already been written in a book well-loved.
Maybe this, then, is the moment he is caught, and lets himself soften into Night.
And even still she is not finished.
Before I was a unicorn. Oh! The question rises so fiercely then that he takes a step forward, dark mouth readying to speak. What were you before, how did you become -
But she looks up, and the twisting, shimmering lights shine down on her shyly, in little panes of gold and glass. Ira offers him a secret, and though he wants to tell her that there are many secrets, now, he might beg to know of her, he holds his tongue and nods, and follows.
Asterion does not dare break the silence that cloaks them then, a veil of starlight and smoke. He does not even think of those outside, the ones he has brought (to doom them or to save them he still does not know). The bay is torn between drinking in each column, each tapestry, each room they pass through and between keeping his gaze only on the unicorn.
It is the unicorn he is watching, and the way the light glistens on her horn, and how different she is from Calliope (and how the same, too) so that he does not even notice that the scent in the air has shifted from smoke to roses until they are standing before the pool.
“Oh,” he breathes, and stops short beside her. Now there is nothing at all in his face but wonder; he has never seen anything like this, never thought such a thing could exist. The reflection of the torches are hazy on the steam and the water, like the moon over the sea; the walls might be a cave but for the way the place smells, nothing of cold and dank minerals.
The sound of her laughter more than the words themselves have him looking toward her and for the first time in months he feels like Asterion. Only like himself and nothing more - not a boy playing at king, not a man who tried and failed to have his love be enough, not a wanderer who could never name what he most wanted.
He does not trust himself to speak; he only smiles in a way that is almost a grin, and shakes his head, and follows the Queen of Night into the water.
and hardly ever what we dream
@Isra
