asterion*
She speaks of softness in a hard world and Asterion nods, but where he might have said more his words are forgotten at the look in her eyes. He’d only caught the edge of that glance, but it was enough to catch his breath, enough to make him again wonder —
Ah, but they are never quite still enough for these moments to demand an answer. On they shift again, butterflies on a breeze, always circling something he can’t yet name.
Moira calls him beautiful and he knows better than to protest, but the bay stallion does laugh, a silver mist into the quiet air between them. Lucky thing she laughs too, so that he has a distraction from the warmth that pools in his belly like mulled wine. Beautiful, he thinks again, and thinks of the lean slats of his ribs, the dull brown of his coat, more dust than stardust. Oh, Moira Tonnerre and her honeyed throat, her sugared tongue, words sweeter than any oat-cake. She makes him forget he was anything but a dreamer, anything but a boy with constellations in his eyes and a saltwater tide tugging at his feet.
And Asterion lets himself forget. He lets her words, her memories, push away the thoughts of his tattered court, his healing heart, his weariness and the burden of gods who did not care for their people. Alongside her again, Moira’s voice is soft and bright in his ear, a bell ringing him home.
As they walk toward the keep, as she names family and flowers and friends, the new king wonders if he should be jealous of any in those memories. Of Eluoan, and the way her lips shaped his name, or even of Estelle. But he cannot find it in him, not when it is he she walks beside, despite the note of longing in her voice then.
“It sounds magical,” he breathes, and is surprised to find that despite his own upbringing (no buildings, the only flowers what grew wild in the dunes and the fields, no parties, no music but the wind and the waves and his mother’s solitary voice weaving stories of the stars) he almost longs to visit her home. To see the things that made her. “You must miss it terribly-” his dark eyes go to her as he says it, already regretting the words, not wanting sorrow to crease her brow, cloud her eyes. “The chocolates most of all,” he adds, and nudges her cheek with a grin.
They stand before the doorway, and he is a little sad to leave behind the snow and the way it gave them a world to themselves. Already he can feel it melting on his coat, fragile stars disappearing. But he nods, and gestures her in first, and tries not to imagine them walking together beneath the archway of Terrastella’s castle each night. “Onward, then, miss Tonnerre,” he says, as though he were a prince who belonged in her world, and he does not look back at the snow-bright city behind them as they step into the keep.
@
