asterion*
There is something familiar about the way she smiles back at him - but it is nothing like a smile he’s seen from Marisol, or Isra, or Florentine. No; it is the stranger in the mangroves by the sea-side he thinks of then, and wonders that the similarity hadn’t struck him before.
Both of these mares are beautiful, both of them clothed in different finery, both of them grinning at him like predators. But Asterion is no more prey tonight than he was then, no matter how soft his eyes are with starshine, or how his voice is like seafoam on the beach.
“For some, perhaps,” the bay king answers, but as if to bely his words he is already turning away from the water, focusing entirely on the stranger. Beneath the dusky light her eyes are almost the color of old blood, and it makes him wonder.
“Intrigue,” he allows softly, “is not something I’ve had much of in my life of late. What suggestions would you give me, to find a mask that fits?” If there is something intentional about his question, something almost sly in the way he indicates her own dark velvet mask and the lupine smile below it, he shows it no more than she had. If his heart leans into a quicker rhythm, well, that doesn’t show either.
He does not falter from her gaze when she speaks again, but his chin dips, his dark muzzle dropping toward his chest. Asterion tilts his head, unable to help the way the corner of his mouth curls, and he feels more reckless, more boyish, than he has in months. “Wonders abound tonight,” he says, and oh! he is glad Cirrus is far away, sleeping near the shore. There is no one to see how his eyes shine at the game of it, at the sense of danger she wears like a fragrance - no one but herself. “I’m not sure where the night will take me - it feels more for others than myself.” It is the closest he will come to claiming his kingship; his smile fades as he glances away, back toward the shoreline and the horses wandering there, limned by lamplight. But when he looks back to her he wears it again, small as something new-blooming. “Of course, it’s only just begun. Only the fortune-teller in the market could say where it might end.”
@Vendetta
