[P] You lift me up and I am found

[Asterion]

Asterion in sunshine and in shadow*   Perhaps once or twice, she confirms, and Asterion says nothing but he does dip his chin, his airy smile turning to something more solemn. In truth, before Novus he had had no experience with kingship; he had been a wanderer for his time in Ravos, and had thought he would be a wanderer still. But oh, he has learned since then. The starlit bay has seen what the crown cost Florentine, and what it cost Reichenbach (though the memory of the man is still bitter as gall). He can only wonder what it will cost him. Asterion has met many, many horses since he arrived in Novus, but none of them were a happy once-king. In a way, then, it is well that she mentions the Rift - for it tears his thoughts away from the crown he bears. At once he straightens, forgetting the drink, forgetting the dance, forgetting the night entire. Now he looks at her fully, and thinks of the sorrow in her words, and feels almost shameful for the excitement that stirs in his own heart. It is the same excitement he’d felt when Florentine first mentioned the Rift, that of a boy who dreamed himself a knight, a boy not ready to let go of adventure. Clearly, that has not been Katniss’s experience. “The Rift?” he asks, unable to keep back his questions, even if he holds in his eagerness. “I have heard many stories of it. That is where my sister, Florentine, came from, and some others…” He trails off, and thinks of what the silver mare had told them on their first meeting. “Perhaps the friend you search for came through, too,” he says, voice going soft as the silks that drape the room. Perhaps he should not have said it; now he remembers the feeling of loss, of waking up one fine morning and finding the one you loved simply gone. It sobers him, even in this place where there is so much color and laughter and music. When she speaks again the king once more nods, still unsmiling, more thoughtful than he had been with his careless words before. “Then you should listen to that,” he says, though Asterion believes neither in fate nor, of late, the gods. Oh, the gods of Novus are real enough, but he thinks them neither careful nor kind. She asks of his own court, and he smiles again beneath his silver mask, though it is wry and sad and does not entirely reach his eyes. “To tell you the truth,” he says, voice soft and low, “I am not sure. I have not been back enough, but when we left it was nothing but frozen mud and floodwater. That was winter, though, and now it is summer…” he trails off again (an uncommon trait, for him) as something like guilt grips him. Over the sturdy pounding of a drum, the trill of a harp, he looks at her almost sheepishly. “Now you must think me a terrible king, taking whoever would come with me and running away from my court.” There had been no food, there had been no hope - but this he does not say. Asterion long ago decided he has earned whatever judgement comes his way. @Katniss