i have made the obscene decision
to do something unforgivable.
to do something unforgivable.
T
he griddle cake sizzles like hot embers when Caine lifts it to his mouth and bites. It burns his tongue, but the day is achingly cold and his stomach gnawingly empty. He chews and swallows with relish before he remembers the ivory stallion and bay mare. Lazily, he licks the honey from his lips like a cat cleans blood from its jowls. Their responses to his attempt at pleasantry are blunt and insubstantial. Caine's brow itches to arch.
Instead, his silver eyes flit carefully from slender girl to horned man, narrowing just a fraction when he reads the tension carved into sullen brows. When they look at him, the hostility in the air is tangible enough to cut.
Briefly, Caine wonders what it is he could've done. Never has anyone suspected him so early into their acquaintance (even when it was in their best interest to do so). He is almost impressed, until he remembers that he has not done anything.
Puzzled, Caine lowers his sphinx-like gaze to the girl.
“Are you travelers that the blizzard has grounded here? I’ve not seen either of you before."
Her spring-green gaze on him is as sharp as a hawk's. Though her voice tries at innocence, she is not good at it (and even if she was, Caine eats lies like air and spins them just as easily) and the boy finds himself studying her like he might a perplexing painting. He gleans nothing, however, from her close-lipped mouth or her large, searching eyes.
"However fierce the storm, if I'd wanted to leave I would have," he says at last, his answer as purposely vague as her question had been probing. "Solterra is large. Surely you are not old enough to have met all her citizens in turn?"
He masks the taunt in his voice with a satin-smooth smile — though perhaps that made it all the more apparent.
He means to say something more, but a cutting wind rips through the street before he can. Reflexively, he raises his wings to block the onslaught of biting sleet.
The snow. The blasted snow. And then the thought hits him. Caine's eyes glow an unearthly silver when he tosses the snowdrift from his mane with a fluid shake.
"The god Solis says that monsters who breathe ice and hiss snow are the ones who have locked Solterra into this hellish cold." He pauses, glancing weightily at the man who stands stiffly to his side, as pale as the ice underfoot.
"The hunt is tomorrow, but I am not one to take a god for his word so easily. Do these creatures even exist, or is it just another one of the games immortals play when they tire of their unending existence?" His tone is not bitter, though his words might be. His voice is equal parts cool and melodic and keen. The unnatural winter has made him restless.
"What say you both we have a peek for ourselves?"
Caine does not know what game either of them are trying to play, but this one, the one he has offered to them on a silver platter, he has played so many times before. A game of cat and cat, none willing to act the mouse.
But there is always a mouse. And it has never been him.
@El Toro @Elif | "speaks" | notes: repeat after me, a restless caine is a reckless caine
