asterion,
He hunts in the waning light, the pain of his recent wounds still singing like a psalm. Though the pain makes him grit his teeth, he welcomes the reminder of his folly, of the way he’d let down his guard - too trusting, yet again. It is a story he’s tired of repeating.
Cirrus has left him, gone to the shore to soothe her own hurts, and Asterion searches the autumn clearings for comfrey. He will not let Dusk’s healers see his torn ear, rent by an eagle’s talons; it is not vanity that drives him to fix his own wounds, but shame.
At least he’s learned enough from his time in Dusk to find the plant, to chew the leaves to a paste and apply them to his ear. Even so he knows it’s not enough, but the night is falling swiftly, and he cannot avoid his court forever.
He is moving slowly through the thinning trees, favoring his injured leg, when he first hears the rapid beat of an approaching horse and then the sound of voices. For a moment he pauses to listen, his lips twisting, wry, at the familiar sound of Marisol’s welcome - and then mingled curiosity and concern drive him forward just as the stranger speaks again.
“This is Terrastella,” Asterion says, and separates himself from the shadows of the trees, Before all that was visible was the pale mark of his star; now, in the moonlight, the faint dusky glimmer of him is revealed, nearly as dark and slim as the two mares he stands between.
First his gaze touches Marisol, and there is something almost dark in his gaze, a slant to his brow that she surely knows him well enough to read - do you still regard Vespera so? But he says nothing of the greeting that she has been raised by, and instead only inclines his head in a nod. “Commander,” he says, and tries not to wonder if she catches sight of his tattered and still-bloody ear.
And then it is the stranger he regards, his gaze dark but not distant. Once he might never have measured her up at all, but he has learned much in Novus and in his time as king. He searches for injuries, he searches for signs of violence, and he never guesses how well the woman before him knew his father, or how she fought by his side.
At last the bay extends his nose in soft greeting. “Welcome,” he says simply. “I am Asterion, and this is Commander Marisol of the Halycon. What brings you to these lands?” Though there is no threat in the words, he is not as open as he once might have been. Of all the lessons Novus has taught him, perhaps the most painful (and so most remembered) is this: there is always, always blood on the horizon.
king of dusk.
@Mephisto @
