so this was how you died;
in whispers that you did not hear.
in whispers that you did not hear.
P
erhaps he should not have stared at her so for so long – he forgets, sometimes, the implications even a simple glance carries – but the gold streaking through the dark, fine bones of her face reminds Caine of paintings and gilded frames. Of finer, delicate, uncomplicated things.“I’m sure you’ll meet her, at some point. You can tell her yourself that you’re a fan of her handiwork.”
Isra’s handiwork? Caine has seen the Night Queen breathe magic into thornless rosebushes. Whisper lullabies into singing hearts. It is not magic the boy finds impressive.
“A fan of her handiwork, or of her canvas?” His eyes trail up the line of Fia’s scarred cheekbone until it stops just before the sun-gold pool of her searching gaze.
Brow arching, he leaves her to ponder the implications of his words.
Since the very beginning of his life – when he was little more than a dying foal in the streets, mahogany hide stained crimson with the blood of his birth – Caine has always known what he is not.
He is not sympathetic.
(“It’s the least I can do – really. You did just agree to help me overthrow a dictatorship,” Fia says as she grinds the aspilia to golden dust. He merely nods, too engrossed in observing what she is doing to give much more of an answer.)
He is not charismatic.
(“Humbled, are you?” He looks up at that, giving his braided mane a final, deliberate toss. “Never.”)
He is not merciful.
(“I…” He halts when he no longer senses her besides him. “I took it off.” He thinks he hears her voice catch, but when he turns to look she has tilted her face away. The ends of her scarf flutter against his chest, and when she speaks again he cannot help but wonder why even with her hood removed, her plans laid bare, she has never seemed more of an enigma.)
“It felt as though I was keeping something locked inside of me, and I couldn’t let it out, when I was wearing the collar.”
There is something agonizing about the way she tells him these things – like she is telling them for the first time. And she is telling him.
“I almost died, recently – occupational hazard, I’m afraid – and I realized that I…”
Like she trusts him. (Does she not realize? That to trust an assassin – to trust someone like him – is to trust a barely tamed wolf, its head in your lap while it dreams of tasting your blood.)
“…could not do what needed to be done if I couldn’t feel, so I had to…take the collar off.”
What is it like? he aches to ask. The words taste like sand in his throat. He tries again, swallowing. What is it like to feel?
It comes out as “We should both consider a change in occupation.” Caine has worn the black mask of apathy for so long, he has forgotten how to take it off. The silk has melted into skin.
Vexed, he keeps his gaze from straying to Fia by raising it towards the stars. The stars provide the only reprieve against silver streaked with gold.
“The Elatus?” he echoes, staring fixedly now at the never-nearing horizon. When the girl sets off again, presumably towards the canyon, he trails her, not quite shoulder-to-shoulder. A force of habit he does not realize he is committing until the silhouette of the canyons loom in the gloom-thick skyline like ancient sentinels, and her voice cuts through the brightening dark like a knife through butter.
“I’m curious myself, Caine. Why did you agree to help me?” His head snaps towards her, surprised, until her question notches in a crevice of his mind and his lips dip into a pensive frown.
“I wanted to know what it was like.” He draws in a breath and holds it, and when he speaks again, his voice is a hardening mix of nonchalance and uncertainty. “To be able to choose.”
He does not look to see if she understands. He knows that she does.
“It is a luxury I do not get to partake in very often, if you can believe it,” he says lightly, his gaze sinking into the shadows of the dunes as they pass. “My magic – I lost it when I entered this land, and now it comes and takes as it pleases. My appearance – well, I was not born with two sets of wings.” His wings thump up and down in the sand, affronted at the admission. “They were a nuisance when I had to relearn how to fly again.”
Tilting his head, he considers. He does not know how to tell her about his past – he does not know what there is to tell, except of magic and darkness and pain (always, pain) – but the night is dark enough, and he allows himself the luxury to believe that even if he does not tell her, she will somehow hear it in his voice.
“My previous organization” – his tongue glides over the word like it is barbed – “is, to my knowledge, no longer in operation.” No – that is a lie, and Caine knows it even when he spins it. The Garde has retreated like a wounded beast might, slinking into the shadows to lick its own wounds.
And him? What is a weapon without a wielder? He had been created for a specific purpose, and when that purpose had wandered off on porcelain legs to Saints knows where, he had been cast away like a broken blade. He does not know if he blames them.
“And the thought of going rogue does not seem an appealing one. So, you see, I have decided to make a selfish choice. I have been trained to wield my blade for a purpose.” The black mouth of a cave rises in front of them like a serpent's gaping jaw. “When your letter came, I found one.” Nothing more, nothing less.
He tries to make himself believe it.
@Seraphina | "speaks" | notes: he is so Cryptic so Mysterious
