[P] kiss me, and you will see how important I am;

[Marisol]

who are you
when it's all over?

That is all. That is all there is, right? Duty, the smell of blood, the hug of the hard edge of her spear to a patch of skin -  there is nothing to her but the tattoo of her heart that says Halcyon, Halcyon, Halcyon, and for the first time that Mari can remember that tattoo cannot make her feel whole.

She watches him and holds back a sob. The smell of salt stings her nostrils and burns a web against the inside of her chest. He is beautiful, and the beauty is what makes him dangerous, the ice-blue eyes, skin dappled in shades of sea and rock; if Mari were not careful she could fall in love with him, or something like it. (She is sure plenty of other people feel the same, and more sure still that Amaroq does not care for it.)

Since childhood, her merit has not been in beauty, but coarseness and violence.

It is hard to imagine anything different.

What is the point, anyway? Since birth she was not the princess but the sword, and there is no reason to think she will ever be anything different. Her fate is stamped on her as obviously as the stripes of white on the back of her wing. There is no escaping it: she made her choice, all those years ago, when she first painted them across her dark feathers, and now she is obliged, by God or duty or tradition or something similarly stupid, never to take them off.

His voice is as cold as the wind and the waves, and when Marisol shivers she is not sure if it is the weather or the acid in his tone that makes her uncomfortable. I - her throat closes around the word, and she blinks furiously against the tears and the breeze. The wind whips her short hair into a frenzy. Her shoulders stiffen. I don’t know. 

It is shame, then, that stops her from saying anything else.

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