[AW] this is a call to action

[Marisol]

blessed in spirit
are the poor

Some part of her wanted to tell him to stop screaming, stop pouting, throwing a tantrum like a little child. It disgusts her, in a way, that he is not afraid to show his anger. The fury roars through him like a wildfire and pours from his eyes in tears of horrible smoke. There is no hiding it, and he is not even trying. How can he be so bold? (In her, anger like that is not a fire, but a brittle freeze. Splices her bones into a hundred little fragments, constricts her heart in an icy fist. Even looking at him and his tiny hoof stamping into the snow makes her a little bit nauseous, a little bit like she has become a mother looking after a baleful child.)

But she knows that Ard is feeling a pain that Marisol is incapable of even imagining, and so she grits her teeth and stifles her disgust and only looks at Ard with a cool, level gaze, as if she is feeling nothing more than a mild concern for how this all might turn out. But there is something like fear in her eyes when she turns them to Theodosia’s, slanted over her cheeks, and tries to say with speaking, Help.

(She is not made for anything but the bare, bright bones of duty, sure as hell not made for the tears and the blood that stream down Ard’s face and the emotion that pulses through the air like lightning. Or is it lightning, spilling from Theodosia’s wings in soft streaks? Marisol does not know whether to shift closer or farther away. She hovers on unsteady feet. Ard’s tears pull at her heartstrings until they threaten to break and flood her chest, and still she cannot find anything to say that would do anything but anger both of them more.)

You promised! he howls. 

Bile rises in her throat, some bitter combination of righteousness and anger. It burns against her tongue. Some of the muscles in her shoulders start to vibrate like plucked strings. I promised, she wants to say, nothing more than a home to you, but even Marisol is not so cruel. Not so terribly uncouth. She stifles the retort inside a knot in her jaw. 

No, she answers Theodosia flatly. Her eyes remain locked on Ard, two pieces of perfect gray glass burning with a cold, dark worry, almost like a hurricane. She does not ask anything else. She knows very well that if Erd was not taken from his own chambers there is little to no chance of evidence remaining in the city itself. My apologies, Ard, for your brother’s disappearance. The Halcyon will search Dusk’s borders for clues. 

By Her hand, she adds, We will return him.

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