in sunshine and in shadow
He can’t help but watch her, the way emotions unfold in her eyes and across her face like a lightning storm high above the horizon, like a map rewriting its lines. It is beyond his ability to decipher; he is clueless to her jealousy. All he can read is her hurt, and her bond with Neerja.
Asterion takes it as a good sign, when the cat declines to show him her teeth. But the brief peace does not last, not when he mentions Raum.
He is taken aback by her whisper, fierce and soft as anything in the undergrowth of the forest, more piercing than any song a bird of jade and gold could sing. How to say it’s because of her that he is hunting Raum, that his focus on the mad king does not mean he has forgotten the phoenix?
“You are never gone from my thoughts,” he says, and breaks his stillness to close the distance between them, with only a lingering look at the tiger that says please. The king does not touch her, but he puts his dark mouth close to her ear, and the humid heat of her skin makes his own of salt and stardust feel all the cooler.
“It is not for my suffering that I hunt him. It is for what he has done - kidnapping and nearly murdering your queen, indiscriminate killings, starving the people he rules until they obey. He is a tyrant, and I have a responsibility-” as a king, he does not say. As someone whose magic runs thick, thick as saltwater and blood - enough to do something, enough to kill a monster. All these things, just as he and Eik spoke of, a year ago on a balcony in Denocte overlooking the sea.
When his gaze snares the red girl’s, he can only hope she understands. And concern is thick and acrid on his tongue when he pleads, “Stay away from him, Moira. Please.” Say you will, his tongue does not ask, but his eyes do. She is fierce, she is strong, but she is no match for evil and magic. Not even with her tiger.
As her tone changes to something smoother, honey and gunpowder, he settles back, opening up space between them for a breeze to wind through. The bay pulls in a breath as she speaks, and once again takes in the trees around them, the undergrowth thick and chaotic and richly green. How different it is from a fire-warmed hall in either of their cities, far from their people’s eyes. Not since they first met on the cliffside high above the thrashing sea have they been so alone, and yet the king still feels the weight of judgement on his back.
“It’s beautiful, for all its strangeness,” he says, and now the softness in his voice is more like velvet, more like smoke. Gone is the urgency; of all the things he cannot have, he can at least have peace with Moira. But as her words trail off his gaze searches hers out again, hearing the hurt below the words, wishing - like Neerja - he could fix it.
He wants to say tell me where you find it, and knows he cannot. Instead he smiles, aching, hollow. “There are no sweets in the wild, Miss Tonnerre. I’d give you a week at best.” When he breathes out, it is close enough to warm her cheek. In the trees, the insects and frogs and birds have begun their wild chorus again. It is strange to think how quickly he is growing used to it, how fast the trappings of his life in Novus - castles, dances, wine and bread - fall away like tattered clothing, like thin and itching skin. If he stayed, would he become a wild thing?
Asterion pushes the thought away, but it only hides, it does not flee. Not until he looks back to Moira, the warm gold of her eye, the delicate lines of her face, does the island fall to the background again. “What is your goal here, then? The Relic?”
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