It feels… it feels better, to not be at odds with Moira Tonnerre. He had not realized how much their past conversation had weighed on him. Without realizing it himself, Eik was a highly harmonious man. Most every action of his was performed with the intent of striking balance in the world. Righting a wrong or, much less often, wronging a right, was what every part of his being strove toward.
“I love you too, Moira,” it sounds awkward to say it out loud, as awkward as he expected. He feels flushed with the admission, but he stands tall. To say those words out loud feels like lifting a weight off his shoulders. A guilt, irrational and without foundation, blows away in the wind that rises off the sea. “Thank you.” Thank you for showing me such a thing was possible
He only smiles when she thanks him for loving Isra, for that, like loving Moira, is a matter in which he had no choice in. And he thinks how the Tonnerre name sounds like such a weighty name to carry, and how Moira Tonnerre deserves to be loved. With his magic he feels her trembling heart, sure as if it were held in his hands, and he marvels at how delicate it is.
They walk once more, and she speaks of Denocte, and he snorts softly as she deflects his praise. He does not protest her humility– he has a growing sense of the fights he can and cannot win with Moira Tonnerre, and he picks his battles wisely now. He can’t exactly storm out of the room this time, there isn’t anywhere for him to go but back– and despite his hesitation in crossing the bridge, the moment he stepped foot on it he was committed to seeing what lay on the other side.
So he says nothing, until she says “I would die for Isra, just as any would of our court.”
“No.”
He frowns, surprised by the steel in his voice. Surprised a the emotion that swells so unexpectedly. From where did it come? “Don’t say that.” No one else can die for her. It would be like plucking the feathers from the limbs of a bird. It did not matter if love was the cause of their death– if anything, that might make it worse. She could not– no, she did not deserve the heaviness of that. "Don't ever say that."
Eik knows how much it hurts, sometimes, to be the one who survives. He knows how it doesn’t feel any better than death itself, how it might very well be worse– but of course we can’t know for sure, not yet. (And at the end of the day, it’s the not knowing that eats at you.)
“Did you know the man named Acton?” He licks his lips, feeling suddenly nervous. He had never said that name before: Acton. (Somewhere there is a gavel pounding on wood, ringing judgement– but whose? And the crime–?) Eik knew almost nothing about him. Bexley’s lover, Apolonia’s father. A crow that kept to the roost when all others flew. He’s tried not to think of it, but the not-thinking becomes its own kind of thinking. Acton is the word his mind returns to every minute it is not occupied. All those dark spaces between moments, the question begs to be asked: who was this man who died for Isra?
(you tell yourself he died for his country, his morals, his daughter, his brother
but you know it was love he died for, it was Isra, and it makes you feel–
?
)
@
Time makes fools of us all
