[P] roman holiday

[Marisol]

a dead body the work of my righteous right hand.

Despite Marisol’s trepidation, she does not flinch from the darkness of his voice as he addresses her, nor the burning, hellish red of his eyes. The more superstitious part of her wonders if those are his real eyes or the side effect of some demon’s curse; granted, she has her own skeletons to hide, and she can’t help but pity him that hers are more easily kept out of view than his. Marisol can curl her lips as low as she wants, but Senna is doomed to see forever.

She knows he has his own reasons for being here, and she has a gnawing, aching feeling it will not be a reason she likes or approves of. For centuries Prudence was the Halcyon’s most prized possession, and to hand it off to a Solterran snake-prince would be… unfortunate, to say the least. (It won’t happen, she reminds herself. Even if he finds it—and that’s a pretty big if—Marisol has…ways, of getting it back, and a dedication that must far outmatch his. She can fight dirty, too.)

(Or can she? Maybe it’ll be different now, maybe the ocean in her won’t know how to hold back. Isn’t that it’s nature—to be wild, uncontainable? Will she have to work twice as hard for half as much restraint? Will her steel expressions melt for good? Maybe it’s all over, maybe she’s just an animal again, the rabid, snarling thing Vespera made her in the very beginning, maybe it’s just a return to savagery, maybe—)

The book opens, and though Marisol does not gasp, the sudden flare in her slate eyes says she may as well have.

Prudence is as recognizable to her as the pattern of her own wings, as old and familiar as her mother’s voice. Marisol has spent far too much time researching not to recognize the fabled armor from so little as a spectral echo. And even this is not quite an echo. The drawing in Senna’s book is ash-dark and intricate. Mari can practically see the shine of the opal headpiece; her face is cool, but her heart is bursting.

“Hunters and thieves,” repeats the Commander. Her eyes are still watching the diagram on the leaf-thin paper. “Nothing like you, then, Senna.” When her eyes finally look up toward his they are serious as ever, but the lightness of her tone implies something that sounds like no matter, as long as it’s found. She smiles, genuinely, briefly. “I hadn’t realized politicians needed armor, too.” It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.

Marisol is not naive. She is well aware that while Senna’s desire for Prudence and her own might be similar in ferocity, their reasons are vastly different. She cannot begin to imagine what a disgraced half-noble would want with Vespera-blessed armor, but want it he does, and might help her in the process. So who is she to turn him away, when the luck of her god and her people are on her side?

She snaps her cropped tail against her right hindquarter. The cadets know their orders—the one behind her on the right moves to stand aligned fully at her side, squaring his hooves in a slightly wider stance, and the one on the left snaps her head and clicks her tongue at Kite, beckoning him away from the crowd. “She won't hurt him. We search bags that cross the border,” Marisol explains, her voice both mild and clinical. Her stance relaxes; her weight shifts slightly backward, spear a stiff brace against her hind leg.

“I am quite interested,” she says with a grin, “To hear of a deal which both benefits you and does not threaten us, as I’m having a hard time imagining one.” 

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@Senna <3

aimless | kokovi