in sunshine and in shadow
“My sister has plenty to say about everything,” he answers, and his grin is true, if fleeting. Indeed, Florentine could talk the ears off of a hare if she had a mind to, and be so charming the creature wouldn’t notice; sometimes he wonders how they came from the same blood (but oh, how glad he is).
The king’s smile is turned to something softer with what she says next; his gaze touches on her face, her lashes dark against her cheek, and wonders what grief she sees. “I will.” It’s far easier to promise such a thing than it is to imagine it; even in such a world of magic and medicine Asterion has never heard of a horse without wings gaining flight. Some dreams stay dreams.
It is easy, he thinks, standing here with her and breathing in the salt of the summer sea. The bay doesn’t feel like a king at all, in this moment - only like himself without the weight of titles that would mean nothing in the wild, that in the end are only words. And it is easy to nod when she says she can think of nowhere else she would rather be. Countless are the times he’s had the same thought, looking over the Terminus (but countless are the times his fickle heart has whispered except-).
“There’s none better,” he says, even as the surf proves his words true with its endless rhythm and the gulls cry out with agreement.
Something is different in Samaria’s gaze when she settles it on him, then. There is a weight there that he can feel, even as he keeps his own dark eyes turned out to sea and horizon and sunrise. And as silence stretches between them like a skein of spiderweb it seems his heart is knocking harder, waiting and worried.
When she speaks at last that tension breaks, and a roil of other emotions rush in to fill the space; searing sorrow, a rage dark and hot. Were he less in control of his magic a wave might crash up, might scatter to pieces like glass, might take the shape of his emotions - but the next one rolls up to kiss their feet and recedes, leaving nothing more than bits of shell and wet sand.
“Samaira,” he says, and the smooth syllables of her name only convey a little of what he’s feeling. They are near enough anyway that it doesn’t feel unnatural when he shifts to lean his shoulder against hers, her feathers soft as down against his star-scattered sides. “You can tell me,” he says softly, “if you want. But know that you are safe here, that no one would dare hunt you or hurt you for what is yours. And love-”
Here he falters, for how could he tell her that it was safe? He knows better; Talia had taught him, long ago, that love could be a sentence, or a sin. And yet, hasn’t he learned since then that the fault was not his own? That his love, at least, was never a crime?
“It shouldn’t cost anything.”
@
