Before now Isra had not known how it felt to be looked at like a monster. She's been looked at with love, with hate, with lust, with concern. Once she had even been looked at like she was a feast for a starving, evil heart. Each look she's ever known had made her feel like a ghost, or like something blooming beneath the endless sun.
She has never known a look like his, rotten and bile and so full of something dark enough that later she might call it heart. She wonders if this is how she looked when she tried to kill Raum, or when Raum turned his magic to look at Eik in the belly of a mountain.
And she wonders why she hasn't cracked the world open already if she knew how to sculpt her features into the look of rot and rage.
Perhaps on another night when all her edges weren't so cracked and bleeding she would have felt shame to have such a look turned at her. Or maybe she would have felt less like a queen and more like something ready to burn down the world just to taste soot and smoke. A hundred other nights would have been better to meet his man with his sharp eyes, and his sharp wings, who blends into the shadows as easy as breathing. Tonight all she can say, without a smile, is “I thought that once.” And maybe another night her voice would have been jasmine blossoms in the moonlight instead of all this rust trying to bloom.
She doesn't step closer, not when he has that look. Isra's learned enough about wolves to know when they are thinking about blood and thunder. Or maybe it's that her daughters look like this always, teeth tight around a secret they don't want to share. All she knows is that he looks like nothing soft, nothing for tall-trees and winding creeks.
He looks made for war, or perhaps for stories of wars long forgotten except in the scars writing script across their sides. She thinks, am I not made for war too?, before she steps back.
Or maybe she only thought, I am war.
The boards turn back to silk that waves on what little wind is this deep into the markets. When it makes a sound she can still hear the shush of the distant ocean. And somewhere below the waves there is Fable circling the harbor like a shark. “Welcome then, Andras Demyan from Delumine.” She tries to smile but all that comes out is something weaker, like a lion trying to smile at a jackal-- all teeth.
Lantern light gathers on the tip of her horn and makes strange the hollow curl of bone (the only crown she ever wants to wear). At her hooves the stones start to glimmer and shine in short blades of diamond grass. “Perhaps next time you won't arrive by flying into a crowd like a crow.” She doesn't bother to hide the warning but when she smiles, really smiles this time, blooms of jasmine twist around her hooves.
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