ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A LONELY WOLF, LONELIER THAN THE ANGELS; HE HAPPENED TO COME TO A VILLAGE. HE FELL IN LOVE WITH THE FIRST HOUSE HE SAW. ALREADY HE LOVED ITS WALLS, THE CARESSES OF ITS BRICKLAYERS. BUT THE WINDOWS STOPPED HIM.
Orestes does not often sleep.
He likes to think it is because there always duties to attend to, from paperwork to logistics to politics. Orestes likes to think he does not sleep because he does not have the time. After all, he has found it difficult to deal with the nobility of the Court, not that he had expected any differently. He devotes hours to studying the few remnants of Solterra’s old library, or the private collections past monarchs have gathered. Orestes calls often upon a tutor, teaching him the art of Solterran script and the old language, and studies such intricacies late into the night by candlelight.
While all these things are true, they are not the reason he wanders the streets of Solterra after the rest of the city has gone to sleep.
They are not the reason he passes out of the citadel, greeting the guards by name, to enter the windswept streets. He stops for a moment in the main street, his eyes closed. The wind tangles in his mane, sweeps down his flanks. It brings a bone-deep chill to him. When he opens his eyes again, they are bright with something like tears.
No.
Orestes wanders because
he is the only one
that remembers.
They haunt him like ghostly ships on the horizon, with surrender-white sails. He always sees their gem-bright eyes, struck through with fear. He cannot help it, but when he tries to sleep the memories come to him, worn with time, worn with distance, worn with the loss of magic. Orestes no longer remembers most of their names; perhaps it is Solis's, to spare him the pain of loving them. Perhaps it the curse of the mother sea, as she whispers a forgotten language in his dreams, a language he no longer understands. Her magic is not in his blood anymore, and reaching for it is like reaching for a phantom limb.
This particular night is worse than others. This particular night he does not remember his name, the name given to him by the Khashran, the water people. The fact hurts worse than a wound, when he attempted to call it to mind, bring it to tongue, only to discover the resonant nothing. Orestes. Orestes, Orestes, Orestes. But there is more that he can no longer say, because he no longer knows it.
Yet, Orestes cannot let them go easily; he holds on with resolute determination, of battles lost and the rare battle won, of the way his father had been as white as innocence, the way the herd had pleaded he not go surrender. They will kill you. They will do worse than kill you. He remembers that, when he had gone alone, walking up the worn steps of the cliffside to the precipice of them to meet with the golden son of Oresziah—he remembers they had chanted it, like a prayer, his name, but he cannot remember what they said as the wind whipped it up from the sea and let it sing in his ears.
Stop. Looking out at the darkened city, he begins to walk. Orestes breathes and with each exhalation banishes the memories to the best of his ability. He can feel his heartbeat in his pulse and with each and every steady thrum he aches, and aches, and aches. He is full of regret, of apology. I am sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. He could not save them and with each night he is forgetting, forgetting, forgetting; the final betrayal; the final failure.
He studies repaired streets as he walks, he studies the sun sigils stitched with golden thread into red banners. The wind rips them taunt and then turns them limp; it howls against his ears and he wonders if the desert feels as empty as he does.
Another exhalation; Orestes begins to busy his mind with thoughts of this life, this day.
He thinks of Solterra’s children. The new Souls he Keeps; the only way his own Bound soul finds rest. He thinks of Jahin, with eyes like amethyst; one of the few that understands genocide. Baphomet, ambitious and burning. Aghavni, the emerald-eyed dove, the remnant of a lost dynasty. El Toro, the white knight, the champion and the unsure. All of them and more. All of them and more. Orestes thinks of the Court he hopes to save, of the traumas he wants to correct—
and for just a moment, as he turns down a dark street, he thinks of Marisol’s soft grey eyes.
For some reason, he is not surprised when Solterra’s banished queen steps from the darkness of an alcove and confronts him. It is a simple sigh that escapes Orestes, soft and quiet, as if to say of course I would find you here; of course this meeting would be tonight. He ought be unsettled; but the soul in him is too old for such anxiety. No. He has died too many times to be surprised by how tormented spirits will forever haunt the corridors of injustices; of their brutal condemnation. Like a ghost, she wears no expression, aside from the nearly feverish glow of the eyes. When Orestes looks at her, it is with the same feeling that fills him as he recollects the fading figures of his past. When Orestes looks at her, he sees a woman forged, a woman of silver and steel and all things hard.
He sees pain.
In another life, she'd have been beautiful. In another life, she'd have had the world. He marvels at her for a moment; the way her companion's wings spread from her shoulders like those of an avenging angel. Orestes wonders if she has come for justice, or to haunt him. But the fear does not come. No. He simply studies her as he studies the ancient language of her people and her god; with the bright, wild eyes.
The streets are quiet, now. Quiet, quiet, echoingly quiet. She says, So, you are Orestes.
Orestes, yes, brilliant gold with all his passion, burning the colour of the sun. The soft light his tattoos emit illuminates her face and he likes to think it softens it. Yes, Orestes, who wanders now with the forgotten names of a people he had been born to save. Yes, Orestes, who has lost everything but that part of his name and the hope that now—only now—he may make tomorrow better.
She commands him. If he were another man, it may have made him burn. But he gives her the respect that is due; he dips his head as he would to another monarch, and follows her with the liquid fluidity of a cat. Past the lantern they go, into a place where the light of the stars does not reach. So it is only him, soft and bright as a dying fire and her, the cool of a whetted blade.
He says, “And you are Seraphina.” He does not know why, when he says it, Orestes thinks it is an acknowledgment that there will be on more name in his mind that keeps him awake at night, one more haunted face. He asks, "What can I do for you?"
As he will always ask, again and again and again, until the weight is not so heavy.
IN THE ROOM SAT PEOPLE, APART FROM GOD NOBODY EVER FOUND THEM SO BEAUTIFUL AS THIS CHILDLIKE BEAST. SO AT NIGHT HE WENT INTO THE HOUSE, HE STOPPED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM, AND NEVER MOVED FROM THERE ANY MORE. HE STOOD ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT, WITH WIDE EYES, AND ON INTO THE MORNING WHEN HE WAS BEATEN TO DEATH.
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