[P] how do i love you? oh, this way and that way;

[Marisol]

I did think, let’s go about this slowly.
This is important. This should take
some really deep thought. We should take
small thoughtful steps.

But, bless us, we didn’t.

Shyness looks strange on him. It is ill-fitting, a coat it seems he has grown out of. But Marisol knows she must look equally foolish, a queen and a warrior who cannot quite hold herself still, whose muscles seem to tremble, whose eyes blink rapidly and too nervously as she pulls her lip between her teeth and watches, watches, watches. Like a bird being chased, her heart flits recklessly in her chest. It pecks at her ribs. It tries to break out. With every passing moment she feels a little more faint, 

and then he speaks.

Oh, Marisol—never has a voice been so soft, or cared so much, at least point-blank; her breath catches briefly in her throat as he turns to face her. He looks just as he did last time, sans the wreath. Ringlets of star-white hair. A warm darkness in the eyes, like a league of the ocean, warmed by the sun. The high cheeks, the thick, fluttering lashes, the way he smiles in a way that is nearly sad but not quite, a boy strung between wanting and hesitation—once bitten, twice shy, maybe.

She licks her teeth, anxious in a way that buzzes to the bone. In here it is dark and dusty, still like a mausoleum: her eyes drift, unsettled, from one corner to the next, naming the stacks of books, the engraved teapots, the scrolls and strewn-about pens with their feather-tails fluttering against the wood. The setting sun casts a light on the scene that is somewhere between purple and gold, somewhere between magic and a lovely, perfect real world.

The kind that does not exist, she reminds herself. Are you a fool enough to get your hopes up?

He will say something painful, she is sure, something that hurts and hurts and hurts even though he will try to make it easy. He will turn her away, like she turned him away, and they will return to their separate corners of the world and be doomed to a relationship of politics, conveniences, letters sent but not replied to. This is how the world works—or, at least, the part they live in.

Now she understands Asterion’s curse. Why he had spent so many lights alone, why so many of his lovers had disappeared after just a season. Why Florentine had only had the strength to love Lysander long after she had passed on her title. Mari closes her eyes. Little swirls of green and gold move in circles across the back of her eyelids. The world is quiet, now, or she is deaf, and all that is left is the sweat-slick beating of her heart and the sound of fear like blood rushing through her head.

An exhale.

An inhale.

The Commander opens her eyes, and—

She can see nothing but the white waves of his mane as he draws her in, the smell of him—salt, sun, something almost like enchantment—filling the air, the warmth of his skin a sun-strong heat that floods her like a wave, nearly knocks her over as the weight of his head comes to rest against her shoulder. Relief stuns her, a god-given bullet, and Mari’s every muscle goes liquid-weak. 

There is a sharp breath that she knows is hers but sounds completely alien, and a breaking noise like a sob, and Marisol buries her face into the slope of his shoulder, the cloud of his hair, and does not let him go. Her heartbeat is banging too loud to hear over; heat floods her until her skin starts to burn. When he begins to pull away, she pulls back, lashes beating like butterfly wings against his skin.

Don’t leave, Mari wants to beg, wants to cry—don’t leave, don’t leave. But she bites it back soundlessly.

But when he finishes the sentence for her she almost laughs, knocked back by a sudden wave of calm so strong it does not feeling like anything but flying, and flying, and flying: how lovely a room this is, and how quiet, flooded with the jewel-colored light, pulse dull and insistent against her tongue, her cheek, the place just behind her eyes. She’s managed not to cry, but something is—

breaking, coming apart. 

Another few breaths, forced to slow calmness, and Marisol presses her forehead again into the edge of his shoulder. “You were not tactless,” she offers softly. “I was only afraid.”

Or is she still? There is no way to know; now something bitter is coating the back of her throat, a kind of paranoia, or something like self-hatred. She closes her eyes tighter.

Don’t ruin it.


“Speaking.”

credits