saudade

[Avdotya]

You're a survivor,

it's written in blood across your lips

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A leader who would be willing to do anything to preserve the people she loves. Indeed, she would—she has. Avdotya has spilled king’s-blood upon marble floor for them, she has lit the capitol in fire and blood for them with treason painted in red across her black hide. Her life belongs to the Davke and the desert they roam, but it does not belong to Day Court. ”And in heading that nation, I would end it.” Her voice is poison, it drips with a quiet venom that seeps into the frigid, winter air around them and promises him that there is no good hiding somewhere within her. Orestes, unfortunately, is trying in vain to create the image of a woman who does not exist.

And then she catches it, that flutter of a moment where the king’s face writhes just slightly with raptorial quality. A single, frayed string escaping from the clean edge of a fine silk piece and she cannot help but acknowledge the desire to pull at it, to perhaps unravel him from his poise. Her lip, now dressed in frost, twitches so softly even she fails to notice it. ”I did not need you to ask, your majesty.” The red heat of her eyes meet intently with the cool blue of his own, hoping that he’ll play her game.

Then finally she shrugs, for she grows tired of their back and forth on freedom and ferality. Or maybe because Orestes has actually said something she agrees with. Regardless, the conversation shifts and now he seeks her name, her motivation; whether she will uphold him in his actions or not. She intentionally avoids her name. ”My spear does not lose its thirst for the blood of kings, Orestes, but if you do not tread on me then I will not tread on you.” For now. Avdotya has spoken many a lie in her lifetime—most notably during her oath as regent—whether or not this is one of them even she doesn’t know.

Opportunity is a powerful thing, after all.

Her head then turns away from him, looking out past the babbling stream and into the wall of pines. ”You already know the answer to that.” The Davke, always the Davke. They met death for her once upon a time, when Zolin stole her away to leash and parade around like some prized hound (oh, how that worked out). They died for her and she intends to someday repay that debt, but she must first rebuild them to their former glory before that day ever comes. This, she knows, is why Solis granted her her immortality; it is why he spared her from the grizzly she now wears upon her back. ”We will find our place again. The effects of war stand poorly against time’s hand in the desert.” She is vague, and with reason. The Davke were a marauding group in their prime... she does not intend to change that if they are to flourish. ”Just as I presume you seek the same for your court,” not our court, ”free as it can be.” She repeats, but with sarcasm on her tongue.

@orestes

THE DESERT VIPER

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