I had a dream, I got everything I wanted
Not what you'd think, and if I'm being honest
It might've been a nightmare
Not what you'd think, and if I'm being honest
It might've been a nightmare
S
hadows swirled around his wings and pooled in the dips of his spine, feasting at the warmth of the room like leeches grown thin on pond water. Yet despite the lack of an adversary (the single candle guttered still, wax-flesh dripping at alarming speed, sure to die within the hour), the shadows kept away from the center; away from the spectral silver, the holy fire (and a pyre—when Caine's sight blurred, he thought he saw the ashes of a pyre, blanketing her shoulders like snow) and contented themselves, like cats, to the corners.But how precious little it mattered. The death-pall gloom the spy brought with him into the room threatened to swallow everything in a darkness so profound, so primordial, that even its summoner felt a shiver ghost down his neck.
'Why do some fear the dark?' he had once asked Agenor, hunched over a game of chess. The settee he'd ensconced himself into had been so large that there had been very little boy left between the leather. Only the glint of colourless eyes, slanted down to his white king.
'Because of the inherent absence of light,' his master had replied, watching the boy keenly as the black queen glided across the board and slew a bishop. 'Is that such a terrible thing?' the boy had murmured, dark-eyed now as he foresaw his king's imminent checkmate.
'Perhaps not to me, nor you,’ said the warlock, ‘but to some—' he paused, and a half-smile played across his lips as the white king slid desperately behind a knight. 'Nothing could be worse.'
Caine drew himself upright and tossed his hair from his eyes to glance warily at Seraphina's prone form. Nothing could be worse. Perhaps she would agree. She was not a creature made for the dark. Her hair, her eyes, the gold of her scar; every part of her leaked light, as every part of him leaked shadow.
“Am I supposed to start guessing?” Irritation or reluctance or curiosity might have coloured those words, but drink had dulled Caine's perception to the functionality of a dirty mirror, and her voice had gone too quickly. His eyes narrowed, but he gleaned nothing.
So he laughed instead—a low, silken thing—and slipped back into the skin of Verona. “You wound me, Fia. Will you not listen to my story?” he asked lightly, teeth flashing in mirth. “If you listen—” And then he quieted, suddenly solemn and hopelessly uncertain, unbalanced by the events of the evening; which had finally, only finally, begun to careen and crash upon him like a roof done in by a tempest. “No guessing. I will reveal myself at the end. I am tired of games, anyway,” he murmured, and suddenly a wave of nausea spread from his stomach to the bottom of his throat. The room spun, and the cloak around his shoulders slipped. An inch, maybe more.
Damp sweat beaded Caine's temple as he pressed his cheek to the cool, wallpapered wall. Listlessly his eyes, pale as bone, wandered to the armor and blade stashed in the corner nearest the window, and then to the letter she held poised in the air, creased in the memory of a rose. Moments passed before his voice cut again through the dark.
“I will keep to this side of the room. Do not make yourself uncomfortable on my account.” And to honor his sentiment, Caine slid down from the bed to the worn carpet, landing with a soft thump. Wordlessly (and with great effort, though he did not allow himself to dwell upon it) he recalled his shadows from the opposite corners, and cleared her a matching space on the floor to rest upon. If she so wished.
Satisfied, he put his back to the foot of the hard bed pallet and chewed his lip thoughtfully. “I shall tell you the story,” he began, “of the boy who put Death in a sack.”
{ @Seraphina "speaks" notes: decided to postpone story time until the next post so that we don't get a gigantic Caine monologue that doesn't give Sera a chance to react! }
