for a taste of real life
—
She had left his letter on the mantle. It was charred on the edges; she had tossed it into her fireplace in a fit of cold fury, before fishing it out again when the corners had started to blacken and the thought of burning it, really burning it, had sent her scrambling for a poker.
I set sail at first light—
She had spoken to no one of it. The red-tailed hawk that had swept through her curtains at first dawn would seem, to any curious observer, only one of the dozens of letter-bearing avians that dove in and out of the emissary's window at all hours of the day. And if the young emissary herself had seemed uncharacteristically quiet at breakfast, well—perhaps fatigue had finally caught up with her.
From the day of her appointment, Emissary Aghavni had never missed a moment at Court. Few, in fact, could recall a time when the Hajakhan princess (for it was common knowledge now, though no noble worth their rank had yet dared to broach it in public) wasn’t escorting ambassadors to the king, or penning letters as she breakfasted, or requesting crates upon crates of wax candles to be brought up to her tower—she went through them at alarming speed.
There was nothing she couldn’t do, nothing she couldn’t master. Least of all her own heart.
‘Dearest August,’ she had written back, ink spotting the page in her haste. ‘Upon your return from the seven seas, be sure to bring back a necklace of pearls as big as sparrow’s eggs to present to your future majesty, Queen Sol IV. Failure to do so will result in you being turned coldly away at the palace gates, with no chance at redemption.’
Her grip had shook as she'd reached the end of the parchment, but her calligraphy betrayed nothing. If August had thought his departure would arouse any sliver of devastation in her—the nib of her quill snapped, leaking ink, and Aghavni had cursed as she reached for a new one and moved her blotter over the spreading stain.
‘Charmingly, A.’ Then he had thought wrong. Even if her heart had shattered to pieces, even if she had sent all her chambermaids scrambling out so they would not see the weakness leaking from her furious eyes—
(A letter! That was all he had left her with, before bidding her a sailor’s farewell, forever. Aghavni was not stupid enough to hope that August would one day return. Better that he didn’t. Better that she never saw his face again, so that he would never know how weak she really was beneath her pretty words and bold farewells.)
A Hajakha could betray the whole world, even each other. But never themselves.
----
She departs for Dusk at nightfall, August’s letter cold on the mantle, her hair in pearl-strewn, latticed plaits, and her eyes as green, and as hard, as cut emeralds.
----
“So—do you think this place is as grand as the Scarab?” Aghavni asks O, lips pulling into a wry smile. She bumps her hip lightly against the buckskin’s dusky shoulder and glances over, a little indifferently, at a tray of canapés balanced on a passing waiter’s hip.
She plucks one from its plate—a wine-soaked cherry—and pops it into her mouth. It bursts at once across her tongue, sweet and then bracingly tart, and her dark lashes flutter in a display of mirth.
Look upon the Solterran emissary now, glittering gold beneath the floating lanterns, and nothing could have ever been once undone. Her posture is, as always, refined and disciplined; the line of her jaw and the tilt of her gaze calculated to give an appearance at once alluring and disarmingly innocent. She does not try to appear more than her age; instead, she wears her youth like a crown of holly, a fey creature on the cusp of girlhood and womanhood.
But when she smiles, as she does now at lovely little Apolonia, the sharpness of it whispers: This is a girl forged of ambition. If you are wise, you will watch her carefully for the teeth that do not flash, but hide: deep in the gums, unseelie and savage.
Humming, Aghavni draws close to Apolonia's satin ear and glances discreetly into the crowd. “You know, O, that girl over there has been watching you ever since we entered the room.” And smirking, seized by sudden muse, Aghavni detaches her emerald scarf from her neck and loops it around O’s. “There. Now you look even more lovely. Let’s dance!”
Let’s dance and dance, she thinks, bitterly, as she twirls towards the center of the ballroom. Until we forget everything, even ourselves.
I set sail at first light—
She had spoken to no one of it. The red-tailed hawk that had swept through her curtains at first dawn would seem, to any curious observer, only one of the dozens of letter-bearing avians that dove in and out of the emissary's window at all hours of the day. And if the young emissary herself had seemed uncharacteristically quiet at breakfast, well—perhaps fatigue had finally caught up with her.
From the day of her appointment, Emissary Aghavni had never missed a moment at Court. Few, in fact, could recall a time when the Hajakhan princess (for it was common knowledge now, though no noble worth their rank had yet dared to broach it in public) wasn’t escorting ambassadors to the king, or penning letters as she breakfasted, or requesting crates upon crates of wax candles to be brought up to her tower—she went through them at alarming speed.
There was nothing she couldn’t do, nothing she couldn’t master. Least of all her own heart.
‘Dearest August,’ she had written back, ink spotting the page in her haste. ‘Upon your return from the seven seas, be sure to bring back a necklace of pearls as big as sparrow’s eggs to present to your future majesty, Queen Sol IV. Failure to do so will result in you being turned coldly away at the palace gates, with no chance at redemption.’
Her grip had shook as she'd reached the end of the parchment, but her calligraphy betrayed nothing. If August had thought his departure would arouse any sliver of devastation in her—the nib of her quill snapped, leaking ink, and Aghavni had cursed as she reached for a new one and moved her blotter over the spreading stain.
‘Charmingly, A.’ Then he had thought wrong. Even if her heart had shattered to pieces, even if she had sent all her chambermaids scrambling out so they would not see the weakness leaking from her furious eyes—
(A letter! That was all he had left her with, before bidding her a sailor’s farewell, forever. Aghavni was not stupid enough to hope that August would one day return. Better that he didn’t. Better that she never saw his face again, so that he would never know how weak she really was beneath her pretty words and bold farewells.)
A Hajakha could betray the whole world, even each other. But never themselves.
She departs for Dusk at nightfall, August’s letter cold on the mantle, her hair in pearl-strewn, latticed plaits, and her eyes as green, and as hard, as cut emeralds.
“So—do you think this place is as grand as the Scarab?” Aghavni asks O, lips pulling into a wry smile. She bumps her hip lightly against the buckskin’s dusky shoulder and glances over, a little indifferently, at a tray of canapés balanced on a passing waiter’s hip.
She plucks one from its plate—a wine-soaked cherry—and pops it into her mouth. It bursts at once across her tongue, sweet and then bracingly tart, and her dark lashes flutter in a display of mirth.
Look upon the Solterran emissary now, glittering gold beneath the floating lanterns, and nothing could have ever been once undone. Her posture is, as always, refined and disciplined; the line of her jaw and the tilt of her gaze calculated to give an appearance at once alluring and disarmingly innocent. She does not try to appear more than her age; instead, she wears her youth like a crown of holly, a fey creature on the cusp of girlhood and womanhood.
But when she smiles, as she does now at lovely little Apolonia, the sharpness of it whispers: This is a girl forged of ambition. If you are wise, you will watch her carefully for the teeth that do not flash, but hide: deep in the gums, unseelie and savage.
Humming, Aghavni draws close to Apolonia's satin ear and glances discreetly into the crowd. “You know, O, that girl over there has been watching you ever since we entered the room.” And smirking, seized by sudden muse, Aghavni detaches her emerald scarf from her neck and loops it around O’s. “There. Now you look even more lovely. Let’s dance!”
Let’s dance and dance, she thinks, bitterly, as she twirls towards the center of the ballroom. Until we forget everything, even ourselves.
