aghavni
—
« ♡ »
rise like lions after slumber / in unvanquishable number / shake your chains to earth like dew / which in sleep had fallen on you
F
rom her tower, the harbors of Solterra looked like a row of craggy teeth; all crumbling sandstone monoliths sunk to their knees in sand, and rickety piers pressed end to end like matchsticks. Ships trundled wearily into port only to shoot off again like pond skaters when their loads were hauled off in color-coded caravans, red-roofed for the markets and gold-roofed for the castle. Now and again a sapphire-roof, bound for maison de Hajakha.
Up close, the harbors looked less like teeth and more like a circus that had lost its tents. Everyone was a performer: from the gap-toothed merchants hawking tiny glass baubles at head-swooning prices, to the sweating apprentices running from caravan to caravan like headless chickens, to the sailors piling off the ships bow-legged, rowdy, waving jugs of rum like batons.
Even Scarab-raised Aghavni felt, for a wide-eyed moment, desperately overwhelmed. And a moment was all it took.
"Miss," came a drawling male voice by her ear. She stiffened; she hadn't heard him approach. "You dropped your pin."
Aghavni knew, for a fact, that she hadn't worn any sort of adornment—not even her scarf—when she'd left that morning for the harbors. A noble's whelp she couldn't deny being, but she'd practically grown up in the Denoctian underbelly. She knew better than to parade through foreign streets unaccompanied, draped in finery like a little lost princess.
She knew how that story ended.
"Did I?" Slowly, Aghavni spun around and blinked up into a pair of slanted amber eyes, lined in thick kohl. He was older than her but not by much; around August's age, she guessed, or perhaps a bit older. Discreetly, she looked him over and tried to calm the thump thump thump of her heart.
A gold ring gleamed in the boy's left ear, and a saber hung sheathed at his hip. It was a fine saber—much too fine to match the threadbare cloak slung lazily over his shoulders, or the hungry, satisfied way he watched her. Her telekinesis tightened around the smooth wooden guard of her fan, its black ribbons tied into her mane.
"You should be careful, miss," said the boy, as he held out a golden sun brooch studded with sapphires. It gleamed like a snowflake under the midwinter sun. Her stomach sank. What he held out to her, was a brooch bearing the crest of Hajakha. "You stick out like a sore thumb in these parts. Not everyday one as pretty as you wanders out to the harbors."
She knew what word he had neglected to say. Saw it reflected in the curve of his smile: alone.
—wanders out alone to the harbors.
"I thank you for the concern," she replied with a tight smile. "But I'm afraid that pin was dropped by another. I don't own anything like it. Good day—" She ducked her head and made to brush past him. During the rebellions of Zolin's time, the Hajakhan vaults had been plundered when the mansion had been stormed by rebels. Her father had taken pains to secure most of what they'd lost over the years, but it wasn't surprising that there remained a few Hajakhan treasures still in circulation. Like the sapphire-studded sun brooch.
The boy knew exactly who she was when he'd held it out to her. Aghavni's steps quickened. Loathe as she was to show apprehension, she began to angle towards a bobbing dock a small ship had just pulled into, disgorging sailors like flopping fish.
"Leaving so soon, Princess?"
A threadbare cloak snapped out and pressed against her chest, digging its corners into her long mane. Aghavni tossed her neck savagely and tried to shake it off, but the cloak—wound into the shape of a scarf—restrained her with crushing strength. The boy sidled languidly up to her, and pressed his mouth to her pinned ear. His fiery coat and flashing golden eyes reminded Aghavni of a tiger. "Have your kind not learned anything? Your father hid you away for all those years," he crooned. "But he is not here now. No one is."
A sharp crack—wooden ribs blossoming into metal. Aghavni pressed the blade of her innocuous, silk-skinned fan to the soft underside of the boy's throat. "Get off," she whispered, just as crooning.
But she could not stop her breath from trembling.
@August // one tiger boy to make things spicy
