to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
For most of his life August had kept going by never giving himself enough time to think.
From dawn until moonset, from his daily training with the sword to his nights with strangers to the countless witching hours spent with an eye on the tables and the floor, the palomino had stuffed himself with duty, scheduled himself with work. It wasn’t the idle hands he worried about, devil be damned, but his idle mind. His thoughts, sharp-toothed and always hungry, loved best to turn inward.
And for years it had worked. But too much had changed (when had it begun? Raum? The island and the relic? The day of Aghavni’s departure?), and he was not changing, and August could bear it no longer. He had left the Scarab and the little misfortune-born family he’d made there, and Denocte, and the continent altogether. But that adventure had soured, too, and now the only thing he had to his name was too much time.
August, who clung to duty, told himself that Aghavni needed him to stay - to protect her as he swore as a boy to her father he would do. After all, he had seen her attacked, in daylight, in public (the sneering, snobbish part of him was not surprised it had happened, here in Solterra). But in the deep, locked-box part of his heart he knew it was only to give himself the excuse of meaning.
The princess didn’t need him. Nobody did. And August didn’t know who to be when it was only up to himself.
This mood held him him like a cloak, more stifling than the sun, darker than the kohl-rimmed eyes that watched him in the marketplace. And in the small house he rented by the week it took up space like an unwelcome visitor. That is why, when his door shudders with a bang, his heart leaps at any promise of distraction, of action, however ill it may be. It isn’t until he hears his name in a voice he can’t recognize (he has never heard her sob, never heard her throat so wrung) that worry seizes him like a cold wave. Who, he thinks, and swings wide the door.
It takes him a beat to recognize Minya. Not because of the antlers, or their loss, but for the wretched expression she wears, the way it changes the contours of her face, the red that streaks her hair and skin and the red that rims her silver eyes.
“Come inside,” he says, more command than suggestion, and he scans the street for pursuers and finds none before closing the door behind them, bolting the thick iron latch, and turning to face her.
“Minya-“ His mirror-silver eyes scan her, the broken roots of her antlers, the grime and the blood, searching for other signs of injury. “You’re safe now. Are you hurt?” August keeps his voice calm, matter-of-fact, but his mind races with questions and his heart with worry, a staccato that flutters the pulse below his jaw.
Who? demands his thoughts, and it is a terrible relief to turn their clamor for violence outward.
@Minya | <3
