caine
—« last year we abstained »
H
e had begun nursing the bottle sometime in the middle of the night, and when finally he reached the bottom of it, the day had aged into a sour, blustery afternoon. The sky was of an indeterminate shade of grey, sullen and faintly threatening—though of what, Caine could not tell; gilded Sunsyia had not taught him the finer points of weather.
Sunsyia. It lingered, sometimes, in the space between memory and dream: the drowsy golden summers of his youth, where his sole companions had been rare tomes and empty inkwells, the monotony of study broken only by the tap, tap, tap of moths stunning themselves against his lamp. He liked to recall that rose-stained scene whenever he was particularly miserable; there was solace to be found in the fictive versions of truth.
Arching his neck towards a grimy, potlid-sized window, Caine was disappointed to discover that snow had failed to soften the bite of winter in the night. The vintner's prediction had fallen as flat as his champagne. Wearily he fell back upon his bed, wincing into the stale sheets when pain, fluorescent bright, blossomed from the puckered scars gouged at his shoulders. His temples throbbed like a gong as he curled forwards, repressing a violent need to be sick. The empty bottle, swan-necked and crystal blue and really quite exquisite, fell to the floorboards with a dull thunk. A dribble of liquid leaked from its unstoppered mouth and eddied in a whorl of wood, red as blood.
Dusky sunlight filtered weakly through the pinhole window and enhanced the hollows of his eyes, his cheeks, his clavicle. Exhausted, stupidly drunk, and desperate for reprieve, Caine stared numbly at a spiderwebbing crack on the low ceiling until the walls fell away and the room faded to a womblike black.
He did not wake until it was deep, deep night.
He could not remember why he had come to Denocte but found he was in no hurry for an answer.
He was now apart of that exalted class—men of leisure—where whims were followed with religious fervor and reasons mattered not at all. Truly, he thought it an uncomfortable fit and even drunk knew with cold certainty that it would not last. Yet the signos he had found bound in hefty stacks of ten, left in a cloth satchel at the foot of his hospital bed, had proven more difficult to burn through than expected.
He had no one to spend it on, least of all himself. The common vices of the leisure class—gambling, feasts, pleasure as sport—disinterested him. So instead, after a suggestion by an old, possibly senile doctor extolling the medicative qualities of alcohol, he dedicated himself to dispassionately drinking his liver into the gutter.
The doctor had not lied; it was the only way that worked to deaden the pain, if only for a muddied, disorienting few hours. It was reprieve, at the cost of lucidity.
The heathen sky, wild with stars, cloaked Caine in utter dark as he trailed listlessly through slick streets and market squares thick with smoke. Nothing interested him yet he bought things with dead-eyed abandon: a black mother-of-pearl circlet; a chipped scarab beetle brooch; vials of perfume like jewels. A stiletto made of bone, nymphs and satyrs carved into the hilt.
The stiletto had not been a purchase. It had been pressed into his grasp by a passing shadow, veiled, headily perfumed, and jingling like a slim-ankled dancer. He had accepted it without restraint—almost meekly. He had not looked back at the giver, before wordlessly sliding the slender blade into place besides his silver one.
Bone pressed cold against his hip.
The moon, half-waned, hung like an ornament in the velvet night by the time Caine's hooves carried him through a tavern's well-worn doors. He was famished, aching for a fix, and wedged into the first empty spot he saw. Before he could settle a guffaw of laughter exploded to his left; grimacing, he turned away and found himself staring into a girl's pale, guarded face.
Her eyes were a shocking blue, so bright that they magnified the fine, translucent angles of her face while muting everything in the tavern to background. Somehow she intrigued him; a near-empty shot glass occupied her part of the scar-faced bar table.
After a pause, he inclined his head. His eyes flashed bright and silver-cold.
"Wine, if you please. Dry," he said in a low clip, turning to the barmaid and rolling a newly minted coin onto the countertop. When glass slid roughly across the wood not a moment later, he brought it to his lips, tipped his throat to the sky, and drank from it deeply as if parched.
His hair, loose and skimming his knees, pooled in the space between his wings.
@Castalla
an eternity later please have this actual novel
an eternity later please have this actual novel
