with criminal mentality
The rain is slanting sideways against his face when he looks up, its raindrops small and sharp and cold. Not for the first time, he wonders if the fire of his blood, of his anger, will be enough to keep the frost away.
And if it isn’t, would the forest at least shelter his body?
Despite the rain running in rivulets down his brow, he lifts his eyes enough to look at his Warden. Ipomoea doesn’t have to wonder if it’s only the storm cloud-darkness or the electric brightness that makes the edges of his jaw look so sharp. He knows it’s neither. He knows it’s the anger, and the worry, and the bone-deep ache that has eaten away at Andras from the inside-out. He knows it because he feels it, too. Their necks carry the same curve, like the spine of a bow stretched back so tightly it almost snaps.
There’s only a little bit of peace in knowing that today they are but two sides of the same coin, that today with the storm turning the two of them the same shade of grey, it is only their wings that set them apart. His own tremble now, wrapping themselves tightly about his fetlocks. And despite the cold creeping down the sovereign’s spine, despite the pounding of his heart that sounds more and more like a wardrum with each passing day, Ipomoea almost smiles.
He says nothing at first, as Andras begins to speak. But the words are there in the way he purses his lips, in the way his hooves sink like stones into the sodden earth. He disagrees with every step, every breath - because how could it be an accident? he wants to scream. How could this be so random as chance when it’s all so clearly planned? - but he says none of this.
Ipomoea only casts his eyes sharply back at the pegasus when his voice trails off, and leaves a thousand other things left unsaid. His own imagination fills in the blanks.
"Maybe…" he echoes, as the sky and earth rumble.
But he isn’t patient enough to hold back his questions.
"How is Emersyn doing?" he watches Andras’ face, waits for his reaction. "I know you two have spent time together in the library, going over the maps."
The rain is ruining the tracks, so he slows. His steps move him slowly closer, inch by inch, to Andras.
"Is she -" for a moment he struggles to find the right words, to voice his suspicions without making it sound like he had no choice but to turn on his own people now. "- doing alright, with all of this?” It’s the last thing he wants to think, or so he tells himself.
But the brightness of her eyes is as clear as the lightning streaks flashing behind his eyes, the excitement in her voice as she drew another bloody X on the map echoing again and again in his ears.
@
"Speaking."
