[P] holy water cannot help you drown

[Adonai]

« see i have to burn »
—

I

f there is anything I have learned over these months that pass like immortal years, it is this: My mother gave her dreams to Pilate, but her rage—she gave to me. Forgive me, Mother, for I have never understood.

A knock at my door yanks me from my labored writing and it is like lurching out of a dream. I blink; slowly the bright world comes into technicolor focus: dusk slanting red through a window; a candle sputtering yellow and then white; the lyre on my bed bending light into gold. My quill hovers, dazed, over my parchment. A thick bead of ink trembles loose from its sharp nib.

Someone steps into my room. By the uncertainty of their footfalls I know they are a servant. My siblings are never uncertain unless they are wanting for something, and even then it is only an act: like a stray cat feigning helplessness for sympathy and warm milk. Perhaps they learned it from Pilate. Though I have never caught him at it it seems like something he would do, on someone in love with him. I have never seen him in love back.

And anyway—my siblings know better than to come to me for their needs and wants. All my mother's children have a nose for power, and it no longer lies with me.

"The table is set,” says the servant, her voice muffled as she bows low. “But if you wish it I will bring your food to you, prince.”

I shake my head. “No. I will go down.” Slowly I lift myself to standing. My quill drops to the table, splashing ink over the few clean lines I have written. It is a small thing but I have so little left that every loss, however small, lures to the surface a thorn of black anger. The serving girl catches it on my face and pretends not to notice.

Wordlessly she fetches me a thin cotton robe and drapes it over my shoulders. It is common knowledge that the ailing Prince Adonai catches chill even in the heat of a desert summer. I say my thanks with a faint smile, and a fainter blush colors her cheeks.

“I was here yesterday,” she says hopefully. 

“Ah, yes. I remember you,” I say, and my voice is cold enough that she knows I don’t. 

—
The moon hangs proud and luminous in the darkening sky, days away from fullness. It trails besides me like a bright-eyed hound, peeking through the procession of windows leading down to the feasting hall, and I am glad for its company. In the day the high, arching windows bathe the hall in sunlight and heat, but on moonless nights the shadows break in like thieves. It is blasphemous, of course, for an Ieshan to consider the world without Solis' light in it.

A guard moves to nudge open the doors for me and I take the chance to slow my breath. The rest of the House knows that I am recovering slowly—but how slowly—there is only one who knows.

I step into the room and it is only him and I.

"... Pilate," I say coolly, drifting my eyes towards him until I see the pink flicker of a snake's tongue and turn away, disgusted. A servant steps towards me, to draw out a chair, but I stop him with a hard smile. Slowly I walk to the middle seat of the long table, draw out my chair myself, and sit.

Until now I have kept the rage at bay; ragged shadows, shoved into corners. Yet if the lake of my power has been sapped away by a hundred flickering snake tongues, then what they have left behind is bedrock slick with venom.

I reach for my fork and pause, the utensil dropping back onto the table with a tinny clink. 

"Brother." A goblet of wine sits halfway between him and I, red as old blood. "I am thirsty."

And then I look at him, my eyes so bruise-blue they gape wide and black, like holes.

@Pilate // I have never been THIS. excited.

♢