pilate
/
walking round always mad reputation, leave a pretty girl sad reputation / this that what-we-do don't tell your mom shit, this that red cup all on the lawn shit / got a fresh cut straight out the salon bitch
I will never make his life easy. Why should I, when he has been so mindful to ruin mine?
I crunch down on a mouthful of pomegranate. The seeds make a sound like the cracking of bone, and juice spills, blood-red, onto my tongue and sloshes out from the spaces between my teeth. This mouthful is particularly tart; I can’t help screwing my face up when the bitterness hits me like a rock over the head.
But at that moment I see Adonai’s spine twist in a shiver, and the wince falls away as I focus on hiding a lightning-quick smirk.
The courses come and go. Platters are whisked away as fast as they’ve come, before I can even quite decide which ones I want; though perhaps it’s my fault for watching it so lazily, still spitting husk after husk of pomegranate seed with the red leached out of it into the ringing golden bowl. Suddenly I’m running hot. My cheeks, my scales, simmer with a random warmth. Carelessly I unclasp my cloak and let it fall, sitting up as it comes to rest on the ground in a rippling pool of white, and as I stretch outwards and upwards my whole body feels like it’s opening up, unfurling, unwinding, growing warm and vibrant with the rush of adrenaline that always accompanies my arguments with Adonai.
It’s one of very few things that still makes me feel alive.
Moonlight pours in through the arched windows like so much liquid silver, and even though I hate him I know deep in my heart that my brother is beautiful. In this river of mercury his skin turns cool and white as marble, the gold leached out of it by the cold light of the stars, his pale hair a river of silk. And his eyes—they are my favorite now, more captivating and beautiful than they ever were Before, these knee-deep pools of bruise-blue water, these pockets of purplish cobalt like the petals of a forget me not.
I’ve never seen a color like it. Sometimes it makes my chest ache, the sheer beauty of it; the kind of color you see not in nature, but in oil paintings. Sometimes it makes me jealous. And sometimes it doesn’t.
He might have those eyes. But I have everything else.
I look into those eyes as I pour him his drink. How can I look anywhere else? He stares at me with the smile of a dead man, and I am in love with him. I had inevitably imagined him a coffin. But now, seeing him alive, fixed in place like a doll, I feel that I have never understood his loveliness: he belongs like this, postured in a way that makes him look more alive, strained under the weight of his anger toward me and all the things he wishes he could do. Just my eyes, just my presence, has him in a chokehold. I roll my tongue around my teeth and taste wine, though I haven’t taken a sip since this afternoon and now the world is all but dark out.
For a moment there is silence between us. I listen to the slosh of the wine into his glass, the labored sound of his breathing. The servants turn into soundless statues. My heart beats in my chest, a quiet but insistent brag, and I feel its pulse crawling into the back of my throat with every second I stand this close to him. The slow sound of the world coming apart. The darkness soft and comforting as a blanket.
Where are the others? I give him a cutting glance sideways, not quite believing he doesn’t know the answer, but my expression is dry as ever. When I would take my meals in my room I would imagine you all down here, toasting until the dawn. Now my lips purse; I push both dark brows down as if really considering, but my mouth (barely) hides a smirk. He is the only one in the room who could possibly see it.
This is tiring. I take the seat next to him, not asking for permission, and lean back in a lazy, catlike arc. A servant carefully moves the bowl of pomegranate seeds back in front of me.
“They decided to dine in the courtyard,” I respond, “when they heard you were joining us.” It’s not technically a lie; I just don’t add that they were there to see my face go dark when I was the one to announce it, a carefully constructed expression of pain that fell away as soon as they turned.
I toss another seed into my mouth. Juice floods out of it, red as blood.
