asterion*
Now, in her room, heavy with her scent and colored with her things and guarded by her tiger, there is nothing Asterion can think of but Moira.
But all the way here, through the sleeping forest and past the half-moon lake and onto the cobbled streets with their colorful markets and cloud-billow masts and all the things familiar and strange (bonfires and trees of gemstones, gardens of jasmine and gambling halls) he thought about his father.
About how he never stayed, about how Asterion is sure he carries the same blood, a body made for leaving, and how that scares him. He thought about that last day, standing with the chestnut stallion beneath a tree where every whorl of bark and sliver of leaf was made of stone, in a world that could not sit still. Why, he had asked at last, the question he’d carried with him since he was born, why did you go? Gabriel had smiled a question that would feel familiar on Asterion’s own mouth, something wry and faraway.
I always tried to stay.
Asterion is not his father. But oh, he knows the tide-pull of the road, knows what it is to be driven by duty and in so doing pushing aside all else. He knows what it is to be afraid to love, to believe his love is a cursed thing, doomed to splinter or drown.
He worries it’s happening now. Worse is knowing that it isn’t - that things would be alright, if he had never left Moira alone in that glade.
Their gazes cannot touch; as soon as he turns to her again her eyes of molten gold look away, her dark lashes a veil. His frown deepens when she mentions his sister; he starts to shake his head, and sighs instead. “That isn’t what I meant.” She continues on, speaking to Neerja instead of him, and the bay stallion wants to protest - he did think of her, always, every hour; what he did not think was that his sister’s magic could splinter, that he could be locked out of the world that held the girl he loved.
His eyes are dark and limned with silver as she continues; the saltwater stings. Still she does not turn to him; he wishes he were the tiger, protector and comforter and confidant. Instead he is the reason she needs Neerja. And still his body begs to touch her, to lay his cheek against her shoulder, to brush her hair from her eyes, to kiss her on her closed eyelids and on the tip of her nose and on the soft velvet of her forehead and everywhere.
When she says what answer do you wish to hear?, that is the moment he knows in his heart it is over. But his head is slower, even as his eyes shut for a moment and the room closes like a fist around him his head is looking for reasons to hope. Asterion opens his eyes again and she still has her face pressed against striped fur. The once-king draws a breath, though he already feels like he’s addressing a closed door. Perhaps there is a crack of light beneath.
“I want you to tell me you still choose me. I want you to tell me that you love me, and that there’s some way I can make up to you my year of missing, and show you that you can trust me not to leave again. I want you to tell me to stay, and - and to believe me when I say I will make Denocte my home, that I will be your shadow, your servant.” They feel more like promises than pleading or lies, even when the sea inside him feels dense and dark. Hasn’t a part of him always loved the Night Court, even when it felt like a betrayal to his own? A breeze stirs the curtains of her bed like a hand; Asterion holds her in silent regard, memorizing the curl of her hair, the curve of her neck, the way the lamplight falls across her wings and kisses her body crimson. There is nothing else he wants to say; he is selfish, he only hopes she looks up and says yes.
And he knows it isn’t fair, not when he left her, not when there will always be a part of them both waiting for another goodbye. So he adds, hoarse-voiced, half-desperate, “But more than that I want to know what would make you happy, Moira. I want you to look me in the eye and tell me the truth. And I will do my best to give it to you, whatever it is.”
@
