pilate
/
promise I'll be kind, but I won't stop until that boy is mine, baby, you'll be famous, chase you down until you love me
When I look at him I feel more than I have ever felt for anyone or anything else. The thing that scratches at my throat and rises in my stomach like bile is stronger than the fragile love I have for Corradh, stronger than the ache of missing my mother; stronger, even, than the mixture of rage and panic and hunger I feel when I think of Adonai, which I thought, until now, had grown as fearfully large as any emotion ever possibly could.
But one glance at the Warden—his bright eyes behind their glasses, the slash of white opening his lip, the faint rise and fall of his chest when he lets out a sharp breath—overshadows everything with ease, like Goliath over David.
I pull my mouth closed. I hold it in place until the hinges of my jaw ache with the pressure and threaten to burst. I keep my lips in a carefully-easy line, just barely turned up at the edges, and my eyes on his even when the blue-gray tint of them makes me feel physically sick, and my breath steady even when I brush past him into the crowded room and feel his feathers scrape my leg—my shoulder—my hip.
I keep it together. Hold myself closed at the seams and square my legs and force myself not to look away. Even when the walls press in, and I begin to feel smaller than I’ve ever felt. Even when my body goes warm as a fever. Even then I am a prince, carefully curated, painted into place, and motivated more than anything by the idea of looking calm in front of him when all I want to do is scream.
There are some benefits, I think to myself, of being raised well.
Andras says mhm as I gaze around the room, something between a growl and a gasp; and I can’t tell if I love or hate the way it shoots through me in one long blue electric arc, almost like his magic would. I turn anyway. In the half-dark, I can see little of him but the glint of candlelight on his glasses, the splash of white stark against his throat. A bird in a storm. “W—“
As fast as I start speaking I stop. He is touching me. On purpose.
I watch the movement as if I don’t quite believe it (which I don’t). But no, I can see it and feel it—his wing falling in a gentle arc toward me, and I watch it come down like it is an axe and I am awaiting execution, with bated breath and a body-numbing anticipation.
When he does make contact, it is lighter than I would have thought him capable of. God-breath ghosting over my shoulder. One feather, then another, then another comes to rest on my spine, at once weightless and all-consuming, and I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe without looking at him, my smile falling away to reveal the slightest hint of a snarl, my eyes burning with something between fury and desperation, wearing the brightness of both.
The wing retracts, and I feel almost as though I am falling to the floor without his touch.
“That’s easy,” I say. And my voice is suddenly hoarse, unbefitting a prince, and my throat feels thick and rough, like I might choke if I have to say what I’m about to. I chew my lip, dark-eyed, thinking.
“I can’t help it.”
