to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
If he never realizes how badly he failed her on this night, he will be lucky.
As it stands, the guilt will begin to gnaw at him the moment his adrenaline wears off and he’s far from here, his heartbeat quieted, and alone. The shame will come later, the next morning, settling low in his belly like a rough lump of coal. Both will grow the more he thinks about them, and Warset, and the things that happened at the fringes of the desert that night.
But for now there is neither. There is the pound of his heart, a god’s gallop against his ribcage, and the wheezing sound of air moving through the stallion’s punctured throat, and a snarl from the leopard-that-was-Warset that sounds almost liquid. There is the sight of her, dragging the chestnut by the throat further into the shadows, his hooves still kicking up sand and dust. All of his senses seem clearer, as though they’d been fogged before and are suddenly clean for the first time.
And what does he do with these marvelous senses, all his blood prickling his veins?
He runs.
Because as she purrs and bends low over the other man’s neck, there are cries rising up from behind them. First they’re questions, and then shouts, and August is too recognizable, and has not made himself a friend of the king. So he flees, out of the alley and into the wind, his ears turned behind him to listen (as though he could hear anything over the sound of his own surging hooves, his own thundering heart).
When he slows down enough to feel anything other than alive, it is sick satisfaction at the thought of that bastard who’d threatened Aghavni caught between the jaws of a predator. It’s possible that the crowd had separated them, that he had survived, but August does not say a prayer for him. In a way it turned out lucky - now any investigations would be for a panther, not two horses. And everyone knew such predators were not unheard of in Novus. Even though he left without information, he isn’t sorry for what happened.
Not until he thinks of Warset, and wonders when she will become a girl again (one of the Shed Stars), and whether there will be someone’s blood in her belly when she does, does his own stomach begin to turn queasy. The change hadn’t hampered her at all; the big cat had not seemed distraught. And he was not worried about her ability to escape.
But it is a long night, after that.
@warset | <3
