asterion*
She does not answer him, and so he hopes.
He studies her face the way she does his own, finding shadow-mirror images there of the circles below her eyes, the sharp line of her cheekbone, the slope of her shoulders as she climbs from the cushions. Overhead her lights glow, delicate as fireflies but far more constant. A ghost of a smile grows when she speaks, and fades again before she reaches him.
But he can’t keep looking when she sighs his name like that, the way he’s heard it a hundred times in dreams. Before tonight he’s never been in her room, and it had felt almost too intimate a place (has she had another man in here before? The thought darkens his mind like a moon-shadow before passing) - but when he closes his eyes, when she draws near enough to touch him and there is only her scent and her breath and her warmth, they could be anywhere. A festival in Delumine with flowers in their hair, a cliffside in Terrastella like the first day he saw her and his heart already begged her stay, a snowy courtyard or a jungle thick with magic and shadow.
Perhaps there will be more memories, more places made holy by a thing so small as a shared glance. Perhaps -
He keeps his eyes closed as she speaks, but ghosts his muzzle against her cheek. She is real, he is home. I never wished for a servant. He should be used to the mingled feeling of disappointment and relief. It is easy to serve - easier than leading - he could give and give until the ocean of his love was wrung dry and never ask for the tide to turn. How many, instead, have begged or ordered or cursed him to go?
Her tone belies her words; when he finds her gaze again, gold wreathed in black like a flame against the night, he reads the sorrow there. And when she says I love you he can hear the shattering, can feel it reverberate down his bones, where it sinks like stone and roots like roses. “I love you, Moira,” he says, low, fervent, as though he can mend the breaking in her words with the obstinacy of his own. And when she kisses him - his cheek, though he reaches for her lips, hoping - he wants to pull her close, and ask her again to invite him to her bed, and let nothing in with them but starlight.
Because she loves him, she loves him, she loves him (As had Talia - as had Aislinn - as had Marisol - different fires, all burned out).
Her smile feels like a miracle, turns him again into a foolish boy with a belly full of butterflies and the hope to follow them.
“Anywhere,” he breathes, and goes after her out into the hall.
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