D
oesn't he remember her? And then Aghavni tilts her head back, blinks, and thinks: Oh.
Of course he wouldn't, when she has changed so much. When her hair is not black like spilled ink but its glamorous inverse: moon-pale, glacial, the Weaver's signature platinum. When her eyes are not a mousy, dovey grey but green like absinthe, green like envy, green like emeralds, mined from the heart of the earth.
She would think he'd at least know her face, but then, they had all been children and—her eyes flicker up to his, purple as an emperor's robe—he was not his brother, Raoul.
Aghavni remembers little about the eclipse that was her childhood. She had been but a tiny thing, unsteady on her legs, foal's down for fur, owlish in the eyes; adamant to stick to the other noble spawn like a burr that couldn't even sting. But she remembers the Nazarets, because they had not been one of the Four and to Mother that was as much a declaration of alliance she could ever hope for—and she remembers the brothers Raziel and Raoul.
She glances down to the hellhound sprawled luxuriously at Raziel's hooves, into her spectre-white eyes, and thinks: And I remember you, too.
"Gahenna," she says, her smile glancing. The roaring of the crowd nearly drowns it, but Aghavni knows that the hound, at least, will hear.
Mother had been so worried about leaving her alone with them, the famed hellhounds of Nazaret. If Aghavni closes her eyes she can still remember slivers of the memory, her mother's voice tinny and hollow, a voice stolen out of a dream.
"Sol, you may play with the twins but you must not pet their hounds." A bubble of laughter from a woman curled on a beaded cushion besides her mother. Zophia... will you raise a Hajakha that way?...
Aghavni slides herself ever further down the polished stone, finished in a mirror-like shine, until her shoulder barely skims Raziel's. Gold leaks slow, like thickened blood, from a crack in his chromium skin. Biting her cheek, she considers: she did not use to be so—dismissive—of breaching what had been, to her, the minimum amount of space required between oneself and another, for those born to the old nobility. Father had observed it as strict as a military man—Charon, as strict as a servant bound to a military man—and Mother, because she was a full-blooded Hajakha.
Touching her was like touching the sun.
And yet, Aghavni thinks, They killed her anyway.
So it goes.
But then she smiles, wide and full, because she must have been meant to meet the last son of Balsheva Nazaret in such an unholy place for good reason. His aunt, that snake, was giving her so much trouble at court. Their meeting, Aghavni is beginning to believe, must be what the gods-sworn and the desperate call fate.
So she lifts her head up, up, up, until her mouth is just shy of his ear: "Have you forgotten me, Raziel?" she whispers, "I am Sol Hajakha."
oh, you clever little things
the sycophantic teens
