the saints can't help me now, the ropes have been unbound / i hunt for you with bloody feet across the hallowed ground
When the only monarch I have ever sworn my allegiance to sees me, her posture stiffens. In that instant, she is like a marionette being jerked together by its strings. Limbs fall into ribs fall into a mechanical, beating heart, all of her twisting itself back into the shape of a woman made rigid by the weight of a crown.
A twist of sadness blooms in between my lungs at the sight. I know that I am thinking far too much of myself to be hurt by this—that in front of me, a fallen prince, Seraphina must still weather herself against the memory of a savage court's savage customs and the words they had seethed at her.
I am used to dismissal. I am used, even, to being loathed.
I am unused entirely to being seen as someone capable of cruelty. So when she looks at me, at the bruises beneath my eyes, at the gouges in my cheeks, I flick my gaze away from her to the dead, frozen grass. I allow her the time to look. I allow her the time to gather herself up again.
There is another brown spider crawling jaggedly up the stem of a decaying, half-crushed leaf. Blinking, I kneel down into the frozen dirt, my cloak billowing in a black circle around me. I do not look at Seraphina, yet when she is standing and I am kneeling it makes for a crooked display of fealty. I both mean it and don't. I am not certain what she expects of me; I am not certain what I expect of her.
I stare long at the shivering spider.
“You're right, but I've barely noticed.” I shift; my brows draw low over my eyes and it is as close to disapproval as I have ever been able to manage around her. I look up to her and my mouth sets in a fine line. I know how ridiculous it sounds from a man dying as he speaks, but I say it anyway. “I don't think,” I murmur, my breath frosting in the bitter cold, “that you have ever paid much attention to your own welfare.”
I am unused to saying such things. Miriam is. Miriam is far better in the art of gentle admonishment than I. When I do it, when one of my siblings breaks a leg or a heart or a doll, my reprimands roll off my tongue like a priest's sermon. It is no wonder they prefer Miriam to I. I do not prefer myself, either.
“I would think that the cold poses far more of a danger to you than to I, Prince Adonai.” The spider has fallen off of the leaf, scuttling away into the undergrowth, and so I have nothing, anymore, to keep me kneeling in the ice-hardened dirt. But I don't get up. I shift slowly to my heels instead, tilting backwards until I feel the tree's scaled trunk join with the ridge of my cloaked spine.
I wish I could say to her, instead of shrugging off a bare chuckle, Even now, you worry about others more than yourself. There are some who would call that a defect of character. But that is a priest's sermon. And I am very far from becoming a priest.
“So even you have heard. About my—condition.” My voice is sober and quiet. If I am shocked at her knowing this I do not act it; I am full of shock already at her own miraculous survival and have no room to apply any residual amount of that to myself. I look to her wearily, as silver as a sword above me, and linger my gaze at the hollow between her ribs, and that swell—minute, even from below—that softens her form like a scrap of wool caught on a bramble bush. “Yet you outdo me, my queen. Close as I have come to death, I am not yet a ghost.”
I clench my tongue, my smile thin. That is a bold thing to say. I do not wish to offend her. Yet before I can say anything more—either to soften or to further reprimand—a peal of laughter rings out from above the branches of the skeletal tree and my heart leaps inside my chest. It is the vulture.
The vulture speaks. Her words are a prophecy sealed with wax: He will die soon.
If I hadn't wasted all of my energy clambering up this hill, I would have pushed myself up to my hooves before the echo of the vulture's clicking giggle can fade to ringing silence. Yet I remain propped against the tree; I am as skeletal as its winter-bare branches. “How soon?” I cannot hold my voice steady; I glance, stunned, towards the ghost queen and wonder if upon her return to the land of the living, she has brought herself back a demon.
And then she cautions me to leave the demon alone, but it is too late. I have already spoken out of turn, and I have yet to receive an answer. My wing extends warily from my side, as if reaching towards the laughing demon; it closes on air. My jaw settles into rigidity.
“Your companion,” I say slowly. The House of Ieshan is a holy house. The existence of a demon should horrify me much more than a prophecy of my coming death. Yet it is the condition of the dying man to fear his death worse than the healthy man. I have tried to outrun this fear yet when it is spoken of so lovingly—so eagerly awaited—I cannot keep the pain from leaking into my voice. “Will you be the one to see me into death?” I say to the vulture. I do not look at it. My eyes of bruising ink are trained hollowly on Seraphina's blue one. She has yet to turn; I have yet to see her scars.
I know that I will die.
But I do not want to die.
A twist of sadness blooms in between my lungs at the sight. I know that I am thinking far too much of myself to be hurt by this—that in front of me, a fallen prince, Seraphina must still weather herself against the memory of a savage court's savage customs and the words they had seethed at her.
I am used to dismissal. I am used, even, to being loathed.
I am unused entirely to being seen as someone capable of cruelty. So when she looks at me, at the bruises beneath my eyes, at the gouges in my cheeks, I flick my gaze away from her to the dead, frozen grass. I allow her the time to look. I allow her the time to gather herself up again.
There is another brown spider crawling jaggedly up the stem of a decaying, half-crushed leaf. Blinking, I kneel down into the frozen dirt, my cloak billowing in a black circle around me. I do not look at Seraphina, yet when she is standing and I am kneeling it makes for a crooked display of fealty. I both mean it and don't. I am not certain what she expects of me; I am not certain what I expect of her.
I stare long at the shivering spider.
“You're right, but I've barely noticed.” I shift; my brows draw low over my eyes and it is as close to disapproval as I have ever been able to manage around her. I look up to her and my mouth sets in a fine line. I know how ridiculous it sounds from a man dying as he speaks, but I say it anyway. “I don't think,” I murmur, my breath frosting in the bitter cold, “that you have ever paid much attention to your own welfare.”
I am unused to saying such things. Miriam is. Miriam is far better in the art of gentle admonishment than I. When I do it, when one of my siblings breaks a leg or a heart or a doll, my reprimands roll off my tongue like a priest's sermon. It is no wonder they prefer Miriam to I. I do not prefer myself, either.
“I would think that the cold poses far more of a danger to you than to I, Prince Adonai.” The spider has fallen off of the leaf, scuttling away into the undergrowth, and so I have nothing, anymore, to keep me kneeling in the ice-hardened dirt. But I don't get up. I shift slowly to my heels instead, tilting backwards until I feel the tree's scaled trunk join with the ridge of my cloaked spine.
I wish I could say to her, instead of shrugging off a bare chuckle, Even now, you worry about others more than yourself. There are some who would call that a defect of character. But that is a priest's sermon. And I am very far from becoming a priest.
“So even you have heard. About my—condition.” My voice is sober and quiet. If I am shocked at her knowing this I do not act it; I am full of shock already at her own miraculous survival and have no room to apply any residual amount of that to myself. I look to her wearily, as silver as a sword above me, and linger my gaze at the hollow between her ribs, and that swell—minute, even from below—that softens her form like a scrap of wool caught on a bramble bush. “Yet you outdo me, my queen. Close as I have come to death, I am not yet a ghost.”
I clench my tongue, my smile thin. That is a bold thing to say. I do not wish to offend her. Yet before I can say anything more—either to soften or to further reprimand—a peal of laughter rings out from above the branches of the skeletal tree and my heart leaps inside my chest. It is the vulture.
The vulture speaks. Her words are a prophecy sealed with wax: He will die soon.
If I hadn't wasted all of my energy clambering up this hill, I would have pushed myself up to my hooves before the echo of the vulture's clicking giggle can fade to ringing silence. Yet I remain propped against the tree; I am as skeletal as its winter-bare branches. “How soon?” I cannot hold my voice steady; I glance, stunned, towards the ghost queen and wonder if upon her return to the land of the living, she has brought herself back a demon.
And then she cautions me to leave the demon alone, but it is too late. I have already spoken out of turn, and I have yet to receive an answer. My wing extends warily from my side, as if reaching towards the laughing demon; it closes on air. My jaw settles into rigidity.
“Your companion,” I say slowly. The House of Ieshan is a holy house. The existence of a demon should horrify me much more than a prophecy of my coming death. Yet it is the condition of the dying man to fear his death worse than the healthy man. I have tried to outrun this fear yet when it is spoken of so lovingly—so eagerly awaited—I cannot keep the pain from leaking into my voice. “Will you be the one to see me into death?” I say to the vulture. I do not look at it. My eyes of bruising ink are trained hollowly on Seraphina's blue one. She has yet to turn; I have yet to see her scars.
I know that I will die.
But I do not want to die.
BRIGHT SPLASH OF BLOOD ON THE FLOOR. ASTONISHING RED.
(All that brightness inside me?)
(All that brightness inside me?)
♦︎♔♦︎
