pilate.
T
wo things can be true: I understand why Adonai wants him, and I don’t find him attractive.For one, he is far too tall. For desert horses, we, as a family, are built quite small, and I feel degraded even by the thought of kissing someone twice my size. I think it would be humiliating. (I have promised myself I will never let a man look down on me.)
Secondly, he is far too flashy. I couldn’t stand it, having to compete with a partner like that. Perhaps it is cruel, but next to him I think my brother would simply fall out of notice, like he was not carefully crafted of noble, magic sand, but made to blend in to the wallpaper. Now that would be an embarrassment. Our own first prince, cast out of the limelight simply because he was desperate to fuck some kitschy out-of-towner.
Tonight, Adonai has found yet another means of disappointing me.
I am looking right at it. I have been watching him all night.
It is late now, far later than I would be up on any regular day. The usually golden-light of everything Solterran has been bleached out by the black of the night, then dyed over by the sterile silver glow of the moon; every building, every cobblestone, is lined in the colors of ash and metal. It is cold. Quiet. Still. And around me, the estate is empty, empty, empty. All the life has gone out of the desert; all its inhabitants are sleeping soundly in their beds.
There are no guests remaining, though their perfumes still hang heavy in the chilly air, and their hoofsteps are still pressed into the wet grass. Even the servants have finished their cleaning and gone home.
It is just me and him.
I am standing in the courtyard, under the fig tree whose fruits Corradh devoured all those weeks ago. Its leaves cast mottled shadows on the stone at my feet. A bitter wind blows through, howling against the bushes, rattling the locks on the windows; but otherwise the world is silent.
The linen of my cloak flaps loudly in the breeze, and I wind it more tightly around my shoulders. It is not made for winter, not even Solterran winter, but it is something.
It is my something. It makes me feel powerful.
I am standing in the courtyard, under my family's decades-old fig tree, and I watch him draw to a stop in the middle of the street. He looks like a little soldier doll under the towering buildings of my city. He does not look dangerous in this spot. He looks... lonely. He tilts his head back, as if he is searching for something in the stars or the blue velvet of the darkened sky.
And I understand, for the first time, and with only mild disappointment, that he is, in fact, beautiful.
From behind him, I ask softly: "Do you need a place to sleep, Vercingtorix?"
“it does no harm to pretend you love him.
provided you sell him the idea.”
