King.
If he was ever alone in the peace above the storm, the sacred quiet of the mountain, it was not for long. Asterion turns at the word that sounds to him like a rap against armor. His dark eyes travel up the length of the sword, from tip to fur-wrapped hilt, and to the woman who holds it. There had been displeasure in his expression when he heard the voice, and then surprise as he found the speaker, and now a smile blooms on his dark mouth.
“Lady Euryale,” he replies, low. When she draws near he makes no move save to broaden his stance, to feel the sunlight (thin though it is) warm his weary muscles. It is a pleasure to watch her, he thinks - the steadiness of her gaze, the motion of her ribbons a current around her. The line the sword draws in the snow. He wants to ask her why she’s brought it here, what she hunts. He wants to ask her if she’s used it to kill, the way he’s always wondered about her teeth. Who are you really? she’s asked him once, and now, as he has many times, he wonders the same of her.
She is the brightest thing in this faraway world, and his gaze leaves her only briefly, to glance across the clouds as though he could see through the storm to the ocean at the horizon. “But nearer the stars,” he says, still smiling, though the smile is heavy, slow. If there are stars in him now, they are in eclipse.
What he does not say is that the sea is always in him now, murmuring, ebbing, churning. His blood obeys the same tides, his mind is a whirlpool.
But Asterion does not want to think about these things, or the sea. Not when the softness of her brushes against his shoulder. Not when her breath warms him better than the sun. The caress of her ribbons raises a shiver to his skin and he drinks in the color of her, vivid as a venomous snake, a warning he doesn’t intend to heed. He wants to reach for her in turn, an impulse unlike him. At last the sword falls still, and the woman too; they are close enough he can see bits of ice in her lashes, hear the whisper of her veils.
He wants to touch her, to share her warmth, to forget the bite of the wind and the howl of the gale and the feeling of being alone. (And the thing within him, it wants to touch too - to take.
At her question he meets her eyes, bright tourmaline in the bone white of her face. There is another world behind his own gaze - a sick place, a holy place, where dying and creation are the same.
“I am free.”
The wind picks up, scattering snowflakes around them like diamonds, or magic. And the once-king reaches for her at last.
If he was ever alone in the peace above the storm, the sacred quiet of the mountain, it was not for long. Asterion turns at the word that sounds to him like a rap against armor. His dark eyes travel up the length of the sword, from tip to fur-wrapped hilt, and to the woman who holds it. There had been displeasure in his expression when he heard the voice, and then surprise as he found the speaker, and now a smile blooms on his dark mouth.
“Lady Euryale,” he replies, low. When she draws near he makes no move save to broaden his stance, to feel the sunlight (thin though it is) warm his weary muscles. It is a pleasure to watch her, he thinks - the steadiness of her gaze, the motion of her ribbons a current around her. The line the sword draws in the snow. He wants to ask her why she’s brought it here, what she hunts. He wants to ask her if she’s used it to kill, the way he’s always wondered about her teeth. Who are you really? she’s asked him once, and now, as he has many times, he wonders the same of her.
She is the brightest thing in this faraway world, and his gaze leaves her only briefly, to glance across the clouds as though he could see through the storm to the ocean at the horizon. “But nearer the stars,” he says, still smiling, though the smile is heavy, slow. If there are stars in him now, they are in eclipse.
What he does not say is that the sea is always in him now, murmuring, ebbing, churning. His blood obeys the same tides, his mind is a whirlpool.
But Asterion does not want to think about these things, or the sea. Not when the softness of her brushes against his shoulder. Not when her breath warms him better than the sun. The caress of her ribbons raises a shiver to his skin and he drinks in the color of her, vivid as a venomous snake, a warning he doesn’t intend to heed. He wants to reach for her in turn, an impulse unlike him. At last the sword falls still, and the woman too; they are close enough he can see bits of ice in her lashes, hear the whisper of her veils.
He wants to touch her, to share her warmth, to forget the bite of the wind and the howl of the gale and the feeling of being alone. (And the thing within him, it wants to touch too - to take.
At her question he meets her eyes, bright tourmaline in the bone white of her face. There is another world behind his own gaze - a sick place, a holy place, where dying and creation are the same.
“I am free.”
The wind picks up, scattering snowflakes around them like diamonds, or magic. And the once-king reaches for her at last.
The sea has many voices,
many gods and many voices
many gods and many voices
