[AW] the whole world or nothing

[Hagar]

HAGAR IESHAN

i am angry.
i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.

I

meet a man at the festival. He has long, black hair and a coat the color of dark chocolate, blotched here and there with fingers of white that look like cracks in a window. He tells me he is some form of noble, a distant relative of the Azhades, come to town for the party. Of course, no one would recognize him. Of course, he does not need to introduce me. He seems to struggle for a way to elaborate.

“Because I already know them.” I finish for him, smiling politely, doe-eyes and bright.

“Because you know them,” he agrees, and buys me a drink.

A man who likes the way I smile, my hair falling in straight red curtains– not quite as bright as Miriam’s nor quite as wild, but red all the same, but, I think, just as beautiful. (If not more so, I will add, later, when I have the time to stand at my vanity and stare myself straight in the cold, thin face.)

I touch his shoulder. I lean my cheek on his neck and feel the thick, still muscles beneath. This man is not a socialite, he is a soldier, and I can tell by the way he looks down at me with the ghost of a smile, a private one that he tries to keep me from seeing, that he feels like he has played some great trick on me.

“To be underestimated,” my mother once told me, as we sat in the courtyard on a stone bench, shaded by the serrated leaves of our plum tree, “is a gift. Especially for you.” She had looked at me strangely, then, as if she was privy to some secret, and, as always, one she wouldn’t tell. A week or so earlier I had convinced the cook to give me not one but two pieces of cake before dinner, though she had been strictly told not to do so. A few days before that, Pilate almost dropped his lesson books and his quill where he stood until I was caught with my mouth to his ear.

She had known, I know now, what I could do. But Lady Keturah knew the value of secrets, and had instructed me well in their keeping, and so as long as I never said a word to my siblings, or my father, or the servants or strangers that came to my door, she never spoke of it herself.

It is a well-curated art by the time I step through the door with this man, curling the ends of his mane around an invisible finger and looking appropriately stupefied, which men seem to like, and slightly apprehensive of the dimly-lit series of open rooms full of tables that lead out to a space in the back. The apprehension is not as much of an act as I wish that it was.

The yard is dark, some patches of thick, dry desert grass turned silver by the light of the moon, and the dirt–not sand, just dirt–an inky sort of blue-black as we step onto it. My date greets someone on the other side of what looks like a ring, where they’re hauling someone just as dark as the ground to their feet. I am busy looking bored, and feeling annoyed, when I see him.

He is laughing. Somehow I am both surprised to see Corradh here and not surprised at all. I am only surprised because to find him anywhere is such a rare treat, these days. He is so busy running away from the stress of a comfortable life.

Once they have escorted him out of the ring and he is still laughing, nose bloodied and ears ringing, I’m sure, I cross the room toward him. My date follows, until he sees that I am walking toward another man–brother or not. Part of me can’t blame him. We do not exactly look like siblings.

“Corradh,” I say, “what are you doing?” I feel the man’s eyes on my back. I lean forward to wipe my brother’s nose with the silk of my robe. The eyes turn away.

“Is it fun?”

@corradh