If he knew, if he knew he was unmaking her - oh, Asterion would tell her to harden her heart.
There is nothing he can give to her; he was only made to drown and recede. That is what Novus has taught him: that his love is not a thing that stays. Since the day his twin left him, warned him never to come near her again, he has been afraid that all he loves in the world will eventually tell him the same.
As, each in their own way, so many of them have.
In his heart, his secret heart, Asterion wants to be claimed. He wants to be told you are mine, and I will not let you go. That is what first drew him to her, this huntress, with her vivid eyes and the glint of her teeth. He has always courted danger - he has always wanted it to court him back. Always it has turned down the dreamer-prince; the monsters always thought him too soft for their tastes.
But he does not feel soft anymore.
Her breath is the warmest thing, here in the mountains where the air is thin and ice coats the stunted trees like a veil. He wants to curl into it like a cat in the sun; his muzzle moves toward hers, a ghost of a touch. “Since I first learned to follow the stars. It took me so long to learn this world’s constellations…” When he blinks, it is another world’s darkness he sees, and another world’s stars. In the country of his birth, in Ravos, he’d always thought they pointed him true. It wasn’t until Novus that he accepted they shone the same for everyone.
It feels strange to have the sunlight sear his eyes when she whispers his name - her voice is made for shadowed places, holy quiet. They should be beneath a cathedral of trees in a forest with moss a dark drapery over the boughs and sunlight pooling like the blood of an offering. They should be back among the mangroves with the sea a hushed murmur beyond them and the moonlight slicking the leaves.
Yet here is enough. When her words falter, a rough smile curves his dark mouth; he sighs when her lips find his cheek. Her heartbeat is a rhythm he could sing to, the ribbons she wears a caress. When his own heart begins to quicken and he thinks of Moira, golden-eyed Moira, he pushes the thoughts away. And when the thing within him, the strange, dark thing, wants to peel back his lips from his teeth and taste Euryale and the rush of her blood so near the surface of her skin - he tries to push those wants away, too.
Oh, he would pray to only be himself here, himself unburdened, if only he knew who to pray to.
This can’t be real, she says, and his mind echoes the same - but Asterion says nothing. He feels the warmth of her, flush against him; the memory of her lips leaving patterns on his skin, the bite of the cold, the roil of the clouds beyond the cliffside. It is all real, real and vivid, and if he flung them both from the mountainside that would be real, too-
When she speaks he is drawn back from these dark imaginings, and grateful for it, even as the chasm within him yawns wider, darker, hungrier. But maybe Asterion is learning at last to pretend, because he laughs as the snowflakes melt on their skin, and the wind tousles their hair and shudders her thin veils of blue like flags of victory or surrender.
“I always wanted to be a knight. To be good, and noble, and brave.” His words form clouds of vapor and he watches, unfeeling, as they dissipate. Then he smiles at her, darkly, and lips the crest of her neck as her breath tickles the hair of his throat. “But now I think I’d prefer to be the magician. Snow in the mountains in winter is not so strange. But I could show you magic…” Around them, the wind begins a wordless moan.
There is nothing he can give to her; he was only made to drown and recede. That is what Novus has taught him: that his love is not a thing that stays. Since the day his twin left him, warned him never to come near her again, he has been afraid that all he loves in the world will eventually tell him the same.
As, each in their own way, so many of them have.
In his heart, his secret heart, Asterion wants to be claimed. He wants to be told you are mine, and I will not let you go. That is what first drew him to her, this huntress, with her vivid eyes and the glint of her teeth. He has always courted danger - he has always wanted it to court him back. Always it has turned down the dreamer-prince; the monsters always thought him too soft for their tastes.
But he does not feel soft anymore.
Her breath is the warmest thing, here in the mountains where the air is thin and ice coats the stunted trees like a veil. He wants to curl into it like a cat in the sun; his muzzle moves toward hers, a ghost of a touch. “Since I first learned to follow the stars. It took me so long to learn this world’s constellations…” When he blinks, it is another world’s darkness he sees, and another world’s stars. In the country of his birth, in Ravos, he’d always thought they pointed him true. It wasn’t until Novus that he accepted they shone the same for everyone.
It feels strange to have the sunlight sear his eyes when she whispers his name - her voice is made for shadowed places, holy quiet. They should be beneath a cathedral of trees in a forest with moss a dark drapery over the boughs and sunlight pooling like the blood of an offering. They should be back among the mangroves with the sea a hushed murmur beyond them and the moonlight slicking the leaves.
Yet here is enough. When her words falter, a rough smile curves his dark mouth; he sighs when her lips find his cheek. Her heartbeat is a rhythm he could sing to, the ribbons she wears a caress. When his own heart begins to quicken and he thinks of Moira, golden-eyed Moira, he pushes the thoughts away. And when the thing within him, the strange, dark thing, wants to peel back his lips from his teeth and taste Euryale and the rush of her blood so near the surface of her skin - he tries to push those wants away, too.
Oh, he would pray to only be himself here, himself unburdened, if only he knew who to pray to.
This can’t be real, she says, and his mind echoes the same - but Asterion says nothing. He feels the warmth of her, flush against him; the memory of her lips leaving patterns on his skin, the bite of the cold, the roil of the clouds beyond the cliffside. It is all real, real and vivid, and if he flung them both from the mountainside that would be real, too-
When she speaks he is drawn back from these dark imaginings, and grateful for it, even as the chasm within him yawns wider, darker, hungrier. But maybe Asterion is learning at last to pretend, because he laughs as the snowflakes melt on their skin, and the wind tousles their hair and shudders her thin veils of blue like flags of victory or surrender.
“I always wanted to be a knight. To be good, and noble, and brave.” His words form clouds of vapor and he watches, unfeeling, as they dissipate. Then he smiles at her, darkly, and lips the crest of her neck as her breath tickles the hair of his throat. “But now I think I’d prefer to be the magician. Snow in the mountains in winter is not so strange. But I could show you magic…” Around them, the wind begins a wordless moan.
The sea has many voices,
many gods and many voices
many gods and many voices
