pilate.
I
f Ruth hadn’t gotten to him first—and to this day I don’t know how she got him, exactly, or why she decided to keep him—I like to think I could have swayed Ishak to my side.Of course, it is just that—a thought. A fantasy. I don’t know anything about Ishak, and certainly not enough to think, with any amount of conviction, that he and I would get along at all. All I know is that he is handsome. Pretty, even. And I am a coveter of pretty things; but more than that, I am a coveter of all the things my siblings have that I don’t, because they exist so rarely.
This is the first time in as long as I can remember that I see the two of them separated. From my spot at the bar, leaning against the marble countertop with excessive languor, I watch my sister disappear around the corner of one of our hallways, and I see too how Ishak's eyes trail her. I am not sure if the fixed intensity of his gaze is a sign of dedication to his post as her guard or dedication of a different kind.
(I hope it is the latter, which is much easier to manipulate.)
The distance between us is not insignificant. He is tall, though, taller than Ruth and all the rest of my family; so I can see his head, as finely wrought as any of the de Clare statues in our hall, over the sea of faces and shoulders that fill our dining room from wall to wall. The light in here is dim, but not dim enough to hide him. The sound of the crowd is a low murmur, rising and falling; but it never rises quite enough to move my attention away from the way he stands, prey-still, in the corner of the room. And when he looks at me—
The bright, pale blue of his eyes is as cutting as ice, a gaze I don't think I've ever met this cleanly before. I grin like a shark.
He comes toward me with undue elegance. I wonder if that's a symptom of his job (if you can even call it that) or something he was born with, the way Hagar was born with her tongue forked, or Andras was born boiling over with rage. Either way, the way he snakes toward me across the length of the room, neatly avoiding more than one stumbling, drink-spilling body, gives me a feeling somewhere been amusement and admiration.
When he draws to a stop, I raise him an empty glass in a mocking kind of toast, and I make sure that the smile plastered across my dark lips looks as innocent as I can make it.
"Ishak," I greet. The sound of my voice makes me realize, quite suddenly, that I'm drunker than I thought; but the slur is slight enough that I might be the only one close enough to myself to notice it. "For who, then? I'll mix it accordingly."
lonely, bored and bad / thank god i'm handsome
