I
n every shout, every cheer, every flare of light that rises up at their backs, Ipomoea feels a piece of himself be settled. In every dance, and ritual, and whispered dream spoken over the flames he feels a bit of hope that his Court — his people — will go on. There is a home here between the bonfires, with its song and its colors layer down layers and layers of heat across their spines like promises. There is a life here that had not been here two years ago. There is a liveliness singing again that they had all but forgotten the notes of.
And he’s there in the wild places of their hearts with them, their king who feels less and less each day like a king. And he is trying, trying, trying still to be that king for them when he lifts his head alongside their’s to the smoke drawing patterns through the sky. Like his soul still moves to all the same beats as their’s, like he is not the beast the desert has tried to turn him into (but sometimes, he thinks it succeeded all along and he just doesn’t know it yet.)
Ipomoea knows it’s dangerous, to walk among them and tell himself this is all he wants. He knows it is a terrible thing, to pretend he does not hear that call that echoes to him when he is alone in the forest, that whispers to him when he is awake at night.
He knows it is slowly eating away at all the still-soft parts of him, the parts that would belong here if only he knew how to save them.
Later he might come back to this moment on the beach and think he should have told her something, anything else. Later he might look at the way Denocte flourishes under a new queen and feel one less piece of himself being pulled away from Delumine. And the space it leaves will only create room for those other parts of him to pull harder, and harder, and harder until —
Later, he will give in (and he will wonder how he was not stronger, how it had not been enough to be their king.) But now he only looks at Morrighan, and he smiles to see the determination that is creeping across her face, so much like that which he once felt. “I will be here when you do. If you need me, I am here for you. You do not have to be alone in this.” Not like I was, he does not say, not like I am.
The waves are still stripping away the lies, the fabricated pieces of him, but this, this he still has. This he will give her, even if it is because a part of him knows that if she did not step up to meet the sickness of her court, there would have been nothing stopping him from doing it instead.
Around them the night is closing in, and the shouts behind them is still settling that frayed piece of his soul that has been slowly coming apart over the years. “Of course,” he says, and tries not to think of the way his voice still sounds like a tree collapsing in the winter frost than a wildflower breaking through the melting snow. And still he looks at her like the immortal, young god who he is becoming, the one who has only now discovered the new current of his soul bleeding through the holes he has carved into his own heart.
He tucks his shoulder into her’s as they turn to head along the beach. “There is a story about our Courts I would like to tell you, if you would hear it.”
And that is how they go into the night together, like two friends leaving their monsters behind them to replace them with a new story.
an endless garden
