—
The unicorn looks up at that sudden swallow.
He has heard that sound before, when those in the court or beneath his command have been met with a fact that they don’t want to face. Martell catches her just in time to see her unnatural eye close in way that is no more natural, and of course it makes him wonder.
If he knew her - if he knew anything about this place, including how to read its language - he might have pressed her for why. Instead, he’s forced to ask for help, and so he only listens, trying to school his expression into, if not disinterest, at least neutrality.
“Luck,” he says, and it is almost a snarl, almost a swear word in the way it slips from his lips. Luck, that fickle goddess who every soldier prayed to and cursed - he should have known, such a thing would save Isra. Some fate, he thinks, had always intervened on her behalf.
Martell looks back to the book, as though now it might show him what it had hidden before; as though all those sharp dark lines might converge into meaning. Of course there is nothing, only a page that is already fading.
For now, he ignores the other part - she found someone willing to die for her - though it stirs something black in his heart. “But that can’t be relied on twice.”
His dark mouth is hooked in a frown; the brow above the thin white stripe, like a reverse shadow of his horn, is furrowed. But it smooths, reluctantly, when he lifts his head toward her again.
“Thank you," he says, even as he resents feeling pinned by that third-eye stare.
@Apolonia
He has heard that sound before, when those in the court or beneath his command have been met with a fact that they don’t want to face. Martell catches her just in time to see her unnatural eye close in way that is no more natural, and of course it makes him wonder.
If he knew her - if he knew anything about this place, including how to read its language - he might have pressed her for why. Instead, he’s forced to ask for help, and so he only listens, trying to school his expression into, if not disinterest, at least neutrality.
“Luck,” he says, and it is almost a snarl, almost a swear word in the way it slips from his lips. Luck, that fickle goddess who every soldier prayed to and cursed - he should have known, such a thing would save Isra. Some fate, he thinks, had always intervened on her behalf.
Martell looks back to the book, as though now it might show him what it had hidden before; as though all those sharp dark lines might converge into meaning. Of course there is nothing, only a page that is already fading.
For now, he ignores the other part - she found someone willing to die for her - though it stirs something black in his heart. “But that can’t be relied on twice.”
His dark mouth is hooked in a frown; the brow above the thin white stripe, like a reverse shadow of his horn, is furrowed. But it smooths, reluctantly, when he lifts his head toward her again.
“Thank you," he says, even as he resents feeling pinned by that third-eye stare.
@
