You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way,
and the only way, it does not exist.
and the only way, it does not exist.
I
ra does not remain alone for long. The first of the other Sovereign’s to appear belongs to Dusk. He knows this only because of her gender; and Ira smiles a shifting smile in response to her calm demeanor, the way she measures him politely with her eyes, like light on water. “Indeed, Lady Elena; and you?” Even in the asking, Ira knows the answer; of course she had. The letter, although ambiguous, carried an aura of authority he recognized as belong to—Not royalty, though that word rises first to his mind. No, Ira thinks. They do not belong to royalty these Sovereigns. They belong to something much heavier.
“I am glad to change that,” Ira answers. “Perhaps after this summit, I might visit your Court? I have never been much to Terrastella.” That same smile—light, flashing on water. Smooth, serene—gone so quickly it seems as if, perhaps, it were a sleight of hand.
Ira might have spent more time on the matter, if the other Sovereigns did not arrive so quickly after; first Andras, with an incredibly curt greeting. Ira says nothing; but he flashes his teeth, mirthful and wolflike. In that moment, Ira recollects the old wives’ tale; red skies at night, sailors' delight. Red skies in morning, sailors' take warning.
Dawn—serene, knowledgeable, soft-spoken. Or, more accurately, were they the coming of the storm? Ira’s own thoughts take on a fantastical enormity; perhaps he finds himself wearied by his father’s recollections of political strife.
(Or, perhaps, he remembers what it had been like to hear his mother collapse heavily on the ground, or the way her blood pooled out as opaque as a lake as he hid entangled in her dresses and silks. He had watched the pool widen and grow; and then stagnate; and all along he thought of how he could not step out of the closet, he could not check on her, because to do so he would have to step foot in that lake of blood. Yes, perhaps Ira remembers exactly what political strife can bring; that it begins with words and ends in flesh).
Then: Adonai. The arrival of Solterra’s chosen Sovereign and crowned prince breaks Ira from his reminiscing he will not admit to, even to himself. Even as the memory fills his mind’s eye it vanishes, forgotten, folded conveniently into a story that belongs to someone else, surely.
(To someone who reminds him, again and again, to be weary of power).
It strikes Ira how much they compliment one another; how they act as strange foils. Adonai and Elena, golden and soft. He and Andras, black with white splashed upon them like wounds.
Ira does not smile now, as Adonai introduces himself and compliments Andras’ coat. Ira does not smile now, as the clearing grows quiet and the gods above them ever austere. Ira does not smile now, as it occurs to him all those gathered know one another in some manner whereas he is the stranger, unknown.
A weakness, and a strength.
He steps forward from beneath Caligo’s shadow, breaking the silence. “It seems,” Ira begins. “We’ve been summoned here for some reason or another. My letter certainly didn’t have a seal on it that I recognized; did any of yours?” His eyes flit, briefly, from one Sovereign to the next. He adds, with a rather expressionless tone: “There seems to have been many strange coincidences regarding our collective shifts in power.”
He has been an avid reader since becoming Sovereign; not a careless man, he has sent a number of spies and informants to report back going-ons of the surrounding Courts. Orestes had abandoned Solterra some time ago; after far too long a lapse of time, Adonai had been chosen by the God himself, after the previous Delumine Sovereign made a grab for the Solterran throne and then vanished. Then there were the rather democratic demonstrations in Delumine and Denocte; meanwhile, Marisol had experienced an “accident” of some sort, instructing Elena to take the throne. Everywhere in Novus power vacuums opened and demanded to be filled.
“Unsettling, if you ask me." Ira adds with a laugh that is a thorn in the throat of true joy. And yet; for the mysteries that surround them, there are few explanations, and Ira wonders if any of them had less than noble intentions. Or, if perhaps, appearances were true for once.
