It is a curious thing that their words should push them worlds apart, where in truth there was so much common ground between them. Florentine was a creature conceived by a dragon of fire and king of ice. She was made in a room of gilded gold and lavish shadows. Silken drapes had billowed across a dragon’s golden scales and born patterns of spiraling ice. So when Isorath wraps himself in ice, his demeanour turning cold, cold, cold, Florentine does not even shiver within his gaze.
Their amethyst eyes, each one imbued with the purple of a sunset, collide and rub. They scold with fire and they burn with cold. There is a dragon somewhere close and for once it is not Florentine’s mother.
She does not tell him of Lysander as an excuse for her delay. Her apology, present only in words, was truly anything but. If Isorath took it so, then that is the first way the Regent had failed to understand his queen. Her apology was a mere vessel, empty of sincerity for it was the information it carried that was important.
But, maybe it was important only to her and Dusk’s healers for: I knew where you were, Lady Florentine, I assure you. he says with a neutrality and a shrug that pierces her with its indifference. Did he not care for his people? As Regent, should he not have also be seeking them out and offering what help he could?
“And you did not think to come and give your aid to your compatriot? Where is your compassion?” Incredulity reaches every part of her like lightning and sets her nerves ablaze. The flower girl is lit, she glows bright and fierce and beneath her shock, her wrath, her grief, the throne room falls away to nothing.
This hurt from his indifference and her wild anger, was not about Lysander, no matter her complex heart, this was about her people. Her reaction would have been the same were it Isorath or any other attacked by another court.
He thinks he is the only one to witness a dragon’s fire melt flesh from bone and reduce bodies to ashes. He thinks he is the only one to hear the whimper of a blood soaked land as it falls into shocked silence as the last warrior fell. Isorath knows she is unschooled in the ways of politics, but he does not know that her death upon a battlefield is a scar forever emblazoned upon her timeless soul. She knows war and she knows death.
The silence he allows stretches on and on and on. She does not make a move to end it. She feels its weight, indeed like a god’s breath upon her skin. She lets him speak, as he once had, but where he was filled only with a cold calculation, so Florentine remains wild and earthen. This girl is a forest deep, deep with mysteries and secrets not even she dare know.
“Then I fear for Denocte.” She says at last. Florentine may be young, but she had seen what drew a Court together to fight in war. If there had not been a bond between them all – a bond forged of affection and even love – then they would never have stood together. “Loyalty is born of emotion, Isorath. How can it not be? You cannot be loyal to something if you do not have feelings towards it. I love my people with my whole heart, it is what keeps me loyal to them. Without that connection, what else would keep me loyal to them? But without any emotion, through keeping my feelings so apart from me, then what is to keep me with these people? There is nothing. A position of power is one that requires decisions of the mind and heart. You can make rational decisions with your mind, Isorath, but the heart will always keep you true to the needs of your people. It will always keep you grounded in the love of and for your people and striving for their betterment. The heart will always love what it loves. You cannot stop it muddying the personal with the political. If you ask me, it is part of what makes it an asset.”
She pauses, her eyes drifting to the window, to gaze at the sunset and a dragon’s shadow that darkens the window for a beat. She looks back to the boy of gold and white.
He moves on, accusations of hidden kisses pouring from his lips and her head tilts. Through petals and twined gold Florentine watches him with a steady gaze, “Where did you find such information?” She asks him slowly. “If you seek to accuse me of kissing Lysander, Isorath, you are very much misinformed.” She takes a breath. “It seems we are all equal parts innocent and guilty.”
The kirin continues on, with artic words designed to cut like blades. She lets him stand tall, but she weathers him, like rock, like a tree that has seen hundreds of years and all the storms they bring. There is nothing grand or lavish about the flower-girl-queen. Not like this boy, who could be forged from the golden diadem he throws at her feet.
“What you fail to have understood, Isorath, is the reason why I have removed you as my Regent… It is not because I am jealous that you have fallen in love with Reichenbach and he with you. It hurts, of course it does. It is because you have given Terrastella a weakness. It is the fact that you were meeting and flirting with your queen’s lover at a public event for Terrastella. You were talking like lovers and because of that you put Terrastella at risk. If you were an enemy looking for a weakness in an enemy court, would you not chose the one where there seems to be a scandal? Would it not appear that there is a weakness and breakdown in relationships between the Dusk Regime when the Queen’s Regent seems to spend more time with her lover than the queen does? Does that not make the Queen look weak in the eyes of others? By making her look weak, you made our Court look weak. You jeopardized the very Court you claim to have loyalty to. What is more, when I talk of loyalty to me, I do not expect it to be of love, but driven by enough caring to want the best for Terrastella through me, and you failed there, Isorath. You are right. This is not about matters of the heart but politics and you have been shortsighted.”
She pauses to take breath, to hear the groan of the citadel’s tiles where his dragon lands like a fierce, warding gargoyle atop a cathedral. Her eyes close, golden lashes snagging upon her fringe. When Flora’s eyes open they are tired and wounded. The crown, the invisible thing upon her skull, weighed more heavily than it ever had. Oh if only she could cast it away like he had his diadem. “Whilst I disagree that matters of the heart can ever be truly removed from political decisions – for we are all fallible after all - if you had only come and told me about you and Reichenbach, then things might have been so different. But instead you both chose to meet together secretly and you asked your prying questions the night of my coronation. You say you do not wish to leave Terrastella, Isorath, yet you are choosing to run straight to the court of your lover. You have made your decision, but I would be careful, for it seems to me, you are letting your heart drive you there.”
The ringing the fallen diadem makes is a melody in the throne room, a song to end an episode.
A new age will be formed here, Florentine knows this, but her eyes lift up to her old Regent. “Good luck keeping your personal affairs separate from Court life, Isorath. I wish you the best, I truly do.”
As the kirin leaves, she wonders. If he truly sought to keep his personal affairs separate from his political ones, then could he ever truly be with Reichenbach?
@Isorath - I just wanted to give her a chance to clarify why she did what she did and answer him. <3 Also, she never actually kissed Lysander. She lipped at his muzzle and mouth the way horses do when they are being playful and affectionate. Her thoughts lingered on the gesture because she is starting to have feelings for Lysander beyond that of a friend, but it was never intended to be a kiss. I have also clarified that with Spaced :) <3 <3
★ She is clothed with strength and dignity,
and she laughs without fear of the future ★
