asterion*
Asterion came to the training yards to remind Theodosia that she needed rest.
He did not miss the way she pushed herself, the way she never answered no to a question despite the shadows like bruises beneath her eyes. The king has learned how sickness can be a black dog that always trails you, keeping to the shadows until it is hungry enough to hunt. He knows, too, how often it is she spars, the pale of her unmissable against the stark colors of autumn.
He is not wrong. Clear across the courtyard is the shape of her, though he can’t tell if it is sweat or lightning she gleams with, here at the end of autumn. The bay is inconspicuous, languid as he leans his shoulder against a fencepost and observes. The day is bright but the air is growing brittle and cool, and for a moment he wonders what it feels like to her, to have her wings spread with the sun on her feathers.
Absent-mindedly he runs the edge of his magic like fingers against the spears and swords and arrows in their wooden racks beside him, testing each tip and each smooth shaft, watching the Halycon train.
He thinks of Isra, missing. He thinks of Seraphina, dead. He thinks of Vespera and the destruction she had led into the gates of the city, all those lives lost for a test they could not pass. He decides then that he cannot tell Theodosia to stop, cannot order her to be careful. What care is there for any of them?
When Asterion steps into the training ring he is empty-handed, but there is a whirlpool beneath his skin and it wants something to drown.
“Do you need a partner, Champion?” he says, and the smile slanting across his mouth then does not belong to a dreamer.
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