to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
Always a matter of time - and maybe that is true enough. Gods knew there were no rules but the House rules at the Scarab, and those had governed their whole lives.
But August was Denocte-born, and he could never pretend the gambling den was its own world. Not when he knew the docks and markets as well as his own reflection, not when he could greet by name more than half the horses he encountered on his runs (under what circumstances he knew them, well, that was more delicate). After all, they had been here when the tidal wave came, and the circling thunder-birds, and the Night goddess herself, all glimmer and dark shine, to name the unicorn queen.
Be still, he urges his traitorous heart, but August doesn’t know which half he’s talking to.
Maybe he should be glad, he thinks as they study one another. Angavni is dark against the bright display behind her, her hair soft and long as a shroud. She would be a fitting image, for a castle such as this - little lost princess, taught how to be sharp. It is better, he tells himself, to have Raum so near; if he is under their noses, all the better to learn what he is doing.
And yet.
Her eyes drop from his and he expels a breath he didn’t know he was holding, one that spills silver from his lips. He had not expected Senna to say - but to presume that meant Raum didn’t know seemed a rare folly. The new king had made his livelihood gathering information since they were weanling foals, and much of that he had done in Solterra.
“Of course,” he says, as she tells them the story that they already know, the baseline rules of the crooked game they play.
It is not that Raum would be pleased, to know that a girl with a claim to the Solterran throne was alive and well in Denocte. It is that he would see her as a threat.
And the Ghost had always had a talent for eliminating threats.
At the mention of the Weaver he suppresses his own frown, though he flicks an ear in brief discomfort. He likes the strange figure no more than the rest of them do, and trusts him less - but then, his home was a gambling den; he could hardly feign dismay at knowing a few spiders. “Do you reckon he’d do me?” he asks, as she leaps down. “I think I’m outgrowing blond.”
If her brush against his shoulder steadies her, it has the opposite effect on August. It shakes him from his curated calm like an undercutting wave, and though his body reacts by habit - pushing back against her, nipping playfully at her hip as he passes - he is almost surprised he did not shiver, or step away. She is cold from leaning against the ice window, and her touch is the touch of a ghost; it is eerie on the heels of his earlier thought, prophetic as a dream. He doesn’t care for it at all.
The boy sheathes the worry like a blade, and draws instead a crescent-moon grin. He knows she plays these games as often as he does (as often as they all do) - is she as weary of them?
“At least pick a warmer place for sharing them,” he grouses, as though the worst enemy tonight is the cold. Only then does he allow himself to shiver, and it is only half for show - but she is already looking away.
In truth he stores up the troubles she tells him like gold, keeping each until they become in some part his own. After all, it is his job to protect her.
Her next words are careful though the tone remains light, careless as a snowflake kissing cold glass. Now his smile thaws into something more familiar to him, though unease is still a cold fist around his heart. Without a last glance at the eternal pursuit behind him, he falls into step after the unicorn. When he laughs it is the same sound it always is, warm and golden as peat whiskey, a boy without a care in the world.
“I say I’ll take that bet, and buy something nice for myself at the Market. Maybe a scarf, prettier than yours.”
As they fade down the corridor, for the moment more children than ghosts, a single drop of water melts like a tear down the cheek of the suspended mare.
@Aghavni | <3
