[P] oath

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

Few know Solterra’s king has a daughter. Or if they were told, they have now chalked it down to myth. Never has Solterra’s sovereign spoken of a child and never has one visited.
 
Until now.
 
She stands beyond the wall, silent as she is scoured by the mocking laughter of ignorant guards. Their laughter crashes like waves through the citadel, churning off each wall and rising, rising like floodwater. It reaches the throne room and a king that muses in the now shattered silence.
 
The laughter ebbs, as all floods do. It recedes as if they have been silenced, as if someone dares to challenge them. Their voices are now the murmurs of stagnant waters, a fetid stench and Raum moves silently toward an arched window.
 
Down and down his gaze falls, down to the citadel steps to where his guards goad and drive back the source of their laughter. There is nothing in the depths of his blue eyes, there are no lines nor shadows upon his face to whisper of a king’s thoughts, or to betray his inner thoughts. He counts how many guards he should dismiss, he observes their idiocy, he wonders how much more blood will stain the dust bowl of Solterra before the sun kisses the earth in sleep. He wonders and he remains as stone, unmoved, uncaring, untouchable. Until the guards shift. Until sunlight spills like fire down a horn of glass and across a slim, small frame.
 
That girl, or her mother, might be the only ones who would ever be able to see the spark within his gaze, the flare of eyes widening. The door behind the guards opens, its groan is stifled but enough to stop the guards’ laughter. From within he steps, out, out into the sunshine away from the citadel that still echoes with his descent. That still cries with the smashing of a vase, dropped by a startled servant he brushed by.
 
He leaves it all behind him. He dismisses the guards as he steps in front them and into the black bleakness of his child’s stare. When was the last time he has stood here, before her, held in this blue gaze so similar to his own? When did she grow up? She stands, slim and tall and bold and haunted.  Every inch of her is them.  Sabine is the sun and the moon, the slimness of Rhoswen, the slimness of him. Always have they been slim, eating away at each other’s joy, loving each other too terribly, too horrifically, too wrongly.
 
“Sabi,” He hums and his voice is dust and mercury. Midnight barely clings to the silver of him, he is drowned in sun, in everything Rhoswen is and oh it is eating him alive. Then, there is a smile upon lips that have so readily forgotten how to curve like they do. It is a Crow’s smile: the smile of a father bequeathing his daughter a dagger in Denocte’s markets. It is the smile of a father consoling his daughter as she aches over her mother’s distant nature. But in all the spaces his lips have forgotten how to smile, is a smile of a dictator king with blood on his skin and corpses at his feet.
 
“Come in my Sparrow.” He calls to his child, the girl bold enough to fly away, escaping the harsh, barren seasons of her parents’ relationship. He guides her in, up step after step, spiraling higher and higher to the ample stretch of a throne room gilded in gold.
 
Only there does he turn back to his daughter, her presence like salvation and joy. Raum’s lips reach to press a fleeting kiss to her temple. “I have missed you. What brings you here? Are you well?”

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@Sabine Iamnotready .... Iamsosoready