saudade

[Avdotya]

You're a survivor,

it's written in blood across your lips

---

The pause between them seems to linger; it sits there heavy and cold, forcing the silence to grow so loud that Avdotya can hear even the softest rustle of fur from her bearskin in the biting winter winds. She knows his answer before he can say it, but that is only a shred of what she has come seeking. Who are you, Orestes? She wonders. Is he a Zolin, selfish and hungry for power? Is he Seraphina, righteous and dutiful? Or maybe he is the pale crow, Raum, driven only by a potent need to bury a nation under the hand of its own king. Again, the viper wonders: who are you?  What mark will he leave on Solterra when his reign is all but gone.

A wry smile half-crooks itself upon her frosted lips when he asks her of the crown, why it was never hers when had once laid before her for the taking. The Davke manages a chuckle. ”Because I would never bleed for a people I do not care about.” There was not a single drop of blood coursing through her veins that was worth using for the sake of the Day Court or its citizens. No, Avdotya has only ever existed for her tribe, for her wild desert family decimated by a failed and unruly monarchy... to wear that crown atop her head would be to spit on the bones of all those Davke lost to it.

She steps closer to Orestes, her gaze unwavering as it traces every detail of his golden face. He looks every bit of the role he's taken up and it leaves a sour taste on her tongue. ”Solterra was not meant to be ruled by kings and queens and their pretty gold pieces,” she adds, her sharp desert accent as deep and bold as ever, ”it is a feral thing, a beast that cannot be tamed by your politics. There is a reason every bearer of that crown finds themselves dead.” Avdotya remembers Zolin and the way his throat spilled so beautifully upon the marble floor, how his cowardly, gurgling voice still begged for mercy while he lay dying. She bears her title as a kingslayer with particular pride - and there is little that holds her back from earning it a second time.

But this was no moment to slay. Jahin still remains in this man’s company as his regent, and for what reason she truly does not comprehend. It is that which drives her to seek more detail, more information. What is it about this foreign king that drove her own Davke to throw his loyalty to the wind and abandon them? Once more, Avdotya begins to wonder, but this time she questions whether Jahin was ever truly loyal to her at all.

@orestes

THE DESERT VIPER

I | C