andras
i am angry. i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.
A
ndras is smiling but it is more like a snarl than anything else, little more than a feral curling of the lips, a show of teeth. It is not, by any standard, the kind of smile someone should show to a prince, or a noble, or, really, anyone else. When Andras smiles at Adonai it is mirthless, and cold, and hollow.Adonai shrugs, Adonai glances and then looks away-- a gesture the warden is coming to be familiar with, the mark of an Ieshan feigning disinterest.
With equal care, something that is growing in familiarity also, Andras wrenches his jaw shut and speaks through clenched teeth: "What does that mean?" The guard's armor creaks as he inclines his head, just a little. He does not know what they expect-- that Andras will roar? That he will bow? He is sure it is something, anything other than this fixed defiance, the hard line of his jaw, the cruel glint of his lenses.
Pilate never had to tell. He still does not have to. A small part of Andras thinks that anything he could find out--anything at all--would not surprise him. A smaller part knows that it would not make a difference. Still Andras smiles unkindly, as beads of sweat form on his brow, as his jaw starts to ache from the clenching.
The prince shifts with a note of finality, adjusting the lyre on his back with a sickly little twang just before Andras does the same with his wings, setting ruffled feathers back in their places. He is looking over Adonai's shoulder at servants carrying oranges and newly cleaned linen and looking up at them from under dark eyelashes or the brims of their veils. Andras thinks that if there is anything he hates, anything he truly loathes more than anything else, it is the ravenous interest with which this family's staff seem to watch him.
It gives one the feeling that he does not know all he should. He really hasn't told you anything about us, his host says in the back of Andras' mind, followed by his own voice that insists it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, though far quieter each time.
His eyes shift back to the bright, bright blue ones before him. Andras tries to shield what tepid curiosity he feels. Andras is not often successful.
"Your family is very presumptuous." the Warden states stubbornly, looking from the house in the back, to Adonai, to the guard, to the street outside all of it. Even now he is searching for any reason to leave. He is still searching when his body draws him forward and the gate screeches shut at his heels. Andras looks down the long lawn, at the white marble of the front steps, at the columns and the palms and the soft red flowers hung from them, and he feels an ache he hadn't expected.
Longing, he will know later. Much later.
He turns to his host, eyes as dark as his skin before it starts crackling again--and Andras did not get a chance to wonder when it had stopped. "Who are you, then?"
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
