If there was more she wanted from him, things he disappointed her by - ah, he should have told her. Then, he would have been eager to listen. Then, he was always ready to change, quick to think himself wrong and vow to do better.
He is not that man, that dreaming boy, any longer. Just as she is not a young priestess, sigil-painted beneath a bower of autumn branches.
Her questions have teeth and claws, smooth and sharp as the jagged, flawless rows of glass that reflect the pair of them in a thousand shatter mirrors and, behind that, the unbroken sea. The once-king is still calm, cool as the winter air, and yet below the surface the dark waters are gathering. Out in the water, each lap of waves sounds like a questions, too. Do you? Do you? Do you?
“You wouldn’t be the first not to. As for shame - well, yours was not the only promise I broke.” Around them, in the reflections of the glass, little flares of light grow - her sigils, blinking awake like fireflies, a hundred patterns whose meaning he doesn’t know. But Asterion isn’t watching these; his eyes are still on Leto, dark as the water beyond them, save for the glow of her magic, the pearly light of distant stars burned upon her skin. “Yes. Be angry.” That is easier, he does not say. Better than disappointment, better than regret.
He is glad to be consumed by flames of wrath. Better, even now, than drowning.
Once, he might have parted from her; might have put distance between them, so that even their dozens of reflections stood apart, with starlight between them. Now, his posture doesn’t even stuffed as she comes near; now he leans a little toward her, as though hungry for her touch, and leans his cheek against her own. As she speaks he breathes softly, quietly, and watches his own reflection; there is no trace of the relief he feels, to hear her say you were never meant to save me.
How could he argue with prophecy, with belief?
There is salt and brine about her, and her skin is cold despite the star-fire emblems that blaze across it. She smells of the sea, of the parts of it he’s never seen; he wonders if he could control the tides in her the way he could draw a wave up over their heads now. His wisdom warns him to step back - that she is a predator now. And that black thing in inside him that wraps around his heart wants her to close her teeth around him, so he might bite her back.
“I always thought it was a gift,” he says, to break these thoughts, these midnight, new-moon wants. Now he does curve his neck away, and step delicately beyond her reach (so she is beyond his own). His voice is genuinely curious; there is a new hunger in the words, an older one that whatever sickness has seized him. “That’s how you see it too, then?” It’s almost longing, the way his voice drops, and his gaze strays to the sea, and he asks, “What is it it like - beneath?”
He is not that man, that dreaming boy, any longer. Just as she is not a young priestess, sigil-painted beneath a bower of autumn branches.
Her questions have teeth and claws, smooth and sharp as the jagged, flawless rows of glass that reflect the pair of them in a thousand shatter mirrors and, behind that, the unbroken sea. The once-king is still calm, cool as the winter air, and yet below the surface the dark waters are gathering. Out in the water, each lap of waves sounds like a questions, too. Do you? Do you? Do you?
“You wouldn’t be the first not to. As for shame - well, yours was not the only promise I broke.” Around them, in the reflections of the glass, little flares of light grow - her sigils, blinking awake like fireflies, a hundred patterns whose meaning he doesn’t know. But Asterion isn’t watching these; his eyes are still on Leto, dark as the water beyond them, save for the glow of her magic, the pearly light of distant stars burned upon her skin. “Yes. Be angry.” That is easier, he does not say. Better than disappointment, better than regret.
He is glad to be consumed by flames of wrath. Better, even now, than drowning.
Once, he might have parted from her; might have put distance between them, so that even their dozens of reflections stood apart, with starlight between them. Now, his posture doesn’t even stuffed as she comes near; now he leans a little toward her, as though hungry for her touch, and leans his cheek against her own. As she speaks he breathes softly, quietly, and watches his own reflection; there is no trace of the relief he feels, to hear her say you were never meant to save me.
How could he argue with prophecy, with belief?
There is salt and brine about her, and her skin is cold despite the star-fire emblems that blaze across it. She smells of the sea, of the parts of it he’s never seen; he wonders if he could control the tides in her the way he could draw a wave up over their heads now. His wisdom warns him to step back - that she is a predator now. And that black thing in inside him that wraps around his heart wants her to close her teeth around him, so he might bite her back.
“I always thought it was a gift,” he says, to break these thoughts, these midnight, new-moon wants. Now he does curve his neck away, and step delicately beyond her reach (so she is beyond his own). His voice is genuinely curious; there is a new hunger in the words, an older one that whatever sickness has seized him. “That’s how you see it too, then?” It’s almost longing, the way his voice drops, and his gaze strays to the sea, and he asks, “What is it it like - beneath?”
In the ocean washing off
my name from your throat;
my name from your throat;
