asterion*
How strange it is, to listen to her speak and feel jealous of the injured who experienced her tender and attentive care. Asterion should know better, and oh, he does! - especially after all that has happened in fires and in floods, in monsters and callous gods. How many has he seen suffer, and how many give in? And yet he cannot stop it, this feeling inside him like a river of green and silver, sweet and bitter and most of all wanting.
“They are lucky to have you,” he says, and no matter the sincerity of it it is only a pale shadow to the things he wants to say - that he wishes he were wounded only to have her hands on him, her voice in his ear; that he wishes he could steal her away to Terrastella under the guise of sharing her skills with the healers there. They are not wants a king should voice, belonging not to the people but to the boy he is still, whenever he is around her.
This time when her gaze darts away, shy as a swallow, his does not do the same. Asterion’s eyes on her are intent, brimming with questions that aren’t his right to ask, with wants he cannot ask her to satisfy; he ought to be grateful she is looking away but he is desperate for her to see what he cannot say.
He blows out a breath when she speaks of flattery, frustrated with the both of them at how well they play their demure parts. Even when his chest loosens to hear her say what suitors he still shakes his head, rebuking the way she lowers herself. “My love does not concern itself with home or hearth,” he says before he can stop himself, and cannot regret the admission. Neither can he be grateful when she continues to speak, not when his heart has shown itself, not when it waits for rebuke.
It’s only when she turns the question on him that his expression shifts into something more distant, and his gaze at last looks away - watching the others go about their lives in the warm hall, and seeing them not at all. “I have never thought love is a game. It is a cruel player who sees it so.” When she leans over, when she presses a kiss to his shoulder, the skin there shivers beneath her mouth and his own lips part, though he does not speak - all his words have fled him. Instinctively he turns his face toward her, captures her mouth with his own before she can withdraw. She tastes of all the sweetness of honey and none of the bitter-green of nettle; he would pass on all the teas in Denocte’s harbor in favor of the taste of her.
Ah, but now it is his turn to blush - too rash by far, he is sure, but as he lets her go he swallows the apology that rises so quickly to his tongue.
Neither does he look away, though he should feel abashed - he wants instead to watch her reaction, to watch her golden eyes and the line of her dark mouth, to read there what she will not say.
But before either of them can say anything there is a tap on his shoulder, and Asterion turns half-reluctant and half-relieved to find a Terrastellan page there, looking both mortified and far too interested. At once the bay straightens, reminds himself he is a king, remembers they are in a public hall - oh! what that must have done for her careful reputation.
“Your Majesty,” the boy begins, and Asterion wishes as never before that they might just use his name. “I apologize at the - er - interruption but your presence is requested in the courtyard. A question from her Highness Isra about the festival…” the boy’s eyes travel, curious, over the king and the phoenix-bright woman beside him before casting down, though he cannot so easily hide the beginnings of his smirk.
“Of course,” he says, rising, but his gaze lingers on Moira. “Miss Tonnerre, I -" here he falters, uncertain; I am sorry? - oh, but he is not sorry, not in the least. I love you? Perhaps it is true (perhaps his heart has known it for some time) but he cannot say it here, not with an audience, not when he may have driven her away with his sudden brashness. “Thank you for the tea,” he says instead, and wishes at once he could evaporate like the steam that curls above their cups.
Leaving is the next best thing, and so he follows the page out, their hooves echoing too loudly, his skin flushed hot enough to melt the remainder of the winter snow outside.
Yet he cannot help his smile, which does not fade until well after he has stepped back into the soft storm outside.
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