asterion,
Her letter frightens him more than any diagnosis that Atreus could give (though what he had given had been brief, the both of them sharing a look that said this can’t be it. Scrapes about her neck, bruises on her shoulders and legs, salt crusting her skin. Nothing more she’d show him).
There were small reassurances: if I were capable of saying sorry, and don’t you dare hold it against me. That is the Marisol he’s familiar with, the one he trusts with his life, even the times they look at one another with deep wounds in their eyes. Two souls made up of similar stuff, working toward the same goals in entirely different ways.
What else, then, will his Commander tell him? What more to be known? It is this he asks himself as he makes his way down the sun-dappled, spring-warmed streets to the barracks. The king carries with him an ancient book, leather worn to gleaming, pages unevenly cut and the bright-dark-bright of virgin bark. He tries not to feel foolish walking into an aerie of warriors bearing such a volume, and mostly fails.
It doesn’t matter much - they ignore him anyway, busy as the bees out in the prairie. A few cadets cast their eyes to him, and all that meet him bow as he passes, but it is clear they are about some other business. The hive is feverish with activity, a livewire of nerves he doesn’t know enough to decipher. But the day is cool and clear, and it smells like spring (like blooming) even over the hay and oats and rich smell of churned-up earth from the sparring fields. He fills his lungs with all of this, and steps into the Commander’s quarters, bracing for - what?
He doesn’t know what he expected, seeing her. It isn’t this; she looks whole and hale, if a little frayed, but when has she ever been relaxed? Their watch hasn’t ended, it seems, since he took the throne for Florentine. Even he is past the point of hoping that will change.
Asterion is grateful for what small mercies fall his way. But his eyes are still cautious, soft as evening darkness against her gaze of slate, and he does not drop them even when he nods. “Commander Marisol,” he greets, unwilling to drop either part of what has been her name for years - they are both too vital to lose. Something about saying them settles his heart, just a little, enough to loosen his mouth into a smile that’s almost sheepish when he passes her the book. “I brought you something.”
The title, sparse of flourish but bold and dark, reads Hymns of Gloaming: The Poetry of Vespera’s Creation. It came from the small, private library that passed into the hands of each sovereign, and as he gives it to her he looks away and thinks the infinite meadows of heaven. “You’ll have to tell me whether it’s any good. I have no ear for poetry.” (He has learned that there are many ways to tell someone you love them. This way, neither of them need be embarrassed.)
But both of them know why he came, and he straightens as he turns his gaze back to her, the warrior who also bleeds the black ink of poems. His smile has passed, his brow is furrowed like a field of clouds, but he thinks of the scar she gave him, a silvery thread along his side, and decides there is nothing worse they can give each other than that brief glimpse of death.
“First,” he says with the steadiness of a king and the softness of a friend, “tell me all you can of what happened that day. After, you can fill me in on this…Prudence…and what it means for us.”
king of dusk.
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