scream when captured, arch your back
let this whole town hear your knuckles crack
The feeling–the one that came to him in Solterra, the nameless one somewhere between dread and desire and desperate, desperate joy–had not left. let this whole town hear your knuckles crack
At first it was painful, like being pinched, or something intercostal cramping in time with the beat of his heart. Andras rises with the morning sun and Oriens follows him into town with the voices of birds or the fog burning away from his path or the crack of his magic as it arcs off his spine, or his heels.
Day in, and day out, Andras rises, and walks, and sits, and walks again back to the library until it has become monotonous enough that he can find the raised edge of each path with his eyes closed, until he can make out the shape of each knotted trunk through the red of his eyelids. Day in, and day out, Andras pours himself through the door in a rush of black feathers and lightning and tucks himself away with a book about plants, or beetles, or the chronological history of jewelry made by Denocte artisans–
–and still the feeling does not leave. Rather it haunts him like some sun-soaked desert ghost with eyes like orange, molten steel and a wreath made of snakes. Andras sets his jaw and closes his eyes and throws the book across the room.
Eventually, the pain gives way. The sameness of each day becomes less of a comfort and more of a strain. One morning he wakes with the sun and it falls on his face and Andras thinks of skin like the earth, half-obscured by an impossibly green philodendron and he is not run through with ice but instead the pinch is just pressure, warm and smooth.
There it is again. That silence, as his magic drains into his chest–but just for a second, before it roars back to life.
–
The guard at the gate looks at Andras with thinly veiled contempt, as if just by being employed by the rich and the powerful makes him more than the Warden. Andras meets his gaze with something level and bitter– if it is veiled at all it is only with gossamer.
(This is not the first time he’s come back to Solterra, or at least looped through the sky over its shoulders, always holding his breath, always knowing it’s as easy as tipping his wings and he’d be there, in the heart of the city, where he can see the estate as he steps through the Sun Court’s doors.
But flying is easy, and falling–plummeting, even, into whatever cold water awaits him–is not.)
Andras picks through his thoughts while he waits, a knot of contrition and grief and the words to express them, though they’re never the right words, or in the right order. All the dread-need-joy drips into the rage-hurt-impatience until it is a messy blend of both. Andras stops to think that if hell is real it is literally every time he’s stood at this wrought-iron gate with his heart in his hands.
He thinks someday the warmth in him might be comfortable, thinks it might not feel so much like he’s choking to death, but that won’t be today.
A shape comes toward him, sliding down the front steps like a ghost, and Andras thinks he might look familiar but can’t quite place how. For a moment–a long one–they stare at each other, black on almost-white, and then the man speaks: If you’re looking for my brother–
He sees it now. The straight, long nose. The unholy patience. It’s endearing until it isn’t.
Andras’ mouth twitches. He clenches his jaw. What should have been relief–because it isn’t Pilate, and he is spared a few seconds of complete panic, and there is still so, so much time to run like the coward he’s finding he is–is just anger. The sort of anger that licks at his heels and plays light off the rim of his glasses.
The sort that’s more comfortable than whatever else is in him.
“What do you want?” he barks, eloquent as ever.
andras demyan
they made you into a weapon
and told you to find peace.
