here, in the faerie wood, between sea and sea, I have heard the song of a faerie bird in a tree.
E
very one of her father’s letters is sealed with golden wax. The face of the envelope is left blank, its only embellishment the flakes of real gold embedded into the grain of the thick, creamy paper.
Aghavni has not received one for months.
So when she walks into her father’s office that morning and sees the envelope of gold-flecked paper stamped with golden wax, reflecting bits of sun like glass, she snatches it up and tears it open like it were a divine summons.
She skims the swirling calligraphy eagerly, unaware of the sun that has risen in her own expression. The letter reads like all of his letters do: a few lines of greetings (“I hope you have been well, little dove.”), a few lines of regret (“Urgent matters keep me from visiting the Scarab this season like I had intended.”) and a paragraph of new tasks to complete. Escort a visiting noble, investigate caravan disappearances, sever ties with this or that establishment.
She likes this part the least. She always skims it quickly, impatient for her father’s parting sentences (the only part of the letter he remembers to tell her a bit about himself) so she almost misses it — one swirling line, indistinguishable from the rest.
Her lips ghost over it, and come to a frigid, breathless halt.
She reads over the words again and again, carefully and then faster and faster, until they tangle together into a flavorless, meaningless mass. Writhing snakes on her tongue.
“The new king of Solterra will be visiting a week from when you receive this letter.”
Aghavni wants to think — wishes desperately to think — that her father is wrong. That he has made a mistake. But her father is never wrong. He rarely makes mistakes, and she does not think this is one of those times.
Her father has sealed their fates with the dip of a hawk-feather quill and the cooling of golden wax.
Raum is coming.
She folds the letter into thirds and slips it back into its gold-pressed envelope. Slides it gently beneath a porcelain vase filled with fresh roses, dew still dripping from the thorns like blood.
Her face, when Aghavni gazes into the gilded mirror hung like a portrait above the desk, is bloodless.
— ♠︎ —
She goes the entirety of the day and half of the night without mentioning the letter and its damning sentence to anyone.
She suspects that Charon already knows. The advisor is fond of reminding Aghavni twice a day — once during breakfast and once again after dinner — that he knows everything there is to know about anything that matters.
And this, certainly, matters.
She finds herself staring up at August’s door without remembering how she had gotten there. Perhaps her wandering hooves had wanted to hammer the final nail into the coffin that had been building, plank by plank, around her since dawn.
She considers for a moment, of what she would lose, and knocks on his door before she can consider too long.
When he answers the door, leaning against the doorframe like a tomcat basking in noonday sun, Aghavni blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.
“Will you come with me to see the ice castle?” Her voice ends in a flat dropping of breath, making her question sound less like a question and more like a poorly-strung command.
She resists the urge to scowl, even when it tugs at her mouth like puppet strings.
Before he can answer, she looks away from his quicksilver eyes (ones she'd thought, when she'd first met him, too pretty for a boy to wield) and adds “You can refuse. It is not an order.”
@August | "speaks" | notes: two birds with one stone ;D
the great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
It is a day like any other.
August is early to rise, beating the dawn-light out onto the streets of Denocte. He slips outside the walls and breaks into a gallop, a slip of sunshine come early to the fields that sleep beneath their blanket of snow. Few others are up at this hour; he passes by deer moving softly as they browse in the woodland, and owls winging home after a night of hunting, and he sees the first light touch the turrets of the ice castle, setting them ablaze. the By the time he is done the sun is nearly up, the sky is blush pink, and there is a sheen of sweat upon his cool golden skin.
The rest of the city is rising, now, too, and the gulls are crying out over the marketplace as he winds up the cobblestones back to the Scarab. It will be a cold, bright midwinter day; already the air is nipping at his ears and his nose and August is not sorry to arrive back at the club and draw himself a bath.
The hours stretch into their comfortable routine, familiar as his running-stride. It is too early for the tables, but there are other matters of keeping house; the golden boy checks in with Charon, with Vik, with Minya. He even sees Manon (a rarer thing, as she can move like a shadow when she wants) when he takes lunch in the private kitchen. It is only Aghavni he doesn’t see, but this isn’t uncommon - their real work does not begin until after the sun is gone again. Not that time is an easy thing to measure, in the Scarab; in the deep heart of it, there are no windows, and the hour always seems to hover around midnight.
But it is far earlier than that when he goes back to his room to ready himself for the evening. Tonight he braids his hair back to show the elegant curve of his neck and brushes his coat until it gleams in the candlelight. He never used to be vain, not until his job in part depended upon his appearance - but now (though he would admit it to no one) it’s become another of his little rituals, a piece of order to his day. Routine, paradoxically, made him feel more ready for chaos. And chaos was always only a breath away at the Scarab.
The knock does not come as a surprise. Neither, when he does ease open the door, does the sight of Aghavni. She is beautiful, as always, and seems just a little harried, which is not unusual - but there is something else, some shadow in her eyes as he searches them.
What she says by way of greeting is a surprise, though the only way he shows it is by blinking.
But he recovers quickly (he always does, for he must) and at last straightens. “Well, in that case-” and the line of his mouth quirks into a grin, soft dimples pressed into golden cheeks. “I thought nobody would ask.” With a nod, he gestures for the unicorn to lead the way - as much an excuse to watch her as anything. If her non-greeting hadn’t been enough of a sign, the rare, tense set of her shoulders is - something, he knows, is troubling her. And theirs is not a life that makes them strangers to stress; whatever it is, it isn’t small.
For now he will play along. He’s still smiling as they wind through narrow corridors, through patrons and serving-girls, until they spill like embers into the cold night. Only then does he draw alongside her, near enough to share warmth, near enough that he almost reaches over to touch her shoulder. Almost.
“I can’t remember the last time you took an evening off for festivities,” he says mildly, but his voice belies the way each of his senses is trained on her, searching for a sign of what is wrong.
from somewhere beyond the clouds, I heard the Goddess laugh.
“I
thought nobody would ask.” His reply catches Aghavni by surprise — a difficult feat to accomplish. Though August has always managed it better than most.
She looks up at him, only to realize her mistake when the boy’s smile makes her stomach flip over itself like the tailor’s scruffy little dog did whenever he begged her deploringly for treats. Her only solace lies in the fact that her particular affliction has not yet learned to spread from her stomach to the muscles of her face.
“Am I the first?” Aghavni’s voice carries true, as she trusts it to do, though it crests with genuine curiosity. Do you really only go to fetch the bread every morning, August? she wonders, incredulous. Times like these are when she laments not having Minya’s talent for reading boys like books.
Still, she is just a bit pleased at his words. She almost relishes that she is the first one brave enough to ask, until she reels herself back, indignant, because when has she ever been afraid? Her head tilts as she regains her bearings. “I’d thought you more popular than that.”
It is easy, too easy, to pretend that nothing is wrong when she jests with him like this. The arms of habit are welcoming, and she allows herself to sink into them, just for a moment, before she pulls herself away.
She spins neatly on her heels and makes for the end of the hall, expecting that he will follow. The staff dash about the rooms, readying themselves for the night, and guilt gnaws quietly at her as she slips past them and pulls spike after spike from her tightly-knotted mane. There is no need for her hair to be bound if she is not working the Floor, and anyways, the gold pins do not feel half as lovely as they look.
- ♦︎ -
The winter wind is laden with the promise of frost. She shivers, but it is only partly due to the cold. Tonight is a night of full moon, and her city of stars has turned into something entirely other. Sounds carry too easily. Shadows stretch too eerily. And despite living half of her life in the Scarab’s own whispering dark, Aghavni’s heartbeat thump thump thumps in her chest when she realizes just how much she does not recognize it; this shadow city.
She draws closer to August’s familiar golden shoulder, a beacon in the gloom, and masks her unease with silence. Her father’s letter has sucked her wits dry like a leech.
“I can’t remember the last time you took an evening off for festivities.” Aghavni startles at the proximity of his voice. How long have they been walking? How far are they from the castle? She knows it sits on the banks of the Vitreus, but she has only been to the mirror lake once before, and that had been a long time ago.
“I can’t… either,” she says, frowning as she tries to remember. “It’s getting harder to step away. With Father gone so often.” The admission falls from her tongue unadorned by her usual caution. She has never felt the need to keep her facade of polished self-assurance around August. He saw right through her every time, unfailingly. (Sometimes — she wished that he didn’t.)
Which is why, when she sees the castle of ice shimmering from beyond the trees, Aghavni does not bother to hide her astonishment.
Her eyes widen as they scrutinize every inch of the impossible creation through the dense foliage, then through the willow fronds, until at last it looms, mirage-like, in front of them. A castle of ice. She had not believed the rumors, not really. But now — she forgets why she ever doubted them.
She forgets the letter, folded into thirds, slid under a vase, on her father’s long-empty desk. She forgets the Solterran king's impending visit. She forgets even the Scarab, because here, under the silver moon, everything not carved of ice (or kissed with gold) evaporates like her steaming breath.
She turns to August, studies how the moonlight bleaches him silver — into a frost king, she thinks, remembering her childhood stories — and laughs. Sol's laugh. “Am I asleep? Is this a dream?” But before she allows him time to answer, she adds with a toss of her hair: “But if it is, don’t tell me. I don’t wish to wake so soon.”
the great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
“Shocking, isn’t it?” At the mention of his popularity, August turns his expression into one of wounded pride, complete with a long-suffering sigh. “Nobody seems to think I can tolerate the cold.”
It’s not until she turns away that his silver-eyed gaze goes keen again, watching her free her hair from each gleaming golden pin. Wearing them she looked like a warrior, like a princess, elegant control with a sharp reminder of danger. Without them, with her hair pale as summer wheat in a cascade down her neck, she became a girl.
Well, she is a girl, he reminds himself, as she tucks the final slender, sharp pin away. She is all those things. But August, who prides himself on remembering everything, chides himself now for forgetting, and for the way his heart skips a beat as the last of her golden locks comes tumbling free.
Summer-boy he is, August has always seen the beauty in everything (and everyone). Of course Aghavni is no different.
Outside he breathes deeply, a bracing pull of winter air that dispels his earlier comment and shocks his brain and mind into wakefulness. It is not his favorite season, but it does make the nightly bonfires all the warmer, their smoke the richer, and the stars through that hazy blanket are bright and sharp as pin-pricks. Everything is clear and the moonlight gilds the city in pale silver. Where she is uneasy - not that he can tell - August feels alive.
But he does not forget her disquiet, and nods when she answers. “He’s always trusted you,” he says, but there is a crease between his brows as he continues. “But I’m sure he’s…busy…lately.” An understatement, given the situation in Solterra (and how torn August is, over that - he will never forget watching his mother slain, never forget the cruel desert sun slashing through the bars of a prison-wagon, never forget how the desert country was nearly his jail). If he were Senna…
Well. That was a dangerous game to play.
He is grateful for the distraction of the castle. It is so easy, in Denocte, to tire of wonders - the dragons, the graceful castle itself, the bonfires and markets and the breathing sea - but this reminds him that there is magic in the world, that he is lucky to witness it. Like her he only stands, breathing great plumes of silver, drinking in each turret and window. August doesn’t turn to his companion until she laughs, and when he does it’s with a laugh of his own, a sound of joy and wonder, a bell that hasn’t often been rung since he was a boy.
“I won’t pinch you, if you do the same for me.” Wonder has turned her back into a girl, too, and he feels for a moment like they are fairy-tale children, like tonight is a story just for them. And like Aghavni he doesn’t want to remember the tense set of her shoulders, the worry she couldn’t hide. August only wants to explore this quiet miracle.
“Come on,” he says, and bumps his shoulder against hers. “My lady’s castle awaits.” And with a grin and a flick of his tail against her side he steps away, heading for the wide archway to pass into a setting from a dream, all gilded by the full moon.
her collarbones like wings spread from the base of her throat to the ends of her shoulders. a bird held down by skin.
“N
obody seems to think I can tolerate the cold.”
“Because you can’t, can you?” she had said to him with a snort, back when they’d still been within the blissful warmth of the Scarab. Now, her limbs clattering with cold, Aghavni curses herself for neglecting to fetch her cloak in her haste. Her silk scarf hangs over her shoulders like clammy snakeskin, but it’s better than nothing, and - well, August, with his summer-soft coat and tightly braided mane, has nothing.
She has half a mind to rip her scarf off and pass it to him, but she is too miserably cold to consider doing him the kindness for very long. Perhaps the ice castle will have a heater. Or perhaps he can just loosen his copious amounts of hair. He keeps it neater than I do, she thinks, flicking her gaze to his braids.
“He’s always trusted you. But I’m sure he’s…busy…lately.”
The scratching of claws on cobblestone echoes through the narrow, serpentine streets as they pass the mouth of an alley, and though Aghavni tells herself the noise is from nothing more threatening than a sewer rat, she stiffens before her good sense can set in.
“As he always is.” Her sigh fogs the air with a dreamlike haze. The day her father runs out of ambitions to chase -
That will be a day, indeed.
Aghavni is altogether too glad for the beauty, and distraction, of the ice castle. Just until midnight, she tells herself as she stands transfixed in its flickering shadow. She will allow herself until midnight, like the princesses in her fairy books (that sit on a raised shelf in her room, collecting dust and centuries).
Time tick, tick, ticks away.
“Come on. My lady’s castle awaits.”
Smiling, she swishes her long, golden curls in what she hopes to be a royal air. She had not been among nobility for long enough to be sure, though the thought troubles her little - noble manners can always be taught, when it came time for her to learn it.
“What a grand castle that awaits me,” she remarks, trailing closely behind August as he steps under the glittering arch.
And then they are inside, and Aghavni doubts no longer if she is dreaming; her dreams are not capable of conjuring scenes of such ethereal magnificence. The Solterran castle had been beautiful in a severe, ostentatious way. With its sculpted domes and Midas touched interior, her uncle’s taste for the extravagant was infused into every gold-plated mirror and ruby encrusted cutlery she remembered.
Like preening peacocks, the nobility had been. And a dragon’s glittering lair they had entombed themselves in.
But the ice castle - Aghavni has never realized before that beauty wore another face. The face of a snow queen, pale and regal and...
Forlorn.
Her gaze trails up and up, until they settle upon the looming windows inset with panes of swirling color. Like tapestries, she thinks, when she realizes that the swirls form shapes, and the shapes form stories. Wordlessly, she studies the fables immortalized in ice.
In one of them, a black mare and a golden stallion circle each other like the sun chasing the moon. The stallion’s muzzle stretches towards the mare’s ink-black tail, but never quite reaches. The mare’s hoof lifts towards the stallion’s flame-touched back, but never quite touches. Quietly, Aghavni stretches her nose out towards the panes, and shivers when it rests against ice. Her eyes flutter closed.
What use is there in waiting? It is not yet midnight, but she is not a princess in a fairytale. She is not even a princess, not anymore. She opens her eyes and stills her breath.
“I received a letter today. It was from my father.” August is somewhere behind her, or besides her, she doesn’t look to make certain. Her gaze remains fixed on the black mare’s ice chip eyes. “He hasn't written for a long time, so I expected for there to be more tasks to complete than normal. Trades to settle, caravans to account for. Visitors important enough to escort. Nothing out of the ordinary. Until -” Her voice breaks as she chokes out a soft laugh.
“Raum is coming. The king of Solterra.” The word she doesn't say dangles like a noose between them. The blood king. The blood king. When she speaks again, her voice seems made of snow.
“He arrives in a week’s time. And in my father’s place, I am to go and greet him.”
the great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
She had teased him - because you can’t, can you? - and he had nipped at her playfully, and let himself shiver for effect, and they had gone on.
But the truth is that August believes he can tolerate anything, if the end result is worth it. Exhaustion - simple; he runs and trains with sword and bow until his limbs tremble and his lungs are aflame every other day. Cold - fine; it is not so difficult, to take his mind away, to think not of the numbness of his limbs but the wonder of his court in snowy glory, and the way it made the scents and sounds all the sharper. Pain - well, pain is difficult, another mind-trick, but not so different from the cold.
He loves to better himself, to force himself up to his breaking point and beyond. This is how he knows that he is alive, that he is strong.
What he can’t tolerate is such cruelty enacted on others.
Perhaps they are strange and sorry thoughts to have on such a night as this, on their way to a castle better than any from a fairy-tale - but August thinks that if this is a story, then their land is under a curse. Too much tragedy, too much darkness, so much uncertainty building on the horizon like a punishing storm. When there comes the rustle of tiny clawed feet the golden boy does not note it, but for a twist of his ear, a quick cut of his eyes. A rat or a dragon, both harmless; he is thinking now of Senna, and anything that creeps the streets of Denocte in search of a meal after dark is a pale fear in comparison.
Neither of them speak until they reach the castle, but her father’s presence hangs between them like a ghost, deadening the air, making the night colder. It only dispels at the sight of the pale archway that glitters like diamonds beneath the full moon.
They are still only playing pretend (just like children, he thinks, and is glad that Senna is not there to see them) but as the unicorn steps forward into that strange magnificence August pauses behind her, his gaze tracing each cold and lovely surface. What strikes him most, what lays its hands around his heart and holds, is how much detail and care has gone in to something so temporary. That is perhaps the greatest wonder of all, though it tastes like sorrow on his tongue.
When his silver gaze drops it is to find Aghavni, touching her nose to that temporary and lonely perfection. The sight stills him like nothing else has yet; she belongs here, in this place holy and strange, and he is almost glad when she breaks the moment for surely he never would have.
August waits behind her, and the chilly cathedral they stand in makes him feel like he is holding his breath even as it spills from him in steady silver plumes. Here it is, he thinks, the reason for her uncommon tension, and even so it is not until she laughs, and speaks the king’s name, that August feels truly cold for the first time. He is not sure how he will thaw.
But still his expression is stoic, until a half-grin creases his cheek, though it is formed of the same stuff as her laugh. “I didn’t think the Scarab would reach treason so soon,” he says idly to her back, to the stallion and mare that pursue one another like an ouroboros.
How easy it might be, to kill Raum within the dark and lush walls of the Scarab. August thinks of the sword in his rooms, the fine hilt encrusted with barnacles and sharp bits of coral, the way the blade curves like a question and gleams like an eager eye.
If that is what Senna wanted, then he would say so. August shuts down the thought with all the will of his mind, like closing a door - but the want of it lives on his his heart, in the dark.
“Does he know who you are?” This question, too, is languid, all the gold splendor of a lion lounging on the veldt. Only someone who knows him utterly would hear the worry in it.
like the moon pulled the tide and the tide pulled the sand
“I
didn’t think the Scarab would reach treason so soon.”
Aghavni’s lips made the shape of a smirk, only to drop back into a non-committal hum when she realized the effect was utterly unconvincing. “Ah. Well, it was always a matter of time.”
Truly, she was surprised it had taken this long. The Scarab had never pretended to be something it was not, and Aghavni had always thought its uncompromising morals (or lack of them) indicative of a lesser appreciated brand of honor.
Better a wolf who sharpened its teeth in public than one who hid under the skin of a lamb.
She turned her back to the stained-ice window and leaned against it, wincing when the ice touched her skin. Silent, she studied August as he studied her, reading the lines of tension he concealed so well. His eyes were twin moons in the castle’s ghostly light, and it made him look like something other. Unmoored. Untouchable.
She caught glimpses of this August, this unknowable August, more and more often now, and she could not stop her heart from clenching each time. Aghavni had known — she had always known — that one day he would leave (promising to return, perhaps, but she would stake no hope in it) and she would bade him off with a crooked smile and a good-natured curtsy.
Such was their fate. As immortalized in time as the ice tapestry’s night-black mare and the day-bright stallion. Her path would always be one of shadow, and August was a boy who drank from the sun.
“Does he know who you are?”
Aghavni cast her eyes downwards, tracing the patterns of crisscrossing prints in the snow carpet. “No. Father would not tell him.” But even as her mouth remained set in a cool frown, her voice turned crisp at the end. Stiffened with a note of uncertainty.
She tried to tell herself that her doubt was completely unfounded. Father would never tell anyone he did not trust his longest kept secret — least of all Raum. The king who would not bat an eye at sending cutthroats, possibly even himself, after a looming threat to his already precarious sovereignty: a direct heir to the Solterran throne.
Father had hid her away in Denocte, paid the right people to change the right records, erected memorials for a dead wife and then a not-so-dead daughter — he had done all of that to keep her continued existence a living secret. He would not throw it all away to please an orphan-born king. Sentimentality aside, Senna was just not that type of man.
But then why is the king coming to the Scarab? She could not understand. The letter had left things purposefully obscure, which frustrated her to no end. Her father still didn’t trust her — or believe in her, she couldn’t decide which was worse — with his plans, because he knew he didn’t have to. She would obey him utterly, because he was her father.
And who else do you have left? crooned a black voice in her heart.
“And in any case,” Aghavni said, banishing the treacherous voice back to nonexistence, “I am not Sol anymore. Sol was killed by rebellion-sent cutthroats two years ago. That is what all the records say. That is what Solterra knows.” Her voice was a flat monotone as she recited her death with the detachment of one reading it off the pages of a history book.
“We don’t even look alike. The Weaver made sure of that,” she muttered, wrinkling her nose when her thoughts turned to the Weaver. No matter how many times she visited him — she could never get used to the way he looked at her.
Without warning, Aghavni hopped nimbly from her perch and bumped her shoulder with August's, striding past him with a valiant smile. Normally the sharp-eyed girl was never the one to initiate touch, but she thought she could allow herself the indulgence tonight.
“Now that I have told you that, I suddenly feel much lighter. I hope you are not tired of hearing my troubles, August, because from now on they will only become more prevalent,” she chirped.
This was the game that Scarab-raised children played. Acting like they were perfectly alright, at least on the outside, because none of them knew how to be that on the inside.
Before Aghavni continued down the hall, eager to turn the next corner, to step back into a world of ice queens and glacial beauty, she paused, her face turned away. “I think we are overdue for a spar. Live steel, and this time I shall beat you. What do you say?”
Seraphina's death was a warning to them all. If Raum meant to be a menace, she would at least take a pretty blue eye with her to give to the reaper when he came for them both.
@August | "speaks" | notes: I'm terrible at closers so if I need to throw up another post to make it official I will, but this feels like a good stopping point! <3
the great object of life is sensation - to feel that we exist, even though in pain
♠︎ ♕ ♠︎
Always a matter of time - and maybe that is true enough. Gods knew there were no rules but the House rules at the Scarab, and those had governed their whole lives.
But August was Denocte-born, and he could never pretend the gambling den was its own world. Not when he knew the docks and markets as well as his own reflection, not when he could greet by name more than half the horses he encountered on his runs (under what circumstances he knew them, well, that was more delicate). After all, they had been here when the tidal wave came, and the circling thunder-birds, and the Night goddess herself, all glimmer and dark shine, to name the unicorn queen.
Be still, he urges his traitorous heart, but August doesn’t know which half he’s talking to.
Maybe he should be glad, he thinks as they study one another. Angavni is dark against the bright display behind her, her hair soft and long as a shroud. She would be a fitting image, for a castle such as this - little lost princess, taught how to be sharp. It is better, he tells himself, to have Raum so near; if he is under their noses, all the better to learn what he is doing.
And yet.
Her eyes drop from his and he expels a breath he didn’t know he was holding, one that spills silver from his lips. He had not expected Senna to say - but to presume that meant Raum didn’t know seemed a rare folly. The new king had made his livelihood gathering information since they were weanling foals, and much of that he had done in Solterra.
“Of course,” he says, as she tells them the story that they already know, the baseline rules of the crooked game they play.
It is not that Raum would be pleased, to know that a girl with a claim to the Solterran throne was alive and well in Denocte. It is that he would see her as a threat.
And the Ghost had always had a talent for eliminating threats.
At the mention of the Weaver he suppresses his own frown, though he flicks an ear in brief discomfort. He likes the strange figure no more than the rest of them do, and trusts him less - but then, his home was a gambling den; he could hardly feign dismay at knowing a few spiders. “Do you reckon he’d do me?” he asks, as she leaps down. “I think I’m outgrowing blond.”
If her brush against his shoulder steadies her, it has the opposite effect on August. It shakes him from his curated calm like an undercutting wave, and though his body reacts by habit - pushing back against her, nipping playfully at her hip as he passes - he is almost surprised he did not shiver, or step away. She is cold from leaning against the ice window, and her touch is the touch of a ghost; it is eerie on the heels of his earlier thought, prophetic as a dream. He doesn’t care for it at all.
The boy sheathes the worry like a blade, and draws instead a crescent-moon grin. He knows she plays these games as often as he does (as often as they all do) - is she as weary of them?
“At least pick a warmer place for sharing them,” he grouses, as though the worst enemy tonight is the cold. Only then does he allow himself to shiver, and it is only half for show - but she is already looking away.
In truth he stores up the troubles she tells him like gold, keeping each until they become in some part his own. After all, it is his job to protect her.
Her next words are careful though the tone remains light, careless as a snowflake kissing cold glass. Now his smile thaws into something more familiar to him, though unease is still a cold fist around his heart. Without a last glance at the eternal pursuit behind him, he falls into step after the unicorn. When he laughs it is the same sound it always is, warm and golden as peat whiskey, a boy without a care in the world.
“I say I’ll take that bet, and buy something nice for myself at the Market. Maybe a scarf, prettier than yours.”
As they fade down the corridor, for the moment more children than ghosts, a single drop of water melts like a tear down the cheek of the suspended mare.
like the moon pulled the tide and the tide pulled the sand
“D
o you reckon he’d do me?”
Aghavni's eyes widened in confusion. Perhaps August really was growing too confident in his ability to charm (she knew very few people who could resist that golden-boy smile and bronze physique) - but she had never pegged him as the type to set his sights so... high. The Weaver? Was the Weaver even interested in -
“I think I’m outgrowing blond.” Ah. So that’s what he meant. Aghavni choked down her bewilderment - thanking the gods her loosened hair was long enough to cover her face - before snorting blithely at his jest. “Blonde is always in season.” It was, after all, the Weaver’s favorite hair color.
And unlike hers, August’s was natural. “And besides, you can’t be a golden boy without golden boy looks.”
She squinted her eyes in a petulant glare when he nipped at her hip; yet even her much touted sharpness of observation failed to catch the flicker of unease dampening his smile. She strode down the corridor unperturbed, lost to the echoing clicks of their hooves on ice.
She was glad that August was here. Perhaps there’d come a day where she could say it to his face, but for now it was wiser for her to be the sole bearer of such thoughts.
When she was younger and still confined to the Hajakhan summer estate, a canary in a golden cage, Aghavni used to imagine herself as queen. What type of court would she hold? What dresses would she wear? What dances would she attend? But above all, what she had mulled over most was how to become a queen that would never have need of anyone, because she was needed by everyone.
Her lips formed a rueful smile. That childish fantasy had disintegrated when Father had taken her to the Scarab, and she'd met Charon, and August, and Vikander, and so many others. When loneliness ceased to plague you, it was terrifying how quickly you grew used to its absence. How much you wished never to know it again.
“At least pick a warmer place for sharing them.” Her lips curved into a pleased grin when August indulged her in her game of turning bitter truths into candy-sweet lies.
Tragedy was not a look that Aghavni wore well.
She could not command it to harden into diamonds like Minya. She could not persuade it to melt into gold like August. She was not a commander and she was not a persuader - she was a liar.
There were the good liars - everyone was a good liar, if they did it often enough - and then there were liars like her. What differentiated the two was not an increase in skill, or usage, or even circumstance: it was simply this.
Liars like her could not live without their lies. To them, their lies were not just intricately spun webs with threads of deceit and mischief - they were their entire worlds.
And Aghavni - with emerald eyes that should have been grey, flaxen hair that should have been black, a blood anointed throne that should have been hers - could not live without her lies. So she was glad, so very glad, when August said:
“I say I’ll take that bet, and buy something nice for myself at the Market. Maybe a scarf, prettier than yours.”
She laughed, as bright as a lark. “Remember the scarf you could have had when I dangle mine over your pretty head as I win.”
Her voice echoed off the crystalline walls. Humming, Aghavni dragged her emerald gaze up and up and up. Until her hair hung in a white curtain over her back, the curve of her exposed throat bobbing up and down as she swallowed.
What she would give for this peace to last.
@August | "speaks" | notes: I lied I couldn't resist adding another post! this one feels more like a closer anyways <3