for @ofwrxth, elysia arantes. peritia of the day court. palace of light.
the chapel’s high, arching doors sighed open for him at a mere nudge, humming with the heat of the afternoon. ancient though they were, their brass still gleamed as if newly-cast and the latticework, an elaborate motif of a sundial, bore no rust. as a boy, he had marvelled at the palace’s undying splendour —— too green to understand that the price of beauty without time was exacted, not on skyscraping spires or ceiling frescoes, but upon the head of every child bred beneath the finery. and so it was that he had been a boy of ten when he first chanced upon these doors : they had not parted for him then, still fettered as tightly to his father’s whim as he had been. and so it was, too, that tyrian had brought a small, quavering hand to the sun-warmed brass and shattered every ward that the late high lord had seared into the bones of the palace across three centuries.
there was always a price.
the chamber was by no means cavernous. its modesty and practicality had pleased him then, when he had sought a sanctuary without serrated edges, and it soothed him now. shadows bruised the nooks that light could not touch —— he indulged, briefly, the sweetest yearning to take shelter in the shade before turning to face the pulpit. the platform had been hewn nearly a millennium ago, but the cedar still shone as if it had been lacquered yesterday. his footfalls were muffled by a scroll of carpet that ran the length of the chamber and at the end of his approach, tyrian halted before the basin by the altar. tipping his face down, he marked the herbs that saturated it —— dittany, foxglove, and comfrey —— before bathing his hands in the water. as he dried them on a cloth, he marked also her draughts, the distinctive manner in which they were stoppered and labelled, and how the priestess had writ herself into the space with admirable surety.
“ lady arantes. ” his voice felt strange in his mouth, like a piece of a puzzle that had been dislodged and could no longer find its place. “ pardon me for the absence : it was not my intention to sequester myself, but i fear the lack of inhibition that took charge of me when my powers fled. ” the frankness was no new courtesy between them ; tyrian had offered her tutelage with this exact brand of candour when she had yet to don her circlet and he, the mantle of high lord. “ your efforts under the mountain were venerable —— for that you have my gratitude. ”
a faint tension settled on his brow, and it was some time before he spoke again. “ i’m afraid it is imperative that we locate the cauldron first. before even the dawn court. ”
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