Musings in the World of Tyria

[tyrian-musings]

Selfish Secrets

Salt. Sweat. The last reminders of terror dreams and the bite of bitterness. The fabric clings, sticky as he stumbles free of the sheets, his gaze blearily drifting across dark skin. The choking pressure at the back of his mouth is driving, beckoning him deeper into his quarters, fingers crooked. Fingers down his throat.

Slender, mangled hands brace against the counter, breath sharp and uneven. Seaside air is cool on bare flesh, drifting across nerves still alight from sleep. The mirror glitters glassy, his reflection dull against the memory of who he is to the world. Flecks of gold in green are nearly swallowed by the dilation of dark pupils, black twists dangle half out of their bindings like a tangle of ropey snakes. He looks thin bare before himself, where he can follow the jut of clavicle and high cheekbones press against skin, fighting to be free. Glass is cold beneath his touch as he traces his reflection, following bones and the slope of a long nose with the tips of too-thin digits. Dark ink seeped into his skin in careful replication shifts with the flex of his fingers, impressions slithering beneath his skin like corpse flies, sucking at the air. Hungry, threatening to break past the thin film of scar tissue bubbled up between sigil lines.

The caress trails from cupid’s bow to the part of his lips and pauses. The Cheshire smile is jagged and uneven, lopsided like always enjoying half a joke and extending beyond the way his wrist pivots to obscure. Too long, too curved, a cruel mockery of a jester’s grin.

It shouldn’t matter. Those who held the blade are long since gone, and were they not, likely to have forgotten him many years past. He wouldn’t know their faces. They were little more than remnants of his history, marks and marrings that chronicle a life.

Beautiful, he was told. With and without them. A talented hand could remove them entire, leave skin clean and smooth, but the idea frightens him as much as it draws. He has always been the sum of his history, unabashed and disgusted both. Even without them, the memory of their imprints would remain.

It’s breathtaking. You’re breathtaking.

When his lips split beneath his fingers in the mirror his laugh is low and broken, the curl of a thing full of disdain. They see the jagged scarring long healed, another thing conquered—

He can still feel the bite of stone into his back and shoulders, the dizzying crack of skull against rotted wood. The world smells of a sewer and the blood of his brothers slicks his fingers too slippery to offer him purchase on dirty fabric and bodies stronger than he would ever be. Teeth clacking, the frantic clip of words in a bite cut short by a hand in his mouth to stretch his jaw wide as steel slips sweetly against the inside of his cheek. They meant to take his tongue, but boots on the street bid them leave him and his brothers in their own mess.

Beneath his fingers he can see split flesh and thready meat not wholly severed, baring teeth too high and painting his jaw in scarlet. Ugly. Raw.

Breathtaking.

Adebayo’s fingers slip away as the smell of the sea returns, and he draws a deep breath. Air on bare skin is cool and sharp and pulling him further into his present. His tongue touches the backs of his teeth, wets his lips, stares at the jester’s grin.

This bitter, broken nation is full of wretched, ugly things. Turns them into something beautiful.

The vase beside his bed cradles a treasure that flourishes, and his fingers trail lightly over the edge of a petal. Delicate. Pretty. Dangerous and secretive. Perfect despite that it should not even be.

With resolution he pulls the mask on again, the magic tingling across his skin like the familiar slip of a lover’s touch. Settled beneath the fine attire he dons, the illusions pull close like armor. Beloved, to hide the monstrousness beneath as supple smiles and beckoning fingers obscure the rot set deep.They will not understand. They will not understand.

[tyrian-musings]

In the Aftermath

The sweep of a paintbrush is an idle thing, mindless and mindful both as deep violet bleeds into the carving of desperate nails in wounded wood. No longer does the flutter of a pennant dangle before it, found tattered and bloodied, torn from its hang. Whose hands had pulled it free, hoping some empathic soul resided within to let them inside as raptor and blade ran them down for only the crime of Not Knowing?

His knuckles ache, stunted fingers throbbing in a long familiar pain that buries deep and lights a fire up his arm. The phantoms linger in peripheral, faces he knew once, sweeping forward to ghost a touch to his cheek and down his neck. Help us.

But what can the damned do for the damned?

A child runs by behind him, sandaled feet slapping against the sandstone wet and sharp, and the shrillness of her laugh cuts through the air like a scream. The noise that chokes in his throat is unbidden, biting hard against his teeth and pressing against the inside of his mouth like a crawling thing desperate to be free. His head bows, the brush slipping from his grip to splatter paint upon stone, weight sagging forward to drive his shoulder against the wall, long twists swaying at his back.

Somewhere in the distance he can hear a voice, drowned out by the panicked drum of his pulse. Unfamiliar, blending with the ghosts until all are one.

A hand rests upon his shoulder, slides to the dip of his clavicle and down, beneath the artful wrap of fine attire, over obscured scars and ink with a wretched, haunted knowing that sets them aflame.

Hello, lovely.

As bile rises in his throat at the sickly sweet voice, his hands impact someone solid, fingers tangling in the delicate, sun laden chain of a victor. Palms grasp at his elbows to steady him, a dark, scarred face watching him in open concern. Lips move but only in silence, the words lost beneath the roar of irrational terror for long enough to be missed.

“Are you—“

The freshly painted door clatters open with a resounding slam, testing fresh hinges as he stumbles inside, slipping from the Sunspear’s grip and fluttering a hand to his mouth.

—lo, lov—

The door rattles loudly, ajar where it swings, echoing its scream against the bare walls. The impact of his knees on the ground is jarring, jolting sharp pain through his nerves as he doubles over. Hands slap against the flooring, sand a biting grain against the soft gloves covering his palms. The world pivots, spins, his stomach churning.

—lovely.

When his awareness returns it’s to the dark, dusty air sharp with illness, and his breath echoes hollowly in the emptiness. A hand trembles as it starts to his belt, where dark shackles—heavy and ugly—dangle against his hip. It’s habit now, the reminder, an irony that drives deep: to remain free, he must find comfort in the bondage of a prisoner. Bones ache where he lays on stone, knees nearly to his chest, and he presses his cheek to the chill of stone with a shaky sigh.

“How could anyone love you? How could he have loved this place enough to—” The breath from Adebayo’s lips is soft, a whisper as if afraid of being overheard even in the emptiness of his office. Fingers stray to the tuck of a little butterfly clipped just beneath his collar, the tip of a digit tracing over a delicate wing.

With a soft groan, long legs uncurling as he shoves himself upright, Adebayo pushes quivering fingers through his hair and rubs awkwardly at his mouth. He’ll push onward. He doesn’t have a choice. He never does.

“I suppose it’s to Kourna, then.”

[tyrian-musings]

The Dream

CW: References to mutilation and cannibalism

He's falling. These days, he's always falling, always sinking deeper. It's always cold, a strange frigidity he cannot escape that creeps into every crevice and pulls his nerves taut like a sitar strung too tightly. The water tastes of filth and corpses, the stink of the sewer grates where the bodies would catch underneath the city streets--wet, bloated, forgotten. Somehow he knows he is a part of it, the blood that chokes him and fills his lungs, the flesh between his fingers and caught in his teeth. Sometimes the hands that press past his lips writhe against his tongue and burst apart like grapes in a splatter of maggots down his gullet that block and build and swell his throat until the skin begins to shred under the pressure.

The throttled cry that slips from him as he opens his eyes tastes of sewer water and blood and the moisture on his cheeks and lips squirm against his skin. Above him is a figure, looming and loving in a mockery. Lamore. Not Lamore. It is Llachlan that leans over him, their grand antlers glistening and pretty lips parted, painted with slippery gore. Multiple arms, spindly and split, wrap around their form in mimicry of a cradling embrace as black eyes peer over their shoulder toward him. Fused. Beyond, through the branching of Llachlan's blood-slick antlers, he can see the familiar ceiling, the distant shelves of artifacts gleaming behind their glass casings, and the crawl of shadows. Terror freezes him but doesn't blot out the sweet whisper of familiar voices, layering and layering into a song.

Fingers find his chin, his jaw, his lips and they pry, pull, force. His skin indents as fingers trail down his sternum and press, dig, and peel back the layers of him. Flesh parts like water, stinking of death, and words whisper into his ear--

Share with us, Addie...

Questing fingers push the slickness of meat past his teeth with the accompaniment of lilting laughter. He has no choice but to eat.

When he sits up, the breath he draws is cold and hoarse, his throat raw and aching. Fire lances through his nerves, the blankets wrapped tight around his legs like a vice, and something scatters onto the floor to shatter as he fumbles for the neatly crossed pair of glasses at his bedside. The world is a blur until he slips them on, his gaze snapping toward the door. It's open, spilling a sliver of light from the hallway in. Lamia stands a backlit shadow in the doorway, her arms crossed and pale eyes settled on him, eerily still. He stares, skin sticky with sweat turned cold.

He shudders.

"Remember it this time?" The smoky quality of her voice is low, musical and distant. Warm enough to be familiar but tinged with a carefully placed barrier. She doesn't stir from her lean, gaze half-lidding as he leans over himself and traces his palms over the last lingering throb of phantom aches.

His answer is little more than a breathy, hollow laugh as his arms curl around himself.

No. He never remembers. But he can still feel the fingers in his flesh.

Used. Thrown away.

He doesn't hear the door close as she ghosts away.

[tyrian-musings]

The Letter

Dearest Siyaar:

Enclosed you will find a small token of a world beyond what we could have imagined as children. I have written to you of Elona, written to you of my work here, but oh, my friend. It is a place unlike any other.

Elona is a place of mystery and magics, of horror walking hand-in-hand with beauty. It is a terrible place. I did not come here to find a home, for though my blood comes from here, I am not of this place nor its people. It has become a parasite, buried deep beneath my skin and curling up in my chest like some strange infestation. There are monsters here, but they walk in sight plain as day and they are praised their monstrosity, lifted up like gods only second to their horrifying eternal-king. I suppose by now you have likely heard about the Lich, about Palawa Joko. He has taken a world and isolated it, broken its back across his knee and called himself its savior--and the people believe him, or many of them do. He raises the dead and gives them their souls anew in exchange for eternal loyalty. The privileged few throw themselves upon blades and at his feet for a desperate hope of Awakening with his blessing.

Elona's relationship with death is an odd one, so foreign and yet in a way strangely--comforting. Death is quite so permanent where we hail from, save when Zhaitan still roamed. The end. The fear. And yet here, in this place of horror and beauty, death is merely a new beginning--if you are worthy. There's a certain sort of enchantment to it that you don't find elsewhere, or at least nowhere else I have been.

Do not fear, my friend. I am not so thoughtful of this place to yearn for Awakening.

But here I can be monstrous, as the world has made me to be. I can be raw and angry, I can be hard with one hand and gentle with the other. Blood stains coins as much as it is traded in vials for simple commodities. The monsters roam free here, Siyaar.

I can roam free.

Keep this scarab close and think of me, my friend. Think of this place where I dwell but think not of the dangers I'm sure you assume are here. You are often in my thoughts, even so far away. I look forward to when we can be in one another's company again--and we shall. Elona will not bring me to my knees.

Though the words do not pass from their fingers know that Porcia and Caius do miss you and think of you. Be safe, Sweet.

With Affections,

Adebayo

The small package that arrives for Siyaar under the usual route is little larger than his palm. An ornately decorated scarab is carved and painted iridescent and gold, and the space between its wings is set with the glitter of a sapphire.

[tyrian-musings]

The Price of Betrayal

Sharp. Hot. Metal. The tang of iron painful against the backs of his teeth. Anger stinks like ozone, cloying, clenching, tight. He was drowning. Pulled under by grasping hands unseen, the clutch of the fingers of his heart indenting in his flesh.

Te ari ng.

Hi m

a Par t

“—refused the meeting. He said it was too dangerous, and that the crew was joining—“

“The fucking lich, like a bunch of cowards. Corsairs throwing down their flags to fly the thrice godsdamned goat. Freeport’s a joke—“

Palms press against the slotted wood of his desk, hands bare and mangled and bitter reminder.

“We knew it would happen, Starsong.” Her voice is soft, steady, unafraid of the lick of mesmeric energy electric up his forearms and dancing between his fingers. “We were prepared for Bitar to bow to Najafi. These are his seas, Joko’s seas, not—“

Wood drawers clatter, glass shattering against the mosaic tile of an artfully caulked floor, splashing ink in a pool of crimson dark enough to glint black. Papers flutter like frightened doves in escape, desperate, dire. The desk sounds a crack as it overturns beneath the pull of his hands, resounding where lightning splits a tree’s trunk. Damaging, burning, biting. His jaw aches like fire from the clench of his teeth, the trap of his tongue pressing up against the roof of his mouth. Bile claws its taste in his throat.

He has been here before.

“--He was MINE. He put those knees at my feet, I was his fucking altar, and he--”

She watches, earthy brown of her eyes half-obscured behind the fall of ropey twists and thick lashes, full lips drawn thin. For a moment, her brow twitches, but her hands remain loose at her sides, one atop the tome dangling from her belt.

“--thinks he should fear the lich, but he swore his oath to me in his room. He hasn’t sanctified his ground. We salt his earth, we whisper those little bleats in sailors’ ears, and when he goes to bend those brittle knees, he dips his head to his own execution.” In the low light, the lavender gleam of his eyes is a beacon: brilliant, furious, a fire that consumes its fuel white-hot.

Silence hangs a taut wire, pulled tight enough that breath threatens the bonfire burning betrayed across the room.

She breathes.

“Night will fall on his sails, Starsong.”

It is only once the door closes behind her that the storm soothes, shattered glass beneath heels and wood clutched between slender hands as he rights it. Stepping sidelong around spilled ink and wine, he smooths out parchment with the tips of his fingers, scrounging up another inkpen with a soft breath. Chair tucked in. Ankles crossed.

Warden Naseefa Bakhshi:

Please accept this as my formal request to officially become and otherwise remain a procurer and scholar of artifacts of arcane and historical nature for the betterment of The Inevitable's provinces.

As several of your house’s academics can support, my resources and reliability for such are unquestioned, and you and yours shall have the recognition you require for my capabilities should you accept my request for sponsorship. I have attached information on relics already acquired by those of your house as proof of my skill, as well as their names so that you may inquire as you will.

In health and glory,

A. Okoro.

With the ink still wet upon the stamp marked in the corner of the letter, he presses his thumb to the parchment, watching as the cuttlefish seal glimmers--and then flattens--as he begins to warm the violet wax cradled in his palm.

[tyrian-musings]

Ghosts

"You have to remember to burn the bodies. If nothing is left, they cannot use it, and cannot bring them back for more fodder." He can feel the lingering heat beneath his boot as superheated sand-turned-glass cracks under his weight as it sways. Sharp fibers cut into his throat, roughening mellifluous tones into a jagged mess. The tone is quiet regardless, the firmness of instruction pressing past discomfort.

"There is meant to be honor for the dead. Always. But you have always had a gentle heart, and so I know you treasure them all. But the world will force you to be hard, sometimes, and you must be ready." The bodies are limp, the magic of their Awakening long since left them, but Valkuri lifts them in his arms like brides, uncaring of the tar and ichor that slick his cuirass and gauntlets. "These are lessons I neglected to teach you, before. I know it is--"

A breath exhales sharply as the Vabbian adjusts his hold on the cumbersome body, its stretched limbs turned to inhuman grotesque mockery. Another victim of the mass Awakenings. Another victim of a world of lies. "--late. To teach you these things, but mayhaps it will help you in the future."

The wind that sweeps across the droughted plains is hot and humid, whistling through the sparse branches of nearby Manketti trees, their dry lengths clacking together like bone charms on a windchime. They stretch like skeletal fingers, plucked free of foliage like carrion. The stink of the dead fills the air, poisoned fish beaching themselves upon the dry banks in desperation only to drown on air. Pungent enough to make the eyes water.

"They are poisoning it. We do not know precisely what runs rampant, though legends have begun to take blame. Another of the Undying's ploys, to twist what was once Kourna's and make it his own. Their own, the Conclave." Valkuri's head tilts slightly, as if he listens to something, and then sets the body atop a makeshift pyre, amongst others in varied states of decay. A pair of satchels lay nearby, filled with personal effects--a pendant long rusted, its singular sapphire scratched and its cut worn down; a ragged journal formed of hide and pressed leaves, barely bound together; a spear tip bound by a thin leather thong, carefully unwound from a fragile wrist. Boundless things, some of which seem to hold no financial value, each reverently set aside.

There is honor for the dead.

There must be.

Valkuri's laugh is low and quiet, a rumbled chuckle that slips free sweetly. It sounds discordant, too warm against his tongue, too warm for the wolf. "It is important to take them back to those who will see them honored. Merely because we do not know their value does not mean they have none."

"Perhaps a difficult thing, for the likes of us and ours." Reaching up to carefully arrange a shorn arm across the body's chest, its dead skin still yet damp with the stopped leach of ichor, Valkuri exhales a quiet sound and tucks the torch flickering nearby beneath the makeshift, raised platform. Only then does he step back, straightening and rolling his shoulders back to watch. To be their witness, as smoke and the stink of the burning dead dried acrid on his tongue.

A hand lowers to his side, little and ring fingers slightly outstretched in offering, a reach to be taken as he settles in the watch he has decided for himself. His gaze drifts after a moment, from the searing flames that lick and devour hungrily at its dead offerings.

"I am sorry that it took this long to show you, my s--"

The empty air that greets him catches in his throat, words dying on his tongue as his golden gaze searches the dead savannahs in a brief desperation.

The winds that rustle snowy curls do so like the carding of fingers, light and quiet. The air sighs.

Lips pressing thin, Valkuri pivots to look toward the pyre once more, the line of his jaw taut enough to visibly flex masseters. his hand falls to his side, fingers curling loosely in the fabric stained an inky black. The humid air curls around him in an oppressive embrace, pulled moreso by the burning of the pyre.

He still stand witness here. For the honor he could not afford his own, so will he offer those whose names he will never know.

[tyrian-musings]

Duty

It's stranger than he thought it'd be, walking through the piles of the dead and seeing both sides as one's own. Kadir and Justice flank him, their heavy footfalls crunching bone and blood and tar-slick dirt the same that break beneath his heels. His armor is drenched and he knows not how much of it is his own, a hum of numbness singing through him as he walks, step-by-step. Another body, its leathery flesh shorn and shredded and soaked with tar. She lay mangled, still and half-twisted up by some magical force. Dutifully, he touches his torch to the weathered skin, waiting for the flames to lick at her fingers. Her gaping chest. A shattered leg.

In another time, he may have wondered who she was, but that empathy is locked away. Here and now she is a risk. The Sunspear beside her, a boy perhaps barely seventeen, the back of his mismatched armor dark and tattered.

A Risk.

How many of his fellow members of Elysium expected this? Knew? This is not unfamiliar, the knowledge that they could rise--would rise, as they had done before. It is only unfamiliar to wish to see it stopped. Once the sight of the dead rising had been a wonder, a thrill. Hope.

The crunch of bone beneath Kadir's bloodied maw draws his attention, the blood-jackal's growl echoing unearthly, low, a ripple somehow still yet heard with the thrum of war around them. The Sunspears and their allies rage against the gates in a desperate surge, a race against time. It isn't peaceful now, but he knows he must take time to rest. Soon. Soon.

But first, the dead must not be used against them.

Kadir's prey stills its twitching, head lolling back to drop against the ground and roll slowly toward Valkuri's feet. Wide eyes, dry and blank and stark against death-darkened skin. A mouth that may have been pretty once is open, the glitter of gold teeth hard to miss against the bright white only darkened by the slickness of tar. A noble, no doubt.

He could have been her, once.

Diligently, almost lovingly, he touches the torch to her lips. A purifying kiss.

Sleep, now.

Movement catches his eye, and he turns to look as the trembling form of a young woman begins to push herself up. Blood seeps from wounds at her collar, her chest, caking the ground beneath her. A hand rests gently atop Kadir's neck to still him. Justice's approach slows.

With a rolling step, Valkuri moves toward her. Her skin is soft and hale where it's bared, the fall of her matted hair thick and coiled, half pulled from its braiding. She bears bright colors now dark, the iron chain around her waist littered with mismatched, childlike mimicries of the Sunspears' emblem. One hand curls atop Valkuri's boot as he stops nearby her, her fingers slipping on the slick metal of his armor.

"H-help--"

Burdened with the weight of a war far older than she would ever be, hopeful, shattered. She was a plain girl only beginning to show the muscle all her hard work had earned her, pulling herself free of the pit of starvation. Crooked teeth dark with blood and dirt. Her eyes are dim, and her voice echoes layered, like many in one.

As his blade gently eases beneath her jaw to still her, as the flames lick at her curls unbound, as he straightens to begin his search again, Valkuri's voice lifts in song. It is a deep thing, the way his voice rumbles, well-trained and rich. It is a lyric from a time nearly forgotten, taken from shelves he had stolen from, where his eyes opened wide and the lies began to fall away.

The horrors of Elona are nothing new to him, this land where the dead are revered and where the people throw themselves upon the blade of their oppressor with his name full of love upon their lips.

Once, this could have been him.

[tyrian-musings]

Forgiveness

Feet swing idly where they dangle over the edge of the cliff overlooking the library, enchanted fountain bubbling quietly behind her like the rush of a brook. Up here Haven is small, distant, easy to imagine as something entirely other than where they are.

She likes that idea.

By the edge of the fountain is a rustle of movement, quiet and easy, and heard only because he does not wish to hide. They’ve been at this for nearly an hour by now, quiet and otherworldly.

“I am sorry that it has taken so long to realize. And to reach out to you.”

At first, Lysse doesn’t answer. She allows the silence to hang, unbroken save for the whistle of the breeze, not out of malice but in consideration. He has never hated the silence. Not like she has.

“I have heard you apologize more in months than I have my entire life before you left.” When she speaks, her smoky voice is hushed, lilting as her gaze dips to the fuzzy cat-eared headband dyed to match the copper of her hair. She turns it between her fingers gently, though she isn’t focused on the gift itself, long familiar though it is. “I don’t know if I like it.”

“I know many things are different, Lysse. I know I am different—“

Lysse pivots slightly in her sit, her smile faint and crooked and trembling with uncertainty as she casts her gaze back toward him. “You never used to do this when you’d tromp off to fight alongside them.”

“Things are—“

“—different. I know.”

Valkuri slips quietly off the edge of the fountain to instead settle beside her, his own legs dangling off the edge. Their silence returns, heavy and cloying and weighted with a thousand things left unspoken. He gazes at her, at the glitter of dying sunlight across the high points of her face and in her hair, the curl of dark lashes. She doesn’t pull away when he reaches to touch the inside of her wrist with the tips of his fingers, a hesitant and uncertain thing entirely incongruent with who she always knew him to be.

“You’re not allowed to die until I forgive you.” The words are blurted out, tight and thin, and she lifts her arm up enough to slide her fingers through Valkuri’s own and press her palm flat to his. “I forbid it.”

The vibrancy of her golden gaze meets his own, and she ignores the tightness in her chest and the watery intensity of her stare. His smile is faint, melancholic, and she pauses briefly upon how ugly it looks on his face in its wrongness.

“As you wish.”

Lysse can hear the strain in his words, the thinness of the sounds. His voice was made for leadership, for war and confidence and greatness, for speeches before a crowd of the loyal. For laughter she so rarely heard.

It, too, is ugly in its hesitance.

Her anger bubbles up like a bonfire, twisting her painted lips. Where had the man gone, replaced by this boy? Where had the flame been extinguished? Where was the great man she had known all her life? The sound that escapes her is small, fragile, and she surges forward to press her forehead to his shoulder, fingers gripping hard enough to feel the strain of his hand against her own.

It takes a moment, takes readjustment to turn and curl his other arm around her strong shoulders, bowed with the weight of what he had left her to bear. She was strong enough to carry it, he knew. She always had been. Valkuri encourages her closer, dipping his shoulder away from her and instead pulling her taller frame so that her cheek could find his chest. Her free hand snaps up, fisting in well-worn fur hard enough to hear the fabric creak.

For once, he does not correct the dampness that stains her cheeks and darkens her lashes. For once, he doesn’t correct the quaver of her voice or the thinness of its whisper.

“I will never forgive you.”

[tyrian-musings]

Home

Fingers to the sand trace idle fractal lines, revealing the long-obscured tile of vibrant cerulean beneath the grains, scraped and scarred by age and disrepair. Though walls are half-collapsed beneath the weight of war and forgotten memories, it is a sheltered place, hidden away from the wandering view of any who might pass. Patrols do not come here, not now that Balthazar no longer walks his warpath. Purpose is a mystery, long lost to be remembered only by the spectres in peripheral.

But a ghost looms above, crouched among the jagged remnants of a dome, its once artful mosaic chipped and scratched into an unrecognizable smear; he is still as the shattered statuary littering upended flooring, silent beneath the sweep and whip of wind and scatter of sand.

When she arrives, he holds breath and remains above, observing as the fist in his chest coils tightly enough around his heart to speckle his vision. She is radiant, bronzed, tattooed skin barely hidden beneath a sandstone hued cloak and copper locks swept up out of her face. Backlit by dying sunlight and the sky’s paintbrush strokes of autumnal dusk, unnaturally golden eyes rake across the ruins with trepidation.

The weight of a tiny body cradled in his arms like the grandest treasure. His wrists pivot to hold a memory, a yearning for the simple. A desperate, infantile cry tears through the barrier of is and was.

Why had he left?

When the crack of haunted remembrance fades after its deafening echo, he finds her staring up into the shadow where he lurks gargoylesque, and the wariness of her expression swiftly is buried beneath the diamond sharpness of a clenched jaw and the flinted steel fire-fury of her eyes. Her lips thin, hands at her side not quite grasping at the softness of the deep violet of her sari.

“You told him not to come.”

She watches him as he rocks forward, one hand grasping at the crumbling stone as he swings down to drop to his feet nimbly, dust and sand fluttering about him as he lands. “I asked him for us alone.”

His steps do not approach, only shift to brace against the broken flooring as he straightens. “You do not ask. You only ever demand what you think is best for everyone. I am tired of being told what is best for me.” Not quite a hiss, her voice is a knife blade, sharp and solid and a whip-cord lashing full of spite.

“I am sorry.”

The Valkuri Asoni she knew is not a man to bend, to whisper apologies in broken tones, to bow his head and press his knees to the sand.

But he does for her.

Her fury is a thing of fire, white-hot beyond its flashpoint. It is a familiar thing, although not from her. Not aimed toward him. Rather than duck away, he braces, bears the burdens of his decisions. He owes her this. He owes her the expression of her anger and hurt, and the weight of the Silenced behind her. It is not the first time he has felt her force. He trained her in martial prowess as he learned much the same, fostered her strength to walk his same path; it is different now, when fragile cartilage folds and pain flares in his senses. Impact snaps his head back, and he scrambles to rein in every instinct that tells him to fight.

No. He owes her this.

At first he does not parse the words that rip from her in her unrestrained anger, garbled from the pulse slamming in his ears. The echo of her voice is a roar, and for a moment the fear of Lyosha’s concern solidifies.

“--swore you would protect him! He was the one we all swore to protect, and you--”

His breath exhales unevenly almost as if in a laugh, bitter and tight and curdling sour in his throat, and through the blur of his sight he can see the trail of scarlet stark against the sand.

Alive. Not the one that should have been. Penance, penance, penance. Deserved better. He deserved better. Bett--

It is the fingers in his shirt that wrench him from his bleary focus, and he blinks against the tears pain summoned in order to see her face more clearly. Nails lacquered and manicured short scrape against the scarred skin of his chest as she clenches her grip, teeth bared. This close, he can see the hurt alongside her anger like an aura. He did this.

“Why?”

A strong hand lifts, resting atop her wrist as he exhales a soft breath, the simple word echoing cacophonous in his ears. It is an accusation he has leveled at himself but from her voice, cracked in fury and fear, the blade digs deep and twists between his ribs. To bleed out here would be no loss. Not a man like him.

Promise me you will not die, my wolf. I will not allow it.

His fingers curl, squeezing around her wrist firmly but not bruisingly, knees grinding into the sand through woven fabric. It is the first time she has seen him bowed, the first time she has seen him on his knees, and it is powerful.

But sometimes power is a bitter thing.

Lysse’s fingers twist in the fabric beneath her hand, and she huffs a sharp breath as she begins to pull, to drag him up until his feet are under him. Scarlet stains his beard, dribbling down his neck and soaking into the collar of his shirt. It slicks her fingers, hot and stark against the cold of tar and ichor of the dead she surrounds herself with. He is alive. Alive and warm before her and more than a memory. The serval pauses, waits with ire in her breath, a hunter stilled before her prey. Her movement surges, yanking him bodily despite his bulk and ignoring all unfamiliarity of the gesture, her broad arms curl around him in a bruising hold. It is a demand more than a question. She will take, as he taught her to.

It is instinct that sees his own draw up, sturdy fingers sliding up her back and curling at her shoulders. She must bend to press her face to the juncture of his collar, heedless of the steady drip of his shattered nose, but she does so with a hand clenching around her heart.

“Why did you leave, father?” In the wake of her rage, the whisper is thin and dusty, the smoky tones of her voice tremulous and nearly lost against fabric. “Why did you leave me when I needed you?”

Long after the sky has been draped in starlight, she stands at the edge of the ruins, sand dusting over the toes of her boots. She stares, watching the broad figure disappear into the night, the ghost of the man he once was. Anger remains with understanding, a bitter pull that roils acid uncomfortably in her gut. Answers breed questions and further uncertainty, leaving her once more feeling the pull between two stubborn forces. Indecision lingers.

I cannot choose for you, little Lysse, just as Lyosha could not choose for me. Your hate is not unfounded, and I do not ask for your forgiveness. Only know that there has never been a day I have not regretted all that I wrought.

Her fingers curl tightly enough to dig half-moons into her palms, the echoes of his explanations a whisper in her mind. The desert evening is a bitter bite against her skin when she steps from the shelter of the ruins properly, gazing off in the distance he had long ago disappeared behind, her jaw aching from the tightness of its clenching. It would be simple to follow, to trail after the man she had idolized as long as her memory lasted, to follow in his footsteps as the little girl within her always yearned to do. But she is wolf and asp.

And neither.

With a shaky breath she turns, chin lifted as she smooths inked fingers over her abdomen to smooth the hang of delicate chains. The glitter of city lights are a siren call, bright and clarion and familiar, a lie of familiarity—a lie she whispers to the wind.

Home.