The Songbird and the Wolf

[ XXXI ] Break Away What's Left

Face to face, the Prince of Court Corvus is all angles. 

The shadows of the corridor cast his features in darkness, dancing in the hollows of his cheekbones, the dim candlelight reflecting in the dark browns of his eyes. He wears the deep greys and blues of his court, they add to his sharp angles, his severeness. 

But there is nothing severe about the look he sets on her.

She might have mistaken it for pitying, but the heartbeat she thinks she's noted that, it's already gone.

Fae aren't a species to show their age, but there is something slightly withered to this man's features that make him appear older. 

He is older, maybe by a decade if she remembers correctly. 

Barely a blink of time in the terms of their lifespans, but it feels like an infinite distance in that heartbeat.

His eyes are fixed to her, studying and careful.

The silence is a weighty thing between them, and she realises, belatedly, that he is waiting for her permission. 

Elodie swallows the lump at the back of her throat, and steps back. Dipping his head to him, it isn't quite submission, it isn't quite a bow, somewhere between the two, a compromise she could let herself live with. 

Either way the movement feels stiff, unnatural.

Aeyliv, is kind enough or perhaps simply oblivious enough, to not pick up on it. 

On elegant feet, she steps aside, her skirts dragging across the floorboards as she moves, the fabric rustling as she pulls the door open to allow him in. 

Aeyliv steps past her, his own footsteps as quiet as an encroaching frost. 

Though she allows herself the comfort of tightening her grip around that length of wire, until her fingers numb around the breadth of it.

It is enough to anchor her against this storm. 

"Is it clever for you to be here?" She asks quietly, the closest thing to a joke she can muster. Her alternative question was why on earth was he here, so she felt this was the friendlier of her available choices. 

She's caught him off guard, but she hasn't displeased him.

"My mother would argue no," his answer is more honest than she'd expected it to be. A slight hint of a smile splits his features. "But that's my mother's favourite word, so I wouldn't take too much heart to that." 

"And his Royal Highness?" She queries, her voice gentle. 

"If he notices I've snuck off, I'll be sure to offer an apology."

Elodie tries not to take the easy way he speaks of his parents to heart. 

How she longed to think even briefly of her parents without it sparking grief through her veins again, but she does not hold that against this stranger. 

As tempting as it would have been.

"But if I am to be married, I think I have every right to make that choice on some sort of grounds."

It takes all of her effort to not flinch at those words.

She blinks - she'd half convinced herself her efforts had already been a failure. 

"I apologise about that," her voice is quiet, but unflinching. 

"You already have cold feet?" Dark eyebrows cock toward shaggy brown hair.

Elodie isn't quite sure if she would call his tone of voice mocking, reading this face is like trying to read a book at a distance, in the dark. 

"Forgive me for thinking I was the one who'd sprung it on you," comes her retort.