'ᴡᴇ ꜱʜᴀʀᴇ ᴀ ꜱᴇɴᴛɪᴍᴇɴᴛ. ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ʙᴇ ʙᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ʀᴇᴠᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ.'
Only one month has passed in Daliah Viper's life trying to reintegrate at court and follow the uneasy trails her eyes have caught.
One month filled with blood, tribulations, and l...
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I stay at the pier with Ptolemus for a while until the shark fins disappear completely under the water. Naturally, he doesn't just put off his boots and hangs his feet inside, but he sits down next to me. Our shoulders brush, and it feels as chafing as the sharkskin to my strained muscles.
The wind ruffles in a soft cool blow over our faces and hair. The constant closeness to heat and fire in the last days has made my hair brittle and broken. It is an uneasy, tangled mess. His is the same as always. It reminds me of runt's fur, the same, sleek, silver coloration in the brisk sunshine that falls in stray rays down.
I miss the dogs. I shouldn't, but I really do.
"Don't tell anyone I lost my cool last night," I ask, closing my eyes and taking another deep breath. "I just don't like being touched at my throat, it rubbed me off the wrong way. There is nothing more to it."
His face twists a little, grimacing, and a silent, foul question forms in a cloud around us as dark as my swarms. It's unspoken since the day he chased off Samson in the hallway after the coup, him and his sister making me sit in some safe, small niche of space, eyes half-closed until my father picked me up.
"Just promise me you won't tell anyone you had to carry me," I insist. "People already think the worst. They don't need to know I am weak."
"I won't tell anyone," he promises, easy enough to believe. "That wouldn't help you or me."
"True." To deflect any following questions, I give his arm a stiff pat with my flat hand. He let's it be. "How are you doing? We usually don't get to talk about anything. I am not the only person that almost died last month."
"I'm fine," he lies with the same deflection. "Yesterday. When you screamed about-"
My face grimaces before I stay flat and without any visible damage. "It was nothing. I was having a nightmare. I was panicking. I told you. I'm scared of failing again. Your mother would not look at me again if she knew I was not able to handle myself."
If the pier would just start to shake and waver, it would be a proper metaphor for this conversation. But she is his mother, and he knows I don't lie now, at least. It's the only reason he doesn't just walk away. He asks rhetoric questions. He isn't stupid. It worked with Evangeline before. It works now. I dodge any question for my babbling about missed opportunities.
"Oh, I almost forgot. You're going to get married."
A ship horn flings through the air somewhere in the distance, and it sounds like another set of funeral bells coupled with my too innocent words. Not a rigged alarm, but a bitter reminder and dry ironic, bellowing echo.
