Illarion does know what has happened, and which window of the house has captured Paul's attention; even so, he lifts a hand as if to say, and the flames? It should not surprise him if the answer is simple--the outward world reflecting the inward fire the young man burns with, mediated through blood magic and corruption--yet it should not surprise him if it is not. The lingering eyes are proof enough that Paul's is a soul that can be tangled, swift and sure, into strange outside troubles.
Yet Illarion says none of this, only tips his chin up--his Omen's following--as if he could also watch Gideon's window.
"She will be back," he says, quiet and sure. "The first months are the bleakest. You mourn for who you had been."
He is jealous, he knows, in some part of himself; Kiriona is an abomination of want, a mistake made of grief and selfish loneliness. Her father's sword and child-as-possession she might be, yet she is so because it is the only pattern John seems to know--a defective, warped pattern of paternity that knew love must be there but mangles its proper expression. Turned from her friends she might be, she still has them; she has family who will walk into hell for her, and damn the differences between the living and the dead.
It is achingly familiar and infinitely far from the lot of a fungible Unearthed soldier, abandoned on the battlefield and long after. Yes--Illarion is jealous of Gideon Nav, but it is one thin current in a greater wash of relief and hope. What has happened to her is terrible, and irreversible; it has ruptured her family in Trench and caused them terrible pain.
But all of that is not without remedy. All of that is the first step on a path he's already stumbling down, with many of the same people to guide his way. She's got even better chances at it than he does.
Yet he says none of this either. These are not thoughts for the vigil and funeral; they are not meet until mourning's over and real dawn begins.
Instead: the question of the duel, that outward expression of his own unrealized spasm of grief. His expression darkens behind his veil and there's reality in that look of guilt and chagrin, not acted but truly felt. "No, and may no duel I ever fight be all I wanted. That would be a horror."
Judicial violence, the correction of talon and blade, wasn't something to take joy in. And he still had.
"But he's kept terms and admitted his fault. No one died in what came after. It is enough," and he says it like, it should be enough, but it is not.
no subject
eyesare proof enough that Paul's is a soul that can be tangled, swift and sure, into strange outside troubles.Yet Illarion says none of this, only tips his chin up--his Omen's following--as if he could also watch Gideon's window.
"She will be back," he says, quiet and sure. "The first months are the bleakest. You mourn for who you had been."
He is jealous, he knows, in some part of himself; Kiriona is an abomination of want, a mistake made of grief and selfish loneliness. Her father's sword and child-as-possession she might be, yet she is so because it is the only pattern John seems to know--a defective, warped pattern of paternity that knew love must be there but mangles its proper expression. Turned from her friends she might be, she still has them; she has family who will walk into hell for her, and damn the differences between the living and the dead.
It is achingly familiar and infinitely far from the lot of a fungible Unearthed soldier, abandoned on the battlefield and long after. Yes--Illarion is jealous of Gideon Nav, but it is one thin current in a greater wash of relief and hope. What has happened to her is terrible, and irreversible; it has ruptured her family in Trench and caused them terrible pain.
But all of that is not without remedy. All of that is the first step on a path he's already stumbling down, with many of the same people to guide his way. She's got even better chances at it than he does.
Yet he says none of this either. These are not thoughts for the vigil and funeral; they are not meet until mourning's over and real dawn begins.
Instead: the question of the duel, that outward expression of his own unrealized spasm of grief. His expression darkens behind his veil and there's reality in that look of guilt and chagrin, not acted but truly felt. "No, and may no duel I ever fight be all I wanted. That would be a horror."
Judicial violence, the correction of talon and blade, wasn't something to take joy in. And he still had.
"But he's kept terms and admitted his fault. No one died in what came after. It is enough," and he says it like, it should be enough, but it is not.