Paul is eager to please, obedient to a fault. It's a tectonic flaw, the crux of the long chain that carried him from a cold beach to a cold earth, the anchor that holds down so much of what he's done for her.
Paul wants Gideon to be happy. He wants her to be safe. He wants her to have all of the things he believes her to be entitled to.
The thing that stands on the lawn wants this for her as much as he does.
The corona around his head flares like a star. The light is pitiless and consuming; it swallows shadows and casts none before it, arcing into refracted halos that spin in shivering orbits above him. His Omen raises herself up inside the stark, fragmented colours that pour off of him with the iridescence of a chemical fire.
She's finally being selfish. There's part of him, in the conflagration of rejection, that's almost glad for her.
"If that's what you want," he says, and he doesn't recognize the language, cannot know if she will understand the words, but he knows she will understand the shape of the sound. He turns to his Omen and scales her, impossibly, finding handholds on her hide that he should not know exist, but there they are under his fingers. She sings for him, and her song trembles in the dirt. He flattens his hands on her back when he's astride her and looks down at Kiriona, Crown Prince, in the seat of her dominion.
"No faith that we betray," he tells her, in clean, short Galach, ice crashing into cold water, impossibly human out of the hellstorm of brilliance still sheathing him, "You call, I answer. Remember that."
With that, he digs his knees into his Omen's sides, bidding her and the crown inside of him to follow Kiriona's command, turning back towards the sea. He won't look back to her, or the house that looms behind her. He doesn't need to. He doesn't forget.
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Paul wants Gideon to be happy. He wants her to be safe. He wants her to have all of the things he believes her to be entitled to.
The thing that stands on the lawn wants this for her as much as he does.
The corona around his head flares like a star. The light is pitiless and consuming; it swallows shadows and casts none before it, arcing into refracted halos that spin in shivering orbits above him. His Omen raises herself up inside the stark, fragmented colours that pour off of him with the iridescence of a chemical fire.
She's finally being selfish. There's part of him, in the conflagration of rejection, that's almost glad for her.
"If that's what you want," he says, and he doesn't recognize the language, cannot know if she will understand the words, but he knows she will understand the shape of the sound. He turns to his Omen and scales her, impossibly, finding handholds on her hide that he should not know exist, but there they are under his fingers. She sings for him, and her song trembles in the dirt. He flattens his hands on her back when he's astride her and looks down at Kiriona, Crown Prince, in the seat of her dominion.
"No faith that we betray," he tells her, in clean, short Galach, ice crashing into cold water, impossibly human out of the hellstorm of brilliance still sheathing him, "You call, I answer. Remember that."
With that, he digs his knees into his Omen's sides, bidding her and the crown inside of him to follow Kiriona's command, turning back towards the sea. He won't look back to her, or the house that looms behind her. He doesn't need to. He doesn't forget.