Chapter Text
“Tell me of Ariandel, Sir Sulyvahn.”
Sulyvahn startles, head tilted in surprise. Gwyndolin fills in the blank spaces of his expression concealed behind the framework of his mask, open and off-guard. “Truly? There is not much to tell.”
“I am intrigued anyhow. Do go on.”
He perches his hand at his chin in thought, a habit he finds strangely endearing given his obscured face. “It was cold, I suppose. Bleak. There were few inhabitants, and most kept to themselves.”
He continues. “My mother tried to keep me close at her side, but if I recall correctly I was a rambunctious child and rather difficult to reign in, so there was little she could do to keep me from wandering off and climbing up trees or what have you. Nothing quite like the grand tales you would be used to.”
“How awful.” Gwyndolin is tired of cold and sheltered places.
He shrugs. “I suppose. It was only until I left that I realized that the sun shone on other lands.”
The sun carves itself above them, stealing at their shadows and rendering the path of their walk in stark lines. How saddening, to experience sunlight for the first time and not realize it to be a lie. Sympathy lays dead like a bird that has beaten itself against a window. Gwyndolin has been reduced to petty consolations in the same way a snake devours itself whole.
“And so you had no sun?”
“And no moon. The land was constantly blanketed in snowfall, and you would only be able to navigate by the shape of the trees.”
“Is it all like this?” he muses, more to himself. Sulyvahn cocks his head.
“What is?”
“The other lands” he gestures slightly, shawl drooping. “Beyond this valley.”
“Have you not seen them for yourself?”
“My duty lies here, and thus I have never abandoned it.”
“Such devotion is to be admired.”
“It is all I have.”
Sulyvahn hums. “I have travelled quite far in my time, to lands as hot as the valley is cold. I was once a scholar, in fact, studying in the archives of a grand kingdom to the north that overlooked the sea.”
“That must have been grand.”
“Indeed, it was. The archives were vast, and filled to the brim with more knowledge than I could have possibly conceived of at the time. To be allowed to pursue it at my leisure was a daunting privilege.”
“I have seen enough tomes and scrolls to last an eternity, though the sea-” He purses his lips. “I do not know. Description in books has never been enough to form a proper picture.”
“The sea? Is that what captures your imagination out of all I had said?”
“Need I remind you that I have never abandoned my post?”
“No, of course not.” He dips his head. “I suppose such things would be foreign.”
Everything is foreign. The concept of the ocean is completely alien. Even Sulyvahn himself is a novelty, tantalizing in the way a nut begs to be cracked.
He cocks his head. “It was vast. The sun would reflect off the waves so brightly that it would be impossible to stare directly at it without blinding yourself. Ships would sail out on it, from the towns on the coast, and nobody ever knew whether they would return or sink in the deep.”
Longing reveals itself in a treacherous tug, locked inside his ribcage. Gwyndolin cups water in his hands and only receives feeble imitation. Illusions are formed of flimsy description and a sense of want, and in the end mean nothing if he does not know what he is looking for.
Waves, big enough to swallow him whole. He imagines himself consumed, veils and lace swirling in the dark waters, his crown a rock to ensure he cannot swim.
“What a sight that would be” he murmurs. “Whyever would you come here?”
“There was something I was… compelled to seek, for lack of a better word, far more important than a pretty view.”
Is that all that it was to him? A landscape, set to be framed? The parts of Gwyndolin’s mind that consistently fail him are all in want of a single picture. There is a secondary distance between them, he realizes. Sulyvahn is a clear pane of glass. Gwyndolin jumps when the shadows bite at the edge of his cage.
“And did you find it?”
“Yes,” he says. He pictures a slight smile, tucked silently away behind his mask. “I believe I did.”
The room is unfamiliar. One of the defunct guest quarters, if he were forced to put more thought to it, kept quietly away from the royal suites. The kingdom belongs to him but the castle is a creature built of foreign anatomy.
It is a well-appointed prison, for all that could be said of it. Sulyvahn would claim that it is almost too good for him, as if he were bowing down and granting vast amounts of consideration by allowing Gwyndolin a bed to lay upon. Heavy curtains block the window, obscuring his view of the sun. Thick velvet drapes itself across every facet of the room. Gwyndolin feels as if he has been muffled in the lining of a jewelry box, slowly suffocating under the weight of muted excess.
There is irony to be had in that he was removed from his own chambers and discarded in the lower reaches of the castle, after Sulyvahn had wrung him dry of what little use he could provide and shuffled him off where he could not be seen. It would almost be amusing had Gwyndolin not been the one laying there, imprisoned in his own dying body.
He keeps the door unlocked. It feels like laughter.
He finds a sick sense of cyclicality in being tossed back into bed like a sick girl, steadily counting his breaths and wondering if he is to be kept like a flower, dried and compressed between the pages of a forgotten book. Several centuries’ difference conjures the image of his brother, fumbling a plum into Gwyndolin’s delicate hands. Sulyvahn carves the fruit in half and pries open his jaw.
“There are things that I want that will be forever out of my reach,” he said the last time Sulyvahn had shown his face to gloat.
“And whatever would be out of the reach of a god?”
Sulyvahn dissects the segments of an orange and lays them out in rows like gleaming jewels, meticulously infuriating in his elegance.
“Do not act dull.”
“All the power in the world, and still you sit and struggle.” He smiles, unkind. “What a pity.”
He does not show himself often, at the very least. Gwyndolin’s array of mercies are meager things that bite at his skin at night. Mercies are a tool to count the time that has passed and what time he has left. Gwyndolin divides them to count the weeks. Months are put in lines, set evenly with deliberation. Sulyvahn had once complained that he was difficult to kill. Sulyvahn creeps in through his door at odd hours and they can both see how much tenacity Gwyndolin bears, however unwillingly.
Touch hurts less nowadays. Gwyndolin calls it a blessing. Blessings, or mercies coated in glossy lacquer. Words have lost their meaning and blend into an endless tangled string. One day he will bite his own tongue. There are so many delightful little ironies to stumble across these days, only marginally more entertaining than picking at the skin of his lips and making himself bleed. Has he been broken in so thoroughly that he would do Sulyvahn’s work in the meantime?
Have the gods truly stooped so low? He would say before smirking in his pompous self-assured manner, as if Gwyndolin was his stupid child that he was teaching an obvious lesson.
Are you truly a god? He has said, and so Gwyndolin does not have to conjure up his voice as substitution.
How very fitting.
Sulyvahn hums idly as he drags a comb through Gwyndolin’s hair. The teeth separate white strands in jagged black lines. Gwyndolin fixes his vision on the bottom left corner of the mirror and narrows his sight to the small piece of room he can glean from it. The window remains obscured, the room cast in dark greys. A dull wooden vanity table, an old carpet, dark flooring. A niche to bury himself in, his own shaking hands obscured.
“Why am I still living?”
Sulyvahn pauses, eyebrows raised. “Would you prefer to be dead?”
Gwyndolin does not answer and instead sighs, his breath coming out as a pathetic whisper. “Here I am, too weak to even stand and wholly robbed of all use, and still you keep me alive even when you have had a multitude of chances to end my life. Is that not what you want?”
“And why do you wish to know so badly? Would it not comfort you to be unaware of your fate?”
“So you do have one last plan in store for me,” he murmurs. “How very like you.”
“More for your body, and less for your soul.”
He finds himself unnerved at the distinction. What more use could be gleaned from his body? Gwyndolin has been collapsing in on himself for what feels like centuries. Pull away the flimsy layer of skin and all Sulyvahn would find is rot, cut through with delicate serpentine bone.
“Ah, so there is a difference between the two? How kind. I did not believe you to have the capacity.”
“You of all people should know that.” He picks at a knot, scowling slightly. Gwyndolin makes the mistake of briefly flitting his eyes up only to find himself staring at his own sallow visage in the mirror, a sheen of feverish sweat gleaming on his forehead. He recoils out of reflex. Sulyvahn remains unbothered.
He does not know what he is referring to.
He breathes in deep, nausea swimming in his gut. “My sister used to have a habit of bringing in injured birds and keeping them in her bed. When they inevitably died she would hole herself up and weep for days. My father was never happy with it, but he was too fond of her to ever command her to stop.”
“I must say, I don’t really picture Yorshka as being the nurturing type.”
“No,” he shakes his head, eyes averted. “Not her.”
He brushes a stray lock of hair back over Gwyndolin’s shoulder, awful and tender. “Well, at least my intuition has not failed me. If not her, then who?”
“Filianore” he says, her name falling to the ground like a broken window.
“Filianore” he repeats, tossing the syllables around carelessly. “How lovely. Another one of your father’s precious little pets?”
Gwyndolin decides then to keep her memory private, quiet and sealed off like an oyster guarding a pearl. How hypocritical of him, to trace after his father’s footsteps so neatly that he could almost pretend that he had feet to stand upon. One more little folly will make no difference in the end.
“You do not get to have her.”
“No?”
“Never. Not when you have taken everything else.”
Sulyvahn cocks his head, lips pulled taut. “Very well. Keep her if you must.”
He continues combing his hair, the uncharacteristically gentle rhythm allowing Gwyndolin an anchor to tie himself to. If he clings on the slight tug of the comb then he does not have to contend with the fact that Sulyvahn is the hand that wields it, nor does he have to acknowledge his own body, reflected as a pale white gash. Mitigating the damage only ever does so much. Gwyndolin will fold everything down until he does not have to feel it and chip his teeth on what remains.
Sulyvahn brushes a stray lock of white over his shoulder. Gwyndolin closes his eyes.
“Do you think of yourself as the bird in this scenario then, kept around on a vain whim only to keel over and die?”
“Is this not my cage?”
“And what would you have me call it instead?”
“I want you to call it what it is, rather than feed me your lies.”
“Look at you,” he smiles, almost cooing. “Sick of lies, are we? What a grand day this is indeed.”
“Do not be facetious.”
“Not at all. I find it quite fitting,” and he leans forward, pressing a kiss to Gwyndolin’s scalp. He pictures himself held stationary in his arms, tired and compliant as Sulyvahn tears the hairs out of his head one strand at a time. He will exchange the miniscule discomforts to be propped up like a doll that cannot support its own weight. Miniscule discomforts can be tolerated until Sulyvahn grows bored and breaks his skull.
“Though calling yourself a caged bird would imply a degree of flight to begin with.”
It rains.
Sulyvahn brings him tins of paint and a sheaf of thick parchment one day. Gwyndolin bites down on the urge to throw the gifts back in his face. Sulyvahn already thinks of him as his stupid child. Better to scrape together his remaining dregs of dignity and use it to grip the barrel of the brush than to once again prove him right. The bruises have faded, but he still finds it hard to breathe.
He is not allowed the luxury of an easel so he makes do with the narrow width of his lap. Sulyvahn sits and watches as he paints the crow that has taken shelter at his window until he coughs so badly that he spills watery indigo in smears across his page.
Rain trails itself down the glass. He wants so badly to be able to step outside and feel the water grace his skin, even as it only stems from his failures. It is not like his father will condemn him for it. He is dead, after all.
“What a shame,” Sulyvahn clucks his tongue, looking down at the ruined parchment with detached pity. Fingers trail down the curve of Gwyndolin’s back as he attempts to stifle his coughs into his hand. If he closes his eyes tight enough he could call the motion soothing. Conjure up one more delusion so he can pretend that he wasn’t chained to the bed like a plucked whore. Sulyvahn only ever visits when he wants to take what he’s owed.
The bird takes flight.
Yorshka wordlessly throws her arms around him the moment she enters the room, clinging tight to him even as he lays motionlessly in bed. More allowances, held over Gwyndolin’s head like a pinhole shaft of light. Sulyvahn wields her like a threat. Yorshka jolts back in horror when she feels the jagged shapes his bones tent under his skin.
“You should have told me” she says, voice thick in threat of tears. “I did not know you were this ill.”
There are many things he finds he should have told her. Funny how regret is seldom visited until he is dying. He pats her head in lieu of that, hand trembling with the effort of the motion. “There is no need to fret. It is only a passing illness.”
“Sulyvahn told me the same thing.” She shakes her head. “I want to believe you, but I cannot! You look awful!”
Sulyvahn stands at the doorway, his silhouette a blade-thin line that hangs above the back of Gwyndolin’s neck. How many overstuffed lies has he fed her? Any contradiction will be another handful of dirt to pile on his grave. Gwyndolin chooses his words carefully and forces himself to smile. “You were always terribly blunt. I do not know why I expected you to be any different now.”
“I am only speaking the truth!”
He sighs. “I fall ill very often, do I not? This is no different. I will recover in time.”
“But-”
“It is undue for you to worry your head over me.” He strokes a thumb over her cheek, wiping away the tear that has begun to wobble down her face. His voice feels broken. He is too tired to speak. “I am a god. I cannot die.”
Sulyvahn shifts in his periphery, ever imperceptibly. Gwyndolin does not need to see him in full to picture the smile on his lips, cut into his skin like a gash.
“Of course.” She sniffs. “But… it is all so awful! It began to rain, and then I could not find you now matter how hard I looked! I do not understand anything that is happening!”
“You have never seen the rain before, have you?”
She looks up at him, lost. “No, I have not.”
He drops his hand, muscles crying out from the exertion. Yorshka grips it instead, claws digging desperately into his skin. “Perhaps it will do some good.”
“What do you mean?”
“For the sun to set, now of all times,” he murmurs. He has no energy left to tell Yorshka the truth, if he ever did. All he can offer her is a petty kindness and hope that he is long gone when she finds out for herself. “It would do you well to grow used to it.”
“Of course you would still speak in riddles, even as you are,” she says, bowing her head. “Why must you be like this?”
“Would you have me be something else?”
“I simply wish for you to speak clearly! I do not want you to-” she shakes her head. “No… But please! What am I to do now?”
“As I said, I do not want you to worry. Perhaps you should go out and feel the rain for yourself. I remember it being quite pleasant.”
She gawks in disbelief, brows furrowing. He is glad that she has such a strong spirit, even when it only proves troubling for him. “What?”
“I hate to think that you would simply wile away your time to mourn for me.” He gives her another weak smile, skin stretching like leather.
“And so I should go out and frolic? I- brother, even Gwynevere has fled! I cannot simply prance around!”
Realization settles in the back of his skull. Gwyndolin has been plunged headfirst into frigid water and the shock locks him in place, rendering him a stiff board to be carried down with the currents until he buries himself in the sand. He hopes dearly that Yorshka does not notice his sudden distress, unmasked and vulnerable as he is.
“Has she now?”
“No matter how much I looked I could not find neither you nor her. It was only until I found Sulyvahn that he led me to you.”
“How very kind,” he mutters. Hung like a fruit just out of reach, a brief promise of the space outside the room only to be snatched away. Gwyndolin’s world has been reduced to four walls and the moment Yorshka leaves she will cease to exist to him.
If Yorshka catches on to the bitter tone of his voice she gives no indication, and instead curls her grip around Gwyndolin’s arm. Her hands are big enough to fully wrap around. Gwyndolin is suddenly struck by a short pang of sadness. “You have not seen sister, have you?”
“No, I have not.” That, at least, is not a lie.
“Of course.” She hangs her head, tone dejected. “Silly me, asking such a question of you.”
“She will return.” He lays a hand on top of hers, the contact painful and numbing all at once. If he lies to himself enough he will begin to believe it. “As will I.”
“Do you promise?”
“I do,” he says, for whatever it’s worth. Sulyvahn’s gaze lands on him like a thick layer of oil, unsettling against his skin.
“My Lady,” he steps in, his form towering over Yorshka. “We should leave your brother to rest, should we not? I fear any overexertion will worsen his condition.”
She stands, looking tired. “Yes… Alright.”
Sulyvahn overflows in plentiful insincerity, enough that it makes him want to scream. Of course she would listen to Sulyvahn’s words. Yorshka was raised by him and taught to conflate pretense for kindness. Gwyndolin would never teach someone to recognize his lies.
“I will be back soon,” she nods, turning her back as Sulyvahn leads her out of the room.
The rain will do some good indeed.
He waits for the brief pauses in between fits to speak; it is far harder to hear his voice under the sound of Gwyndolin’s coughing and gasping. Hands tug at his hair, held back in the guise of concern. Filianore braids his hair back- tucks a rose in at the base. She was the kindest. Kindness, elicited by the same pity inspired by the sight of a butterfly robbed of its wings. That was kindness. Sulyvahn holds his hair back and this is kindness too, because Gwyndolin is nothing else than a dying bird that he refuses to snap the neck of.
“Tell me a story.”
He wheezes. Spit hangs from his lips in a translucent thread. Sulyvahn’s breath creeps across the bare skin of his neck in humid waves.
“I have nothing left to give.”
Lips at his ear. The cold flash of teeth- “Surely you cannot spare one last tale.”
Gwyndolin shudders, breathes. One last hollow cough to ease the aching of his chest. His voice is weak.
“I snuck out of my chambers once. The guards were called away for a reason that I can no longer recall. They could be spared. I was too weak to ever get out of bed anyhow.”
He feels the curve of Sulyvahn’s smile against his neck, blade sharp, a thin line carved on his back. “Guards outside your bedroom door? To keep others out, or to keep you in?”
He ignores him. Sulyvahn’s questions are meaningless things, a string of pearls to break his teeth on. “I felt well enough to stand that day, so I fled. I had nowhere in particular in mind. I just-” He coughs, the sound tearing itself out of his lungs. Sulyvahn grips his hair tighter.
“I wanted to see outside. To see the others. I had never had that before. I had only my window and the servants who were to tend to me.”
He chuckles softly, a sardonic smile tugging at his lips. “Unbeknownst to me, my absence had been discovered. A city-wide search had begun for fear that I had run out of the palace, or simply vanished into thin air.”
“You always had a tendency to hide.”
“Not for no reason.”
He splays his fingers out on his lap, broken and scabbed-over, nails long and sharp. How lovely it would be to reach up and pluck out Sulyvahn’s eyes. He wonders if that is what catharsis is. He has been bound and gagged and blinded, left to tarnish on white sheets. Eye for an eye, he thinks.
“The knights and servants were sent into a frenzy. Even my siblings had been made to search for me, tearing through the castle and accusing anyone they could find of tucking me away somewhere.”
He very well could be lying. Delirium coats his words in a thick gloss. Quietly, he has little memory left of that day. All he has managed to preserve is the thick smell of ozone and the dust accumulating in the back of a wardrobe. Sulyvahn has demanded a story of him. He can only give what he can.
“The whole time, as the entire castle had been in alarm, I had made my way down the hall to my brother’s chambers. I was trying on one of his tunics.” He picks at his nails. The skin tears in thin lines. Sulyvahn’s fingers trace across the back of his neck. His voice comes out as a broken whisper. “I wanted to be like him, then. I had always thought to myself, ‘if only I had been born like him, then I too could be great’”.
Sulyvahn’s lips graze at his shoulder. Gwyndolin has become remarkably practiced in the art of suppressing a flinch.
“Is that truly how you thought?”
“Tell me you did not expect anything else. I was deformed, useless, weak. My brother- my father loved him, once.” He hangs his head. A hand creeps at his waist, tracing over the hollow juncture of his hips.
“I was found eventually, and brought before my father. He was furious with me. I had caused a massive amount of trouble simply by wandering out of my room, all the while prancing about in men’s clothing. He was so angry, justifiably so, that he-”
Gwyndolin’s voice dies short of his lips. Attempting to recall anything else only yields him a hazy secondary thought, like rain suffused by a thick pane of frosted glass. What was it, again? His father, towering in his vision, mortified and furious- not unkind. It’s unsettling- his brother, his sisters, standing to the side. His hands curl in his lap like shards of glass. Sulyvahn presses his blade against his jugular. Was there a feast that day? Was there anything at all?
“Go on, then,” he urges, pressing to close against him. The hands around his waist register as an afterthought. Recollection fails him. There was a feast in the hall that day. Gwyn takes his head in his hands, like a wave obscuring his vision. He tells him a story of being eaten alive. Nails scratching against his scalp, sharp enough to tear-
“-locked me up again, I suppose,” he murmurs, listless. “I cannot recall a single thing afterwards.”
-are flowering plants growing from bulbs, with large, prominent flowers and petals clustered together in groups of five or more-
- large, often fragrant, and come in a wide range of colors including whites, yellows, (he only ever wants one thing from me) oranges, pinks, and purples, with a variety of markings-
found often in wooded areas (and still i do not know when i will die) with temperate air, commonly in clusters, though they do just fine in a garden-
stems are long and thin, often bearing several leaves-
produces a rather toxic pollen, unfortunately found to- (won’t let me die, and so i must endure him) -sensitive to said toxins-
typically bloom in warmer seasons after a previous season of heavy rainfall- (what is going to happen to me?) -soil that is well watered and evenly spread
-does well when taken from the ground, provided that it is cared for correctly and pruned during it’s non-flowering-
(what is he going to do to me?)
He paints these in order: a feather, the stub of a candle, the handle of the door, and three cherries. Later Sulyvahn halves them with the small dagger he keeps on his person and tosses the pits out the window. Gwyndolin cannot protest when he presses them through his teeth one by one, or when he draws his thumb over his lips to catch the dripping red trail.
Gripping the paintbrush has grown harder. Sitting up is not worth the effort. Sulyvahn stands and leers over his shoulder like a cold shadow as his hand spasms and sends a splatter of violet across the parchment. When he feels too ill to continue, Sulyvahn will bring over a basin of water to wash the paint off his hands and Gwyndolin will let him and sit there, numb and mute, waiting for it to be over.
“Tell me how you will kill me,” he starts, feeling oddly detached. He guides his brush to a tin of pale yellow, his movements disjointed.
Sulyvahn leans in closer. “Ever eager, aren’t we? And what would you have me say?”
“I have told you what I want you to say. Describe it. I want to know.”
A smile creeps on his lips, all sardonic and thin. “Perhaps I could start off with a crack across the head, or a blow to the back of your skull.” He pauses. “Though it’s not as if I’d be able to do much else to ruin that face of yours.”
Gwyndolin dabs his brush, the paper crinkling in the gap of his thighs. He makes a bright yellow smear at the top of his page and names it the sun, for whatever power he has to call it that. What a shame, to barely be able to name the objects of his pitiful portraits. He was a god once.
“Or maybe I’ll go for your throat again, but truly try to kill you this time.”
“And what were you trying to achieve beforehand, if not that?”
“You were being awfully unruly.”
“Is that it, then?” He runs a strip of blue stretching the length of the page. “I am either a child, a maiden, or a corpse depending on what would be the most convenient to you at that very moment.”
“Or a lover.”
“Lover would imply some degree of reciprocation.” He dips his brush in violet. Bites his tongue. Mitigate the damage. Nothing good will come from this. “And you have never loved me.”
“Astute as ever.” He brushes a lock of hair over Gwyndolin’s shoulder, his knuckles briefly ghosting at his jaw. “Though not entirely. I dare say you have lost your touch.”
“Not entirely,” he says, narrowing his brows. “And so your cold heart does beat after all. Is this what you call love?”
“I do hate to see you like this.”
“Liar.”
“Truly.” He places a hand over Gwyndolin’s, tracing over the sharp valley of his knuckles. “I’m willing to set myself on fire for this.”
“That would be the most preferable outcome.”
He laughs, high and pretty. Gwyndolin bites on his tongue.
A dab of yellow turns blue into an airy teal. He uses it to outline the sky. Overexposure weathers down mountains. Gwyndolin is so sick of his voice. “Is that the point of my suffering, then? Because you have had the misfortune of being burdened by sentimentality? Or do you simply like to watch?”
“Always brimming with questions,” he sighs. “Even if it was both or neither you would still not be satisfied.”
“You owe me that much.”
“And still you would beg for more.”
“If my pain is to be endless then the least you could do is grant me one small relief.”
This is what the sky looks like. This is what the sea looks like. He can render them faithfully because he knows what they are. He can paint the sea in black as well.
“And if I should be truthful with you, even if it is far more than you deserve.” He leans further, taking Gwyndolin’s other hand in his own. Paint smears at his wrist. He seems unbothered. “I will not be the one to kill you.”
“You do not even have the dignity to finish what you have begun?” His hands are shaking, small and pitiful in Sulyvahn’s grip. “I am ashamed to say that I ever thought better of you.”
Sulyvahn grazes his lips at his palms. Gwyndolin tugs back, desperate to rid himself of sensation. He cannot reduce the damage as much as he can endure. Necessity will be the death of him, if Sulyvahn will not. “I do so wish I could be the one to do it, but alas. I have certain people to please who I fear far more than I fear you.”
More for your body, he said, with an awful self-assured lilt to his voice. Fear douses Gwyndolin like a second layer of skin. His body. Does Sulyvahn plan to sell him off as some exotic pet? To carve his ribs open and serve him at a banquet? He pictures his corpse spread out on a table, mutilated and torn to pieces by forks and knives. Red on silver. Red on white. He does not want-
He laughs, a hideous, off-key noise bubbling from his throat. It is all he can do. Sulyvahn lessens his grip.
“Coward” he manages, shoulders shaking.
“If it suits you.”
Gwyndolin hangs his head, hiding his expression in the curtain of his hair. Terror claws at his flesh with blunt nails. There was some comfort to be had in the notion that he would have his ending at Sulyvahn’s hands. Gwyndolin survived on nothing but scraps of consolation. He has no kingdom but a castle. He has no castle but himself. Autonomy flutters off in the wind and the castle devours him alive. There is no guarantee he will die.
Tears land on the paper, unbidden. The sea and sky bleed together in a swirl of blue and black.
“Fair maiden,” the saint says, his smile coagulating on his skin. “Why do you hide your face from me?”
“For the very reason that I had it from everyone, my lord.”
“Can you not grant me a single glance?”
“I cannot.”
“I think I do prefer you without that silly crown of yours” Sulyvahn starts, posturing audaciously in his chair. He purses his lips at the stem of his pipe before tilting his head back to exhale, smoke blowing in curls to the ceiling. Gwyndolin does not need to raise his head back from his coughing fit to be able to picture his grin, laid out like a cat in the sun.
Gwyndolin has no paintbrush to hold. What was once a stick becomes a luxury he is no longer afforded. The most he has to wile away his confinement is the sheer effort it takes to be able to sit up. So many simple aspects of life have been thrown into perspective. He thinks about Sulyvahn’s throat, white and exposed. His fingers twitch.
“Was the rest of your lot as steeped in gold as you, or were you just a special case?”
His body, at least, is a betrayal he can rely on.
“Do you not think me hideous?”
“Oh, I do.” He taps the pipe, ash fluttering to the ground. “It is quite entertaining to know that the paragon of femininity is an eyesore.”
“Why would you hide from me? From your own people?”
She stutters, drying her palms off on the fabric of her dress. “They do not love me, my lord, and consider me grotesque.”
“And yet you do not so much allow me a simple veil to cover myself. Shall I hide under the sheets to better please you?”
He laughs, more of a short bark than anything that could be considered mirth. “No need to debase yourself so.”
“But I love you”
He holds his arms out, hands stretched wide.
“Besides,”
“Do you not love me?”
“It makes you more human.”
He muffles a cough into his free hand, the sound rattling like a loose pane of glass. Yorshka shifts slightly, but doesn’t stir. She must have fallen asleep some time ago. Such steadfast devotion, to mourn the body of the man who had done nothing but gorge her on falsehoods from the moment she could form words. Regret manifests itself as a sharp pain is his ribs, right under where Yorshka clutches at his frail form. Regret has no purpose to serve and will only ever be just that. Gwyndolin has had a lifetime of practice smoothing over contention with a fine layer of skin only to choke on his tongue when it would finally be meaningful. Solace comes in the form of a gentle pat on the head and shallow breaths in an attempt to minimize the bubbling sound that comes from his lungs.
He has been prayed to, but no one has ever wept over him like this. Her tears are far more than he deserves.
The door opens, the sounds of the hinges cutting through the silence. Candlelight illuminates a faint strip of brightness that casts itself over the bed. Gwyndolin holds his breath.
“I thought she might be here,” Sulyvahn says, voice low. Gwyndolin finds himself surprised at his ability to retain the basest of courtesies. There would be too many questions to answer should Yorshka wake up. They can both agree on that, at the very least.
He draws further into the room, the flickering light casting the furniture in odd shadows. Gwyndolin squints at the brightness. “She is awfully attached to you. It is a pity.”
“Have you come to gloat, then?” He cringes at the sound of his voice, catching in his throat like the tines of a steel brush. He wonders if his ability to speak will flee along with the strength in his legs. It would be of little consequence in the end. He is no stranger to being caged in by his body. “Do it quietly, if you have any decorum.”
“And wake the sleeping princess otherwise? You must think me a monster.”
He sits in the chair at his bedside, setting the candle down on a nearby dresser. Gwyndolin is struck by a vague sense of recollection, muddled and unsettling. His father at his right, book in hand, poised to tell a story made to keep unruly children in bed. Lacy curtains to better wrap around his throat. Teeth at his skin, at his stomach, sinking in and tearing-
His father, concerned. What a lie. How shameful of him to resort to conjuring up delusions in an effort to comfort himself. Better to stroke his own hair at night and pretend it to be someone else.
“And far too late of me to do so,” he murmurs, more to himself. Sulyvahn seems to not hear.
“Has she realized your fate yet, or have you decided to let her find out the more difficult way?”
“What would you have me say to her? To explain how I can die in the first place?” He shakes his head, careful not to disturb the sleeping form in his arms.
“To explain anything at all would be a miracle worthy of a higher god.”
Gwyndolin sneers. He imagines it looks quite pathetic in the low light. “What else have you done but tell her your overstuffed stories? You have little room to speak.”
He cocks his head, serene and infuriating. “Do you think that everything I have told you has been a lie?”
“I have trusted you once before.”
“Tired of making mistakes, then? I suppose you had to learn eventually.”
He lets his head drop back against the pillow, closing his eyes in an attempt to stave off the nausea that accompanies every movement. More stories to tell, only in the dark where it is more difficult to distinguish between the truth and the follies that Gwyndolin has been languishing in his entire life. Yorshka breathes out softly, a gentle contrast against the arrhythmic pulse of his heart.
“She will not know.”
“No, I imagine she will not.” He leans in, hands laced. “At least until you are in no condition to tell her yourself.”
A shiver crawls up Gwyndolin’s spine at his wording, unbidden. Sulyvahn seems adamant that his body will no longer be his to own. He does not know whether to celebrate or weep.
He continues. “And so I shall have the honour, when you have all but fled from the consequences. Is that not what you have always done, in the end?”
Gwyndolin ignores his words and instead sighs, the puff of breath stirring at Yorshka’s hair. “Do not insult me by pretending that you would not strip me down and parade my body throughout the city as entertainment. Exposing my sorry work is worth at least half that.”
“To your own daughter? I would say more than half.”
“Sister,” he says, sharper than intended. Sulyvahn grins.
“Ever so picky with your wording. Was mother too much for the Dark Sun to bear?”
He does not reward Sulyvahn’s taunt, even as his smile only grows wider. Sulyvahn lays his body out on the banquet table and splits him down the middle. Forks jab into his abdomen. Gwyndolin thinks about his thumb in Sulyvahn’s eye.
“You are only willing to reveal everything to her when you are in a position where losing the upper hand would be meaningless. Telling her now would expose you for what you are.” His lips quirk at the edges, if only slightly.
“And so would expose you as well. Are you so willing to lose her trust now, even as you lay dying?”
“Whether I tell her now or in a hundred years would make no difference. You have already taken everything from me.”
“Save for her.”
Gwyndolin stills. “She will forgive me.”
“Will she? I would be more concerned with the fact that you are willing to sacrifice the last thing in your life to condemn me rather than her hypothetical forgiveness.”
He is so tired. He so desperately wants to be able to lay his head down and sleep, undisturbed. Sulyvahn is the one thing he can never wish away. “I would love nothing more than to destroy you.”
“And yet you will not.”
Could not is a hidden option that has died on the tip of his tongue. Cannot curls itself at his throat. Regret is nothing more than a petty trinket that lays cold against the skin of his chest like a tarnished silver necklace. Whatever happened to his old self, ever so full of conviction? Cutting off the vestigial limb to die only sacrificed the rest of himself in the process.
“That does not change that I still wish for your demise.”
“What a grand shame” he says, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “I will make sure to tell your sister that you at least tried.”
She wakes soon after he leaves, eyes bleary and puffy around the edges. Gwyndolin bites down on a groan as her weight shifts and digs into the soft skin of his stomach. Her touch is unbearable. He will endure, for her sake.
“Are you alright?” she says, wiping away the sleep crusted at the corners of her eyes.
“I am no worse than I was before.” He gives her hand a weak squeeze. “You could not have slept well.”
White lies hurt just the same. Gwyndolin can only ever cloak the truth in practiced words. Consolation is a synonym for starvation. She deserves so much more.
“I do not mind. I can always sleep later.”
“And you should. You do not have to spend your nights watching over me.”
Consolation is all he has. Consolation is a carved corpse, ready to be served.
“I do not want to leave you alone.”
He feels like laughing. When has he never not been alone? Gwyndolin is a shadow cast by a candle, or the dull imprint of footsteps worn into a carpet. He has never truly been, in a sense. He remains unseen and so cannot exist. He cannot see so nothing else exists, save for his field of view and the tiny scales dotting the backs of his hands that he picks at during long hours.
Sulyvahn climbs the steps and claims his pound of flesh. He has never been alone, either.
“You are almost always with me.” He forces a smile. It feels like a string about to break. “It would do you well to stretch your legs now and then.”
She bows her head. “I suppose so, though I still would not be able to stop myself from worrying.”
“I will not be leaving.” Synonym for starvation. Synonym for lying. Will he have a body to mourn? She only wants to grip his hand when he’s on the verge of dying. He almost wishes she would hate him again. Her devotion is an unearned spoil. “I have nowhere to go.”
There’s hands on him - claws digging into his arms, her face buried in his chest. She’s crying again. She should hate him.
“You are not going to get well again, are you?” she chokes, voice cracking. “I do not want you to lie to me.”
“I-” He falters. He owes her this much, at least. Preparation for the inevitable, as he was never given. “I do not know. Truly.”
“How did this happen? How can you be dying so suddenly?” She sniffs, her tears leaving a wet splotch on his nightgown.
“I cannot say.”
“Cannot, or will not?”
Differentiating between the two would bear no consequences. Gwyndolin will choose the easier option; comfort for comfort’s sake. “Cannot.”
Yorshka clutches him tighter, face obscured. Her touch is a white comet, folding him in smaller and smaller until he will implode. He needs to do something- wipe away the tears, get her hands off his skin. Minimize the damage by causing more in the process. He thrashes as he drowns, and the excess only robs him of air.
He has one thing left to offer, besides the treasure that will be hung upon his body. The last of the assets he received, buried deep within the tomb with not a single devotee to its name.
“Yorshka. Please look at me.” He lifts her head, porcelain gentle. “If I do not return, I-
-commonly forming as short shrubs, wider bushes, or even with stems that trail over several metres long, often covered with
I AM DYING THIS IS DYING I AM DYING OVER AND OVER AGAIN I CANNOT STOP I AM DYING BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN BROUGHT DOWN TO LEVEL OF A HUMAN AND ALL THEY DO IS DIE I CANNOT STOP DYING FATHER PLEASE SAVE YOUR DAUGHTER BECAUSE SHE IS DYING AND I DO NOT WANT TO DIE I CANNOT DIE IN THIS BODY I DO NOT WANT TO DIE I AM SCARED OF DYING BUT IT IS ALL I CAN DO
“I do love you,” he starts, low, impassionate, kneeling at his bedside as if in prayer. The implication, therein; this is love. He has been defiled and tortured and bound by virtue of love. This is love. Love was the noose he tied around his own neck. “Truly.”
His thoughts drift to Yorshka. He should have told her to run.
“Truly” he echoes back.
“I would do anything you asked of me.” His lips press at Gwyndolin’s knuckles, his small hands cradled like glass. Clammy sweat beads at his forehead, Sulyvahn’s face obscured by a feverish haze. “I would pluck the stars from the sky if you so desired it.”
“Then I would ask that you release me, before whatever it is you have wrought upon this land arrives.”
He smiles, unapologetic. “And allow you to die anyhow? You know I cannot.”
“That makes you a liar.”
He moves to his wrist. Gwyndolin imagines seafoam below him, clinging to where his ankles should be.
“You are dying. I am only allowing you a befitting burial.” He looks up, eyes dead and black. “Is that not what you deserve?”
He deserves- what, he does not know. Hands fisted in his scalp and the crush of his skull against stone; his body splayed out in abstraction on the banquet table. Catharsis he says as he cries. Catharsis or cowardice, gently hand-in-hand.
- tastes like blood in his mouth, cold hands against his, all that and everything else. He feels like weeping.
“Grant me this.”
“Anything for you.”
He takes Gwyndolin’s face in his hands, held like a doll.
“I want my retribution.”
“Is that all?”
He presses his mouth to Gwyndolin’s, lingering. Indulging is a death sentence. Gwyndolin affords himself one last private luxury nonetheless; a split second to pretend he is not about to be carved and served, that Sulyvahn would not split him down the middle with his knife given the chance.
Gwyndolin reaches his hands where they are obscured. Sulyvahn keeps his dagger at his waist.
“What would you have of me, then?”
“Anything you can give.”
He kisses him again. Gwyndolin tastes copper. “I will pluck out my eyes for you, if you command it.”
He fumbles at the hilt, fingers barely grazing the carved ivory handle. If he notices Gwyndolin’s pitiful attempts then it is an allowance. He prays he does not.
“More” he says.
“I will raise statues to you in place of a grave. You will be the most beloved goddess in the land, given time.” He lips quirk. “You always wanted to be loved.”
Sulyvahn is too busy spouting falsehoods to notice as the dagger wobbles in its sheath. How fortunate that he has always been more infatuated with the sound of his own voice than Gwyndolin himself. Vaguely, aside, he remembers the tales of human sailors who tossed themselves over the side of their ship. Gwyndolin plummeted headfirst. Gwyndolin kept the castle doors thrown wide and invited in the indignities with his own hand.
“Do you not love me?”
Sulyvahn’s form suffocates him. Lips against his mouth, like water drawing up over his head. Gwyndolin’s hands shake. He finds it easier to wield a knife with both hands. Bracelets and chains muffle together in indistinct sound.
“What would you wish to hear?”
“Only the truth.”
( Do you not love me?, the saint says, face painted in false sorrow, arms held wide in anticipation.)
“I-”
Sulyvahn’s face twists as he drives the dagger in above his hip, black eyes furrowed in pained fury. Gwyndolin drags him to his level, hands fisted in the ostentatious fabric of his robes as blood pools out over his fingers. Retribution, painted in red smears across the ghastly pale hue of his skin. Hands at his throat in exchange for a knife in the side- catharsis, granted through minimal effort, named cowardice even as blood flows like tears.
He will never hear what Sulyvahn had to say. He will deafen himself, voluntarily, and twist the dagger for posterity.
“This is what I wanted” he breathes, relishing in the agonized frenzy of Sulyvahn’s features even as his hands shake with the strain of holding them up. “That is all.”
“You-” he pants, biting his lip in a muffled cry of pain. “Of course you would, you spiteful little wretch .”
The dagger clatters to the ground. Sulyvahn staggers back, attempting to staunch the flow of blood even as it only pours down the length of his body. Gwyndolin lets his arms fall, shoulders screaming.
A smile graces his lips, slight and subtle.
“All that empty talk only for you to stab me in the back when you can barely breathe without choking on your own spit.” He laughs, teeth stained red. “I should not have been surprised.”
“Would you not suffer for me?”
“Of course.” He takes Gwyndolin’s face in his hands, draws his bloody thumbs over the sharp angle of his cheekbones. “I would never do anything less for you, even as you are a treacherous coward.”
He breathes in the metallic scent of blood, Sulyvahn’s black eyes malformed in manic passion inches from his face. “As you have only ever done for me.”
His body twists as Sulyvahn draws him in closer, his lower half a dead weight anchoring him to the spot. Sulyvahn’s touch is a white-hot force unfettered by gravity- burning him, breaking him. Gwyndolin finds the gash in his side and wets his hands with blood, even as he presses in further. Deep black water, closing in over his head. Sulyvahn’s hair draws over him like a curtain and he struggles as he drowns.
“Let it be known that I was not a merciful goddess,” he says, distant and tired, and sinks further down.
The moon is terribly bright, even as Sulyvahn places the deformed crown over his head.
‘Why are you so afraid? You have nothing to fear from me.”
“I fear any man that has teeth as sharp and long as yours.”
“I will not harm you,”
Water rushes at his legs.
“They are only better to savour you with”