[open] say something that says something, any

[Selaphiel]

these days i don’t pray when i close my eyes—

The child had been born in the days after Gale had perished, he knows. After his own mother had died by Gale’s hand, after Firion had done whatever it was that Firion had done to save them all from him. Selaphiel shifts his weight now, studying the child. (She is grown now, yes, but to him she is still the same child he’d watched from afar, aching as it had occurred to him that Mazikeen was happy and it had absolutely nothing at all to do with him.)

He has no way of knowing what that glint in her eye means and he makes no effort to decipher it, only goes on studying her for a long moment after she’s gone quiet. 

He is not an inherently cruel thing, Selaphiel, but he has learned that all kindness comes with a price and, because of this, he has strayed from it. Because he cannot stand to shoulder the pain of this, too. Because if there is any one sort of pain he can prevent, it is this.

He tilts his head a fraction as he considers her answer. It is an attempt to commiserate, he thinks, an attempt to find some common ground. But the worst had already passed by the time she’d been born. And certainly her birth had been proof that the worst was over. Because Firion had saved them and Mazikeen had found someone else worth loving.

“Is it?” he asks flatly. It is not cruelty, merely the absence of any warmth. “You know this from experience?” It is not an accusation, though he suspects that she has known none. Because he knows that Mazikeen, after Gale’s defeat, would have done whatever it took to protect her family from pain. Even at the height of that terror, she had done what she could to protect her friends from it. 

“I’m sorry,” he says abruptly, turning his gaze away from her face. “It’s nice to meet you, Valkyrie.” Though it is strange to have met his brother’s daughter without ever having met his brother himself.

—I just bite my tongue a bit harder

@Valkyrie