He appreciates that she is direct and he almost settles into the conversation—finding that he can navigate the sharpness of her mind and the daggers that he is certain lay buried beneath her tongue. There is something refreshing about her—perhaps like recognizing like—and maybe because he knows that he should not relax, he finds that he can. Whatever the cause, he does not instantly throw up his walls and does not drive her away as he usually does with companions, but neither does he draw her close.
They remain at a comfortable distance, and he finds that he is okay with that.
She laughs when he compares the autumn territory to the kingdom of mercenaries and he just shrugs, not willing to temper his opinion but understanding that it would not be shared. She seemed a woman born of the Loessian mission—she practically bled their roguish mantra. She opens the door though and although he is surprised by it, he’s even more surprised by the fact that he’s not tempted to take her up on it.
“I appreciate that,” is all he says, hoping to close the door on the subject. How could he possibly explain to her that he has no home to return to anymore? He had betrayed Tephra—betrayed his family—during the war. He didn’t even know if his family had managed to escape it unscathed. And he was supposed to just waltz back into the kingdom because he was given the opportunity? No, he couldn’t do that.
It was easier to pretend he was still here against his own free will.
But in the moments that he contemplates such a thing, in the breaths after he asks his question, the temperature of the conversation shifts. When he brings his grey gaze back to up the star-studded woman, there is something different—something cold beneath the sugary sweetness of her smile. His gaze narrows a little and he shifts, a muscle his jaw jumping, but nothing else giving him away in the moment.
Or, rather, nothing giving him away to the average person.
He thinks on her question—his mind immediately going to the sweetness of Kensa’s smile and the night that they had shared together in Loess, curled around one another and whispering stories of their childhood and opening up to one another. He shifts again, unwilling to give up such things to her.
“I have a,” he pauses, grasping for the word, “friend that I want to visit.”
He may be young and naive but he certainly wasn’t going to tell her exactly what Kensa was to him.
BRIGADE
when I was a man I thought it ended when I knew love's perfect ache
but my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake
@[Starsin]