"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
He knew that Adna had sisters, of course, but he had never sunk so low as to try and seek them out. He was surprised when Sabbath came marching up to him in the middle of Loess, head held high with her broken horn cutting through the air. Her tongue was razor sharp and quick to deflate any ego he had managed to rebuild since his return home. Scum, she called him. A treacherous little worm whose wings she’d like to pluck and devour. He’d hung his head in shame until she asked him why it wasn’t enough to get her sister pregnant once.
That was when the confusion settled in. He had to explain over and over that he hadn’t seen Adna since Rupture and Bela were born over a year ago. She scoffed and laughed in his face until she saw the confusion in his eyes, sincere and bewildered. Sabbath snapped her teeth and told him to go to Taiga anyway so that he might make it up to her somehow, and so he set course for the northern territory.
He knows that former members of Loess had taken control, though they weren’t acquaintances of his, and so he passes through their borders without hesitation. Ophanim is careful to lean left and right to avoid the tree branches he passes, though he certainly isn’t graceful in the slightest. On several occasions, he nearly slams face first into the larger pines as he tries to navigate the dense fog that covers the region. When he thinks perhaps he’s spotted his friend, he tucks his wings and begins to dive. His hooves skid across the blanket of pine needles on the forest floor and it makes for a typical Ophanim landing, honestly. He flaps his white and gold wings back to try and slow himself before finally coming to a stop a short distance from her.
Mentioning nothing of his embarrassment, he quickly folds his wings and takes the few steps back toward her with a timid smile across his face. Starsin’s heart quickens with jealousy inside his breast but he knows this is the right thing to do. He bites back his wife’s anger brewing inside him and clears his throat.
“Your sister came storming into Loess and really cut me down to size,” he begins with a nervous laugh. Still, some part of him is happy to see an old friend. Maybe his heart is pleased with a platonic meeting as it thrums within Starsin’s chest. Hers certainly isn’t. “She thought.. she thought your baby was mine.”
Another nervous laugh, because he doesn’t know the right words to say, so he just talks to fill the silence. Clumsy words come tumbling out so easily for him. But what else does he have? Apologies that could never add up to enough? He isn’t the brightest boy in the four kingdoms, but he is at least smart enough to know that giving her hope was all his fault. He set her up to fall and never even tried to catch her.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
Adna has had to live with her guilt since she parted ways with her sister.
She has had to know that a child is growing in her belly that will have both a sister and a cousin. She has to know her secret will come out eventually and it will burn her sister the way that she is burning now. The only thing that she can do is live with the poison in her belly and let it eat away at her.
Affect only her—only her—for as long as she can.
What she does not expect, could never expect, is how her sister would drag Ophanim into this. There is nothing but confusion on her face as she moves forward, her scaled belly swelling with the growing life.
“Ophie?” her confusion washes across her delicate features as she steps forward but it is quickly replaced with dread when she listens to him. Her heart stops cold and she just shakes her head. “I-I,” she stumbles over her words, swallows hard. “I don’t know what to say. I am so sorry.” It seems like all she does these days is apologize and she is not sure she will ever reach a time when the apologies don’t come so easily.
“It’s my fault, Ophie. It’s all my fault. I have made such a mess of things.”
She looks behind her to the woods and hopes against hope Beth is not nearby. That he is doing something else—avoiding her, perhaps—but anything but close enough to overhear this.
When her gaze comes back to the angelic boy in front of her, she just sighs.
“I don’t know what to do,” she chokes out. “I can’t seem to do anything right anymore.”
He doesn’t understand the storm beginning to turn within her family and he can’t pretend to. He has no bond between his brothers and sisters, and he certainly doesn’t share a lover with any of them. Ophanim steps closer when she begins to apologize and he realizes that this was certainly not how he expected things to go. Why on earth would she ever apologize to him when he left the knife in her back? All she had ever done was go along with his awful games and got herself a handful of heartache to show for it. Well, that and their children. At least they had beautiful twins together. (At this thought, Starsin’s heart thumps a little harder, but he assures it that no one could take its throne.)
“Adna, you don’t owe me any kind of apology. Whether she was right or not, I deserved everything she said,” he assures her as he bumps her cheek with his muzzle. His concern for her has changed shape now into sincere friendship, untainted by youthful lust as it was before. “What can I do to help? I’d rather not kill anyone but I owe you a great deal of debt, so I mean..”
He shrugs his shoulders, letting the gold splash across them catch the glow from his halo briefly. The angel boy follows her gaze off into the woods and he stares a while longer than she does. There are so many missing puzzle pieces but he’s afraid to dig too deep. What secret is she hiding that’s so terrible?
“Just tell me what’s happened and I’ll try to make things right.”
His blue eyes go soft as he watches her, wondering if she’s gotten herself into some kind of danger with the wrong people. Violence wasn’t in his nature, not really, but Rupture and Bela need her to be safe for their sake. Ophanim turns his body so their shoulders touch but he keeps his wings tucked over his back as he watches her a while longer. He has never really had friends beyond Starsin, he realizes, except maybe Adna. The others had all been one night stands and brief acquaintances. No one else seemed to stick around in his life but them.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
He has always been such a kind boy, and it is no mystery to Adna why she had cared for him so fiercely in her youth. He had always been there with a smile, a kind word, and a heart that never stopped growing. How could she, as guarded and poisonous as she was, not want to keep something like that around?
How could she ever possibly push something like that away?
But not, with him sidling next to her, she wonders at the way that fierce, youthful crush had faded into something softer—something more platonic. She can only wonder at how different he is from Beth and how she could not have gone in a further direction. She thinks about the bay stallion with his granite jaw and the words that come so slowly, so deliberately, and so often without a shred of warmth within them.
She thinks about the way her heart bruises against her ribcage whenever she thinks of Beth—
she wonders if that is how he feels when he thinks about Starsin.
“I can’t,” she says softly, dropping her head and looking at the ground.
She feels tears burning the back of her sage green eyes but she holds them back for now because she is just so tired of crying—so tired of being so weak. “You don’t have to kill anyone,” and this comes with a watery laugh, low and deep in her throat as she leans over to push him gently, playfully.
“I can’t even admit it to myself,” she whispers, feeling it scratching at the back of her throat.
There is a beat, a pause of time, a breath when she finally looks up to catch his gaze.
“You didn’t deserve that. You know that, right? Whatever she said, she was wrong.”
She does, she thinks, but she keeps such things to herself.
If someone ever asked him just how he felt about Starsin, he would find his tongue useless in his mouth. How could he describe the way his ribs wanted to split open just to make room for all the warmth she pours into him? They don’t, of course, but he manages to make room for every drop of his adoration just the same. Her name is sticky tree sap on his lips and her kisses are a wine that get him drunk without ever feeling sick. When Malone was born, everything doubled and then doubled again. He calls her name in his sleep and dreams of waking up beside her.
Even at their worst, he would make the mountains kneel at her feet and drink the oceans dry if she only asked.
Her love has cut him to the bone, though, and he has stumbled beneath the weight of it. Ophanim plunged himself face first into the ocean waves and cursed his eyes for ever showing him a face so beautiful. She has crushed him in her palm and built him all over again, but he gave her the power in the first place. The crown of his love was always hers, after all. And he would do it all again if he had the choice.
But Adna doesn’t ask and so he doesn’t say that he would drag his belly over broken glass just to kiss her before he sleeps. He just curls close to her when she gives her broken laugh and nudges him. She tries so hard to be strong like her father but he knows she’s got a tender heart lurking in her chest. It can snap its teeth and play the role of beast all it wants, but it would die for a chance at happiness. He knows because he felt the same way back then.
“Except I did deserve that. I betrayed everyone who ever trusted me just to make myself feel better,” he says, still angry with himself over it even as the hear in his chest coos softly to him. “But you can tell me anything, Adna. There’s nothing you could do that’s so terrible that you couldn’t be forgiven.”
And he speaks from firsthand experience, he thinks. He tried to set fire to his future because he was afraid it wasn’t certain but Starsin had come running just to find him. Ophanim took advantage of Adna’s trust and her friendship and she welcomed him back with a smile. His children all forgave him for diving into a war and risking his life. If there is anything he has learned, it is that love devours any sin and still has room for joy.
“Your family is quick to protect you against even perceived threats. I don’t think your father and your sister hate me because it’s fun…I hope not, at least.”
And he laughs, and the sound is genuine this time.
one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide
He was so quick to take the blame—so quick to just breathe it in and let it settle in his veins.
She wishes that he could see himself through her eyes. She wishes that he could see how good he is, how kind, how he has never deserved these injustices that have been played out against him. She wishes that she could tell him how his heart is a beautiful thing and it is to be cherished, to be protected at all costs.
But she does not spit up the truth with him as readily as she does with Beth.
She has some semblance of control and she keeps these thoughts locked tight.
Just a sad smile and a small shake to rid the dust that has settled onto her scales, her hair coming down in soft curves around her jaw. “You are so hard on yourself,” she says and she is a little more earnest with this, hoping that if she says it strongly enough, he will stop fighting it—will just accept the truth of it. “You have always loved your family, your friends, your land. You have been good to them.”
She has known him long enough to know this. At least this much.
There is a piece of her that almost tells him. Almost tells him about how she met a man who feels terribly important and how she doesn’t know how to handle it. How she is carrying his child and doesn’t feel any closer to him. How she dreams of the curve of his jaw and the feel of his warmth but picks fights like the child that she has always been. How he most likely hates her and she wouldn’t blame him if he did.
How he also fathered her sister’s firstborn.
How she carries the secret of it deep within her heart.
But, here, she is a secretive thing and she buries it deep.
“My family of vipers quite likes hating for fun,” she says, hoping to distract him with this.
