A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.
No, she doesn’t remember him.
Though likely it is of little fault of her own. Infection had required a devoted instrument for His own occasional application rather than a daughter. Phasus, obligingly (devout servant that she is), had become all that was ever asked of her — a wicked, pretty thing that would remember Him above all else. There are memories, certainly, that she keeps close. She collects them like dust-covered albums in an attic, though the songs will always be the same. He is still the sun, and she a planet in dutiful rotation, governed by gravity itself to obey this endless cycle.
Time doesn’t change it.
Even now, without Him here to whisper against her pretty ears and the heat of a magician so close against her own skin that she can feel his warmth seep down through her flesh and ignite her, she is remembering Him. Perhaps the way that their magic tangles together now in such a complementary way is reminder enough.
(Like that day at the beach, when father and daughter had tangled together to crumble an angel’s magic like it was nothing, only ashes.)
Veiled behind a set of dark eyes that smolder she is drawing comparisons between them. After a moment, and when her head tilts gently to look at him aslant, she has come up with few and subtle differences (if she only knew). Already she teeters the line, capable of falling into old habits and finding her place at his left flank. Isn’t this what she has always wanted? Here she is crumbling under the weight of his potential, her eyes taking beyond their fill and still left unsatiated. Of course he is going to enjoy her. Let him exploit her. Let him use her up until there is nothing left.
This is what she has been made for.
She should be so lucky.
He comes to them, then, just as she is ready to buckle, the one with gold and silver in his hair that reeks of self-satisfaction in the name of a kingdom and its queen. And there it is again, that familiar tingle of a singular nerve as it rocks her bones like waves against a dinghy at sea. From nowhere gnats are forming a dark cloud around his head, and oh, how she’d like to feed them but decides against it when she realizes she’s not yet ready to untangle herself from the piebald stranger standing parallel to her, at least not for such small, petty pleasures. Instead she leaves her magic to mingle, inwardly still writhing at the notion of its strength, and it is begrudgingly at best that she then steps sideways from the magician lest someone notice the gravity between them and assume it collusion rather than a sick, raw attraction.
Rather than a festering compulsion, bred into her like depravity.
She looks away from them then, both of them, and it isn’t until she does so that she notices the familiar shape in the shadows wielding the gnats. It’s the same shadow that had enveloped her before the explosion, and so she casts a warm, half-lidded gaze towards it though she says nothing.
And she is still observing shadows, trying and failing when it comes to identifying the being enveloped by them, when Camomila slips in among the crowd. A small huff from her chest confesses her defeat with her task on her behalf and she looks forwards again, directing a feigned but gentle smile at the newest arrival to assure her that there are no hard feelings regarding her gently refused deal. Perhaps there are, but while it may have delighted her to have a kingdom fall into her lap so easily, she can hardly begrudge her refusal to lay down and quit until the world is safe. When is it ever safe?
“Phasus,” the magician says to her then, with a smile that reminds her of cities lain to waste. She doesn’t question how he’s come to know her name — perhaps he’s used his magic, perhaps she’s told him already while their skin was almost touching and she was drinking in his power, forgetting herself. It doesn’t matter anyways.
“You will lead alongside me, this free, plague-less island.”
And there, at the end of his breath, a single word makes its home at the crook of her ear. ‘Patience,’ it breathes, not knowing that she is already beside him — that he is exactly the shark she has been waiting for. She wants to curl against him, a display of her loyalty but also her own greed manifested into something physical, but it isn’t time. She hasn’t come this far to forget her tact now.
He asks that Leilan (ah, a name at last) renounce his claim in exchange for an offer that would surely expose himself to refuse. To Camomila he divulges an opportunity as well, though Phasus is not privy to exactly what shape that will take. She doesn’t know that she cares either way, now that her passions are channeled elsewhere.
“Ah, yes. I am Set.”
The fourth comes then, just as he had the first time, and her body is humming again. He is as incendiary now as he was only hours ago, lighting flames where fire is not needed. It is likely that he is still reeling from their previous aggressions, and she cannot fault him for it, not when she still feels those fuses lit herself. She meets his eyes for only a moment, and then turns her focus to Leilan.
“Leilan,” she says then, tasting the sound of it as last. She draws the syllables out a fraction longer than she should. “Perhaps it would make sense to dismiss your companion at this time so we can have a rational discussion. This doesn’t need to concern our friends, at least not while we are just exploring options.”
There is nothing inflammatory about the way she says it, no sweetened version that drips with honey and poison in equal measures.
Let him see what a clever, pretty, patient thing she can be.
“Set, your proposal is agreeable to me. Perhaps it would soothe Nerine to know that I am not left to my own devices given how much they seem to mistrust my intentions.”
‘Patience.’
The sound of it makes her skin prickle with delight.
phasus