James Sulzbach • Cinna Calliope Vassalos (bathyal) wrote in elysia, @ 2022-01-19 21:20:00
WHO: Badr and Cinna WHEN: Over the course of the school year so far, beginning at the beginning, and ending shortly after the recent attack WHERE: On the lawn and in the dining hall SUMMARY: At first, they both feel a bit out of place in Serenitas, but as time goes by, Badr feels more and more integrated, while Cinna...does not. They experience some disconnect. CW: Nah
Badr sits, happily barefoot in a short robe tucked into loose pants, beneath some kind of flowering tree. It is not the kind of flowering tree that grows in Simurgh, but the smell of it instantly drew him to its shade, and so he dragged Cinna to sit beneath its boughs. Around them, bees hum and dart, kissing the orange-white blossoms and carrying away bits of nectar. That part feels familiar, though somehow even the bees in this city seem to be missing some of the natural splendor of the wild pollinators in Simurgh—they’re fat, domesticated bees that probably live in a nearby hive. Everything here is so cultivated. Nature feels strangely segregated from “civilization.” He doesn’t love that, but he does enjoy hiding behind the heavy stems of the strange tree, breathing in dirt and flower, listening to the wind and the whirr of insect wings, an enormous book spread between his crossed legs.
Here, obscured by the sagging limbs and fat flowers, the loud prince seems unlikely to notice them. Badr sighs, feeling clever, maybe even a little smug, for discovering the hiding place. He looks up from his book, a touch of it in his expression before his gaze falls on Cinna and softens. He wonders if being here is difficult for her, or if she remembers anything about Serenitas. Her name makes her seem like a part of this world, but Simurgh is her home.
“How are you?” he suddenly asks.
For a brief moment, Cinna does not look up from her own book. She is seated next to him. Familiarly close, but still with a polite enough gap between Badr’s knee and her own. It has always been this way with her. Though she has known them most of her life, lived with them as close as any family, Cinna has always kept herself at some physical and emotional distance. (Well, as much as she could. Though this has been, at times, hard, especially where Zuya is concerned.) Because there has always been a sense (instilled in her, maybe, by a father she barely remembers now, only a genteel voice and pleasing blue eyes) that she is a guest in someone else’s house, here only temporarily, and that all invitations, no matter how hospitable, do expire eventually. (Besides which, it should be admitted, Cinna has always been quietly afraid of bruising Badr in particular.)
So it has been an unconscious concession, this distance she carries. But here, in this strange place, she has started to notice it. Here, she supposes, the three of them are set apart together. They are all guests in someone else’s house now. Well, this ought to comfort her. And maybe it is. But she’s also become aware of herself as an outsider twice over, and she isn’t entire sure what to do with that yet.
But, like any homegrown Simurgher, Cinna misses the cool, quiet of the forest. She misses the sound of the morning recitations. She hasn’t slept well since they arrived in Serenitis for want of the evening song. So there are pale circles starting beneath her eyes. And her hair has become dull and flat. She wonders if it’s a difference in humidity (it might be). Or if being so close to so many rock-worshipers has already started to wear on her.
She hates it all, if she’s being honest.
But they are here for a purpose. Badr and Zuya must learn and excel in their Calling. And Cinna will stand by them against these foreign absurdities as long as she must. Her own discomfort, ultimately, does not matter. It never has.
Eventually, Cinna lowers a hand across the page she is pretending to read. But still without looking up, she starts, “The same as you, Badr, I expect. Unhappy. But I am determined to frighten away anyone who makes this more difficult for us than it needs to be.” She looks up, offering a forced, awkward smile. “He hasn’t hurt you, has he? Because I’m sure we can complain to the administration if this does not relent. This is a school, not a sporting arena.”
Badr shakes his head and smiles, though the pull of his mouth has a strain to it. He does not know what to make of the Prince’s attention. Perhaps, in a different setting, he might find it welcome. He is, after all, able to enjoy more freedom here than he did in Simurgh—there isn’t an immediate demand for his presence; people aren’t gazing upon him with reverence everywhere he goes. He is, for perhaps the first time he can remember, just another youth.
Even as he is not. He has realized that he might be more prideful than he’d imagined, because he is so used to being cosseted and fussed over, of being treated like some kind of marvel, that being treated as a peer is…a little offensive. He doesn’t want to admit that, because he knows it’s arrogant of him to feel that way. The Chosen of Song is not better than anyone else. Rather, the Chosen of Song is supposed to live in service to the people of Simurgh. His desire to be special is not a flattering trait, and it’s come as a bit of a shock...
He draws himself back to the present and chuckles. “I’m perfectly fine, Cinna. Though it is a little embarrassing to have a stranger be so familiar so...suddenly.” He searches for a petal to mark his place, his arms straining as he sets it aside. “Have you been treated well, though?” he asks, persisting, because he is curious how Cinna in particular is finding Serenitas.
“Like a curiosity at best,” she shrugs, also setting her reading aside. Though she holds the book in her hand still, merely closing the heavy volume on her finger while she speaks. “Like a little doll at worst.”
Smirking, Cinna glances up to try to meet Badr’s eye, and something playful dances away in her own dark blue gaze. She’s a very small creature, elfin in appearance and (anyone who doesn’t actually know her might guess) a little fragile looking. Thin and pale and serious, with a faraway look always in her eyes, they might also think her distracted, not paying attention, easily gone over or around. But this is perhaps a bit by design. Cinna prefers it this way. Though she is in actuality, of course, ever watchful and sees so much more than she lets on. And she is not really doll-like at all. Maybe in appearance, with her large, glassy eyes and smooth skin, but she would not break so easily as porcelain.
Just now, for instance, she’s leaned against the tree behind her, with her short legs sprawled beneath a length of dark, unremarkable skirt. At the far end of her, the toes of her bare feet pointed lazily away from each other. Her arms are slack at her sides, the book, still pressed over her finger, dropped onto a thigh. From a distance, yes, she might look like a bookish scholar, but up close, there is something much hardier about her, almost unusually angular and sharp.
“After all, I may have already been bested once by the lovely Prince Brawns-Over-Brains. I suppose I’ll be too boring now to garner much attention now from anyone else.” She can almost be said to wink, if she were a young woman given to such gestures. Instead, her upper lip merely curls, and she offers another deprecating shrug. “I’ll go unnoticed from here on out, mark my words. And isn’t that just as it should be? We have a lot of work to do, and the term has only barely just begun. I hope you’ve been studying more than your sister,” she adds with a slight sigh, now giving away something truer of her anxieties. “I do worry about her. Even if it isn’t my place, you know.”
He has a feeling if he’d only read a single chapter of their assignments...he still would have done more of the reading than Zuya.
But he’d read all of it and then some. Studying had been a part of his everyday life in Simurgh, and unlike Zuya, he hadn’t been allowed to leave the village. Or maybe “not allowed” wasn’t exactly it. Just that there was never a good enough reason for him to be permitted to put his work on pause and go out into the world before now. So he had learned everything that the priests had told him to learn, and he’d learned everything the elders had told him to learn, and then he’d peeked at some of the archives that were not meant for his young eyes (because there had perhaps been too much faith placed in a teenager using the restricted archives). He’d tried to learn a little about Crystalism and the other countries. But all in all, he’d mostly focused on Simurgh and the Holy Score, so it was exciting to read about new subjects. Magical technology, tactics, history, and the like. He’d dug into the reading just for fun, and so he’d read more than any of the professors had asked well before stepping foot in Serenitas.
But Zuya…
If only they could exchange a little of their strengths: her prowess and his studiousness. He sighs. He doesn’t want to worry about her, because he’s … pretty sure she’ll find a way to muddle through. But, well, it’s hard not to be a little concerned, especially since there do seem to be so many classmates who are happy to distract her from reading with mock battles and feats of strength.
“Maybe...she’ll find tactical arts exciting…” he says aloud, though mainly to himself, watching the sunlight through the flowers. “And it will spark some latent interest in studying?” It seems like a stretch. Still, he hopes that Zuya doesn’t end up miserable, because she has to study while she’s here. “I’m personally enjoying Theories of Elemental Magic a lot. Though...I don’t think that’s really her thing.” And really, he’s more likely to put her off it entirely by trying to engage her in the subject.
“What do you mean, though—that you’ve already been bested?”
Cinna smirks vaguely, eyes casting downward again toward her book. She loves Zuya. But Zuya can also be exhausting. Well, so can Badr, she reminds herself. They each have their own individual strengths, and their particulars, for which she adores them equally, and endlessly. But there are times she wishes she could talk Zuya into opening a book just once, or Badr into putting one down for more than half a second. She wonders if this place will force either of them to adapt. She supposes only time will tell.
“Don’t worry about it,” she says aloud, with a wry twist to her lips, and she flips the book open again in her lap. “I’m small, more brains than brawn. But I’m an easy target no more.”
However, things have not improved for Cinna since their first weeks at the Academy. Oh, she has excelled gracefully in her studies. She works harder than most others in her class, and has a natural intelligence and creativeness of mind that has always set her apart from her peers. (Peers? She isn’t sure she has any true ‘peers’ really, but, well, others within a certain age bracket, then.) She reads continuously, but more than that, she thinks. She writes in her journals and submits essays that have not even been required of her. She theorizes. She has tried to engage her fellow students in discourse, and while most of the time she is met with annoyance or confusion, sometimes she has managed to pull interesting thoughts from their funny little heads.
But, even so, she still feels like a sea dragon out of water. She is a year or two older (at least) than most of her classmates, and though she has a name that situates her as a local, she is still an oddity from that hidden forest. Made even more odd by being an outsider from the inside. Nobody expects someone like her. She doesn’t even know who she is. And, though she rather admires that woman from Donnersberg, she has not found her stride with the faculty either. She works hard to impress them, but she often baffles them too. And her willingness to call them out in front of their own students from time to time has not made her likable.
Anyway, Cinna has made do. Her sleep has improved; she’s gotten used to the way the city can be loud and silent at the same time—full of voices and activity, but devoid of song. She’s found a way to go unnoticed, for the most part. Though there are times she still draws attention. Though stoic most of the time, she has also become a noted know-it-all who can’t keep her mouth shut. Many avoid her. Some call her a shrew. Behind her back, but Cinna knows. Overall, though, she doesn’t care too much.
She’s taken them back to ‘their spot’ beneath the flowering tree. Though now it’s grown dull with thinning leaves and a silence of near-forgotten birdsong. Cinna likes this place; the trees at least remind her of something like home. It’s not quite, it’s never quite right, but it’s better than marble and stone, at least.
“So…” Cinna starts. She hasn’t opened her book today. Truth be told, she’s grown tired of schoolwork. It’s as if she’s exhausted all the interesting material, and the rest is like running drills. She’s beginning to wonder whether this is all worth their time at all. She glances sidelong to her companion, eying him knowingly. Badr is blossoming in some unexpected ways. Though this too Cinna has reservations about. “So, how is the lively Prince Brawns-Over-Brains lately?”
Where there had been petals before, there is a smattering of yellow leaves dotting the greying grass. Badr thinks it’s too cold, really, to be sitting outside. The coming winter leaves the ground feeling cold and hard. He has begun wearing his winter boots, wrapped neatly up his calves, every day. They are not as pretty or comfortable as his slippers, but he hates being cold, and so he has eschewed any thought of going barefoot now. He crouches beside the tree, picking up leaves and admiring them. This tree is new to him, and he liked its summer flowers, but he likes, too, its autumn litter. He keeps the best leaves, held safe in his other hand. When he has enough of them, he thinks he will make a crown out of them. Maybe he will give that crown to Prince Brains-Over-Brains, as Cinna puts it.
How things have changed since that first week.
His feelings have flowered, and the scent of love wafts through him. The days feel softer and sweeter, like he’s floating inside a cloud of glittering incense. Thoughts of the prince waft in and out of his thoughts, drawing random, foolish smiles across his face. It’s been a wonder that he’s been able to keep up with his studies. He’s entered into a near-constant state of distraction—a luxury he never had in Simurgh, but which he has perhaps been overindulging in recently. He knows he should be more moderate. This can’t last forever. When their school days are over, they will have to live lives apart, with other people.
But he tries not to think about that, because the gravitational pull of reality is unkind, and the fall hurts him every time.
He finds another perfect leaf and adds it to his collection. He doesn’t look up at Cinna’s question. He is certain his sisters have seen through him. He knows they must realize why he is so hazy around the edges these days. He doesn’t really want to talk about it, because what is there to say? That he is happy now; that he will surely be miserable when it’s over.
“Energetic,” Badr replies at length. “Do you…want to say that I’m being indulgent?” He glances up at her, his lashes veiling his expression, but the sulkiness comes through. He looks away. “So what? I’ve never been allowed to be indulgent before. I won’t be allowed to again. What can it hurt?”
She would think that Badr has become soft, except that Badr has always been soft. He’s always been delicate and observant, thoughtful and very careful in the way he interacts with the world. Because he was brought up to be soft. Because he was brought up to be delicate as a flower gliding on a lake of ice. But the particular softness about him has changed in recent weeks. Cinna watches the way he plays with the fallen leaves, as if handling precious glasswork. She wonders if the world is more precious to him now than it was before. If it’s changed shape for him, or if it’s only resonating now in a deeper pitch. She wonders what that means for him.
More importantly, she wonders what that means for the Holy Score, and for the Dragon.
Cinna, in a thick cloak of emerald green with creamy fur puffed about her chin and cheeks, glances away from him. Her dark hair trails across her eyes, clinging to her lips in a breeze, but for a long moment, she does not remove her hands from the folds of her long, bell-shaped sleeves. The air is biting here. Not especially cold, but sharp in an unfamiliar way. Back home, the winds are always filtered by trees and brush; here it’s only funneled into hard threads by stone structures and iron gates. Here, even the wind seems manmade. So Cinna has opted for the local fashion in her long cloak and laced boots, but her hair she has left loose. A symbol, maybe, of some unspecified defiance.
Eventually, she pulls a pale hand free of her coat to trace a ridge of silvery embroidery along her sleeve. “Your studies, for one,” she says, not bothering to hide the sharp edge in her voice, as she lifts icy blue eyes toward him. “Your duties, another. You have not lost any resonance with Her voice, have you?”
Badr stills, his back to her. His connection with the Score is the same as it ever is. He’s even asked Her for love advice. It seems like his predecessors weren’t shy about it, and She doesn’t seem to mind, so he sees no problem with it, but he also doesn’t want to tell Cinna about that. She’ll definitely think his mundane problems are entirely unworthy of the Score’s energies. He knows that they are, but She still seems amused enough by them. She likes humans, after all; she likes their mundanities and trivialities, too.
“Would you like to check? Is there a question you would like for Her to answer?” he asks a little coolly. “She is always here with me. You don’t need to be concerned, but if it will ease your heart, then I would be glad to speak on your behalf.” He glances over his shoulder, tucking his leaf collection away. “The only thing I’m having any trouble with is…” Martial Arts. Magitech Sciences. “I’m only finding a few things to be not as easy. Everything else is nothing compared to having to memorize fifteen hymns in the Old Language in a month.”
She can sense the coolness coming off him, so Cinna glances away. They are at a curious impasse. She never saw that coming before they arrived at this terrible place. She imagined she and Badr, and even Zuya would be outsiders here together. Brothers-in-arms against the world. Always. But Zuya, while she hasn’t forgotten them, has found her own way. That’s always been easier for Zuya. But Badr…even Badr. Cinna never saw that coming, that he would find a place here more easily than even she. And she does find it funny: of the three of them, how is she the one standing furthest to the periphery now, a castaway and scowling.
Her parents were from Serenitas. It’s no secret. Though it’s never been openly addressed anywhere that Cinna now remembers. Their exile has always been a foggy enigma, a cautionary tale without context. But she knows. If her name weren’t enough, if her eyes and hair weren’t enough, there’s something stony in her spirit that resonates with these brick walls and those colorful glass windows.
But she snorts softly when Badr finishes, glancing upward at him with a thin smile. “We do have the advantage in some areas. Brother,” she adds, hesitantly, before glancing away again. “I only want what’s best for you,” she says. And the Score, she thinks, but silently. Perhaps it’s a callous thought, but she will not sacrifice what they stand for. Not even for Badr, or his happiness.
Badr watches her curiously from across the dinner table. Is it that he has been growing outwards lately, while Cinna keeps to herself, or is it that she has in some imperceptible way grown out of him? Now that they are no longer in Simurgh, he can sense a certain distance between them. Had it always been there? Did he only miss it because every hour of his day was in such demand? Or has coming to school revealed something about him distasteful to her? He cannot say.
He knows she only came to the cathedral—put herself in danger—because of him. He knows he still trusts her as though her heart was his own. But sometimes he wonders if she has not placed herself in a separate room even when they are in the same room.
He eyes his meal of fish and flatbread and some sort of pasted bean. He misses Simurghian fare, though he supposes this isn’t so different. Perhaps that it is similar—that’s what makes it feel strange and foreign. It is almost what he knows, but not. He sighs and wishes he could simply fill his plate with honey cakes, but neither Zuya nor Cinna would approve of that. So he pokes his fish dejectedly and stares at Cinna whenever he thinks she is caught up in thought or chewing.
They are family. Only family would go into obvious danger for his sake. And perhaps that is part of the problem—perhaps she resents that he led her into such an affair. He cannot say what Cinna is thinking. Not anymore. Maybe, he realizes at last, he never could.
“You have that certain furrow in your brow, Sister. Is something on your mind?”
She is not the same girl who arrived here so many months ago. Her blue eyes, which have always been striking, are even more so now. They burn vicious as ice from her pale face and silvery white hair, making her small, elfin features seem harsher than they once were. The set of her jaw and the frown, both of which are typical, don’t help matters much.
But Cinna does not glare when Badr addresses her. She is still soft with him. Or, at least, she tries to be. Though all of her has taken on a chill that is hard to shake. Even for him. Still, her blue eyes dull slightly when she looks up, going from icy to something closer to sky, and she unclenches her jaw from where she had been grinding her molars with a long, hard stare into the dish before her. She has not grown accustomed to the food, not in all this time. Perhaps she has willfully tried to avoid it. Perhaps she is afraid if she gives in, she will become trapped here. Like a crystal herself.
But she manages something like a half-smile when she looks at him. “Only the usual,” she shrugs. She doesn’t say that she’s afraid for him, though she still is. After the other night, she is afraid of what it means to be Chosen of Song in a city made of rock.
Cinna’s eyes dance across Badr’s plate, then up again with a faint smile. “You cannot subsist on honey cakes alone, you know.”
He wonders if he made a misstep somewhere. Back home, he had not been a young man; he had been an idol and a leader. He had not had to shoulder the weight of every decision, because Simurgh was a kinder place than that, and there were senior priests and priestesses for a reason, but he still had to make decisions that might seem astounding to anyone who hadn’t been leading a country in their teens. He was a sacred figure. To some, he expected he was a sacred object—a walking, talking relic. Badr had always thought, then, that at least at home, there was an understanding that he was also a boy. Zuya, in public, did treat him like he was special, but she was also his sister, and they had played together and learned together and fought plenty of times the way siblings do. She was the one person who really and truly understood what it meant to be in such a station at such a young age, for the Chosen of Dragon was not without her leadership role. But his parents had never treated him, not inside their walls, as something other than “Badr.” He wondered if Zuya and Cinna really did think he was that much more valuable than others—if they thought he was somehow sacred. He was not sure he was sacred. He was only a tool to spread Her voice to Her people.
He cut off the tiniest piece of fish and nibbled it.
He didn’t like the idea that his humanity might have tarnished him in their eyes. It made him feel a bit like something soiled and petty. A facsimile rather than the real thing. He did not know how to actually be sacred. He knew how to dance correctly at a harvest ceremony, to keep his robes tidy, to recite the hymns in the Old Language without pause or stutter, but those were things he thought anyone could learn if they must. They did not bestow anything particularly divine on him. It was a performance for the benefit of his people, to instill confidence in Her presence, to bind them as a community, to keep their history and traditions alive through the years... Maybe seeing him here acting like a man of what the Serenitas folk might call “20 years” had lowered their estimation of him. If so, that was even worse, because they still treated him with kindness. Or was it pity? He had never been pitied in his life, so he was not sure what that looked like. He had heard it was bad, though.
He took another tiny bite of fish and sighed at the taste. He did not like the flavor of this fish, and he did not like the spices used in its preparation. He wished for a filet of trout from the rivers he knew, cooked with fresh sage and basil and liberal goat’s butter the way he liked it.
“What is ‘the usual’?” he finally asked, drinking more water than necessary to chase the taste of the fish away. “Surely the usual can’t be quite as usual, as we are in an unusual place yet…”
Something is troubling him. Cinna watches Badr carefully, with her fork hanging loosely from her fingertips over the barely touched food on her plate. The way his long lashes cast thin shadows over his cheeks, like sunlight diluted by so many leaves. The way he nibbles at his fish, as if it’s another person entirely who eats, while he thinks, his mind always flickering in and out of focus. She can see that. Badr’s mind is visible to her, and like a deer in the wood: lithe and gentle and quick, delicate but pronged where it needs to be, and always disappearing again before you can make it out. Cinna frowns, worry giving way quickly to irritation, then back again to frustration tinged with uncertainty, with inadequacy…
Oh, she is becoming sullen. But Cinna isn’t sure whether she hasn’t always been sullen. She can remember feeling so out of place back at the home of the Marwans. A stony little thing with dark hair and pale skin and eyes. Alone. Her parents left her there. The Marwans insisted what was theirs was also hers, that it should be her home as much as it was Badr’s or Zuya’s. But Cinna has never been able to forget that this was a favor. That every bite she ever ate at dinner is another coin now dropped into the bucket of her debts. A debt her parents laid on her shoulders and then left her with, all those years ago, all to pay back on her own.
And so she has. Or she is trying to. Badr is Chosen of Song. Nothing is more sacred than Her voice, and he is the living vessel through which She speaks, sings, blesses the world. Zuya is the Chosen of Dragon, a force beyond anything these rocks and relics can contend with. Two in a single household! In some ways, maybe, Cinna sees her own role besides them as “chosen” of a sort, as destined. She will serve them. To the ends of the earth. And, if her family has put the weight of obligation on a land that never belonged to them, Cinna will devote herself completely to it. And, with that, to Badr and to Zuya, to the Song and the Dragon, to everything that truly matters. She has studied the Old Language as thoroughly as anyone can, after all. She has spent hours in devotionals, in listening and learning. She has promised to keep the history and traditions of Simurgh as close and as alive as she possibly can. Above all, she has stayed close to Badr and Zuya, and she will certainly not flag in that duty now.
But outwardly, she shrugs again, still smiling faintly. Though the expression is thin. She glances down again at her fish, poking at it idly while she speaks. “The spices they use in this fish, for one,” she muses. “Or…lack thereof.” She glances up again, her smile deepening slightly. “I suppose I miss river trout and goat’s butter. Even if…” But her voice trails off again, as she sets down her fork. Even if she has a name and a face that might fit better amongst these spires and stones, she thinks it will never be feel like home here.
Sighing, Cinna looks away, casting her blue gaze down the length of the table at the other students and their laughter and bright conversation. “I worry we’ll lose ourselves here,” she finally admits. Her gaze flicked up to Badr, then back again. She doesn’t need to say that what she really meant was you and not we. “The other night has me on edge. But…what business is it of ours whatever might have disturbed the shiny rocks in their keep?”
Badr’s expression falls. What business is theirs whatever might disturb the Crystals? Simurgh’s policy has always been clear: it isn’t their business. It isn’t their problem. It isn’t something they should be concerned with.
But the Crystal is tied to Titus, and Badr’s heart is tied to him, as well—and so it isn’t his business, and it isn’t his trouble. By getting involved, he might easily cause trouble to travel from these pristine walls to the boughs of Simurgh. But…that also isn’t a given. It’s just as likely that if he helps here, he might be preventing further engagement with these enemies within Simurgh. He might be protecting his country better by helping to protect this one.
His head is starting to hurt. Or maybe it’s his heart. Something is not quite as it should be within him, because he knows his logic—while not unsound—smacks of selfish desire.
After a moment, he puts his fork down, rubbing the bridge of his nose and shaking his head, so that his curls fall around his eyes, disguising his expression.
Again he wonders why it was he that the Holy Score spared. If She had not felt sorry for him, She might have chosen someone much more appropriate for the role. Someone Simurgh truly deserves.
He feels a pinch of annoyance in the back of his head and his shoulders twitch. He apologizes to that flash of emotion wafting through his thoughts, sitting up straight.
“I’m feeling tired,” he suddenly says, putting his hands into his lap. “I think, perhaps, rest might serve me better than sustenance.” He smiles, though, in case she is inclined to worry. “Our adventure has left me restless. Sleep has not come easily.” Her book will keep her company. At least for this evening, he thinks it isn’t a poor substitute.
If only Cinna had been born to Simurgh.
She would have been a better Chosen of Song than he.
Again, the annoyance, and it does nothing to lessen the bloom of his headache. He moves to stand, straightening his robes. He gazes down at her, her dark hair and sparrow’s build. If he does follow Titus, will she persist in following him? She did in the vault, but there had been no time to think about it. What will happen when she can consider the options? He doesn’t know, and he’s too afraid to ask. He steps away from the table.