DEIMOS
Perhaps their traditions and customs had been beleaguered down with patriarchal incredulities somewhere along the lines: Deimos hadn’t ever been accustomed to asking. He could presume the wedding had begun with some historical contention or conditions, dowries, only for alliances and kingdom thresholds, naught but missed airs of devotion and ardor. Unfortunately, what he’d accepted as an honor, because he considered Rexanna a branch of his family, and would’ve willingly done anything she’d asked of him, was now considered a blatant insult. He didn’t expect the glares, the sharp nuances, the narrowing of the baker’s eyes, and fought not to be affronted either. Property? Had he ever considered any of them in such a way? He’d been a guard, he’d been a protective fortress, and he’d been an onslaught of war, armor, and Stygian abyss, but he couldn’t recall a time where he’d bound them off, commanded their efforts, or insinuated control over them, even as King, even as Lord – imploring Kiada to come to her mother’s nuptials not-withstanding. His possessions? “Never,” he uttered, his features losing all sense of play, diversions, and devilry, pondering how and where and why he’d errored, only accepting Rexanna’s offer, what she wanted for her ceremony. “It was more of an insinuation of family.” Maybe he wasn’t worth those notes either, then, by these standards of vehemence and vitriol. The Sword placed his sandwich back down on the plate, appetite gone off into the ether somewhere in the midst of these stumbling, fumbling lines, eyes lingering elsewhere, not at either of them, reticent in his demeanor, retreating back on a tactician’s note, no sense of burrowing and burying himself into a deeper hole. He listened though, quietly, to the I don’t think anyone came honestly in Kiada’s spiral of laughter, if, after everything had fallen apart, it even mattered anymore – Elephant Kings and their misdeeds, in the raw bitterness of losing time and time again. All talk of weddings had somehow lost their keen luster of amusement, and his gaze only snapped back to the Harpy in her hushed murmur, in the slighted, blighted sigh, that she would’ve asked him too, were Ru’in still alive.
The beast choked on something down the back of his throat, and exhaled deeply too, reaching out to give her a shoulder a squeeze, an eternal balm of support, no matter how much they teased, taunted, or ridiculed.
He was something solid
to lean against
violent and fierce and unmoving
