Andarin: The Mountains: nicodemus ;

astarte;

Love?

She smiles, and her scar creases and wrings itself, beneath his gaze and against his fire and under the spread stars above – try as she might, it never ceases to remind her, and she thinks ever so briefly of Kale, missing him. She wonders what had become of him, resting in the stars and vindicated; she wonders, too, if times had been different, that they would have shared each other under the moon. She’d loved him too, as she’d loved any stallion, though differently;

And Astarte wonders how her mother had withstood it, Queen to a King she did not love and in love with a soldier she could not – it had driven her mad, to cast the Simurgh to the soil and herself to the four winds, and Astarte wonders where she is now.

She looks to Nicodemus, his head turned towards the sky and his eyes laced to the stars as if emboldened by their fire, and her heart leaps with hope for him, more than it had ever leapt in hope for her (not since that first night with Dorian, herself already touched with Icarus – unshameful, tainted, and secret), and her smile widens in secret pride.

“Love is everywhere, friend,” she breathes, grateful for his warmth and wondering herself, “if only you care to find it.”