"Tides of Fire"

[Arvælyn]

“I suppose there would be some satisfaction in conquest… To at least exercise some of the skills in which I’m trained rather than letting those talents convalescence in hypotheticals.” Arvælyn pulled Finn toward a marble bench and took a seat at its edge.

“I’ve never been to war. The closest I’ve known is a Kalzasern wedding, but I see those tapestries depicting the glories of old and, in flights of fancy, I insert myself. In a way it feels the way theatre did… envisioning an unknown and finding myself in the midst of its mysteries…” He trailed off.

“Perhaps that’s it, then. His Divine Radiance was explicit at our wedding that He wants us to expand our influence. Maybe He’s placed this void in my heart to urge me toward His aims. Perhaps She put it there to remind me not to let my chains go slack, when there is so much space in which to tighten them.” He shook his head. It all seemed so nebulous. The pain he felt wasn’t sharp, it was soft like the memory of a tragedy long past. He wasn’t miserable, he just wasn’t happy either.

“Absolutely not.” He replied promptly at the offer to invoke the Rex Regnum. “I will not trouble Him with such petty concerns as my personal gripes about a lot millions would kill to occupy. I’d have killed for it before it was mine… That I didn’t need to… That may be the rub.” He sighed and let his head fall to one of those broad shoulders of Finn’s. If not for his wings, Arry would still be the smaller of the two. Aværys, when he wore the flesh to which he’d been born, was smaller still if more toned.

“So, what’s the fix, then? Who shall we conquer first?” He smirked and, even with his Symphony unguarded, it was impossible to tell if he was kidding. Which doubtless meant he wasn’t sure himself.

[Finn]

"We remain chess pieces upon a board we can only see but obliquely," he said. "That we have crowns of gold and light, well, we are still but mummers. The platinum dragons and the Divine Twins rule here. They merely delegate to us."

Finn took the vehement denial in stride; he supposed it might be due to the object lesson Aværys had taught him, but while he didn't bother the God with every thought in his head except in prayer, he was not shy about invoking him when the need arose. If he didn't want discourse with his chosen, then he oughtn't to have chosen them, at least to Finn's mind.

He smirked back, a little thrill running through him. The bard felt closest to his husband when it felt as though it was them against the world, whether it was penning a song together or, he supposed, conquering a nation.

"Well, I had hoped to serve you Thalya's head on a silver platter for your birthday... My golden prince looks so fetching in the sunlight." Deft artist's fingers came up to adjust an errant bit of golden hair. He smiled, inhaled the restrained, pleasant bouquet of fountain and waters, distant sands. The cool of the marble against his rump, the heat of his lover at his side. It was a paradise, but not the sort that Aværys had offered. This didn't make other glories fade beside it; this simple perfection made him feel as though his dissatisfactions were incorrect.

"Our hearts we have sold for diamonds and gold," he reminded him in song. "But hey, baby, take a look: we have it all." It wasn't only his power that had grown; Finn's voice had achieved new heights as well. Arvælyn heard it stripped down and without accompaniment more than most, and it was lovely in simplicity as well. Finn smiled wryly.

"For what it's worth, my love, I share in your dissatisfaction, your restlessness. I love your dissatisfaction and your restlessness. I cannot wave my hand and banish them, but I will bide by you until we figure things out. Always."

[Arvælyn]

"It is strange..." Arvælyn mused at the mention of Thalya, "I do not loathe her as you do. I would see her stopped for practical reasons, but I don't really take it personally that she tested our defences thus. Probably because the threat was to me, not to you, and because she spent a century in the limbo I now inhabit. I can see whereas it would lead to her brand of paranoia... It was likely warranted, all along." He shrugged one shoulder,

"I'm glad that you are intent on putting a stop to her machinations, though. If she persists in her endeavour, it seems that far more than merely I will be affected." His expression softened at the song, and he felt it in his soul anew. The lyrics held meaning they hadn't when he first sang them in Kalzasi. He had no idea what they would presage.

"We have it all." He repeated, a breathy sprechstimme.

"Perhaps now that I've been about this work for a time, I can seek to diversify it a bit. I've surely proven myself capable enough, and the other members of the consilium are perfectly capable of playing regent for a time while I engage in more life-affirming activities. Perhaps some travel... perhaps some new adventure will present itself that will benefit the realm whilst also satisfying and satiating my soul." He sat upright, lifting his head from Finn's shoulder to look at him properly.

"And what of you? You've heard enough of my gripes and commiserated with some of them, albeit abstractly. What is occupying your mind these days? I wonder what adventures does Phocion have you set upon in his top secret god squad?"

[Finn]

"She tried to take you away from me," he reminded Arvælyn darkly. It created dissonance in his music. Finn had a sunny disposition, had seemed almost too compassionate for the harsh-seeming rules of Solunarian life. If Zalkyriax and Arvælyn loved like dragons, as Cithæra claimed, it was odd for a note of jealous possessiveness to chime along his words.

His hands tightened on his husband again, not so tight as to hurt or harm, but underscoring what he said. It didn't seem as though he were about to drag his husband into his cavern full of treasure, however.

"We could go somewhere," he agreed, the moment passing quickly as a shoreline sunshower. "Our honeymoon was a delight." Nodding along, he knew that delegation was entirely possible. The Atraxian empire had a sizeable bureaucracy, and Finn saw firsthand how Cithæra depended on Phocion and Phocion depended on him. Of course, Finn wasn't the only support Phocion had, and it wasn't as though any of them were shirking duty. But they certainly didn't need to overload Arvælyn so early in his princely career such that he didn't learn how to balance upon that sharp pyramid point.

"Hm. Matters with Ecith aren't yet resolved to my satisfaction. I am still trying to figure out how to charm the aid I require to seek Thalya from your, ah, great-great-grandfather? A great deal of attention is paid to Sirena. I brought her here for protection, and for Solunarium's benefit. But her mother saved my life, saved my music, and charged me to care for her. I am trying to balance my duty to the realm and my duty to mother and child. They still imagine she is might be a bomb to tear Solunarium open as Zaichaer was rent asunder, but I do not see it." He shrugged.

"Perhaps I am blinded by loyalty, and bound by competing loyalties."

He sighed and his song went wistful, resonating with Arvælyn's Rune. He was, as he had said, content, but that didn't mean he didn't sometimes yearn for simpler times, sharing a fine apartment with his lover, playing roles and singing songs and being lauded for their gifts.

[Arvælyn]

"And failed." Arvælyn replied, tenderly. "Showed her hand prematurely and gave us the chance to prepare better defences against her particular powers." Unless, of course, she tried something else entirely. She'd certainly shaken things up for once in her static tenure. That was, perhaps, good for the realm, in the end.

"Though, I confess, I rather like seeing this wrathful, possessive side of you."

Arvælyn quietly pondered the points upon which Finn then expounded. Ecith was a concern that came across his desk quite a bit, as well, and he'd been in the welcoming party that met the Archduke Phædreon... The matter of Sirena was a bit perplexing to the prince, and he'd consciously avoided getting into it overmuch because he'd only briefly met Lyra and she had, in that instance, indeed been helpful. She seemed like she might have even been a friend or mentor, had she not lost interest. Perhaps that was how this Sirena wound up in Finn's care, as well...

"Competing loyalties?" The phrase seemed to break Arry free of his tangential thoughts. "If you think like a Solunarian, you'll find an easy fix to any such instance of ambivalence... Look to the pyramid." He smiled faintly.

"It does not please me that you bedded another short weeks shy of our wedding, but that it was the Rex Regnum means I must, perforce, accept it, because He is my better and I am here but by His will. Where my heart might typically tend toward rage at such a thing, He softens it... eases my wrath and lets me know that it is mine honour as much as yours. My very nature serves Him, for He is my undoubted superior, my liege and my cynosure. Look to your heart as to whom your loyalty is the greatest... Look to their place on the pyramid, and defer to the higher tier."

[Finn]

Finn's response had to wait as Arvælyn broached difficult territory. He was glad that rage was no longer the response, though a part of him wondered whether it was Mesmer, a divine, or a draconic influence that smoothed over those rough edges. Or perhaps his husband's perspective had truly widened beyond his knee-jerk emotional response. He put his arm around the prince's shoulders, mindful of his wings. By now, he had figured out how to comfortably cuddle the half-elven dragonling he loved.

"'Tis where the lines of the Pyramid are unclear that I find difficulty," he admitted. "Sirena has no advocate but me, no place yet in the Pyramid. I will not defy Phocion, but I begged him leave to take her elsewhere if he deemed her unfit for the Custodes Deorum rather than... destruction or punishment. And the word of Aværys is my command... even when it risks your displeasure." He sighed. "The most dangerous gray area, though, has to do with you. If your father commanded one thing and you its opposite, I do not know that I could defer to his greater authority. Or if you decided to give it all up... I would forswear myself to vault you elsewhere, wherever you desired."

He took that beautiful, princely hand in his own, brought it to his lips.

"Look kindly on me, though, my love. Your father might be exalted beyond wherever you might perch, but you will always be the king of my heart. I think he knows it, though, and whether he deems it human frailty or Kalzasern corruption, he allowed me to marry you and does not stop me when I want to defile you."

[Arvælyn]

Sensing a pointedly unspoken query in Finn's Symphony, Arvælyn stiffened slightly.

"Mistake me not. This was a singular instance. I brook this deed because He is my better and what would have been an indignity dealt by another is, instead, an honour from Him. My silver leash tightens ere I conceive of taking umbrage with the saviour of my distaff race." His fingers grazed the tanned throat circled by that unseen collar.

"Seek intimacy in the arms of His lesser, and they will not wait so long as Thalya to know the doom they've sown. My furnace-burning choler will not cool ere I strike, for no dish I serve is ever cold." The scent of charcoal filled the air between them as whisps of dark, grey smoke danced free of the prince's nostrils.

Though this matter had been broached, due to Finn's prompt and honest accounting of the incident, it was not something about which Arvælyn had spoken much. With the information recounted, he'd excused himself in haste to process things on his own. Whatever he did during the pursuant absence was not known to Finn and was closed off in some unheard part of his Symphony. When he returned he only touched on the subject again to say that he wished to hear no more on the matter. Then he'd gotten very busy and distant, and now here they were, addressing it for the first time since before their wedding.

With that aside, he returned with some relief, to the matter of Finn's concerns.

"Of course Silena has a place on the pyramid, Finn, she is peregrina. As I understand things, your work is to make her a citizen and see her pledged to the Founders. Execute this task, and she will be raised to the appropriate tier as determined by the Crown." At Finn's further expressions of ambivalence, Arvælyn shook his head,

"Your hypotheticals are bootless, dear, for I will not gainsay my father and dread liege. You were not present for my fealty vows, but I uttered them in Draconic. My obedience is as binding as any chain forged by Midnight's Mother." He smiled wanly as Finn kissed his hand and rolled his eyes at his broaching the Crownwyrm's opinions on their sex life.

[Finn]

Finn paused. He hadn't meant to imply there would be others, lesser than the Golden God or otherwise, but he nodded his head in understanding lest clarification seem combative. There was a faint smile, however, for how poetic Arvælyn had become in his pronouncements, even just for him. It was likely having spent a sleepless night among his draconic family as much as anything else.

He had loved knowing the soul behind the role back in Kalzasi, and he still treasured the times now where he felt as though he was seeing the parts of Arvælyn that others didn't see. But there were certainly parts of Arvælyn that were changing to fit the mold of the masks he wore, faking it until he made it as they said.

"A peregrina," he said dubiously, "or an asset of the Custodes Deorum." He didn't keep things from Arvælyn, but he didn't go into great deal about most of his missions. It was important to Finn that Phocion not feel as though Finn was likely to run to Arvælyn with reports as to his handling of his branch of the Vigilia Argenti.

Sometimes, he wasn't sure if he was a peregrinus or an asset of the Custodes Deorum, a royal-by-marriage citizen or a knight on a chessboard wearing the colors of Phædryn-Sol'Aværys and Sol'Zalkyrion. He could weather some uncertainty, though, for the certainty of his husband's hand in his.

"The print was so small
I didn't understand
He cut our thumbs
And placed a feather in our hands
Told us we would see
All our dreams and plans unfold."

He didn't mean the lines to be murky, merely topical. A smile softened them.

"Wither would you away, my love, were we fleeing the routine for a bit of adventure? Kalzasern trips don't seem as important anymore now that my family is here, and it felt strange to be there for the coronation... In Kalzasi, but so separate from most of the people and places I knew best. I wonder how the folks at the Crown and Lion are faring. Their simple lives, their simple support."

Finn wasn't wistful exactly, but his life had taken a strange turn.

[Arvælyn]

"I daresay the two are not mutually exclusive..." Arvælyn observed wryly, on the matter of what category Sirena fell into. Assets, as such, did not have a place on the pyramid, after all. There were other qualifiers that determined where they fell, for prince and peregrine alike might serve the interests of the Vigilia Argenti.

At the lyrical reference, he wore a wistful, wan smile.

"I suppose there is a thin line between dragons and devils in some scenarios..." Arvælyn made this observation incognizant of his own appearance and how the draconic features that adorned him made him look as much an incubus as a dragonborn, with horns on his head and leathery wings at his back.

"I'm not sure, as yet... I'll still need to sort things out with the Consilium, so I would not fain get ahead of myself before the path is cleared." At Finn's musings over his former friends and neighbours in Kalzasi, Arry considered for a moment.

"If there is anyone there whose life you would like to improve, you might bequeath gold or gifts. You are revoltingly wealthy now, after all, and a pittance to us might be life-altering to some Kalzasern commoner... A past version of me would certainly have welcomed such a boon." Though this occurred to him for Finn, it was not something he'd ever done himself. He'd kept close with few in Kalzasi, and none who had need of his charity. He had more rivals than friends left from his theatrical career and his life at the cabaret was not something to which he wished to draw further ties. He preferred not to even think on it anymore. Perhaps it was a pity he hadn't learnt that auto-Mesmer trick the Sælyans were so fond of exploiting to temper their feelings.

[Finn]

"Of course," he replied with a smile. "I will be eager to hear, though, when you let your imagination take flight."

It occurred to him that he didn't know how to please his beloved in this situation; oh, he could take his clothes off and please him in the moment, but an earth-shattering orgasm only dropped one into the afterglow for so long. There were larger, more systemic hurdles to their happiness now.

What is happiness? he wondered, not aloud, but he didn't exactly guard his thoughts and feelings from Arvælyn. He knew the thought of a life without his husband was a decidedly unhappy thought, but the having and the holding didn't make each moment a joy. When he spoke to his parents about such things, they were so practical about them. They had shared a life for so long, been partners, reared children, now grandchildren, and it seemed as though they were happy now for their son who would never want for anything material, and who clearly loved his husband, and they were glad that the rest of the family would suffer no deprivation. Fionna could create whatever she wished. Mabon could walk into a strange bar and make friends of strangers and expand his understanding of the world.

Ciarán was currently recovering from too much partying...

"Perhaps when next I find myself in Kalzasi, I will find myself in the old taproom with a bag of gold and I'll give gifts for new children, new marriages, and the like... Make things a little better for everyone." He smiled; the thought did give him some pleasure, although he knew he was more distant from those people than he had ever been now and it wasn't just the distance.

He brought a golden hand up to his lips again.

"We will figure it out, love. Together."

fin.