Chapter 64: At The Brink.

"I do get it," Oizys agreed, voice low.

"I’ve had eyes on me my whole life. Not the same kind as this... the cult wants to sacrifice you eyes—but eyes all the same. You learn to perform being fine so early you forget there’s a version of you that isn’t at times."

"Yeah." His own voice had gone rough at the edges. "That."

A moment of hesitation.

"It’s been a long time since I’ve got to not... be..." Oizys stopped, apparently lost for words.

"Mhm." Elian added helpfully, not exactly sure where it was going but wanting to see it through nevertheless.

Oizys took a long chug, emptying her glass, then leaned forward to fill it once more.

"My mother," She started again. "She’s not always like that. Being the Queen... having to manage most of the court politics, there’s always something going on behind her actions. She used to be really strict with me, unlike with Cassian like you saw today, she wouldn’t even let me smile during court dinners."

A sigh.

"What am I even saying."

A simple, melancholic smile stretched on her beautiful face, and she leaned back into the couch, settling into a more comfortable position.

"Mine was quieter, for the most part." Elian said, picking up the thread she’d dropped, his voice low, uncertain of its own honesty even as it kept going.

"There was no strictness to point to, not really. Just... its absence."

He took a moment to take a sip from the wine in his own glass.

"My father never had to tell me to smile less, because he was rarely looking closely enough to notice whether I did or didn’t." He said as he turned the glass slowly in his hands. "Roderick, my brother, got all of it. The attention, the training, the expectations. I got what was left over, which wasn’t much most of the time. Roderick always told me it was because my father was still struggling to come to terms with my mother’s death... never really managed to wrap my head around that part, if i had to be honest"

He let out a deep breath, now realizing that he had no idea what he was talking about either.

"That’s not nothing either," Oizys said softly, when she realized that Elian wasn’t going to continue.

"Being invisible in your own house, especially when the attention you should’ve gotten is going somewhere else. I think that might be worse, some days. At least I knew someone was paying attention to me, to Oizys, even if I hated that fact that they were paying attention."

"Maybe." He huffed something that wasn’t quite a laugh. "I used to think if I just got good enough at something—anything—he’d have to notice. It never worked. Turns out being ignored isn’t really about what you do."

She smiled at that, a patient and knowing expression.

Something wry crept into her voice through the next words, satire rather than mocking.

"And then you ended up being un-ignorable anyways. Funny, how that works out."

"Terrifying, is what it is."

"That too."

Another long moment of shared silence.

Then he realised that Oizys was now close enough now that he could see the exact shade her silver eyes went in the firelight, could feel the warmth radiating off her, could feel something in the air between them pull tight and fragile.

His heart skipped a beat at the thought, and for a second, Elian found himself bracing for whatever was coming.

"You’re blushing." Oizys said, glancing at him.

"I’m trying my best not to."

The candlelight caught the loose strands of her hair, and up close like this, flushed and laughing and entirely unguarded, she was... most of what existed for him right now.

It was the kind of moment that only existed because neither of them had the sense left, in that particular second, to step back from it.

"Elian—" she started, quiet and all of sudden serious, tone uncertain in a way she never let herself sound.

Elian.

The voice cut through the haze like cold water, sharp and unmistakable even through the fog.

Pull yourself together.

The voice cut through the pleasant haze like cold water, sharp and unmistakable even through the fog.

Kaveri’s presence pressed in around the edges of his mind, urgent in a way he hadn’t felt from her in weeks.

He blinked, and the warmth in his blood turned suddenly, violently cold — not painful, exactly, but overwhelming, a rush of something clean and fierce burning straight through the haze of alcohol like it had never been there at all.

He gasped, sitting bolt upright, the room snapping back into full, unwelcome clarity all at once.

"Elian?" Oizys’s hand found his arm, concern cutting through her own drunken warmth. "You alright?"

He pressed a hand to his own chest, heart hammering, entirely, abruptly sober.

"I think my staff just turned me sober."

He blinked.

"Wait, my staff just talked to me."

He turned to stare at where the Everbloom had been placed next to the couch, forgotten entirely as he progressively got drunker.

You were about to make a decision you didn’t have the clarity to make.

Kaveri said, quieter now, though no less firm.

I won’t apologize for stopping it.

’Since when could you talk.’

He blinked, then realised that Oizys was still staring at him with worry.

"I’m fine," Elian managed out loud, voice rougher than he meant it to sound.

He turned to the princess, heart beating his throat when he realised what he had just been saved from.

"So sorry about that, it just woke up after a whole month. Maybe it needed some air."

Oizys studied him a moment longer, some of her own haze clearing at the edges too, though not nearly as fast as his had.

"...Right. Air. Good idea."

She didn’t push further, though something in her expression suggested she suspected there was more to it than she was being told.

Elian sat very still, pulse finally settling, deeply, thoroughly grateful—and equally unsettled—that something in him had cared enough to pull him back before the night went somewhere none of them would have been steady enough to navigate properly.