Level_5

[Skybreaker] Envieux [Level_5]

Left alone for the first time that day, Asbel exhaled and pushed his shoulders back. He would be prepared, yes, as promised, but prepared for what? What did he expect to do? He could not fight and he could not flee. Something in between, then -- diplomacy, perhaps. If he could figure out what Frey wanted, perhaps they could come to an agreement. Surely the prince didn't enjoy being so contrary and so at odds with everyone...

In gazing about his room, the phoenix's green eyes lit upon the discarded, surely-poisonous fruit left behind by his antagonist. He crossed the polished wooden floor and crouched beside the offending object. What did Frey want? What did he really want?

---

"Of course, yes -- I mean, no, not a word, sir. I won't tell anyone." Already Aren had patted the dust off the rag and, as it was still damp, rushed forward to daub the worst of the blood from Frey's hands. The prince was much more cooperative than he'd expected, and Frey's flush of embarrassment brought a similar tinge to Aren's face as well. To see the hot-headed prince in weakness -- no wonder Frey didn't want word of any of this getting out. Aren kept his eyes lowered to see as little of Frey's anxiety as possible.

Despite the spray of glass across the windowsill, no jagged shards had lodged themselves in the prince's hand, and Aren managed to pick out the scattering of smaller pieces. He'd always had a good eye for detail (one of the reasons he was usually on the cleaning and sewing duties), and with the rag to wipe away the blood as it welled from a myriad of minute cuts, it was Aren's casual medical opinion that Frey would get out of the situation without a scar.

"I will have to tell about the broken window, at least," he ventured softly, still picking out the smallest bits of glass, leaning close to the damaged hand. "What should I tell them about how it broke?"

[Skybreaker] Envieux [Level_5]

Oh, sorry, I forget to check this thread! D:

I'll tack on a servant who visits the prince in his itty-bitty room, one moment~

And I didn't think your post was crap, oh gosh no! It was just fine!

[Skybreaker] Envieux [Level_5]

The prince's sudden retreat left Asbel strangely cold, but he did not move, did not speak, until the prince was out of the room. That Frey made no secret of his aggression, but why was the young man so angry to begin with? The prince and the phoenix had been alive for nearly the same length of time (accounting for the disappearance of past memories), in the same home, around the same people. So why, then, why did the prince behave so much like a loosed arrow? The young man had no direction, no purpose. He only wanted to ruin things -- perhaps ruin people.

But Asbel brushed a hand through his own hair, hating the glow of silver of the prince's hair in the sunset. Dangerous -- and handsome -- so like a demon. Without any guidance, that young man would destroy himself and everyone around him. Though he had absolutely no care for the kingdom, Asbel did not want to see it fall apart in the hands of a misguided child.

Asbel exhaled properly for the first time since Frey's appearance. He uncurled his fingers from where they had been clutching the bedpost behind him, the wood smoking as his fingers parted from the mahogany. "Thank you," he murmured, turning to Bachus with the shadow of a grateful smile. How could anyone dislike this man? He was the only one intelligent to stay behind when the rest had gone to obey Frey's clearly-falsified instructions.

"You need not--" The phoenix broke off, took a breath, squared his shoulders. "You need not promise such, Bachus. He frightens me when he arrives unannounced. If he returns later tonight, I will be prepared." Green eyes flashed in the direction of the now-empty doorway. "I will be capable of handling him on my own."

---

Thunderous footsteps startled Aren out of his reverie, and the slam of a bedroom door nearly knocked the room's pictures out of alignment. He glanced at Jeoffrey and Anders, but neither one seemed to have noticed the disruptions. Such was a front, of course: Aren could see the tendon in Jeoffrey's neck that indicated his irritation, and Anders was scrubbing at the hearth with more energy than he'd shown in all the last half hour of their cleaning.

"Should we go check on him?"

The question was met with silence, and with a sigh, Aren tucked his dusting rag into his belt. Jeoffrey was only twenty, and Anders had only just passed his eighteenth birthday, but at, comparatively, the infantile age of sixteen, Aren knew that if anyone was going to check on the prince, it would be him.

Hands trembling at the prospect, the servant hastened to adjust his green-and-gold uniform, and he made an attempt (however useless) to tame his mess of brown curls. As long as Frey didn't murder him, Aren was going to count this visit as a success.

From the study currently under the servants' supervision, Aren padded silently down the hall and pushed open the not-quite-closed door leading into the prince's bedroom. "Your Highness?" he called, voice little more than a whisper. Where was-- Oh! At the window, surrounded by a shower of broken glass. Suddenly pale behind his freckles, Aren pushed the door the rest of the way open and pulled at the rag still secured in his belt. "Sir, you're bleeding! Hold on, I can help!"

[Skybreaker] Envieux [Level_5]

There he went: the eyes darkened with intended devilry and malice suffused the young man's features. Uncertainty plucked at the back of Asbel's neck and he slid off the bed as carefully as if confronting a wolf. Death meant so little to the phoenix, but pain -- pain he did not want. All he remembered of his prior life was the end of it, and the end of had been a steel-sharp burst of agony. Asbel could still feel the tickle of it in the back of his mind; the presence of Frey never eased it.

While he had not flinched when the prince so casually discarded the poisoned fruit, he stepped back as Frey warmed to his anger, but Asbel -- eyes trained unblinkingly on Frey -- had miscalculated his own position in the room, and his shoulders bumped against one of the posts of the bed. "Your highness, I do not--" but Frey ignored his plea.

What could he do? He could not fly, as all his instincts begged him to. He could not fight, not if he might wound even the least-favorite of the five children.

The crack of the opening door, then, carried in its wake an instant surge of relief. A rescuer! Asbel turned toward the sorcerer with undisguised hope. The man may have been the least appealing of the sorcerers, but against this royal dragon, any knight would do.

Rescue was near, so near-- and then arms closed around him like a cage, and Asbel tensed. Shoulders tightened. Fingers tightened into fists. He was never touched. His feathers were plucked, his feet made perch on offered arms, but he was not touched. Another's heat infringed on his; another's body pressed against his.

Startled more by the strange and unpleasant closeness of his antagonizer, Asbel did not manage a reply for one long moment. When at last he could speak, the words were soft, careful: "I will not be left alone with this creature. Please remove him."

[Skybreaker] Envieux [Level_5]

That's good of you! (: Thank you for letting me know!

And I won't drop either, I promise. I hate when that's done to me, and I wouldn't do it to you, cross my heart.

[Skybreaker] Envieux [Level_5]

While the alchemists froze at the invasion of the prince, Asbel reacted only with a new tension across his shoulders -- a new wariness in his emerald eyes. He knew, as did his keepers, that Frey never brought good news with him. All the spoiled prince ever wanted was to cause trouble, and between being peppered with toxic arrows, pushed out of windows, harried and harassed beyond measure, Asbel had learned to never associate Frey with anything save unpleasant near-death experiences.

The other royal siblings he liked. The two oldest were as handsome as they were regal, and the phoenix felt safe in the presence of the princess, as if she could easily chase away any monsters that endangered him. Even the princes' dragons were oft too imposing to deal with, and the one pleasant outcome of perpetual imprisonment was that Asbel very rarely had to deal with the towering brutes.

Frey, on the other hand... Asbel sat up and folded his hands in his lap as the prince became his only companion. The fruit in the young man's hand he studied with open suspicion, and a glance up and down the prince's figure confirmed that the young man had not, spontaneously, grown up: his eyes still gleamed with the devil's fire, his smile maintained its mischievous hook.

But this was a child of the royal family. As much as he might want to, Asbel could not flare in self-defense.

"No, thank you," he replied, tone low, as polite as possible. With two fingers, he pushed away the proffered fruit and the prince's hand. Nothing about the delicacy looked appetizing, and Asbel had certainly learned not to trust anything the youngest prince offered him. "I am not hungry. You ought to eat of it first."

[Skybreaker] Envieux [Level_5]

No worries! I understand completely (same predicament here, too, I promise)

[Skybreaker] Envieux [Level_5]

Oh, gosh, thanks! I hope I can keep it up.

And I look forward to your post, too~

[Skybreaker] Envieux [Level_5]

"One more. Hold still."

After seventeen years, the tug of just one more plucked feather caused hardly a stir. Asbel felt a brief, sharp sting beneath his shoulder, then little more than a dull, ticklish ache. Oftentimes, the alchemists wanted the down from his chest and sides, but their larger potions these days called for contours and primaries, and the ache of their absence irked him more than the removal of the feathers themselves.

But -- ah, to be done for the day. Asbel shook himself in a flurry of scarlet and gold and hopped onto the outstretched arm of the nearest sorcerer. With a bow, the man deposited the eagle-sized bird onto the stone tiles, and Asbel, trailing sparks, hopped awkwardly away from his keepers to tuck himself into the nest of rugs and pillows spread across a wide, low bed against the nearest wall. The stone of the floor and the walls, though a bland sandstone dun, at least tempered the heat he provided to a room so cozy. Even with open windows, the glass marbled and green, and a breeze rippling through the tapestries on the walls, the sorcerers had stripped down to bare feet and shirtsleeves.

While the alchemists bickered over the quality of the plucked feathers, the phoenix forced his body to change, felt the hitch in his chest that accompanied the shifting of his skin, the cracking of his bones. Heat burned through his bloodstream; slender spires of smoke rose from his neck and back. With one clumsy hop, Asbel rose from the floor and landed on the bed, and in a moment of overbearing heat and brief pain, twisted his shape in a miniature inferno, and then... finished. The phoenix waved away the lingering smoke with one human hand.

He did so hate the shifting back and forth. He would have preferred to remain human had the alchemists not groveled so for his feathers. And as they fed him, clothed him, worshiped him, he could hardly refuse. When he was hardly more than a sooty chick cracked from its smoking shell, these humans had sheltered him, taught him. He may have been but a trinket, a tool, but at least they kept him in pristine condition.

Yet Asbel could feel, exploring the crevice of his shoulder with one copper-colored finger, the mark left by the plucked feather. When he had been younger, bright green eyes blazing with curiosity, he had positioned himself in front of the full mirror to see the scars, but he hated to see them now -- the brown specks along his back and arms like human freckles, marks left behind by a thousand stolen feathers.

Oh, well. A single lifetime for his admirers would last as long as a lit candle; after that, he would be free to leave. This tediousness, then, would be all in his past. That he never remembered his past lives was a mercy, perhaps: to know what existed in the untouchable world beyond would have been a curse too great to bear.

With a sigh, the phoenix rolled off the bed long enough to pull on a scarlet tunic cut with citrine thread and pants to match. No shoes, of course; he despised shoes. And he would never stoop to wearing gloves, though he had a tendency to burn stripes of burnt wood into the posts of his bed when he woke startled. But one hand brushed through his burnished golden hair produced no smoke, only a subtle shift in color from gold to orange and back. With hair appropriately tousled, Asbel touched other pieces of his human body out of habit: earlobes shot through with looped earrings, a nose straight and sharp, knees and legs and toes accounted for.

All in one piece. Good. Settled, then, Asbel rocked back against the pillows heaped onto his bed and watched as the alchemists continued to bicker over their small and precious collection of newly-gathered, softly-glowing treasures.

[Skybreaker] Envieux [Level_5]

Ugh, posted on the proper side this time. Sorry!