[ Like he would have handled this? There aren't many ways to be sure. Not ones that end with someone's blood in your locket.
He takes the phial, with a pause that isn't hesitation so much as instinct: A reverence that time and proximity ought to have lessened, haven't. It feels like a bad secret; intimate in the manner of any viscera. The spells aren't difficult, enough Loyalists must know — at least, Loyalists without an arrest record. He doesn't need those lessons now to observe the gleam. Dim, and unmistakable.
(Not so bright as his own.)
I trusted someone I should not have. How peculiar it must be to draw an end to that story. Closure, tied up neat. How peculiar to watch it unravel. If any of this can even be believed — that couldn't be Ilias' blood. Could be anyone else's. As stories go, it's all terribly convenient.
no subject
He takes the phial, with a pause that isn't hesitation so much as instinct: A reverence that time and proximity ought to have lessened, haven't. It feels like a bad secret; intimate in the manner of any viscera. The spells aren't difficult, enough Loyalists must know — at least, Loyalists without an arrest record. He doesn't need those lessons now to observe the gleam. Dim, and unmistakable.
(Not so bright as his own.)
I trusted someone I should not have. How peculiar it must be to draw an end to that story. Closure, tied up neat. How peculiar to watch it unravel. If any of this can even be believed — that couldn't be Ilias' blood. Could be anyone else's. As stories go, it's all terribly convenient.
This can end now, ]
Alive.
[ But it doesn't. ]