#narines

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One, apathy  I am that I am, and I am nothing 

~ 

Herines Harasaeon was born into a chasmic silence. There was blood. A muted panic. A mother’s sobbing beg for him to cry, please, why won’t he cry? An apology already waiting in her mouth, and finally, a life and death and moment later, Herines wailed into living, though even that came by fits and starts, as if even as a baby, it was the silence of an unborn death he knew best, rather than the vivid scream of life.  

“A boy?” Queen Lugalia asked, eyebrow raised, lips pursed in consideration. 

Kiva struggled to push herself up. “Let me hold him-.” 

“He will be king,” Lugalia decided, four words upon a tombstone. “Your heir. Your son. Herines?” 

“Herines,” Kiva whispered, sweaty palms open towards her wriggling baby held in a midwife’s uncertain arms. “Bring him to me.” 

And he was placed against her chest like an offering before a deity, skin baby-soft and unblemished, eyes screwed shut, and tiny hands seeking, already, the warmth of his mother’s touch, unable to find it as he squirmed. 

“He’s so beautiful,” Kiva breathed, tracing the pads of her fingers over his cheeks, his nose, his lips, too scared to touch him with any amount of firmness. A tear fell from her eye and she began to smile, before he was taken from her by certain hands. Lugalia held him stiffly, analytically. 

“You will do right by him, Kiva,” she warned, brown eyes cutting as they flicked down to glare at her daughter, who still had a hand outstretched to her baby. “After the mess you made, he is a miracle. Do not forget that. He is your first. He is your only. Do you understand?” 

Kiva's hand flinched back, eyes widening in horror, before she recoiled into herself entirely, turning her face away. In Lugalia’s cold arms, Herines began to cry.  

~ 

As a baby, Nathairan was placed in a drawer amongst the shirts and blankets, bundled amongst it all like his mother intended to hide him away from the coldness of the world to keep him only in this pocket of warmth. His sister stood on her tiptoes beside the chest of drawers, fingers wrapped over the wood to peer wondrously inside at her new brother.  

“What do you suppose his magic is?” she asked, cocking her head to the side as the baby twisted in his sleep. 

“It’s impossible to tell yet, love,” her mother said with a soft, albeit tired smile, brushing her knuckle over Nathairan’s hand. Tiny fingers instinctively wrapped around one of her own, holding onto her, and her smile brightened. 

“He might not even be a wiser,” she continued. “Your father isn’t, and my magic isn’t that strong.” 

“But that’s so dull!” his sister huffed, scrunching her nose, before leaning further over the drawer, sharing a secret between just her and her little brother. “I think you’re gonna be a wiser, Nathairan. You're gonna be the most powerful wiser in the whole kingdom!” 

“Do not wish that for him,” her mother warned. “It is enough that he is here, and he is ours. You’ll keep him safe, won’t you?” 

His sister gasped and straightened, blue eyes widening at a task she saw as immeasurably severe. 

“I’ll keep him safe, Ma!” she promised. “I won’t let anything happen to him! Not ever!” 

Her mother smiled and ruffled her curls, earning a giggle from the little girl. 

~ 

Two, disruption  There goes a great shudder through the muscle  A shimmering of bells through the mist 

~ 

The news of Lugalia’s death spread like rivers weaving through a kingdom, flowing into any open crevice, a roar on unrelenting waves, no soil unreached. Perhaps less a river, but a bloodflood. Each corner of the map stained red. Herines bore it quietly. His mother was coronated. He inched closer to that desolate fate he had heard whispered in libraries and nightmares. He considered crowning, how the Harasaeon cycle required both death and life, fire and water, in order to constantly keep moving. For one queen to rise to power, another must die. A baby’s head emerging from blood and not knowing yet the ring of thorns he will soon find placed upon him. Crowning. Birth. Coronation. Death.  

King, king, king. 

They rang the bells all through the night and all through the day, though for which queen, Herines could not tell. In the north, clouds grew thick and restless. His study was filled with feverish writings on measurements and density of a poison no one else had dared to touch. 

Crowning. Birth. Coronation. Death. 

King. 

The cycle turned once more. On its next pass, it would be his time. 

~ 

Nathairan knew only fire. Smoke clogged his throat as he spluttered and choked, stumbling through a home he no longer recognised, wooden walls charred black, his belongings swallowed up in that infernal red blaze, and the heat – it was a living thing, agony tearing teeth down his arms and back as he pushed through to the kitchen. He didn’t know what he saw first. The bowl, or her. 

He wished he hadn’t looked. He wished he’d never come home or that he’d never left to begin with. He will spend the rest of his life forever with a question in the back of his mind, wondering if it would have been better to have burned with them that day. His sister was unrecognisable, a collection of twisted limbs and skin that seemed to melt into the floor like candlewax, blue eyes pale and beginning to boil in her skull. Nathairan sobbed what little breath he had left as he ran to her side, dragging her arm over his shoulder and beginning to pull her to the door. 

“You’re okay,” he cried. “Just a little longer. You're okay, you’re okay.” 

As he walked, his skin warped and twisted like a shapeshifter, cycling constantly through burning and healing. One moment, unblemished. The next, oozing blood and pus down his arms past the screaming cracks of his flesh. 

He managed to stumble out of the back door, hiding from the villagers who had gathered out on the front to watch his family die, and dropped his sister into the grass so he could fall to his knees, throwing up blackened blood on hacking coughs. His entire body trembled with it, disorientated as his lungs immediately smoothed themselves over again. Within moments, it was like nothing had ever burned. 

And beside him, his sister remained motionless. 

He didn’t know how many times he took the knife to his flesh. It dug into him again, and again, and again, each pull of the blade another well of seeping red until he was covered. He'd cut all over his arms, his face, his neck, his thighs, again and again and again, and there were only stains to show for it. Nathairan was unharmed. His sister was dead. 

He ran from that cursed place, a death site forever burning on every map, and remembered the kitchen. Everything had been completely destroyed, but on the counter, scorched in place but still holding shape, was a bowl of leek and potato soup, set aside by his mother, for a boy who would never come home again. 

~ 

Three, curiosity  One quick moment to crane the neck  I have always possessed the insatiable need to see what happens inside the room 

~ 

They first met in the throne room. Nate was pushed to his knees, sunlight fighting vehemently to pierce through the burlap sack that had been thrown over his head the moment they entered Kusig, and even blind, he felt the disparity he existed in. Nate was exhausted, his magic strained, his appearance filthy, and he was about to meet a Harasaeon in the heart of the man’s dominion. Hatred salivated behind his teeth like poison as the bag was ripped from his head, and, squinting against the sudden onslaught of colour and golden light, Nate craned his neck back to look up the dais, at the throne where a king sat to judge him. 

Herines Harasaeon. Blood of serpents. Crown bearer. Godschild. 

He was beautiful, and violent, and looked down at Nate with a cruel contempt in dark eyes, fingers twitching ever so slightly on the throne’s arm. 

“So we finally capture a member of the elusive Brotherhood after you torment the kingdom for years,” Herines said, tone mocking, raising a sharp eyebrow, though his gaze remained cool, a familiar intensity to him that Nate couldn’t place. “This is a momentous day for the crown. Tell me, what is your name?” 

It was not a question. It was an order from a Harasaeon, and Nate was helpless, kneeling before this man in his throne room, surrounded by his guards in a city Nate did not know, with every odd stacked against him in a pile of rubble threatening to collapse and bury him. There was nowhere for him to go and nothing left for him to do, not unless he was given time to think, to rest. That was all Nate needed. If they could just take him to a nice little cell, even just for a night, then he could figure out a way out of here, but as it was, he was trapped.  

Unless... Unless he created a distraction, forced Herines to remove him from the situation, if only for a moment. 

Nate grinned crookedly up at the prince. A mirror not yet clear of smoke. 

“My name,” he said, relaxed, smiling wider like this was all part of a grand plan, “is Nathairan of Kroi.” 

Silence for a tik, two, and then the throne room fell into chaos. In the sudden uproar, Nate saw soft lips parting on a hissed inhale, and knew suddenly that as much as he hated this man, as much as he wanted his hands on him to deliver the most excruciating of deaths, that the ill-feeling, all intense, all consuming, was directed right back at him from Herines. 

They were destined to kill one another, in as many ways as they knew. 

~ 

Four, assimilation  Lo, wellspring of knowledge, of feeling, of sensation  Beauty, overwhelming  I will dislocate my jaw to fit it all in 

~ 

A collision of sweat-soaked skin and bloody teeth. Mocking lips against his knuckles. A laceration across his stomach from a blade forged perfect for royal hands, and crooked, searching fingers dipping into the softness of torn flesh. Nate gasped, back arching at the spill of blood and agony and exposure, pulling at long hair in fists. They had done this so many times now. He did not really understand the purpose of it. Neither did Herines. All either knew was that they needed to possess the other. Nate needed bruises on Herines’ skin as Herines needed to wrap his hands around Nate’s insides. They made burial sites of one another. Hauntings. A violence so vile and thrust so deep that it left ghosts in each cataclysm of touch. Nate knew exactly how Herines tasted, how he gasped and whined and writhed, knew how he looked with wet eyes looking up at him and his fingers in his mouth, but that was all he knew, and all he would ever know. It was something beyond hatred, something beyond brutality. With each bite, Nate wrote a legacy. You will die beneath me a hundred times, and I will leave my mark on each grave. Not even your death will be your own. You have killed and hunted and ruined in each breath, and now, I will eradicate you. Herines Harasaeon is Nathairan of Kroi is Herines Harasaeon. He imagined if they dug their hands deep enough into each other, then the difference would become non-existent. He could absorb Herines entirely. Swallow him down. Erase him from the land. 

Only one could win this strange battle of theirs, and Nate thought Herines stopped fighting back a long time ago. 

~ 

Five, aggrandization  The pull, yes, the pull  Send down your cordage of suffocation and let me in 

~ 

The wiser was deathless, markless, godless. He existed as something unnatural and wrong, repulsive, and Herines wanted to rip every infinitesimal shred of him apart, to dig into the cavity of his chest until he found something real there, a heart he could hold in his hands and eat. He imagined absorbing his magic that way, his vitality, and for the first time in his life considered what it was to be poisoned. 

Held down, tied up, Nathairan was tolerable. A pretty, mouthy thing, and all he could do was bleed. His only talent. Herines could lose himself in the heat of that wine dark red, pulled ever closer and closer to his own death in each gasped moan of pain from the wiser. But what was pain to someone who did not know injury? What was feeling? What was life? Nathairan was not real to Herines, could not be, and was at once the only thing he knew for certain. His lips traced godhood beneath the curve of his ribcage. The deification of Nathairan had also been a murder, and who else could understand that but Herines? Who else? He wanted, needed the other man to understand that. Needed to warp and torture his mind with it. When one of them died, as he knew this dance inevitably concluded, the other would be completely alone again, and Herines already knew his fate. 

He intended to haunt Nathairan, intended to wrap and coil himself around him like a snake, and keep his fingers splayed over that intolerable pulse. There would be no reflections in mirrors, no understanding to be had, no words to express that which terrified Nathairan to speak and that Herines already knew in no more than silence. 

Herines could be poison. He tipped his neck for Nathairan to drink. 

~ 

Six, delineation  I want to know what God knows, and I will be with Him  Sent over the edge, I sigh  Flush against the veil, I sing 

~ 

Of prophecy. Of snakes. Of circles. Time in push and pull, in lo and behold, in dust, in dust, in dust. A priestess holds two candles in her palms and watches the flames burn down to kiss skin and she bears the scars into an endless silence. Godhood in a broken antler, in a golden chain. The Goddess’s voice moulds law and he who hears it best will die to it, while he who never knows her will live. 

One to swallow the sins of the family and bear them. One to spit it all out. Theophagan. Sin-eater. 

There is a road between them both called motherless. They meet in the middle as equals and slit the throat of divinity. 

~ 

Seven, perversion  It is no good, bearing false witness  The sinner's errand  I am what I am, but we are not the same  It is no good, speaking of fairness  The fool's errand 

~ 

There was something to be said of watching Herines Harasaeon burn. Nate knew how a body looked when consumed by flames, knew the smell of burning hair, how skin looked as it bubbled and melted, and knew the knowledge of grief. A family member lost not just in death, but in body. It was the southern tradition to cremate the dead, he knew, but it still seemed unnatural and morbid to him. 

The funeral of a king would normally be a grand affair, an entire nation come together to mourn and celebrate his life, but Herines’ pyre was surrounded only by those closest to him. It was almost something shameful. Perhaps, Nate thought, somewhat spitefully, that was why they were cremating him, so that not a single part of the butcher king could remain, so that they could start again with no body to haunt them. 

He would be so lucky. Drako stood beside him, hands clasped behind his back, chin up, militaristic in his rigidness. He would not cry here, Nate knew, but later, when they retired to their overly grand chambers in the Palace of Kusig, Drako would find a way to excuse himself, and he would grieve somewhere he thought Nate could not see him. After everything they’d been through, all the truths they’d torn from one another, it unsettled something in Nate to know Drako would not share this with him, would not talk to him about it, but he had never shared Herines with Drako either, had he? The oldest Harasaeon brother was a secret between them, entirely inexplicable. There were no words to explain what Herines had meant to Drako, and no curses for what he meant to Nate. 

So he stood silently, and watched the flames climb higher, glowing from every inch of skin like something holy was being exorcised. 

~ 

Eight, resentment  Are these laurels to be proud of?  Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live  Hate, hate 

~ 

Nate moved with the ragged, snapping brutality of someone operating through nothing but devastated fury. Usual graceful movements became rushed, planned attacks became nothing but a roar of instinct, and still, against the clumsy technique of Herines, he was bound to win. He lashed out at the other man with a dagger in each hand and teeth bared in a wild snarl, oblivious to the rest of the battlefield around them, and while he must have known how outmatched he was, Herines watched Nate with narrowed, calculating eyes, sword in hand and none of his brother’s familiarity. 

Nate wanted him here, down in the mud and blood that their soldiers fought and died on, stained and sweaty with a real fight. Faucis was dead. There was nothing that could take that truth back, to swallow it behind the teeth again and leave it forever unspoken. Faucis was dead. Herines had killed him. If these were the last two truths Nate ever knew, then he would breathe them into the very blood he could feel thrumming around him until everything was reduced to the grip of his fist, and he’d let it all snap. 

He hated him. He hated him. He wanted him dead, needed to see him bleed. Nate chucked one of his daggers to the side and darted into Herines’ space, relishing in the slight widening of his eyes, and threw a fist into his jaw with enough force to send him sprawling to the side. The connection of knuckle to bone was cataclysmic. A natural disaster. Nate felt contaminated with it. Revolting. Ruined. He wanted to peel back Herines’ skin to see the vile, writhing animal of him, wanted to watch him scream in an agony so extreme it was unknowable, wanted to break every bone, knock out every tooth, gouge out both eyes, rip off every nail, until there was no more than blood and truth to Herines Harasaeon, and not a lick of honour. 

But he could not kill him, and that devastated Nate further. He reached into the other man’s veins and tugged. 

~ 

Nine, separation  I was an angel, though plummeting  The stars are as beams shining through the wheel  I am sure that hell must be cold 

~ 

Never for him to be a brother. Never for him to be a son. Only this. Only king. Perfect. Ruler. Saviour. He would do it gladly for them. He would transact himself as a currency to change the ink of a curse long dried, but it did not stop the fear. The... aloneness. 

Stood at the top of a dynasty, treated as above all that is human, Rin found himself with no one else. A Harasaeon alone. What is it to kneel at the foot of a god and beg for salvation? What is it to clutch at a mother’s skirts and beg to be loved? Rin knew all. They both spoke to him. Kiva would kill herself to have him home, but Dreea’s words were sure. This was exactly where he ought to be. 

And besides, he was home. Here in this grand old palace that had never felt so large, friendless and frightened.

In the library, wind would sometimes rush through with the distinct whistle of something falling. If he snapped a book closed too swiftly, it sounded like a body hitting the floor. 

He hated heights. 

~ 

Ten, degradation  Nature chews on me 

~ 

Never for him to be a brother. Never for him to be a son. Only this. Only king. Perfect. Ruler. Saviour. The wisers needed a monster and Nate had been all too happy to become that for them. He contorted the nature of his ability, something so pure, so gentle, into a fatal abomination. Such an intimate death, to delve inside, to feel the thrum of fear and desperation, to squeeze the life away. 

There had been a boy in Tauga who was kind, but he burned a long time ago. There was only blood now. Only Nathairan. If he struck a chord in a temple, there would be no echo. 

~ 

Eleven, annihilation  This agony  Such is the consequence of audience  I will claw my way back to the great dark, and we will not speak of this place again 

~ 

Nate wakes from a nightmare, like he often does these days.

It seems impossible to discern when exactly a war ends, but he thinks this might be it. The fighting has stopped. Lilla has been coronated. Kusig is beginning to wash the blood from its cobbles. Things are far from perfect, with the Skelfornes and some Lower House nobles not yet pledging their loyalty to the Wiser Queen, and Lilla has so much work to do, but this is the closest thing to peace Nate has known for a long time. It makes sense then, he thinks, that his body rejects it. He barely eats. He doesn’t sleep. He gasps awake to a terror he cannot contain with memories of a rage he let consume everything. It was all he had for so long. Peace, love, Drako – these aren’t things a man like Nate can reconcile with so easily. To wake up from a nightmare and immediately have warm, undaunted hands wrapping around his middle, pulling him close. The familiar smell of lavender and oils. Words of comfort murmured into the darkness. We're okay. It's over. 

Nate doesn't know if Drako himself even believes those things, doesn't know how to explain this to him properly when those pretty brown eyes implore him to just let him in, doesn’t know how to say that, in his worst dreams, he sees Herines lying beside him. 

Doesn't know how to say that the reason he wakes up terrified is because, in those dreams, before hatred, and violence, and fear, the first thing he feels, always, every night, is relief. 

~