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A tilt of a chin, a flash of dark hair, and the door slammed behind the thief.
The boy, Holland noticed with distaste, had a bad habit of reaching out to people who didn’t want to be held close.
Saying nothing, he unstuck his fingers from a spill on the table.
On top of that, he was bad at it. He didn’t have his brother's easy charm – he was sullen, bull-headed and prone to saying wrong things.
Delilah Bard wasn’t someone who could be told to stay.
Holland wasn’t someone you made small talk with in a tavern.
His glass’ chill seeped into his hand, grounding. Not enough to stop the sway of ground under his feet, a weak echo of the nauseating Ghost’s lull, though.
Ah. He still remembered his baby face from years ago. The searching look in his gaze. ‘It’s nice to meet someone like me,’ he had said.
If Holland was someone who laughed easily, he would have laughed then. 'Nice' wasn’t a word someone used in his world freely.
Nice loot, yes. What a nice pair of eyes you have – what about plucking them out?
Not ‘nice to meet you.’
He and that boy, with clothes and skin seeping colour and health, weren’t alike.
His gaze slid to the sails of ships docking behind the window.
The boy could find someone easier, he mused indifferently. Someone charmed by his princely status or one black eye. Or even his stubbornness. Naivety, and savior’s complex.
Romanticism, Vortalis would have called it.
“Romantic,” he had called him.
He let the thought pass.
It was just a cloud tinged with lead, heavy but temporary.
In the reflection of the window, he could see a silhouette of the hunched figure, copper hair falling over Kell’s eyes.
What would it take to tear that willfulness out of him? To break him, bone after bone, to change that frown into the blankness of hopeless resignation?
“Stop being selfish,” he said, later. “Osaron is mine.”
“I’m not doing this for you," he replied in answer to the boy's thanks. He made sure to lace his words with ice.