Chapter Text
Oralie stumbles into his living room with a crash of something falling.
Bronte is not much more sober himself, but he picks the vase up on his way in, setting it back on the table where it belongs.
She’s already collapsed in one of his chairs, the rose ruffles of her dress so out of place in Bronte’s cold and grey living room.
He turns on a lamp. Her wrists flash in the light, silver glinting from them. Blond hair spills across the back of the chair.
They’ve reached the point in the night where Oralie’s hair, the line of her smile, her free laugh, all start to remind him too much of someone else.
Bronte grabs a bottle of wine from his liquor cabinet, cracks it open without fanfare, and takes a swig. Dignity is a wasted endeavor here. Oralie already understands.
“I miss him,” she says, no guile to it.
Oralie is more than she lets on. Oralie is steely and courageous under her layers of ruffle and smiles. This is only raw and honest, though.
“So do I.” The fuzz of alcohol in his mind lets through truths that he normally keeps buried.
If he squints, the third chair in the room, set between them, is no longer empty. Another laughing blonde fills that space, one leg slung over the armrest, their mother’s eyes odd and sharp in his face.
Fintan .
It has been nearly two years since Fintan burnt Eternalia. To the mind of an ancient, that may as well be yesterday.
Fintan is Bronte’s brother, the first person he can remember loving, his greatest failure.
He drinks again.
Oralie is slumped, staring up at the ceiling like it has answers for her.
Bronte understands. They’re all looking for a way to make this world tolerable.
“He was terrible,” Oralie says.
“Is terrible,” Bronte says. Fintan is terrible. His crimes are still in present tense, and so is he, because Fintan isn’t dead. Sometimes, he wonders if death would have been a kinder fate.
“He killed my- Kenric.”
Bronte nods.
“How can I miss him?” Oralie turns her head towards him. Her eyes are bright with tears. “After all of that, how can I still miss him?”
Bronte is far, far too drunk for this conversation.
He doesn’t understand it either, some days. Fintan burnt Eternalia nearly to the ground. Fintan sparked everblaze without caring for the fact that Bronte was in that tower. Fintan killed Kenric- Oralie’s love, Bronte’s friend.
Even so, Bronte cannot help but see in him a bright-eyed child. A teenager, scarred and battered but hopeful yet. A young Councillor with the world before him and dreams larger than Bronte has ever dared to have.
“We knew him when he was good,” Bronte answers at last. “Perhaps we want to see that in him still.”
“I miss when he was good,” Oralie says.
“I do too.”
“He came with us to all those dances. Even though he’s not- he isn’t-”
“Quite like us,” Bronte finishes.
Fintan had danced with them in ballrooms made for elves like him and Oralie- elves who lived in defiance of the way they were born- had loved it even if he could never understand them. Not the way they understand one another.
He closes his eyes, and Fintan is dancing with Oralie at one such ball, her skirt flaring as she twirls and the jewels of their masks glinting under the lights.
He opens them again to his grim and cold living room.
“Tiergan.” It’s an abrupt shift, but Bronte plays along.
“What about him?”
Oralie’s eyes find his. Even drunk, she sees him more clearly than anyone besides Fintan ever has. “You brought him dancing with us.”
“He needed it.”
“You see yourself in him.”
Bronte doesn’t bother with denial. Oralie knows him too well. “Of course I do.”
What neither of them says is that no one has come with them to dance that way since Fintan stopped doing so. It’s a truth that Bronte doesn’t feel like confronting. Not tonight. Oralie is kind enough not to bring it up.
She is more than she lets on- more cunning, more clever, more ruthless- but there is also a kindness in her that the world has not yet managed to break. Bronte envies it, some days.
“It was…strange,” Oralie admits.
It had been strange for him, as well. He nods.
“Not in a bad way.” It’s thoughtful, as much for her as it is for him.
“I dislike Tiergan,” Bronte says, lies. “But someone needs to look out for Sophie.”
The world has not yet broken them, either. It will, as it does all of them in the end, but Bronte cannot help but wish to delay it.
“Sophie needs good people.” Oralie, in the dim light of his living room, is a wisp of pink. Pale skin, hollowed cheeks. Eyes darkened with sleeplessness.
Neither of them sleep well these days.
Bronte laughs. He tastes the bitter afternotes of wine. “Then I’m of no use here.”
“Neither am I.” A soft, drunken admission.
“You’re better than I ever was.”
“Tiergan is better than either of us.”
He can’t muster the energy to argue.
“You want to protect him,” Oralie muses.
“You’re not a bad person,” Bronte rebuts. It’s not the same argument, but coherency is a lost cause here.
“I wish I was as sure of that as you are.”
He scowls at her as if he can convince her through sheer force of will. “You ought to trust me.”
“I do!” Oralie protests. She’s almost fallen out of her chair with the vehemency of it. “I do, Bronte. Always. You just…aren’t always right.”
Even he can admit that. “Fine, but I am here.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.”
Oralie smiles. Her eyes glint out from a thin and hollowed face. “Okay, Bronte.”
He can never win arguments with her when she gets this way. “And I don’t care about Tiergan.”
“Maybe not. But he’s wearing a necklace you gave him.”
“So?”
A soft giggle. “You gave me one, when we were young.”
“When you were young,” Bronte corrects, but there’s hardly any force to it. He had wanted Oralie to feel understood. He had wanted to give her- one of his very few friends- something tangible. Over the years since, they’ve gifted each other numerous things with the phoenix symbol. The hairpin Oralie is wearing was a gift from him, and his bracelets a gift from her.
They are not alone. Whatever else, they are not alone.
Tiergan is a part of that now, Bronte supposes. That’s true whether he likes it or not.
“It meant so much to me, you know,” Oralie says. She leans on the armrest, eyes half-lidded and softer, now, than before. “I had almost no- no one who knew .”
Bronte knows. He was young and lonely once.
It has been a very long time since Bronte was young. He’s always surprised to find that it’s been a long time since he was truly lonely, either. “I was telling you that you weren’t alone.”
“Neither are you.”
“I know.”
She looks at him.
Bronte can only offer her a shrug. He knows very well that he’s old and bitter and has few friends, but if there’s one friend he does have confidence in, it’s Oralie.
“I’m touched.”
“Oh, forget it.”
“No, really. I- Bronte, you trust so little. So- so few people.” Half a laugh. “I don’t deserve that.”
“Of course you do.” He has no idea what she’s talking about.
“I-” she looks away. “Nevermind.”
Bronte would push anyone else on this.
But he is drunk and tired and trying not to let his last remaining friendship fall to pieces. “You can tell me anything, you know.”
“I know,” Oralie says, but her eyes are far away.
Bronte offers her the bottle of wine, and when they are both far too drunk to even stagger back to her castle, she takes his spare room and Bronte lays awake thinking of Fintan, and Oralie, and secrets, and the phoenix necklace glinting around Sophie’s young neck until sleep finally claims him.