Night Breaths

For Spooktober 2024, word "breath"

Kayvin wandered through the palace by night.

He wandered the terraces, open to silver-cold moonlight streaming low over the railings and casting long, bleak shadows upon the tiled floor. He wandered through the corridors, his bare feet silent and his eyes strained wide to see the way. He wandered around and around the entrance to the throne room, never quite working up the courage again to enter it by night, to see her frozen in icy moonlight, eyes half-closed in eternal flight from a fate she could never escape. He wandered until Yovela and Dielo came wordlessly to find him, silently leading him to his quarters and bringing him to his sleeping pit, where they stationed themselves on either side of him so that he could not escape again without their knowledge.

By day, he waited for Pasiphae Jade to complete her calculations and he waited for word that the passage to human Sayinia had been cleared. He read. He read until he could no longer focus on the crawling script. He picked at melodies, he criticized and threw aside old compositions. He found his only daytime solace in practicing his fire magic, honing his skills as he built up the power of his combustions and perfected his aim in throwing bolts of arcane power. His courtyard became a plaza of ashes and blackened stone, and the palace gardeners gave up replanting.

But he waited, and orders did not come. While orders did not come, he did nothing toward freeing his mother. And he felt more and more helpless before the crushing weight of inaction.

Kayvin woke suddenly, breath coming fast, heart pounding, blankets and furs flung back against the walls of his sleeping pit. He could not remember the nightmare which had wakened him. He knew it had ice, crystalline shards piercing him with biting cold and hot pain, ice entrapping him so that he could not move, must lie in eternal prison with spears through his torso—

He jerked sharply to the side, rolling into himself as if he were back in his egg. He inhaled for a long count of six, held his breath for four, exhaled for six, repeated. He closed his eyes against the dark and made himself see the notations as he counted, black ink against textured paper, notes and rest marks, pulling each sheet aside to count up as he inhaled, laying them down again as he exhaled.

He sat up, his pulse still fierce in his chest but no longer deafening. He needed music.

He got up from the sleeping pit and walked half-dressed through the moonlight to the cabinet where he kept small instruments. He selected a horned lyre and padded back to his bed. The deep pit would keep the sound mostly to himself, if he played quietly.