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There was once a time when Olruggio’s role as a watchful eye didn’t sit so heavily on his shoulders, already weighed down by velvet and overwork. It didn’t ache the way his robes pulled his shoulders tight nor did it sap his strength until he had no energy left to hold himself upright, passed out across his desk with his cheek pressed to wet ink. Instead, it wrapped ribbons around his chest, pulled taught until his breath came in short wheezes; the silk slipped around his heart softly then choked it in betrayal.
It beat with a painful strength, trying to break free of its confinement but the ribbon only wound tighter.
Moments of peace came when he watched Qifrey teaching the kids with his usual gentle smile. The shine to his eye looked natural on those sunny mornings, grass dancing in the breeze as the girls drew confident strokes with their pens and made water swirl and twist through their fingers. From the window behind his desk, Olruggio could see Agott’s private smile as she made small, clumsy flowers of crystalline water decorate her hair. She held one in her hand, accidentally crushed it when Coco called her name, drenched from her spell but beaming.
Olruggio sighed, the sound rattled through his chest like thunder.
Qifrey made the responsibility of a teacher seem so easy. He looked fulfilled, answering their questions and holding their wrists steady even when they wondered if they were capable of drawing the magic he asked of them. They could rely on him without question, never doubted that the spells he taught them would be anything but gentle and kind. He made them believe that they would be good witches.
The girls always believed in him, and trusted him for it.
For Olruggio, the idea of shaping such malleable minds with his scarred and calloused hands terrified him. Yet, wasn’t it his duty as an adult witch to take on apprentices? Was it his duty to ensure that another generation of children grew up to be good witches who didn’t betray the gift of magic to create misfortune?
He wondered if his hesitation alone betrayed his hope that magic would always be wonderful and kind. Olruggio leaned his elbow on his knee, his hand formed a fist which acted as a pedestal for his wet cheek. He hadn’t touched his inkwell in over an hour.
Though he couldn’t hear their chatter from his place in his atelier, Olruggio could sense Qifrey’s phantom laugh as he watched his mouth open wide with peels of it. The girls’ faces twisted with giggles, bloomed pink on their cheeks with delight as water dipped and danced across the field with every drop of ink they spared. Delight overwhelmed them, made them spin in circles in refusal to let the wonder of magic leave their sight.
Qifrey looked happy. He watched them with a satisfied grin that Olruggio saw directed at him less and less these days.
The girls thrived in the safety they felt under that gaze. Olruggio was afraid.
He was afraid because his familiarity with those faces of Qifrey’s filled him with a dread that pooled in his stomach like icy sludge. He saw it all in the way the corner of his mouth twisted, how his cheeks didn’t lift to his eyes when he smiled. No matter the joy he attempted to pile onto his facade, his eye always seemed to swirl like a raging ocean during a storm. The smile was calculated, sorrow hid in the sheet of tears that coated his iris.
The eye didn’t shine with delight when he looked at Olruggio, but with a pain so deeply locked away that it no longer knew how to breach the waterline.
Qifrey was lying to him.
He knew this. There was a filter he applied with every word that left his lips, omitting a truth that Olruggio knew would destroy something between them if it ever dared to slip from his silver tongue. Always knowing what to say, always knowing how to placate the worry in Olruggio’s mind without ever divulging a single detail.
Olruggio never dared to stop him. He didn’t want to.
So, Olruggio remained willfully afraid. He festered in his fears, scratched it from his scalp and tossed his limbs in bed until exhaustion dragged him under. When his hands reached forward to seek warmth from another’s skin he crossed them over his heart, tensed them until they ached too much to reach again. The water witch needn’t draw magic to pull the moisture from his eyes.
The ink stains on his pillow bled like watercolor.
A letter from the Great Hall added another scorch mark to his desk. It glared at him, made him shiver as though he’d ventured into snowfall without his robes. Bare as the ice tore at his skin.
It shouldn’t have caused him so much fear. He’d been anticipating it, their request for his annual report as the atelier’s watchful eye with precise instructions to provide clear and extensive detail of any minor abnormalities that would be of the Knight’s interest. There wasn’t enough paper across the entire Zozah peninsular to pen the year’s occurrences into permanence, and he didn’t have the faith to condemn it to the Tower of Tomes for eternity.
If Qifrey found out he’d told the truth, would he turn his magic against him again?
Would walls of water, thirsty to drown, surround him again as they had when he’d wrapped a hand around Coco’s wrist for the safety of the other girls Qifrey swore to protect?
Then again, could Qifrey even be blamed for his insistence?
Coco was a mirror of Qifrey, two victims of forbidden magic who deserved the chance to have a caring hand extended to them, to pull them forward and twist the horrors they endured into beauty that they wove with their fingers. The danger that had followed, the threats that surrounded them in even the most safe of places, none of it was a consequence of Qifrey’s recklessness but of Olruggio’s inability to refuse him.
Olruggio’s failure to put aside his unending trust in Qifrey cost the girls their safety. Coco’s mere existence promised danger, but it was now his duty to ensure that she was raised with attentive care, just as he ensured that for the others. He didn’t resent Coco, she was a child who deserved to be in the hands of those who understood her and there was no one better suited than Qifrey.
Instead, Olruggio resented himself for being powerless to do the one job he’d been entrusted to do by Qifrey. A job that left children afraid, permanently tattooed with seals and tortured by nightmares without ever letting it slip to the Knights that a single thing was wrong.
It was his job to watch as his atelier was torn apart and set ablaze and say that it never happened.
It hurt him. When he’d accepted his role as a watchful eye he’d been hesitant, but assured that it would be a simple task because he trusted Qifrey to cause no pain to the apprentices he took in.
For a while, that was true.
For a while, Olruggio could watch the lessons occur in peace. He could write small passages to the Great Hall remarking how all was well and sleep encased in warmth.
A while was so fleeting.
Now, Olruggio watched the lessons with his gaze flitting to the horizon, nervous of what waited beyond it. Now, he felt nauseous at the request for his annual report, learned how to carefully avoid the truth when speaking with the Knights, learned that he could only sleep alone when his blanket had been altered with magic to crush him as he slept. Now, he looked at Qifrey’s back and yearned for him to say that he was just as in the dark as he was, that he didn’t know what was happening, or that he didn’t know why.
He yearned for Qifrey to lie to him again. To lie and say that he was ignorant to the reason danger followed them so aggressively. He wanted him to lie and say nothing was wrong, that he wasn’t hiding anything. Olruggio saw the mask slip when he held him, saw it slip when he mentioned the trust he had in him, felt his lips tremble beneath his own with every kiss he pressed to them.
Qifrey carried secrets like tree boughs laden with leaves, threatening to drop them as they fell deeper into Autumn.
His arms would hold him tighter, then looser, as though he couldn’t decide whether he needed Olruggio to be desperately closer to him or to push him safely away from the hands he drew magic with. Olruggio would take whatever contact he offered, would seek comfort in their wavering connection and reach his hand out to the stars and plead that it was still real. He still trusted Qifrey, despite it all.
He trusted that whatever lies he told were for the greater good. That Olruggio hadn’t abandoned his morals along with his duty by following him. He wondered if Qifrey knew the turmoil he went through, when he chose Qifrey over his duty again, and again, and again. Even when his head begged him to stop, his heart begged him to believe that the fifteen years they’d spent side by side hadn’t been burned to ash yet.
He abandoned his duty to savor a smile he wasn’t even sure was real.
His entire chest screamed with an anguish that left him curled over and panting.
He thought of the nightmares that plagued Tetia, nightmares she’d begged him not to tell Qifrey about. He thought about the dragon the children had faced alone, of Euini and Alaira fleeing in the cold to protect the child from the consequences of the forbidden magic that had been forced upon his skin. He thought about Coco near-drowning at the riverbank, how he’d abandoned two children and left them to resolve a life-or-death situation alone. He thought about the seal Coco drew, so small and simple with such terrifying consequences, yet Qifrey returned from Kalhn without a word and never spoke of it again.
He looked at Olruggio, daring him to broach the topic with an unfamiliar pain that concurrently begged him to leave it alone.
It wasn’t the only time he’d decided to trust Qifrey and leave a topic alone. There were times he couldn’t even remember why he’d left it alone, nor what he was even wanting answers for in the first place.
When was he supposed to draw a line and turn against the one constant in his life, the one person he wanted more than anything to be safe and okay and his. How was he supposed to put the greater good first when he didn’t even know what the greater good was anymore.
His duty as a watchful eye was drenched in an ambiguous film of corruption. He didn’t know where his hushed mouth turned from valiant to dangerous. It terrified him, more than anything, that Qifrey could so easily take the trust he had in him and guide him, exactly how he wanted, to turn his head and be a reliable alibi to render him innocent of every rule he flouted.
Olruggio refused to believe that Qifrey would do that to him.
Olruggio refused to believe that Qifrey would ever strike his heart so painfully that it would shatter on impact.
He placed his faith in Qifrey with shaking but certain legs. He wiped away tears at night and worked his way through the day, watching the lessons for a few minutes and pretending that all was normal. He stared at the girls from the perceived safety of his atelier and searched for the wonder in their eyes, his heart beat steady when he saw the joy that shone in them. He placed a hand against the window and breathed with the whistle of the wind.
He overthought his every move. Olruggio was terrified of unleashing more terror and pain upon those glistening eyes, thirsting for knowledge but weary of the misdeeds of witches who donned brims and points alike. Lies and deception had been commonplace in their discovery of their world, Olruggio only hoped that Qifrey’s were an exception.
Pen pressed to paper, bleeding with ink.
The Great Hall had no cause for concern in regards to Qifrey’s atelier.
The ribbon pulled taught around his heart.