Work Text:
At the center of the Solarian palace is a magnificent garden oasis. Although it sits beneath the desert sunlight, the garden remains lush and cool even at the height of summer. Palm trees bow to the grand pools that are connected by narrow channels, forming a continuing body of water over which wood foot bridges arc and lead to the fountain at its center.
In the fountain lives a mysterious creature that is astonishing to see in a desert, as astonishing as the garden itself. This is the story of how it came to live there.
One evening, a year after the sudden passing of his father, the young Sun Lord had gone into the desert in search of a new pet. His leoger Sooley needed a companion, something to keep him occupied while Dante worked. As he often did, he had gone into the desert alone, preferring the time with his own thoughts and not those of a nation.
With the sun down the desert felt cool, and it was quiet—a different sort of quiet to the palace. Under the moonlight, Dante navigated a favorite path that ran past a shallow oasis that tended to dry up by this point in the summer. There had been excess rainfall this season, which had collected at the pond’s deepest area beneath a stand of palms.
At their base, he thought he saw a figure lying in the water. Fearing that someone had drowned, he called out.
No answer.
Dante strode toward the figure. As he got nearer, he saw two pale arms folded beneath a head. The person’s face was hidden by a long curtain of tangled hair, and the rest of their body disappeared into the water. From the size, he guessed it was an adult. The body was emaciated, lacking any fat, but it was not dead. He detected slight movement as it breathed. A vagrant, perhaps, or someone who had gotten lost in the desert. Either way, they couldn’t stay here.
“Oi,” Dante said, nudging an arm with the toe of his shoe. He did it again and stood back as the person groaned a little. They raised their head, brushing aside the curtain of hair to reveal a gaunt face.
“Can’t you see I’m sleeping?” said the stranger.
“You’ll drown,” Dante said. “Come out of there.”
“You might drown,” the stranger corrected. “I need the water.”
Stepping closer, Dante held out a lantern and looked more closely at the stranger’s body. At its waist, extending into the dark water, were scales.
“You’re a fish,” he realized. “What are you doing in the desert?”
The fish glared over his arms. “Well, I didn’t crawl here.”
It had been common, back when Solaria was still overrun by bandits, for people to be kidnapped for their belongings and abandoned in the desert. But he had never heard of it done to a fish that would die in such conditions. How could it have gotten here? There wasn’t an ocean for a hundred miles in any direction.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Most recently, the Light Territory. Those little demons kidnapped me from my own mansion a few years ago, can you believe it? A few decades back, they wouldn’t have dared step foot on the grounds.”
“Why not?”
“Because of who I served. He’s gone, you see, and so is my protection. But the people who took me are cowards. There’s a chance he could still be alive, so they didn’t kill me in order to spare themselves juuuust in case.” The fish yawned. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t have much energy left, and speaking makes my throat hurt.”
“What is your name?”
“Aster.”
“Would you permit me to take you into Solaria?”
Aster narrowed his eyes. “What for?”
“The pond is usually dry this time of the year. In another few days, there won’t be any water left.”
“And why should I trust you?”
Dante puffed out his chest. “I see no one else offering assistance.”
Aster sighed and studied Dante’s face for nearly a minute. “When I’m ready to leave, will you release me?”
“You may leave at any point.”
“How far away is the city?”
“A half hour’s walk.”
Aster motioned to his tail. “And how do you propose I get there?”
In his poor condition, Aster weighed less than he should have, and Dante easily lifted him from the pond, grimacing as the murk dripped off of him and soaked Dante’s clothes. Aster was bony to hold and demure on the walk, loosely circling his arms around Dante’s neck and resting his head against his shoulder. It surprised Dante to know that a fish breathed air. Aster had a sickly perfume about him, as though something on his body was rotting. A disease of the scales? Clean water should help, and if it persisted Dante would send in his physician.
Once they reached the city gates, a carriage took them the rest of the way to the palace, and Dante carried Aster into his private bath house. He rinsed him beneath a shower to remove most of the grime, then deposited him in the largest soaking pool.
“What do you eat?” he asked, stepping back. “Fish?”
“Ah.” Aster sank into the water up to his neck. His hair was pink, a beautiful rose color, and fell below his collar bones. As he extended his tail, the black tips of his fins breached the surface. “Are there fish in the desert?”
“We raise them.”
“Then fish will be sufficient. Raw,” he added.
Dante nodded. “I’ll have some brought. About your injuries…”
Aster pressed a hand to his side where scales had been removed—forcibly, from the looks of it. The remaining skin was inflamed, and the injuries continued across his tail. “I’ll heal once my essence stabilizes.” He met Dante’s eyes. “When I regain access to my fortune, I’ll repay you.”
“I did not assist you in hopes of repayment.”
“I’m not in the business of owing favors. Whatever it is you want, tell me now. If it’s my body you’re after, I’m not strong enough for that yet, but I will be. Although I’m nothing to look at right now, when I’m healthy…”
Dante sputtered and collected himself. “I want no such thing. What sort of people have you associated with in the past?”
“If you’re wondering whether I’ve been mistreated, I assure you that I can take care of myself. Usually.” Aster flashed a set of predator’s fangs and held up equally sharp claws.
Dante nodded his approval. “Is there someone I can contact on your behalf?”
“No.” Aster sighed. “No, there isn’t anyone.”
“I’ll come and see you tomorrow. Food will be brought shortly.”
“I didn’t get your name,” Aster said.
“You may call me Dante.”
“Thank you, Dante. Where are we?”
“My home. No one will harm you here. You have my word.”
As he left, Aster was peering at him, his red eyes just above the surface of the water.
Eiden arrived in Solaria several days later, forgoing greetings to flop down on a mound of colorful pillows that were intended for Dante’s personal use. Ever since this so-called sorcerer had appeared on Klein, he’d regularly visited the palace along with his incubus familiar in order to maintain the fire crystal, and had taken to staying longer and longer each trip, to the point where Dante wasn’t surprised to find him lounging in the throne room.
“Soooo…” Eiden said. Sooley lay purring on his lap. “Is it true there’s a mermaid living in the bath house?”
Dante did not look up from the letter he was reading. Eiden’s terminology was inaccurate, but as Aster would not be staying here long, he saw no reason to argue technicalities. “Temporarily.”
“New pet?”
“He was stranded in the desert. I’m allowing him to stay here while he recovers.”
“How did a fish get into the desert in the first place?”
“He told me he was kidnapped.” Dante frowned and set the letter aside. “You live in the Light Territory. Do you know of a fish called Aster?”
“My other familiar is called Aster, though I’ve never met him. Morvay said he’s been missing for a few years. He calls him a vampire, though. Not a fish.”
Aster was not a common name, and the Aster in his care drank blood. Dante stood and started in the direction of the bath house.
“Come with me,” he said.
He led Eiden to the pool where Aster was floating on his back with his eyes closed. After a week of fresh food, a healthy color had crept into his cheeks, and he’d lost some of the bony appearance. But the wounds to his tail were still prominent stripes where the scales had been sheared off.
“Dante, Dante…” Aster said with his eyes closed. “Have you come to see me again today? You’re too kind.”
“I’ve brought you a visitor.”
Aster opened a red eye. “Oh? And who’s this?”
He looked at Eiden and slowly blinked, then swam to the side of the pool and took a deep breath of air. The playful expression fell from his face and he said in a faint voice, “Master?”
“So you really are that Aster,” Eiden said, kneeling down to speak with him. “Hi. This is probably something of a shock for you, but I’m Eiden. It’s nice to meet you.”
“I don’t understand,” Aster said, reaching to touch the side of Eiden’s face. “Your scent is so like Master Huey’s.”
“Morvay doesn’t understand it any better.”
“That fucking incubus! What does he have to do with anything?”
“He summoned me about a year back,” Eiden said. “I’m not from around here. He’s been trying to find you too but the trail had gone cold. Wait until he hears you’re right here in Solaria.”
“It’s that dumbass’s fault I was taken!” Aster huffed. “He forgot to lock the mansion before he flew off looking for a dick to suck, and they lifted me right out of my tank.” He sighed and formed one hand into a fist. “If he’s here with you, call him in. I’d like to give him a biiiiig~ thank you.”
“I’m so sorry for everything you’ve been through,” Eiden said. He glanced up at Dante. “But what luck that you were found by the Sun Lord, huh?”
“The who now?” Aster said.
Dante cleared his throat. “Never mind.”
“Ah, sorry, was that a secret?” Eiden rubbed his neck and stood up. “Why don’t I go and find Morvay? I’ll bring him here so you two can catch up.”
With a sheepish expression, he left the bath house. Two red eyes focused on Dante.
“So you’re the Sun Lord,” Aster said. “I knew you had to be someone important to have access to such good fish, but I didn’t realize the title had passed. Your father?”
“An illness, last year.”
“I’m sorry, he was a good man. We met long ago at the mansion. I should have realized you were his son. You bear a great resemblance.”
Dante lowered his chin. “You have been unwell. My appearance is the least of your concerns.”
Aster sunk beneath the water and with one stroke of his tail, put half of the pool between them. “I suppose,” he mused once he’d resurfaced, “now that I have a new master, I ought to leave with him.”
“You should do as you wish.”
“Even though I’m a familiar?”
“In Solaria, people are free to choose their own fate.”
Aster seemed to consider it, his nose and mouth beneath the waterline. Times like this, Dante remembered he was not human. Aster was breathing through the gills on his neck, which opened and closed on their own, red inside where they took in oxygen and somehow uncomfortable to look at.
Dante cleared his throat. “If you choose to return with him, I’ll have a special carriage prepared.”
“I don’t know the condition of my tank back home,” Aster said after a while, raising his lips above the water. “So I won’t leave today.”
Dante nodded. “Then I’ll come see you tomorrow.”
“If I ask you to release me tomorrow, will you?”
“Of course,” Dante said, frowning, and left.
For weeks, he returned daily to the bathhouse, and every day, when he went to leave, Aster posed the same question: “If I asked you to release me today, would you let me go?”
Dante’s answer was always immediate and the same.
Word of Aster’s presence had spread among the palace staff, and it was common that Dante would find one of them peering through the window to catch a glimpse of him. They would run off as soon as Dante appeared, or if Aster became aware of their presence and addressed them, which he seemed to do out of amusement. The curiosity was natural. A creature like Aster had never been seen in this part of the continent, but Dante made it plain that he was a guest of the palace, not an exhibit.
There weren’t many people in Solaria to whom Dante could talk casually, so having Aster as a companion made his days more lively. Often he brought Aster’s food himself, choosing the specific fish and watching with fascination as Aster expertly drained its blood, then ate the flesh.
“What do you normally eat?” he asked one day, sitting on the side of the bath with his cheek leaning against her hand.
“Oh, whatever Huey allowed. It was usually dead meat, but once or twice a year, he’d bring me something fresh.”
“How long have you lived on land?”
“Too long to return to the ocean, I’m afraid. I’ve forgotten how to hunt and been spoiled by warm water. Someone cut me out of the net when I was very young, and I was kept in a fish market until Huey came along. He wasn’t a perfect owner, but he cared for me in his way.” Aster swam to the side of the bath and laid his head on his arms. “And what about you? What were you doing before you took over rule?”
“I served as an ambassador for my father.”
“Before that?”
“Training to become the Sun Lord. I don’t have siblings, so it falls to me.”
“And who inherits it after you?”
Frowning, Dante answered honestly. “I don’t know that succession is still appropriate for a modern Solaria.”
“And it’s difficult without a child,” Aster said. “Are you married?”
Dante shook his head and did not understand, in that moment, the flash in Aster’s eye.
Across the next several weeks, Aster regained the weight he had lost. His cheeks had a roundness that reddened beautifully in Dante’s company; and his tail, which had appeared a rough black, took on an iridescent sheen like oil on water. Little by little, the scales that had been stripped away grew into place, until the color of his tail was even and Dante would not have known, had he not been the one to bring Aster here, that the scales had ever been missing at all. He attempted to research their value, but there was no information about them, only brief mentions of a vampiric fish that had once lived off of the continent’s northwestern coast.
“Nothing,” Aster said one afternoon when he had caught Dante staring at his tail. “They’re worth nothing; they’re merely scales—no different than any other fish in the ocean, the same stuff as my hair. But they wouldn’t believe me, those men. If I had served the sorcerer Huey, surely I must be worth something! They got a shock, I’m sure, realizing they’d earn nothing for their trouble. It’s likely why they abandoned me after all that time. Your marketplace was their last attempt.”
Since Aster had brought up the subject, Dante felt free to ask more. “Do you have any idea who they were, the ones who took you?”
Aster shook his head. “It wouldn’t matter if I did. I’m only a familiar. The only person who can punish them is gone.”
“What about Eiden?”
Aster glanced toward the window. “What good would it do, turning him into a target? Anyway, I got my revenge. A swipe from my claws takes a long, long time to heal.” His eyes settled once again upon Dante, who did not shy from them. As they always did, Aster’s cheeks took on a pink color and he licked his lips. “I’m sure you have a lot to do, Sun Lord. I won’t take up any more of your precious time today.”
His voice was breathy, and the tips of his fangs pressed against the curve of his lip.
“Is the fish insufficient?” asked Dante, who was familiar with the signs of hunger.
“The fish is excellent. I’m just partial to another flavor.”
Those red eyes focused on Dante’s neck. Uncertain whether he should be frightened or flattered, Dante nodded and left.
He ordered his assistant to scour marketplaces from here to the Water Territory for merchants with gashes on their faces who were peddling black scales or powder. If Aster did not want revenge for himself, fine. Dante would keep criminals out of Solaria.
Whenever he visited Aster after that, Dante could not stop thinking about what he’d said. Vampiric species were not rare on Klein, although they were uncommon in the desert and did not speak. None but Aster. He was on Dante’s mind throughout the day: the sheen of his scales, the tenor of his voice. The fangs.
“You’re into him,” Eiden said on his next visit after he fussed over Aster in the bathhouse, even wading into the pool to let him cling for a while. “You look like you wanted to punch me for touching him.”
Dante turned a scalding cheek. “He is intriguing.”
“Hmm.” Eiden drank spiced wine from a jeweled goblet and lay back on the mound of pillows. “Oh, listen to this. When Morvay and I were in the Water Territory last week, we saw quite the spectacle in the marketplace. Solarian soldiers arresting a group of merchants. They had the Water Territory’s permission, apparently, and dragged the whole group back here. I don’t suppose you know anything about that.”
Meeting Eiden’s eyes, Dante gave him a stern look. “Do not tell him.”
“Huh? How come?”
“He did not wish to pursue it.”
“Well, aren’t you the proverbial knight in shining armor! You save a guy from drying out, you send guards to arrest his tormentors, and you don’t even want credit for it.”
Dante ignored him and changed the subject. “Is everything prepared for his return to the Light Territory?”
“The tank is scrubbed and fixed, and his carriage has an irrigation system to keep him wet while he travels. I’ll be glad to take him home as soon as he’s ready.”
Dante nodded.
“You don’t look happy about it.” Eiden gave him a long, lingering grin that Dante had seen him use on the entourage of men he often traveled with—a snake yokai especially.
“Not everything is about fornication,” Dante muttered.
“Makes things more fun, though. You interested?”
“If it isn’t necessary, I do not see the point.”
“Don’t you ever do something just because it makes you feel good?”
“Of course.” Dante thought, again, of his guest in the bathhouse. He cleared his throat. “Ask him when he plans to depart. I’ll have a feast organized.”
“Pretty sure there’s only one thing he’d like to eat here.”
Dante lifted his chin. “What are you implying?”
“If you aren’t going to give him what he wants, isn’t it kinder to let him go? Morvay tells me that the previous grand sorcerer was the same with him.”
“Don’t compare me with some fool who abandoned him.”
Eiden’s smile grew into something more genuine. “I don’t mind, you know. If you were concerned about that.”
With a sigh, Dante stood and made an excuse about meeting with one of his advisors. But his feet took him not to his office, but past the bathhouse. He paused, as he had seen countless others do, at the window.
Aster was floating on his back, looking up at the tiled ceiling. After a minute, he called, “I know you’re there.”
Ducking out of sight, Dante hurried away.
The next morning, for the first time since Aster had come to the palace, Dante did not visit him. He asked Gyro to inform him of any updates and left Eiden to see to Aster’s entertainment.
The change to his afternoon routine left him soured. It had only been a few weeks that they’d known each other. Had he felt this dissatisfied before? Even the spiced tea he ordered to his office, long a favorite, did not taste right. He left it to go cold and stared at the pile of documents on his desk.
After three days, he’d had enough and returned to the bathhouse with the largest fish in the hatchery.
“I thought you’d grown tired of me,” Aster said once he’d drained it.
Dante shook his head
Laying the fish aside, Aster cleaned his face and hands with a towel. “Why don’t you join me?” he asked. “They changed the water this morning.”
Dante weighed the danger (Aster was a predator by classification) against his own curiosity. Before his father had involved him in politics, Dante had been a successful beast tamer—certainly capable of fighting off one fish. As he undressed, Aster’s face grew redder and redder. When Dante put a foot in the water, he expected that Aster might attack him, but he only drifted closer and, when Dante did not refuse, draped his arms over his shoulders.
“I wondered if you would ever hold me again,” he said, pressing a chaste kiss to Dante’s mouth and wrapping his tail around him. “May I tell you a story?”
His throat tight, Dante nodded.
“A long time ago, a school of fish lived in a quiet part of the ocean. They ate what they needed in order to survive and did not interfere with humans. But one day, one of those fish was plucked from the sea, the next day another, and so on, until there were so few left that the species could not survive. The youngest, being easier to hide, gathered together in a remote bay where the ships didn’t tend to come, but during a storm the currents took one of them, and he ended up tangled in ropes. He would have died had a human not cut him free. That fish swore loyalty to the human for his rescue, but the human put him on display. The fish lived for many years as a sideshow curiosity until a great sorcerer, realizing its origin, paid a great price to acquire it. And so the fish devoted himself to that sorcerer for rescuing him.”
Aster took a breath and swallowed.
“I’ve come to understand that being saved is not the same as being wanted, but it’s instinctual for me. I can’t help it. Huey broke the fisherman’s spell and you broke Huey’s. Will you abandon me in a tank like they did?”
Dante shook his head. “I promised to release you.”
Aster’s eyes widened to the point that Dante thought he looked afraid. He settled his hands on Aster’s waist.
“Isn’t that what you want?” he asked. Under his fingertips, Aster’s skin was smooth in the places the scales didn’t reach. He stroked them without thinking.
“I don’t suppose it’s possible for someone like me to live in the desert,” Aster said, even as his arms tightened around Dante’s neck.
Dante licked his lips. “But would you stay if I asked? Don’t you belong to Eiden?”
“I’m not really a familiar, not technically. The genuine ones are summoned, but as I didn’t have any legal standing in the Light Territory, Huey gave me the title.” Aster kissed him again and this time it was less innocent. “Do you want me to go with Eiden?”
Dante shook his head again.
“You’ll allow me to stay in this pool?”
“No.”
Aster seemed to shrink and slip away, but Dante caught him before he sunk beneath the surface. “I’ll have one constructed for you,” he said. “You can’t see the stars from here.”
A tail twined around his ankles and Aster’s arms squeezed the air from Dante’s lungs, but as Dante took that to mean he was accepting the offer, he didn’t complain.
“And the fish you raise,” Aster said. “I can continue to eat them?”
“You can have all the fish in the nation.”
A sharp fingernail traced the side of Dante’s neck and Aster put his nose against it. “What if I ask for something else?” he said, inhaling deeply.
Dante shivered. “I would give it to you.”
He tensed, prepared for the sting of teeth, but Aster kissed his cheek and the corner of his lips. As he brought their mouths together again, he pulled Dante on top of him and floated on his back.
Unseen by both of them, a certain sorcerer who had been walking past slunk away from the window with a smile.
At the heart of the Solarian palace is a magnificent fountain beneath the crystal dome that protects it from the sun. In the fountain lives a beautiful fish devoted to the human that lives with him in the surrounding garden, in an open-air room built alongside the largest pool.
Every day, the fish whispers to the human, “If I asked you to let me go, would you?” to which the human replies, to the fish’s delight, “Yes, although I would not want to.”