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There is something inside him that sings in her. It's resonance, of sorts, their golden blood humming inaudibly at the same frequency, and only she can hear it. This is the curse of Romance.
~
“Goldweaver,” he greets, his voice dripping with condescension.
“Great Performer,” she responds in kind.
He thinks she hates him. The misunderstanding serves her well enough.
~
The followers of Mnestia told many stories, most of which have been lost to time outside of her memories. One of them, which was hardly ever told even back in that golden age, hangs in her mind the most of all.
It was a story of soulmates. Nothing else about it really matters.
~
She would like to blame it on Mnestia and Cerces, say that it is only an echo of their love in their Chrysos Heirs, but there have been other heirs of reason and none of them have ever made her feel like this.
And it's– terrible. Every minute of it is agony, because he is who he is, and she wouldn't dare change a single thing. This makes it all the worse.
~
“Do you hate me?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you hate me,” Anaxa asks, “because you don't look at anyone else the way you look at me.”
She sets down her tea. The table they're using is old, and chipped at the edges, but not as old as her.
“Your trips back to Ohkema are so short, and so few. Would you really waste the precious few hours we have on something stupid like this?”
“Nothing I choose to focus on is stupid,” he scoffs, and there is any number of things she could say to that– mention all of his failed experiments, or his obsession with dromases– but she says nothing.
Behind him, a nymph flaps its gossamer-thin wings. She takes a sip of her tea, and runs her finger over one of the cracks in the table's surface.
“I see,” he says with a smirk.
“Do you?”
Do you feel it too, she means.
“There is someone you hate more than anyone else in the world,” he continues, “and it isn’t me.”
~
As a child, she would hide in her mother's skirts as they walked to Mnestia’s temple. She wasn't afraid of the crowd, or anything at all, but simply liked the feel of the fabric as it blew in the gentle breeze.
On most days, once they arrived, Aglaea would follow her mother to her various duties, but every so often something would come up and she'd be left to her own devices.
There was a garden in the center of the complex. styled a shine not just to Mnestia but to Cerces. Aglaea used to go there, sit beneath the trees, and wait for the rest of her life to arrive. She'd looked forward to it, then.
~
Her divinity has long settled over her like a new suit of clothes. It is beginning to grow old by now, so much so that it's worn her down as well in its weariness, but something about it is just as unfamiliar as it was when she first ascended all those years ago.
She does not like the feeling of not knowing herself. As her soul has eroded, she has known and liked herself less and less. In truth, she thinks the resonance she feels in her golden blood might be the last thing she ever feels, and she resents herself, and it, for that.
She hates how she has betrayed herself. She hates that it happened slowly, like grains of sand slipping through her fingers, and hates how her soul broke apart without her ever really trying to stop it.
~
“There's a funny story in the Grove's archives,” he says. “It's about soulmates.”
“I’ve heard of it,” she says, turning away from him.
“They say it manifests as all consuming desire.”
“It should,” she confirms.
“Your soul– the rumors are true, then?”
“And what about you, Anaxagoras?” She spits, still keeping herself faced firmly towards the sun.
“I deny the flame chase, but my blood is still golden,” he says. “Given that I belong to Cerces, my soul has never belonged solely to me.”
“... This isn't her,” she says, trying to make it sound like an offhand comment. “You're the only one who makes me feel like this.”
With her threads, she makes out the shape of him smiling. He notices her noticing. She says nothing.
“You believe I hate you,” he surmises.
“Given that you stand against me at every turn, and needle me with pointed questions whenever we are alone, yes. I do believe you hate me.”
“Time has weathered your ability to read people like me,” he says.
~
It is hard to explain why she likes him.
There is the singing, of course, the pull in her blood, but if that wasn't there she thinks she'd like him all the same.
She imagines the two of them somewhere else, a different world. They are students, perhaps, or coworkers, or merely two people whose paths have happened to cross. They argue, bicker about nothing until their faces turn blue, and despite or because of that they fall into step together. There is no threat of the black tide. She is still herself.
At her weakest moments, she yearns for that dream to become reality as one lost in the desert yearns for water. It has become what maintains her.
~
The next time she sees him, he smiles at her across the plaza and asks to die.
She grants him the gift of his execution because it is what he desires. For once, she does not make her own opinion known. Let the world think they are, this time and only this time, in agreement.
~
“Aglaea,” he asks, moments before he is to die, “may I resonate with your Coreflame?”
She lets him, knowing he will see it all– the longing, the love, how all of that is a shadow of what it used to be.
He stills, his grip on her Coreflame going slack. A soft smile makes its way onto his face.
“Dear Aglaea,” he breathes. “You amaze me.”
~
As they walk to the Vortex of Genesis, where he is going to die, he falls into step with her. It feels quite natural, as if this is any other day and they have done this a thousand times before.
“We are to be reincarnated,” he says. “You can, if you'd like, repeat Mnestia’s mistakes.”
“No,” she says. “You do the chasing this time.”
He smiles.