soldier - from soldier//poet//king series
His name is Elias and he is a soldier. He is blonde and tall and mighty and good with women even though he has no interest in them. His eyes are green as the sea his mother bore him by - he feels the saltwater tugging at his blood when he nears, and the smell of the ocean is like home. He is twice as large as his mother, but just as gentle. Some days he rides down to the sea and sits on the balcony of her lighthouse, and they drink sweet mead and watch the sun set. She tells him of the fishermen who come to court her, he tells her of the kitchen boy he’s falling in love with, and both of them will laugh at their circumstances. Because she has no interest in men anymore, and he has caught the eye of the princess, and neither of them can bear to see the outcome of the most likely circumstance.
His name is Elias and he is afraid of snakes. He is also afraid of his destiny and what it means he will have to do. Sometimes he feels suffocated under the weight of his kingdom’s sky, forever blue-grey in the snow. Some days, he wants to tear his way out of the city walls, his love in his arms, and run down to the lighthouse, where he can live out the rest of his days in peace. His love calls him a hopeless romantic, but he knows there’s affection in it. His love’s name is Adam, and he is a brown-eyed kitchen boy who Elias found trying to teach himself how to read on the roof during a nightly patrol. Since then, Adam has learned how to read, and Elias has learned how the moonlight reflects in dusky brown eyes. He has also learned that the space between his arms is painfully empty without Adam there.
His name is Elias, and he does not wish to be a soldier anymore, not since the day he was told to burn a rebellious village to the ground, and watched mothers and children burn to death in their homes. It made him sick, to realise what he had done, to wash the soot and blood from his hands and armour. He wishes he could leave, take Adam by the waist and run off to the sea, but if he does, they will both lose their heads, and that is not a risk worth taking.
His name is Elias, and he is waiting for something to change.
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