With his mouth a thin, stoic line, Asbel waited for Frey's outburst to be over and for the prince to disappear into the tent he had originally been so reluctant to enter. Of course the prince would agree to the arrangement only after he realized that the phoenix was a natural talisman against the dark. Nothing else suggested quite so clearly that Frey truly was afraid of the darkness: the only reason he would agree to sleep in the vicinity of such an otherwise-useless [i]thing[/i] was if the thing was a glorified lamp. Already, as much as he now didn't want to, as the last shreds of light vanished in the rain-filled dusk, Asbel's light was already becoming more pronounced: a soft, ethereal glow so like candlelight.

A [i]thing[/i]. After seventeen years of taunting and nearly-deadly pranks, a few insults, none of them new, should not have been so bothersome. But they caught in Asbel's throat all the same and the phoenix gritted his teeth to keep his eyes dry. Always a thing, always a tool. The alchemists thought so, Frey thought so -- everyone thought so, except for Bacchus and Augustine. Two people in all the castle.

Augustine wandered through the darkness towards Cassius, but that was all the sound Asbel heard from that direction, so he entered his own tent and returned Frey's glare. Not even the relative comfort of a small, enclosed space allayed the fact that Frey was the one sharing it with him.

"Royal brat," he snapped in return, voice nearly cracking, and with that he turned his back on the prince and sat as far from Frey as possible. Nothing else needed to be said. The forest was horrid -- the prince was horrid -- the rain itself was horrid. To be wet was a misery all on its own, and Asbel tugged off his jacket and shirt, bare skin still unpleasantly damp and chill. He bundled the discarded clothes in his hands and sent heat through them to dry the waterlogged fabric before he resigned himself to sleeping beside a demon.