As a creature of lust, Hadwin was not only attuned to detecting sudden shifts in arousal, but also the adamant lack of them. In contrast, Safir reeked of fear, and not of the variety Hadwin could coax into pleasure. The two sensations were intertwined in a dance so primal and ancient, if one was stimulated, the other usually kept in step. High-octane, risk-taking endeavors always brought out the hedonist in Hadwin, sure as provoking a tussle with an irate bear led to a tumble in the sheets afterward. Not with the bear, of course–he had more class than to fuck his cognitive inferior—but with a bear of a man? All bets were on. While the faoladh partook in no such reckless feats to prepare for the evening, Safir, by nature of his all-or-nothing final appeal to the Ilandrians, had bled in treacherous waters, and like any sane man bent on self-preservation, was intent on reaching safe harbor before being torn to shreds by sharks. In Safir’s danger-conscious mind, Hadwin might as well be another shark. He would not be able to sway the newly minted king to tread water. Not in his frenzied condition.
“Oh, you’ve given her quite the run-around,” Hadwin said, still ignoring the dandelion spore that trailed the baby monarch, her restrained and ethereal float among the crowd too performative for subtlety. “ You’re a rabbit diving for the hutch before the fox can spring. Let me tell you, there’s hardly a scarier combination than a young, impressionable noblelady with her eye on something. Or someone. Even worse when the word ‘no’ isn’t in her vocabulary.” He thought of sweet Sylvie at the masquerade, the tassels of her bandit mask flapping in the late summer breeze. The ill match of his lips on hers, the tenuous twist and snap of his senses, brittle like a twig underfoot. Rowen, in the crowd, tittering, her mouth opening to reveal reams of blood and broken shards.
Unlike Safir, who voluntarily rejected the libations on the table, Hadwin swept up a goblet of wine and took a steady swig. He drowned the memory. Tapping his foot, he checked for sturdy ground and found the marble tiling firm. No fissures in the fabric of reality. No other worlds to pry his fingers in search for her, wherever her spirit flitted. I am the bridge, he reminded himself. The anchor. If I drift too far from shore, I can’t reel her home.
He breathed. Counted his breaths. Focused on the twang of the strings, the clink of glasses. The ebullient laughter of a couple about to shag in the corner. Desire wafted into his nostrils from all four corners. Reality incarnate–the carnal didn’t breed in cobwebs, in the stale and undisturbed. He found his footing, or some fool’s approximation of it. C’mon, you can’t fall apart at another bloody party! Especially not this kind of party!
“C’mon, it’s your big night,” he said, oozing self-assurance. Leave it to him to smooth over an inner crisis with a smile and a head toss. “If you want to kick back a few drinks and let loose with an alluring beau or two, no one’s gonna blink twice. I saw our good mate Nia traipsing about earlier, so if she’s off the hook–no thanks to you, I’m sure,” he nudged the king gratefully, “then why don’t you take a page from her book and act like you own the place? Which–well, you do. I hate to dampen your spirits any, but your days of public-eye evasion are for the grave, I’m afraid. Mourn the loss and move on. Don’t you think you’ve been standing in the cemetery for way too long?” He met the king’s glassy green eyes, and nodded at what he saw in them–and there was no place for him. He removed his arm and stepped away at a respectful distance. “But I know when I’m not needed.” He tried not to snort in his drink when Safir took him up on his offer. The wrong offer. The offer he threw out there as a half-joke, and hoped the king wouldn’t accept as a viable option.
“Charmer?” He raised an amused eyebrow for the generous euphemism. “Well, I must be doing a shit job of it cuz I can’t charm you.” He winked, then cast a furtive glance at the shadow in frills and lace. She looked like a tick about to pop. All enthusiasm for the night ahead withered like an old man’s balls. The Eliasron stalker stank of desperation and desire–two other traits that often grasped hands in partnership. Hadwin knew what kind of evening awaited him. The stirrings of a headache formed in his temples. “Fuck. I would say you owe me, but consider this a coronation gift. In the interest of honesty–I hate this. I’ll be expecting something for the burns later. Wish me luck.” And despite the grating sensation behind his eyes, he left Safir’s company and entered the spoiled noblelady’s orbit, his grin a mile wide.
No sooner did Hadwin exit than Nia, accompanied by Ari, join the exposed and paranoid Ilandrian king on the floor. For the occasion, Ari wore a peacock-blue frockcoat with aquamarine drop earrings and blue kohl rimming his outer eyelids. His hair remained loose and unbound, but combed to a sheen. While he much resembled the put-together Lord of Stella D’Mare, he shared less in common with the gamboling noblemen who chased their heart’s desire on the dance floor, and more like his petrified friend, who seemed in the midst of a curse-laden flare-up.
For Ari, the last few days had been a panoply of highs and lows. Nico’s disappearance, Sylvie’s illness, Nia’s arrest, a last-chance coronation, his vacillating health—but also; Safir crowned king, Nia’s acquittal, a kingdom united, in essence. The whirlwind of events had stymied Ari to the point of speechlessness. Following the frosty-venued coronation, he returned to the palace and rounded the corner on a curious tableau. Nia stood outside their door, the guards unshackling her restraints. The Ardane woman’s warrant is hereby disbanded, by order of the king, the guard explained when Ari inquired. He was so verklempt that he could only hold her in a tight embrace, words failing. Ari’s second great gift aside from his art–and the stressors and rigors of life had stripped that from him, too.
In a surprising reversal, Ari had no desire to attend the evening’s festivities but rallied to the occasion out of deep respect for Safir, who risked his newly appointed position to free Nia as his first decree as king. When they happened upon the man of the hour, who looked much like a colorless statue in a field of whirling flags, Ari wanted to convey those feelings with the appropriate eye contact, but he demurred to Nia, happy to let her do all the talking.
They took their conversation to the balcony, and the change of venue garnered little reaction in Ari, a testament to the numbness that afflicted his body like a killing frost, which blackened limbs and left them at the mercy of a bonesaw. Despite living several winters outside of temperate Stella D’Mare, Ari was a southerner by blood, and any winter blast from the north wind would chill him to a mess of shivers if not properly attired. But even when the frigid gusts whipped through Ari’s hair and lashed his coattails around his ankles, he didn’t wrap his arms around his chest for warmth, or retreat to the overhang nearest the door. He stayed, anchored between Nia and Safir, a plaything for the wind, and passively listened as the two discussed what it meant to rule Ilandria. He agreed with Nia, of course, but even if he could find the means to manipulate words around his tongue, the raw message she conveyed would lose some of its punch and flavor in his eloquent, euphemistic parlance.
The Canaverises believed that self-pity was a wasted emotion. It spurned good sense and insulted the beneficence of elders and friends. A selfish sentiment, it did not serve or rectify; it only gave further definition to the bleak. Yet, wasn’t that what Ari had invited into his soul? A turgid pool of shame? His well-deserving friend had been crowned king. Nia no longer had to fear retribution from her home county. Sylvie would recover. As for Nico and Laz? Laz couldn’t die, and Nico…was resilient. And Ari would find him.
He almost didn’t hear when the conversation shifted to him. “Pardon?” He asked Safir, not quite understanding–until he did. How had he forgotten that one, essential detail? Somewhere in the mire, he abandoned the glint of light in the bottom of the lake, and ceased looking for hope when survival became paramount. How many days had he spent riding in the frozen muck outside of Galeyn, suffering sores in his soles and thighs on a horse he scarcely knew how to steer? How many days in a row did he stop thinking about the promise he looked to immortalize in gold and crystal? What happened to the color?
“Ah–is that so?” Ari adopted his most casual tone, as if the matter involved a new set of tailored clothes and nothing that would trigger Nia’s suspicions. “Well, I shall have to remove Sommath of the burden sooner than later. If you’d excuse my brief departure—you will be well, in the meantime?” He bowed before Safir–both as a polite gesture of his withdrawal and a delayed congratulations. Ari was doing everything out of order tonight, but better to have a little disarray than ongoing silence. Gratitude for Safir’s unintentional morale boost returned a measure of garrulousness to his flitting tongue, and he finally ladled its dose upon its recipient. “I meant to add–you shall always have a seat at my table, King Safir.” He smiled at the new appellation. It suited him, even if Safir didn’t believe so. “For what you have done for Nia. That small act alone tells me that you are far more deserving of the throne than you believe. It proves you are a man of your word–a nobility that exceeds many of our contemporaries, who spin flowery promises for clout and abandon their conviction at the first sign of adversity. Forgive me for in the past I have doubted your words, and led you astray with my D’Marian sensibilities. We lead with theatrics, with poetical politicking –and I misled you to play a game when the real game was no game at all, but a bid for honesty, which you demonstrated with grace–however clumsy in the execution,” his lips curled slightly, unable to help himself for the jab. “I may also owe Lady Tivia an apology. She wanted you to lead without artifice–and I would have instructed you to build a false idol. In the end, all idols crack. I did, and my people watched the mythology I built crumble to pieces. We are not gods, but men. You know this better than most–and this is why you have my trust.”
Ari straightened from his bow, removing the tendrils of hair that blew across his face. “I shall return. Vanity calls. If I see Lady Tivia in my sojourns, I will instruct her to you. Look after him, Nia.” He gently brushed her arm on his way to the doors. “Next time, let us not meet somewhere that is so blisteringly cold. My aching joints would thank you.” And with renewed hope, Ari plunged indoors in search of Sommath—and the possibility of an imminent proposal.
If Nia and Safir were to return to the ballroom, they would have trouble locating Tivia. Even if they recruited Hadwin, he would also find it difficult to track the elusive star seer, remarking that she didn’t carry a scent, or even a presence, as if she didn’t exist within the parameters of this plane of existence. If they searched by visual cues, they would not succeed, but only if what they were looking for was a woman with blonde hair and a burn-scarred face.
What they did find was…disconcerting. A woman in a dress uncorseted so haphazardly, its red lace strings were gouged out like innards. Without upper bodice support, the straps sagged and slid off her exposed shoulders, threatening to pop her breasts into view. Hair unbound, it fell almost to her waist in viscous spills like black molasses. It spooled over one side of her face, an incomplete human, scrubbed in obliterating shadow. The other half, tilted to the light, had set her lips upon another woman, and the two sucked at each other like they wanted to snuff the other’s life-breath out for good. A man sat behind the two women. Far from a passive observer, he gripped a dagger and scored it across the exposed back of the black-haired woman, leaving jagged welts of blood in its wake. The wound looked careless, a little too violent. She exclaimed, a grunt of effort—or pain—but it muffled against her inamorata’s lips, a choked sound. She arched her back, and in the sudden shift, a curtain of her hair parted, revealing the telltale pointed ears of a Rigas.
In the man’s other hand, he held a lit candle. Admiring his blood-portrait, he moved in, and branded her exposed flesh with the tongue of flame. The woman whimpered and thrashed, her visible eye snapping open in terror. The man held a fistful of her hair in place to make sure she’d stay put. A perfume of cooking meat filled the air.
Safir and Nia would notice that a small queue formed beside the table that the trio had commandeered for their perverse sexual display. They would also hear a curious bystander ask a member of the queue why people were lining up, and the matter-of-fact answer he received. “That sick bitch over there says we can take turns doing whatever we want to her. And I mean,” his eyebrows raised with emphasis, “anything.”
The bystander, curiosity piqued, stepped into the queue. He squinted at the woman, catching a glimpse of the warped half of lip and the burn-ravaged flesh beneath the tangles of her faded ink hair. “Say, isn’t that—” He smartly shut his mouth when he saw Safir approach.
