Dark Lord's Wedding (26 page)

Jerani had brought their llamas from the city pens. The dear beasts bounded around the trees with their harness bells ringing. Jerani ran with them. Whenever he stopped, one baby llama with patches of orange and white ducked between his legs, hopping around and going under again.

“Glad she’s not any taller,” Jerani said.

The rocky tightness in Celaise’s stomach eased. She could fill her lungs all the way down to her belly button.

Jerani took her hand. “Run with us.”

“I can’t.” But she could, now. Even if she wasn’t fast like him, she did. He flowed. He bounded. She stumbled and staggered, but the baby llamas did that too. They still cried out in happiness.

Jerani kicked off a tree trunk and spun around his spear to land on his feet. He gazed at Celaise with that adorable, scarred face of his. “You’re smiling,” he said.

So she was. Her days were better, as much as the lady had been wrong to ambush her and rebreak every bone in Celaise’s body. Now Celaise had to catch the lady’s scent. Celaise couldn’t miss it again.

“Is it almost noon?” She sniffed.

Enticing smells wafted from the city, too many to pick out. It reeked like a warehouse filled with pastries melting on a hot day. Celaise needed to find the lady’s apprehension. It would be away from all the other delicious smells, by itself, coming fast.

There! The tangy sweetness of honey pineapples. Celaise turned her nose to the left and right. It itched. She jogged forward. Had to be closer, but not too close that the lady would spot them spying.

The pineapple scent deepened, and now the fruit was slathered over frogs freshly cooked with peppers. That smelled like fear. The lady was only frightened the moment before falling asleep, and the scent had grown stronger day by day. Or maybe Celaise had become more hungry. She wiped a bead of saliva from the corner of her lips.

The aroma faded after the first waft. Celaise ducked her head down and ran toward its source. No, not that way. Back, beneath the forest’s wooden creepers. She slipped, muddied her knee. Jerani helped her up. He was always there for her. She had to hop over the spreading roots of each tree. They were like giant trunk legs of monsters with warped woody claws.

Then she faced a true terror. The crystal dragon sprawled between the trees. Its tail was coiled halfway up one. Its claws stretched all the way around a trunk. Its spiky chin lay on a rotting log. The dragon was sleeping.

Or Celaise hoped for too much. Its orb eyes were slitted partway open. Was its mistress also nearby?

Celaise crept around it. The scent trail had gone cold. It was like sniffing the ashes of a cook fire. Where had the lady gone?

Ringing bells warned Celaise that the llamas had caught up. Jerani gripped the harness of the lead one, but the baby llamas trotted past, closer to the sleeping dragon.

“Celaise, help!” Jerani dashed after one baby.

She scrambled toward the other, but the runt was too far to stop. The baby gazed at all its reflections across the plated breadth of the dragon’s belly. The little llama
baa-ed
then clattered onto up the dragon’s leg. It licked at the jutting crystal elbow. The scaled monster didn’t stir or wake. Its chest didn’t rise or fall.

“It’s not alive right now.” Celaise pressed a hand against her breast. Her heart thumped through her ribs so she could feel it in her palm.

“They’re both asleep, then? The lady and the dragon.”

“Must be.” Celaise sniffed. Something pricked her nose, a whiff of peppered carrots. She turned around, but it wasn’t coming from Jerani, the llamas, or the city. It was sadness, too faint an aroma to be from any person nearby. Was she smelling the dragon?

The monster’s eyes had stayed half closed even though two more llamas had scaled its back. They were such good climbers. Celaise crept closer to the mound of crystal, snuffling.

The dragon reared up with a clattering boom.

Llamas screamed as they tumbled off.

Claws spread from a scaled leg and rushed toward Celaise. They crashed through vines. They raked the air.

Celaise reached for her True Dress, but she couldn’t put it on fast enough. Not that it would help.

“Celaise!” Jerani hauled her away.

The claws slammed down and tore up the yellow clay. They left grooves as they dragged back. The dragon sat on its haunches, propped on its forelegs. Its eyes glittered down at Celaise and Jerani. They didn’t move. The dragon sat still as a statue.

Celaise held her breath until she couldn’t anymore. She gasped. Then she laughed.

“Close one,” Jerani said.

“I think she’s in there,” Celaise said. “In the dragon.”

“Asleep?”

“She doesn’t smell awake. Hey, couldn’t you see all the way through the dragon before?”

“Maybe so,” Jerani said. “Could just be dark here.”

“I can see. The crystal is painted on the inside, or plated. The lady’s hidden herself in there.”

“The dragon swallowed her?” The muscles of Jerani’s arms tensed around Celaise.

“She’s still alive. It’s not like she’s dreaming, though. She’s further than that, and sad.”

“Huh.” Jerani slid his hands over Celaise’s belly. “Glad we found her.”

She peered up at the dragon. Didn’t look like it would budge again, unless they went closer. It was only a fanged gate, to keep people away from the sleeping lady.

Celaise shivered as the crush of doom lifted. The dragon hadn’t killed her, and the lord father wouldn’t devour her. She throbbed all over, and giggles bubbled inside her chest. She nestled against Jerani. They fit together better now. She wasn’t jagged and twisted. It didn’t hurt to be held. One bur remained though, one bone shard digging in deep, too deep to heal.

He would abandon her. Then she would have only the sweet smoothness of her magic flowing through her veins. She should tell Jerani to go now. She should push him away to save herself even more pain.

Celaise kissed him.

His lips pressed against hers. His tongue was a welcome warmth in her mouth, sliding wet against hers, tickling, playing with her. Their heat surged together. Celaise could feel so much life in him.

The black wine in her backflowed in a cold riptide. She shouldn’t be kissing Jerani, not here in the jungle dirt, not among the llamas, not so near the dragon. Celaise should push herself away.

She clung to him all the closer.

He tore at her clothes. Jerani was attacking her. No, loving her. His kisses seared her skin. She pulled off his warrior robe. He rolled her atop it. They had to be near. Never apart, not ever.

Everything seemed to drop away as she soared with him. All faded but them. The world was only him her love.

Celaise wrapped her legs around Jerani and pulled him atop. He touched her with his manhood. They had waited so long for this. Celaise didn’t need her True Dress to be happy. She had Jerani. She pulled him into her.

It hurt. And it got worse. A scraping, bleeding mangling.

This should be right. It wasn’t at all. This had been their perfect moment, and it had gone wrong.

Jerani was trying to hurt her. She had to defend herself. Celaise needed to Feast. He didn’t smell good right now, but he would be delicious once he feared for his life.

She would roast out his insides. Ribbons of embers snaked into her fingers in burning streamers. Her True Dress would engulf him, and she would Feast on his charred meat. No man could hurt her and live. She clutched the first fiery threads of her True Dress, ready to slip it on in the jungle’s near darkness.

But he was Jerani. He wouldn’t mean to harm her. Celaise knew that. She knew. Celaise wouldn’t wound him. She flung away her fire.

Black wine roiled and frothed within her. It was a wash of emptiness, and only Jerani’s death would fill her and stop the pain. Her power wanted something she didn’t. She tamped its slurping coldness down, but it left her numb and dead everywhere.

Jerani eased off her. He lounged next to Celaise, tucked an arm under her head. His smile was as wide as it could be around his face scars. Past him, a few of the llamas stared. They had watched the whole thing. Celaise’s stomach quivered and shriveled.

“What’s wrong?” He rubbed a thumb over her palm.

She pulled her hand away. “We’re never doing that again.”

His smile collapsed. He leaned away from her and pinched his eyes shut. “Guess I should be grateful we had this much time together.”

“Because you’re leaving?”

“I don’t want to.”

Yes, he did. How could anyone stay with her? Jerani would run, and when he did she would kill him. No, she mustn’t do that. She would have to let this Feast go. Black wine bubbled in her chest with fermented foulness.

“I wish we’d never met,” Celaise said. She would’ve been happier alone. And more scared.

And miserable.

“
I will be wed during the lunar eclipse, ninety-seven nights from now. I hesitate to indulge colloquialisms, yet you may have heard of the astrological event referred to as a blood moon.”

“
Delicious! Every wedding could use celestial extravaganza. But tell me, how did you prophesize the date? Did you read the future in spider webs, or from the entrails of a rabid—”

“
Mathematics is more powerful than prophecy.”

Jerani spun around in the market. Maybe he had seen wrong. It might not have been
him.
Past two women arguing over the price of a rhinoceros beetle, beyond a stall overflowing with flower slippers made of ice-blue petals, next to a curtain of hanging candlesticks, stood the tattooed man. The one with blossoms tattooed across his chest.

“They’re here,” Jerani said to Celaise. “The blossomed man and the sword woman. From the banyan grove, the ones hunting the lady.”

The scales of Celaise’s viper-skin dress scraped against each other with a harsh edginess. Now she could be angry at something besides Jerani. “I smell them but—ah, there they are. How did you spot them?”

She sounded surprised he was capable of anything. He flushed everywhere with an itching heat except for his cold hands. Jerani needed all his strength not to slump. He didn’t even have his spear to lean on. The stingers didn’t like men carrying weapons, but they had let the woman carry her swords. Their hilts stuck out from the side of her robes. Maybe that’s what Jerani had glimpsed.

He had felt something like jaguar whiskers running up his spine. Then he’d looked and seen the couple. Their skin wasn’t much paler than the crowd’s. Jerani wouldn’t have seen that, but the blossomed man wore the same jeweled gauntlets. His metal fingers picked up an onion from a cart. He said something to the woman, and she laughed.

The couple didn’t hold hands. They still walked through the night market with a closeness deeper than touch. Even when they drifted apart to different stalls, the man and woman had a connection. The woman didn’t glance back toward the man, worrying if he were still there. The man returned with a bottle balanced on two plated fingers. She smiled. They moved on, and no one tried to step between them. The couple had too strong a bond.

Tears burned deep in Jerani’s eyes, where no one could see them. What if he and Celaise were never so natural together? So at ease. So happy. She might’ve meant what she had told him today in the forest. What a blow after what a wonder.

“They spotted you.” Celaise hissed at him. She had stepped behind a merchant’s stall full of caged birds.

“Did they?” The couple hadn’t reacted. Jerani scrambled beside Celaise, even though getting close to her made breathing hard. Wasn’t just that she wore a dress half red, half blue, and all viper. His muscles weighed him down tonight. He wouldn’t be able to outrun the blossomed man if it came to a chase. He flinched when the merchant shouted.

“Parrots! Quetzals! You’ll love them as pets or savor their meat and feathers. Can’t go wrong!”

Jerani peeked between the birdcages. The man and woman were strolling nearer and nearer. Moths flitted around them. That made sense. They were almost glowing.

“They must’ve heard the lady was in this city.” Celaise clamped a hand on Jerani’s arm. Each red-blue finger ended in a single fang that almost pierced his skin. She pulled him past baskets of smelly fish.