Dark Lord's Wedding (50 page)

Hiresha walked with Tethiel over the fluorescent beach. A leap had carried them out of the crystal palace and through the moonlit fog. The wispy silver flowed softer than silk. Her toes landed in the cold firmness of sand. It massaged her bare feet. Algae between the grains shimmered like corundum jewels of green and blue. The lights sprinkled over the surf.

“I do hope,” Hiresha said, “not all the guests kill each other while we’re away.”

“We’re shamefully greedy to steal this time for ourselves and absolutely right to do so.”

“I’ll stay as long as Jerani is protecting what’s important, the fennec.”

“Of course.” The sand darkened around Tethiel’s boots then lit up purple behind them. “When we first met, my heart, I told you I’d started Feasting to save my family. Sometimes I believe that’s true. Sometimes, I doubt.”

Hiresha remembered the night. Rain had fallen around them like sapphires. Tethiel had warned her never to Feast. It wouldn’t help her. It wouldn’t cure her. It would only fill her with regret.

“I have splinters of memory,” he said, “shreds like past dreams. There might have been a girl. Nothing of her remains to me but a sense of shimmering youth. I think I wished to win her. To steal her away from my older brother.”

“Then you began Feasting?”

“It may be so. I know, I know. My infamy might never recover if people thought I began indulging in forbidden magics for the sake of love.”

He didn’t know what in his past had been real or false. Hiresha could say the same of her present. What a terror to always doubt oneself, to never have any certainty. She took his hands in hers and cradled them. Real or false, they were his. “Memories reflect our beliefs more than truths. Perhaps your history is changing with you, though I hate to think you’re believing increasingly in love.”

“Sentiment is the most pretentious thing you can wear. No, there’s a more comforting answer. My magic is corrupting my memories. And my present.”

Fog rolled overhead as surf churned nearby. Warmth breezed over Hiresha and enlivened the flames of her dress. “You mean, constant Feasting on human fear changes how you perceive the world? What a revelation.”

“True power requires an unhealthy and unreasonable belief in yourself. What you call my illusions, I see as truth. The world changes around my will, sometimes without my even knowing.”

He lifted fluorescing sand and threw it in a spray of fluttering fireflies. He had used his right hand, the one she had seen charred beyond function.

“Did the Talon burn off my arm with an explosion of dragon blood? Or did I make everyone believe so? I do not know my present or my past. Maybe I don’t truly enjoy your company, or you mine.”

A groaning bellow echoed through the mists from a distant monster at sea. Hiresha faced Tethiel, lacing her fingers with his. Waves crashed nearby with the same rhythm as the flow and ebb as a spinning intensity that coursed up her hands and into her arms.

“Maybe that’s all love ever is,” he said, “a spark of truth created between two minor illusionists.”

The phytoplankton twinkled over the beach and crashed in the waves as brightness. Hiresha waded into the star flow with him. She said, “I can accept love as a pleasing illusion.”

“It’s more than that. Sometimes it’s agony.”

Then perhaps she did love him from time to time. She wouldn’t waste long pondering semantics, not when she had many more intriguing questions. “You told me your magic obscures your past. Does this mean even you don’t know if you’re a man or a woman?”

“And everyone who might remember is dead.” Tethiel’s vest had taken on the pattern of whitewater, with serpent coils writhing in silver thread.

“You will know after purging yourself with the wild magic.”

“I am frightened to find out. A man may wade through a hundred lies only to drown in a puddle of truth.”

They had each of them sacrificed certainty for power. Hiresha knew she might dream. Tethiel might lie. No one in the world would understand except for each other. The tensions in Hiresha drained through her bare feet into the moist sand. She wriggled her toes, and their jewels twinkled. Only one doubt remained.

“I should’ve spoken of this before,” she said. “I understand how marriages are consummated, yet beyond that I likely won’t wish to spend too much time in the bedroom.”

His gazed at her but did not reply. Each quarter-second felt to her a small age of anxiety. He might call her inhuman in her needs, or lack thereof. Tethiel would be more correct to call her unreasonable, for her to hope he shared all her desires and disinclinations without having discussed them exhaustively before their wedding. At least he had refrained from agreeing too quickly that he had as little lust for her. As much as Hiresha was above petty insecurities, they might still smart.

Hiresha’s face was flushed and nipped by sea spray. “Poets confuse love and intercourse. I do not. One is affectation, the other sensual. I appreciate the latter, within reason.”

“You care more of trust and regard, deep as ocean depths.” His easy tone concealed whether or not he mocked her.

“We should reach an understanding now, in terms of matrimonial expectations.”

The sea breeze ruffled his hair, which was dark but had luster as bright as silver. It fluttered and became mist then sifted back into being. “You are too good to be true, my heart.”

“I should hope not.”

“You needn’t worry. I am potent in my spellcraft but less so in traditional ways.”

Impotency didn’t correlate strongly with a lack of desire. Though she hated to suggest it, she said, “You may not be aware, yet I have enchanted a peculiar sort of ring to aid older noblemen.”

“It is enough to possess your time and your high opinion. I savor your fears, few and precious.” He dared to wink at her then. “Sex is a childish pastime.”

Against all odds they were in near agreement. He had to be as amazed and nervous as she, wondering how so right a pairing could be probable.

Hiresha didn’t have to rise to her tiptoes to kiss him. When their lips touched, the world trembled, and a pinging sound crossed between Hiresha’s facets. In one, he lay dead in her arms, his heart stopped. Here, his heart thudded against her chest. His touch was a painful necessity, like a salve rubbed onto an open wound.

“If you’re a dream,” she said, “at least you’re most diverting.”

“That is my only goal.”

Flying back with him to the wedding palace, Hiresha collided with a thought. They stuck in the air. “Your magic is what makes you impotent?”

“Yes, and the opposite.”

They had lost their momentum. Hiresha had to sink down to a rooftop before they could jump skyward again. “Then, when you stop Feasting, your former desires may return.”

“Let us not dwell on it until after the ritual. We have greater troubles waiting for us inside.”

He was all too correct. She couldn’t help but imagine abandoning the last hours of the wedding. Leaving seemed infinitely easier than dealing with the guests. “Must we even marry? We’ve agreed to a moderation of intimacy and have no aspirations of children.”

“Marriage should always be a goal, never a means.”

“Excepting, I assume, how it’s critical to our plans.”

“There, you see,” he said. “It is important to us, and that’s enough.”

“I wonder if it is. Nothing as flimsy as love could ever suffice to bring a couple through marriage.”

“No rite of passage involving blood, terror, or deprivation is half so harrowing as a wedding,” he said. “You cannot expect anyone properly wed to be sane, loving, or fit to raise a family.”

“Then it is well we have a deeper bond,” she said. “More sensible than love.”

“More complex than lust,” he said.

“As a wedding is a parade of bothers, we must dress ourselves against them.”

Jerani and Celaise waited before the crystal doors. They had brought the coat. Jerani spun to face Hiresha and Tethiel as they dropped from the mist. Celaise kept composed; she must’ve smelled them coming.

“Wear armor,” Tethiel said, “and people will want to bash you. A fine enough coat makes a man invulnerable.”

“Especially when that coat contains an inner layer of armor,” Hiresha said.

Jerani held out the vest first. Hiresha had designed the outfit with the golden ratio, and math made everything handsome. The red handkerchief in the chest pocket was folded in progressively smaller triangles. The black fabric glossed from purple to green depending on one’s vantage. The cuffs mirrored the collar to give the impression that his hands were dangling heads.

“You will note, the fractal embroidery,” Hiresha said. “Looking closer will show you the same pattern as at a distance.”

Tethiel held out his arms. Jerani and Celaise slipped on the coat. He rolled his shoulders into it and sighed.

Jerani asked, “Will you kill the Talon? For attacking you.”

“Cannot you allow a man a moment to enjoy the best coat he’s ever worn?” Tethiel asked.

“You’re far better without that decrepit lapel flower,” Hiresha said. “As far as the Talon, we need him alive, for tonight.”

“Best to pretend the attack never happened. It’s my fault as much as his.”

“Absolutely not true.”

“My mistake, his malice.”

“I’ll execute him slowly,” Hiresha said. “An enchantment will fill his bowels with tumors.”

“You’re the rarest of delicacies.”

While Celaise dressed Hiresha in her gown of victory, the fennec bounded out of the double doors. He carried a terror bird feather as big as him. The fox dropped it at her feet. He chirped in proud ascending trills at his theft.

“You mustn’t slaughter all the terror birds, my brave fox, or they’ll go extinct, Hiresha said. She told Celaise to place the feather in her dressing room beside the statuette of the pink hippo.

“Shall we?” Tethiel beckoned her back into the dining hall. “May they see us together and despair.”

“I have my fox.”

“I have a new coat.”

“The world could array itself against us,” she said. “We would still conquer.”

Jerani made sure not to step on the lady’s long dress. It dragged behind her, wrapping around the column and strangling it. The cloth writhed when she walked across the ceiling. Something wasn’t right about the way the dress gleamed. No guest could look away. None dared look too close.

Celaise had sewn agony into the dress. The corpses hanging at the center of the room had been pulled down, and he had watched her rip out more than their bones. She had stitched everyone’s focus on the lady. The hall had hushed. The lady and lord went together between the posts with the jewels necklaces.

“Talon,” the lady said. Guests twitched and blinked at the force of her voice. “You assaulted my groom.”

Jerani wouldn’t want to be on the other side of her glare. With her and the lord together, nothing could stop them. Jerani just had to guard their backs. His spear tracked the winged warriors looping around the Talon.

The priest slipped on his way toward her and had to steady himself. His feathers hissed against each other. He pointed his dagger at the lord. “His heart has to be fed to—”

“You must be punished.” Her blue gem spike hurled from her hand. It shot past the Talon. A winged warrior swerved out of its way. The glittering rock swung back and broke the bird man’s neck.

His feathers burst apart and turned to red smoke. His wings shrank to a man’s arms. The flying warrior must’ve been a person to begin with. He had become one again after death. The gem had collapsed his skull.

The second winged warrior shrieked and began to fall. The lord lifted his arm. There was a snapping sound, a flash of fangs, and the warrior was gone. Only a puff of red smoke remained.

The lord flicked a feather from his glove.

The Talon wrung the hilt of his dagger. “Give me their hearts. The Winged Flame must have—”

“You’ll have nothing tonight without my leave.” The lady clenched her hand and yanked it back.

The warrior’s corpse jerked. Teeth flew from his open mouth. They fit together in a blossom pattern in the lady’s headdress. His bones were torn out and shattered. Their shards joined with countless others in a yellow lace of her dress. His fingernails lengthened her clattering veil.