Nineteen Pye
NINETEEN
Pye
Pye hasn’t slept in days.
It wouldn’t matter if they did; all they would dream about is Avirin. The lush expanse of her skin, the brown of her eyes swelling to black, the pleading sounds she makes when she needs —
Pye’s eyes slip shut. It’s dangerous to replay these moments, tasting a dream that they can never have. They have no footing in the life that Avirin desires. They could not give her what she wants. Their lessons with her are over.
The reminder twists like a knife. It shouldn’t; Pye did what he set out to do.
He provided her the education she sought, and now, she’ll apply it as she always intended.
She will use her skills to find a suitable husband.
Someone who can provide for her. Someone with a “respectable” future.
Someone with only the most mundane reputation.
“Are you still moping?” Cascade calls from the staircase, her arm slung about Selbie’s waist. Even she’s grown tired of Pye haunting her parties, a wayward ghost staring toward Ellison House. He can hardly make out anything in the dark, but knowing Avirin is there, in the distance, is enough.
Selbie whispers to Cascade. They share a look before Cascade gestures toward her chambers, and Selbie disappears inside. Cascade does not follow. Instead, she settles against the wall opposite Pye and folds her arms. “‘You are both the prisoner and the jailer.’ Isn’t that what you told me once?”
The only one keeping you suffering is you.
Pye shakes their head. That doesn’t apply here.
This plight is not so simple, requiring more than his usual indifference to social rules.
If it were Pye’s future on the line, he knows what he would do.
He wouldn’t wait a second longer. He would ride to Avirin’s house.
He would knock on her bedroom window. He would ask for her hand.
He would kiss her until she tired of him, and then, he would spend every hour waiting for her to call upon him again.
But this isn’t about his prospects. He has never had many of those, and he has certainly soiled any that remained.
He wants only the best for Avirin. She has an entire life ahead of her.
She is clever, quick, and captivating. She can set her mind to anything she desires.
She deserves prestige and merit and culture, access to any and everything, and a husband who can give that to her.
Who can match her curious mind. Who can love her half as deeply as Pye does.
Those words have become almost a comfort in the last few, lonely days. Pye does love her. He adores her. That is why he holds such hope for her future. That is why he cannot squander it.
Pye rolls up his sleeves. “There is nothing I could do for her.”
“Horse shit,” Cascade laughs, “you’re cutting shams! You’ve been dangling after her for weeks!”
“She told me about the life she wants. This isn’t it. I have to respect that.”
Cascade’s expression turns hard and flinty when she leans closer. “This is no calf-love, Riften. This is serious. You’re going to ‘respect’ your way into a life of misery. For both of you.”
Then she leaves him alone.
It’s for the best. His yearning is at odds with the atmosphere of this place, and where he once enjoyed losing himself in frivolity, it now leaves him incredibly aware of Avirin’s absence.
He holes up in his room on the far side of the manor and pens multiple letters to Avirin, but he resists the urge to send any of them.
He isn’t sure how many days pass. It’s all one long, devastating blur until he receives an invitation at the door.
THE LORD AND LADY GILDING
REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF
Lord Riften’s
COMPANY AT A DANCE.
He knows little of the Gildings. Undoubtedly, this is nothing more than a cordial solicitation; he’s only invited to these events to provide gossip and stir up intrigue.
He should not attend. Now that he and Avirin — Miss Ellison — have finished their lessons, they should keep their distance…
but Pye wants to be near her. Just once more.
Just a glance across the room before Pye swears off these damned social affairs and retreats back into his own world for good.
Whispers follow him when he arrives at the Gildings’, but he ignores them and sidles along the dance floor. He’s drawn to Avirin immediately. It’s like fate has tied a string between them, because when she spins, their eyes meet across the crowded ballroom.
The thread pulls taut.
Dark hair sits high atop her head, framing the colors flying in her cheeks. Her pale lilac dress was surely not chosen by her, but it does nothing to detract from her beauty. She is even more breathtaking than the last time Pye saw her.
At the sight of him, her expression shifts into a mixture of elation and sadness.
It makes Pye’s chest ache, and they are so caught up in her that they nearly don’t recognize the man she’s dancing with.
Those unremarkable spectacles may obscure much of his face, but they cannot disguise the sinister nature Pye knows lies beneath.
His blood freezes and cracks like ice across a lake.
The song ends. Lord Reid’s grip on Avirin never loosens, and when she finally pries herself away, his sweaty handprint lingers on her bodice.
Beside Pye, a woman whispers, “Do you think they’ll dance another set?”
“That’s the on-dits,” another woman — Miss Sargent — replies. “I hear they’ve already drawn up the marriage papers. Apparently, Lord Reid has set his sights on her.” Miss Sargent scrutinizes Avirin over her glass of orgeat. “Though I can’t imagine why. She’s quite beneath his touch.”
A cold sweat breaks out on Pye’s neck. Marriage? Of course this is what Avirin was preparing for, but so soon? And with him, of all people?
No matter Avirin’s desperation, Reid is a fate worse than anything she could imagine. She needs to know. Pye has to warn her.
While the two women giggle, Pye nudges past. The drink sloshes, and both women gasp when it lands on their dresses.
Pye hardly pauses to turn over his shoulder.
“Do not speak of Miss Ellison unless you find words more befitting of her.” Then he slips into the crowd and tries to peer over the sea of bobbing heads.
Reid has taken Avirin to a corner of the party. She keeps her eyes cast out across the room, twisting a handkerchief between her fingers. Another song begins, and Reid guides Avirin’s arm into his.
Pye’s heart hammers. He pushes through the crowd, ignoring the growing sounds of discontent until he appears before the two of them. He tries to steady his breathing. “Miss Ellison.”
He bows to Avirin, but it’s Reid who steps toward him. “Mr. Riften. What a surprise.” His smile is tight. “I’d started to suspect you considered my company beneath even the demimonde.”
“Far from it,” Pye clips. “I don’t consider your company.” He keeps his eyes on Avirin. “I hoped to speak with you, Miss Ellison.”
Avirin opens her mouth, but Reid pulls her tight against his side. “Apologies. She has a prior engagement.”
The word is a punctuation mark. Reid pulls Avirin away. Pye tucks his wings behind him to keep pace, following when Reid leads them into the center of the room.
The music starts. The dance begins again.
Pye does not step aside. He knows Reid hopes to cow him with the other couples brushing past and casting uncertain glances, but Pye stands firm.
Reid knocks into him with a snarl. “I will draw your cork, you base-born —”
Another couple swirls into Reid. He lurches forward, whirling toward them with furious intent despite the dancers’ effusive apologies.
Pye doesn’t waste the opportunity. He slips his hand into Avirin’s, weaving through the crowd and pushing past the growing whispers. They burst through the door to the gardens, never slowing until they reach the walking path and the cover of shrubbery.
Avirin’s cheeks are flush from the brisk pace. “Have you taken leave of your senses?”
“Do you intend to marry him?”
Avirin’s mouth closes, like having to speak the answer is too much for her.
Pye shakes their head. “He is dangerous. Heinous. A villain of the highest order. My words are not borne of envy, I swear to you, but there are reasons why the courtesans do not welcome him at our parties. Why he is barred from our events.”
The thought of Avirin encountering this evil — being subjected to it — is more than Pye can bear. His hands flex to reach for hers, to make her understand, but the resignation in her eyes stops him in his tracks.
“He knows what I am.” Her words are weary, like she has spent days searching for any others.
“I have been brought to point non plus. If I do not marry him, the rumor will spread. I will lose any opportunities I have left. I will be whispered about in the streets. Shunned by every business. Shuttered away by my mother.”
Pye wants to tell her that he understands, but their struggles are not quite the same.
In the eyes of this world, Pye can never be anything more than an eccentric man with hedonistic appetites.
Like the performers at the opera can provide entertainment, but never be elevated.
Like Cascade can run a house, but never own it.
Like Avirin can salvage her future, but only if she gives every piece of herself away to get it.
Pye’s chest tightens. What can he do? They cannot change the idle precepts set out for them, no matter how they ache to. No matter how they try. Their heart swells with a sadness they can hardly breathe past, desperate for some flicker of hope for her. “Do you love him?”
“Of course not!” Avirin recoils like she’s been burnt, but the truth of the matter settles heavily onto her shoulders. “But what choice do I have?”
She looks at them like she’s waiting for something. Praying for something. The words tingle behind Pye’s lips, on their tongue, against their cheeks. They have to ask her. Even if they cannot provide her the life she desires, they must ask her, so that she knows exactly what her choices are.
He exhales softly. “Avirin…”
Her lip quivers. She looks at him with an animal fear, like she’s not certain what he will say, like it could be worse than the fate already set out before her. Then she surges forward to press her mouth to his.
Kissing Avirin is every bit as devastating as Pye imagined. It captivates him suddenly, then slowly, immersing him in every detail. Her clutching hands that he soothes with his own. The tentative curl of her tongue seeking his. The needy sound she makes when they press closer.
He groans, and her hand tangles in his hair.
She kisses him like it is the first and last time she will have the chance.
He wants to calm her, to assuage her doubts, but he can’t pry himself away.
When he pulls back for a labored breath, all he sees is the pleading tilt of her mouth, and he can do nothing but kiss her again.
She pours into him, an overflowing vessel.
He returns it with a deluge of blue smoke, and she drinks him down, hungry for everything he gives her.
He tugs roughly at her gloves, so desperate to feel her skin that he casts the fabric aside and guides her bare hands between the top buttons of his shirt.
He’s so lost in her that he doesn’t sense movement behind him. He doesn’t hear the gasps. He doesn’t see the two women in stained dresses — but Avirin does.
Her breath stops short. She tries to step back, but the bushes already surround her. Pye blocks her body with his, but the women have seen enough, barely covering their mouths to hide their revulsion.
The black in Avirin’s eyes does not fade, and something else casts a shadow across her face. Pye lifts their gaze to the two horns sprouting from Avirin’s forehead, thick and dark and bending back along her temples.
Her hands follow his eyes. When she brushes the keratin, a panicked sound escapes her. She jerks her fingers away, but in her horror, she reaches for the horns again.
Pye grabs Avirin’s hands. It’s a surprising change, but not harmful — at least, not unheard of.
Pye has seen other succubi with these features, but Avirin’s face grows deathly pale.
There is no way to disguise this. No preserving her reputation.
No proposal from Reid. No question of what she has become, all because Pye could not pull himself away from a kiss.
Damn it all.
“It’s all right.” His voice is soft. “You’re all right. Look at me.”
His words can’t reach her. In the midst of her panic, her breath comes in short bursts, eyes darting over his shoulder. The women behind them are already tearing back toward the party, and Avirin’s world is slipping from her grasp.
Pye cups her face to bring her eyes to his. “It will be all right. We’ll sort this out. I will help you, I swear it.”
A sob hitches in her throat. “You can’t —”
“I will marry you!”
It echoes through the garden, ragged with his breathing. Pye’s words hang in the air all wrong. He never wanted to say them like this. A proposal is supposed to be joyous and wonderful, but instead, it sounds as desperate as Avirin’s predicament.
It doesn’t matter. Avirin hardly hears him, gathering her skirts and running down the path like she wishes she could leave this entire evening behind her.