Chapter 8
Eight
A good brownie never mourns the dead.
It would make funeral orgies really awkward if everyone was crying.
- Arienna
I try to stand from the bed to go after Richard, but my knees buckle as soon as my feet hit the ground. Marrabel stares at me, her golden eyes no longer laughing like they normally do when it’s just us three: me, her, and –
My breath catches on a little giggle, but it feels hollow, fractured, wrong. “Where’s Saragese?”
“She’s at the market, Your Majesty.”
I lurch back to my feet; this time, I stay standing. “We have to go help her. There was a fire. What if it’s spread?” I laugh louder. “And so many people were screaming. They need healing.” I head towards the ensuite to grab the healing wand, but Jace moves in front of me.
“Sit back down, Arienna,” he says, herding me towards the bed.
“I can’t! They need help.”
“You being there will make it worse.”
“No. No, no.” I shake my head as I walk backwards. “I might not be the best with a healing wand, but I know how to use a healing rock.” My laughter hurts my throat.
“But you’ll distract Richard, and he’s most likely their target.”
I crumble onto the bed. My body might be still now, but my heart feels like it’s racing around the room. “Well, then, I can… I’ll start the funeral arrangements. Do you have a list of clowns? And ventriloquists?”
I laugh, thinking about the bodies I saw on the branch.
Some of them were missing limbs. “We could have puzzle rounds.” I nod.
“Throw all the pieces into a box, and see how long it takes people to dig through and find their matches.” My eyes scrunch up as I look at Jace.
“That’ll be fun, right? Do fairies still like carnivals? ”
He doesn’t say anything, so I carry on, “I know some of them were in a lot of pieces, and you might be worried we can’t play with them, but you only need their heads for the face-in-the-hole boards, you know?
I can make some really cool boards where they’re getting fucked by a yondu; that way, their injuries don’t look too out of place.
Or if we just find their legs, then we can have them sticking out of the board like they’re bending over.
Then we can have someone back there to service the glory hole.
Or if just a hand, then, then –” I’m laughing too hard to finish my thoughts. Tears are streaming down my face.
But they’re happy tears.
Because a good brownie is never sad.
A good brownie never mourns the dead.
So I press a hand to my chest, and I laugh loud and hard. “That’ll be funny, right?”
I think about the funeral we had for my dad and six of his brothers and sisters.
That was such a joyous occasion. I didn’t shed a single tear.
Not when the ogre pulled them out of her vagina one by one, covered in cum and blood.
Not when her troll partner scraped Uncle Puddy off his dick, then dropped him as a splat on the ground.
I laughed loud and hard when cousin Madi created a pantomime of their deaths, having them march inside a cut-out vagina and then get bludgeoned to death by a ram worked by six men.
I sat on dad’s knee as a ventriloquist made him laugh and crack jokes just like he used to. “How many brownies does it take to make an ogre’s pussy tight enough for a troll? Seven!”
It was all so happy and celebratory. I want to bring that here. That laughter and good memories and none of this pain.
“Saragese…” I start. “Saragese…”
Marrabel turns sharply away from me, her fists clenched at her sides. As she storms into the sitting area, Jace slides the two doors across the archway of the bedroom. He turns to me, his face emotionlessly empty. Then sadness fills his features, and he steps towards me, opening his arms.
I lurch up and stumble into them with zero hesitation. My bubbles of laughter shake the both of us as his arms wrap tight around me. I press my face against his chest.
“Why does death hurt here?” I rasp. “It’s not supposed to hurt.”
He doesn’t say anything, but I already know the answer. It’s the only logical conclusion.
“Fairies give off pain pheromones when they die, don’t they?” I rub my cheek against his chest, smearing my tears. “But then why aren’t you affected? How are you not…”
He squeezes me tighter. “I’ve lost a lot of people close to me,” he says slowly. “The pain is merely familiar, not gone.”
The sliding doors of the room are pulled open.
“But I’ve lost a lot of people too,” I say. “So why is it not the same?”
“Because the connections are real here.”
Jerking my head up, I pull away from Jace so I can look around him. Fabia, my best friend in all the Seven Planes, is standing in the doorway, staring at me, her face the softest I’ve ever seen it.
“I don’t understand. They’re real in Brownston too.”
She glances at Jace as he turns around. With a quick nod, he moves past her. The door clicks shut behind him. Sighing heavily, Fabia steps forwards. She grabs my hand and leads me back to the bed. We sit down side by side on the edge. She slings an arm around me, and I fall against her side.
“Why is this any different?” I ask with a giggle. “Why is everything here so different?”
Her breath leaves her in a noisy exhale.
She squeezes my arm, then rubs it. Silence pushes between us, making itself annoyingly at home.
It makes me think of my cousin Madi; once, she told a travelling Razian merchant to make himself at home when he stopped by for a cup of tea.
So he kicked her out, claiming he liked his house nice and quiet.
I wish this silence was a good type of quiet. But it’s not. It’s heavy and uncertain and cold. Shaking my legs, I shift against Fabia, mooching off her warmth.
“Because Brownston is a cult,” she finally says, “and Raza is not. They’re not just following a rulebook all the time that tells them what to think and how to act.
They are their own individual persons, not a horde mind where one person can so easily be replaced by another.
Richard is Richard. Jace is Jace, you know? ”
I frown. She’s mentioned our kingdom being a cult many times before.
The first time was when we were teenagers, but that was far from the last. I’ve always nodded along in complete agreement because a good brownie doesn’t argue, but this time, I really want to understand.
She’s adjusted so much better to life in Raza.
I want that too – to be happy here despite all the violence and pain.
To not just be in love with its king but with the entire kingdom.
“But there’s no one else like you either,” I say softly, “and you’re not a Razian.”
“No, I am not,” she says, squeezing my arm again. “But I never bought into the cult mentality – all the rules, I mean.”
That’s true. She broke them left and right. She was asked to go to prison all the time, but she never did.
“And you’ve always struggled to stick to the rules too, Arienna, especially when you’re drunk.
You feel things you aren’t ‘supposed to’, real things, like me.
It’s why we’re such good friends. Everyone else is so lost in the cult, but you and I?
” She hugs me tight, talking fast now, as if she’s been waiting forever to have this conversation.
Whereas, I am slow and hesitant, so full of uncertainty.
“We know there’s more to life than just being happy or horny. It’s why you save all the monsters you find – you’re sad that they’re hurt or alone.”
I frown. “But a good brownie always helps someone in need.”
“No,” Fabia says sharply. “A ‘good brownie’ helps out of devotion to the cult rules. You help because you genuinely care about them. Remember when you brought back that praying mantis?”
I smile at the memory of the petal-shaped beauty. “She was lovely.”
“She was vicious as fuck. She almost bit your head off.”
“We were just practicing her mating dances. She loved me.”
“Ugh, no. She loved the taste of you.”
“So does Richard.”
“Ugh. Ew.” She shoves me away, and I laugh. It’s quieter but not as broken. The world never feels as bad when Fabia is by my side.
Pulling me back against her, she sighs. “And you miss them, don’t you? All the monsters you raised and released?”
“I didn’t release them,” I mutter. “You made me get rid of them.” I can’t see her face, but I know she’s rolling her eyes.
“The point is that you miss them. Because you’re you. But your mum and sister and everyone in Brownston, they don’t miss anything, do they? Even if someone goes missing in the night or dies in front of them, they never mourn their absence.”
A frown pulls at my lips, but looking back on everything, I know she’s right. The rules don’t come as naturally to me as they do to everyone else. As much as I try to be a good brownie, it always takes so much effort.
I never grew comfortable with the family orgies, always finding a reason not to attend.
I never stopped getting hurt when my exes moved on.
I secretly judged the people who were into necrophilia – something no brownie should ever do.
And I spent numerous nights tossing and turning, in so much pain as I thought about all the unloved animals out there, slumming it in the wild.
My chest tightening, I drop my gaze. I force a smile, then let it drop again. “I guess I get what you’re saying,” I say uncertainly. “Thinking about mum being dead – it’s not sad, but if you died…”
I swallow hard as I think about seeing her body cut down at the market. A fractured giggle escapes me. Wrapping my arms around her waist, I hug her tight. “I love you, Fabia.”
“I love you too, Ari.”
A knock on the door has us both looking up. A moment later, it opens, and Jace comes in with a tray of steaming, hot food. Despite my stomach growling at the sight of it, I stay where I am, my arms wrapped around my friend.
Placing the tray down on one of the bedside tables, Jace shares a look with her. Then he leaves, shutting the door behind him.