Chapter 19
THE MOON-EATER’S REAL MOUTH
In the future that may or may not come to pass depending on how messy Iriset and Lyric get, Amaranth mé Esmail Her Glory is having a very bad day.
She’s spent years, absolute years, perfecting her ability to get herself off—quickly, efficiently, slowly, languorously, teasing and tormenting and gratifying her body—for the sake of the Moon-Eater, the mirané princes, the Vertex Seal, the whole entire empire really.
But this morning nothing is coming. Ha ha ha.
Uncle Lirdal, the Mistress before her, would say it’s stress.
Amaranth is certain that can’t be it, because today is no more stressful than many, many of the days in the past half year, since she met that cursed apostate in prison.
Today won’t be the first time she’s attending a memorial for someone she loved.
It won’t be the first time Amaranth says things she doesn’t mean, or the first time she uses her epic falling force to draw people to her, to make them listen, make them agree, give her more power, let her decide.
It won’t even be the first time she tries to pass someone wearing a craftmask off as a member of her family!
Amaranth has been in far more stressful situations. So why does every touch feel like too much? Why does her skin practically burn? The soft robe is satin-woven godgrass fibers, one of the gentlest materials in the world, yet it grates against her nipples, her hips, the nape of her neck.
If miran got sick, she’d think she has a fever.
Standing before the altar, robe hanging loose on her shoulders, she tilts her face up to the cracked dome of the Moon-Eater’s Temple.
The midnight-blue tiles that fell have not been replaced, and the lighter plaster infrastructure of the dome itself is like a scar.
Amaranth breathes carefully. Her heavy hair is bunched in loops and curls at her crown, dragging her head back. Her neck aches.
Amaranth closes her eyes, willing the ache to travel down her spine as a warm flush, an illusory touch from her god.
She parts her lips to breathe, focused on the sensation of air on her tongue, the roof of her mouth, sliding down her throat, and she imagines the shivering, drowning sensation of the Moon-Eater’s pleasure resounding back to her, back to her, back to her after she builds up her orgasm.
Amaranth presses her hand to her sternum. She knows herself and she’s good at loving herself. Her body knows how to do this. So do her heart and mind.
Lowering her hand, she lets her fingers ripple individually over the rolls of her belly, the valley of her navel, circles her middle finger there, like it’s another mouth—isn’t it?
“Isn’t it?” she whispers, and her smallest finger brushes the line of soft black curls at her pelvis, and Amaranth’s knees quake.
She slams her thighs together with a curse. It feels wrong. Off. She’s off.
With a growl, Amaranth plops down on the hard edge of the altar. Stone cuts into the bottom curves of her ass. Amaranth pushes harder, rolls her hips into the pressure. She leans over, shifting so the line of cold stone slices over her hole, which isn’t even wet. This is bullshit!
Amaranth whirls and grabs one of the teeth off the altar, then flings it with all her might toward the screens blocking her off from the temple foyer. It cracks into a wooden seam. Leaves a dent.
She shoves the rest of the teeth onto the floor in a loud clatter and flops onto her back. Though she knows this place is very, very clean, she feels grimy. Like dust continually falls from the broken ceiling.
The little sigh she makes is not quite amused at herself.
She wishes she found any of this funny. Amaranth prides herself on finding things funny when she probably shouldn’t.
Her jaw clenches. Her fists clench. She clenches her thighs together.
Several times in the past she’s held one of those larger molar teeth in between her legs, just above her knees so she can squeeze her legs together with all her might but still have space for her own hands to dig into herself.
Those are usually good orgasms, though she’s pretty vicious afterward. So maybe good isn’t the right word.
“Your Glory?” her body-twin inquires worriedly from behind the damaged screen.
Right—throwing the tooth was definitely abnormal behavior.
Amaranth groans in frustration. What she needs is someone to pin her down and just use her body, just make it do what it needs to do.
What she needs is for somebody else to fuck the Moon-Eater today.
What she needs is somebody else. “Anis,” she says in her most lazy voice.
“Everything is fine. The Moon-Eater and I are taking our time.”
Too bad Anis likes dick and Amaranth doesn’t particularly, or her body-twin could help.
“It’s good to steal time for yourself, Ama,” Anis says with that particular tone that’s equal parts soothing and sardonic.
It brings a real smile to Amaranth’s lips.
She closes her eyes on the hard altar and relaxes her muscles one at a time, starting with her shoulders, and moving down down down toward her feet.
The air is warm in the Moon-Eater’s Temple, even as they move further into autumn.
Her robe drapes the altar protectively, and Amaranth lounges there, letting her mind wander.
No focus, just her mind loose to think its thoughts, as her hands settle on her belly, sliding up and down.
Her right hand cups the weight of her left breast; her left hand curls over the lowest round of her abdomen.
There is so much she should already be doing for the day.
Bathing, dressing for the memorial, then a few last-minute meetings arranged by her secretary while her hair is done and her face is painted—probably one of which will be with the persistent, sexy small king of Sharp-Shin precinct who’s leading the coalition of non-mirané demanding to see the Vertex Seal.
And that’s all before Amaranth is to lead a processional of the mirané princes to the royal tombs at the northern edge of the crater. To bury her mother.
Without Lyric. Without his fucking wife.
They already faked a memorial for Singix and sent a fake body back to the Ceres Remnants.
And by they, Amaranth means herself and her handmaidens and Beremé, who Amaranth is not happy to be indebted to.
Because Garnet is no help; Garnet is being a huge stubborn ass and barely agreed to hide the fact that Lyric is gone and use the mask of Lyric’s face Iriset left behind to keep everyone in line.
Amaranth is sure the only reason Garnet even agreed is because if Lyric is declared missing, then the power will all fall into Amaranth’s and Beremé’s hands, and he’s clinging to what he calls the final shred of Amaranth’s cheap loyalty because she wants Lyric to remain the Vertex Seal, even if it’s a fake Lyric.
The princes need an explanation, and the non-mirané of the city demand it. Amaranth thinks of Sharp-Shin again—
—and sits up in one graceful motion. “Anis!”
“Your Glory?” Anis throws aside the screen immediately, but halts just as fast to see her Mistress leaning precariously off the altar, naked but for the robe clinging to her shoulders, an intense hot look in her big mirané-brown eyes.
“The small king of Sharp-Shin is scheduled today, right? This morning? Fioren said she bullied him into putting her on my schedule since she can’t get through Garnet to Lyric?” Amaranth grins, knowing she looks maniacal. “Bring her here. Now. I’ll see her.”
Anis pauses, chin tucked in a disapproving pout.
“Anis! I need this. Send her in the moment you find her.”
With a sigh of her own, Anis goes.
Amaranth leans across the altar, arching her back and thinking of the small king of Sharp-Shin.
Ah, Silence, Amaranth had such a crush when they were children.
Sidoné had been long and gangly then, narrow-eyed and suspicious, but with this barking laugh Amaranth yearned to invoke.
She’d grown up so well. Warm mirané-brown coloring, but with the broad features of the Bow, her lips are so full, her eyes narrow and sharp, just like the precinct she rules now.
That long neck! The way she moves, trained since birth to defend, to elude danger.
That’s one of the reasons she was Amaranth’s first body-twin, only torn away when they were thirteen, nearly a quad of years ago, because her family was assassinated.
The laws had been changed just months before, to allow second-generation children to inherit if they were born mirané.
That had been Amaranth’s first taste of hating progress, hating justice, because it took something away from her that she wanted.
She loves Anis, of course. Anis who had come to her then also at thirteen, awkward and uncertain, but with just enough confidence to be who she wanted to be, in a new place, with new power, and the ambition to win the future Moon-Eater’s Mistress to her side and become untouchable.
Amaranth has sometimes wondered what would be different with Sidoné still at her side, but it was impossible to think anyone but Anis would have been a better ally in apostasy when Singix Es Sun dropped dead and Anis hissed to Amaranth, Iriset can do it.
Amaranth moans on purpose. A low, breathy sound, making it echo in her skull.
She opens her mouth and breathes the sound of longing up to the broken dome.
Her elbows bow out like butterfly wings as her fingers tangle in her own hair, and she lets one knee bend and fall aside, opening her up to the air.
She sighs like a song. In and out, not the measured patterns her brother likes, not the purposeful design of her sister-in-vows. Just Amaranth’s own.