Chapter 18 #2
Marrow hovers before a plague doctor mask like it’s a mirror. He doesn’t touch it. His voice is almost fond. “This century trimmed tragedy into a carnival mask and called it a costume.”
“Then we’ll make it a coronation,” I say briskly, and shove the Dark King’s set into his hands—black-on-black brocade, short coat with bone-white piping down the seams like a promise, a high-but-open collar that will frame his throat for biting later when no one’s watching.
“You’re not a doctor. You’re the funeral the kingdom deserves.
Buttons like coffin nails. Cravats that say don’t scream, it’s art. ”
He looks at the clothes and then to me. He bows his head exactly one inch. “As my queen commands.”
Heat floods my legs so suddenly, I have to move or I’ll embarrass us all by melting through the carpet. “Good. Wonderful. Skully, you’re our King of Death.”
He blinks. “I’m sorry?”
“Death King,” I reiterate, and start plucking pieces as if I’ve been dreaming about them for years.
“Black velvet tailcoat with silver studs, shirt that’s technically a shirt but functions more like a legal disclaimer, leather pants with zippers that don’t lead to anywhere, and a crown that looks like it lost a knife fight.
We’ll skeleton you with paint later, but for now you’re the prince that stages a coup by accident because kissing you in public counts as sedition. ”
His mouth curves slowly, like I stroked a cat the right way. “I could be convinced to commit treason.”
“Conviction is built in,” I say sunnily. “We’ll provide the evidence.”
Bonehead watches us with naked yearning, like he’s at the glass of a bakery case and all the pastries are me.
I wave him over to the Bloody Warlord selection and immediately veto forty percent for being too brown.
“You’re my Berserker King. Fur mantle, leather harness under the coat for when I get bored and yank it off you in a hallway, boots that look like you kicked a castle and the castle apologized.
I need straps. I need buckles. I need you to look like you’re about to raid a neighboring country because they looked at me wrong. ”
Bonehead grins so hard he loses a syllable. “Raid.”
“Correct.” I lift a belt with a useless dagger glued to it and throw it back. “Not this. Find one that could actually cut feelings.”
We separate to conquer. I weave between racks with a shopping basket on my arm and a mission shivering under my skin, tossing in accessories without checking price tags: rings shaped like talons, a crown that’s essentially a bruise with spikes, fingerless leather gloves, and a fur collar for Bonehead that’s going to make grandmothers clutch pearls until they pass out.
Every handful I throw in makes the basket heavier, makes my thoughts lighter.
Math that checks out.
A girl with a nametag that says Sage hovers too close while I compare two different sets of fake jeweled pins.
She smiles at Bonehead when he stomps by carrying an armful of belts like he’s rescuing them from a burning building.
It’s an open, friendly smile; she can’t help it. He’s sunshine made of violence.
Mine, I think, and the thought has claws. The friendly smile grows fangs in my head.
“Can I help you find anything?” she asks, glancing at me like she’s bracing for an answer no one trained her for.
“You can help by not tripping,” I say in a tone I learned from Sunday school teachers and drill sergeants in movies. “He’s very big and you’re very…squishable.”
Bonehead pauses. Looks between us. “Squish?”
“Not today,” I tell him, and then give the girl a smile that is technically human but all the edges are wrong. “Thanks, though.”
She retreats, blinking. I should feel bad. I do not. I feel like a dragon polishing its pile.
Skully appears at my elbow like summoning works both ways. He’s holding the tailcoat and nothing else. The sleeves dangle like they want to pet me. “Approve me, little terror.”
“Bring me the pants too, big terror.”
He smirks like he’s got the joke and me under both hands. “Yes, ma’am.”
Marrow doesn’t ask; he presents. He’s chosen the shorter coat, the sleeker collar, the black waistcoat with dark bones woven into the brocade. It’s almost subtle, the way the pattern dissolves into shadow if you step back. It is so obscenely him, I make a noise that is not from any known language.
“Fitting rooms,” I croak, then clear my throat and reclaim a tone that doesn’t whimper. “All of you. Go. I will judge.”
“As you wish.” He bows. Actually bows. Then disappears into the dressing room.
I whirl around, high on my own chaos, and nearly slam into a mother with two toddlers. She’s staring at me like I’m a grenade with tits. Her little gremlins are pawing at a clown mask.
“What?” I hiss before I can stop myself. “Never seen a girl herd her skeletons before?”
She clutches her kids like I threatened to barbecue them. Maybe I did. Maybe I would. Who knows anymore. I flash a smile, all teeth. She scuttles off.
Inside, my chest is a jackhammer.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Distract. Distract. Distract.
The dressing room corridor is purgatory with price tags.
Curtains that have seen too much, hooks that pretend to hold secrets, light that makes mortals hate themselves.
Fortunately, my men are not mortals and my vanity is feral.
I plant myself at the end of the corridor on a cracked vinyl chair like I’m a panel of one on a reality show where people cry about hems, and knock my sunglasses down with a flick of my finger.
“Don’t come out until I say,” I decree. “I need to be ready.”
“For what?” Bonehead calls, already wrestling with something that wants to be ripped.
“For the way I’m going to look at you,” I say. I don’t mean for it to come out like a threat, but it does.
There’s a pause. Skully laughs, low and truly delighted.
Marrow says nothing, which is worse. I hear the snick of buttons, the rasp of fabric sliding over skin, the quiet obscenity of men dressing with intent.
The Emporium Muzak is playing a cover of a cover of a song that once tried to be dangerous but is now safe enough for dentist offices; my heart syncopates over it in something rude.
“Okay, one at a time, go. Bonehead first, then Skully and Marrow.”
Bonehead emerges, full-body blast: boots like thunder, the fur overcoat hanging from one arm because he hasn’t figured out how to make it accept his biceps.
The harness crosses his chest and hugs everything I want to chew and the crown sits low on his brow like he fought it for the right.
The pants are a miracle of modern engineering.
I say a little prayer of thanks to whatever pervert designed them.
He stands there, five percent smug and ninety-five percent dog waiting for a stick. “King?”
“King,” I say automatically, voice gone husk-soft. “Warlord. Husband of Fire. Turn around.”
He does, obedient, slow like he knows the spin is a show. When he faces me again, he’s beaming. “Pretty for October?”
“Pretty for murder,” I say, standing so I can adjust the crown on his head with ceremony. He bends and the movement is so practiced—this offering—that I have to swallow the air like it’s liquor. “Do not look anyone in the eye unless it’s me.”
“Okay,” he says cheerfully. “Only October eyes.”
“Good boy,” I kiss him on the mouth briskly, leaving his heated gaze to follow me as I continue down the line.
Skully slides out, and the world changes temperature.
Not colder. Just narrower, like a lens focusing until heat burns a hole.
The tailcoat rides his shoulders like it knows the rest of him better than I do; the shirt underneath is wicked—wide open black silk, buttons that do nothing to protect anyone.
A glimpse of ribs like a promise he wants me to break.
The leather pants hug him like bad decisions.
He put the crown on crooked so it doesn’t look like a crown at all, it looks like trouble got bored and decided to accessorize. .
He doesn’t pose. He lounges against the doorframe, one ankle crossing the other, mouth a razor cut that would bleed me giggling. The sunglasses are gone. His eyes flash for a heartbeat, reminding me of freight car shadows, hunger, and wet paint. He doesn’t let me pretend I didn’t see it.
“Well?” he asks, like he already knows.
I look him up and down once, slow enough to be rude, then take a step that puts my hands inside his coat on his hips. “Death King,” I pronounce. “First of his name. Kneel, so I can fix your crown.”
He doesn’t kneel. He leans forward until our foreheads almost touch. “Fix me, then.”
I smack the crown straight with two fingers and step back because if I don’t, I’ll lick his teeth in a store that sells child-sized bumblebee costumes, and I’m trying to be a good influence.
Marrow does not make an entrance; he lets the corridor notice him in stages.
First the shape of the coat, slim and long, that invites people to believe he’s taller than his already towering height.
Then the gleam of bone-white embroidery that is not bones, not really, but glances there when the light shifts.
Then the throat, of course, because I am a simple creature with a singular religion: his shirt unbuttoned just to the place that makes prayer hard, the cravat like a leash I want to hold and hand back, before stealing again.
His hair is an afterthought that looks composed by moonlight.
He stops where he knows I can’t not touch him and does not bow, because he knows if he does I’ll fall through the floor. “My queen.”
“King of the Dark,” I say. It comes out more reverent than I allow myself in public. I touch the lapel; I touch the cravat; I touch the space just above his sternum where the shirt opens to skin. “You look like music that kills people.”
“A waltz,” he suggests, soft.
“Something that climbs,” I counter, softer.