5. Boundaries and Bargains #7
Surian flinched. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.
Allora's smile vanished.
She lifted her gaze to the woman, flat and dark and unblinking.
"Zhara ve'kallin," she said, the old Awyan insult spat more than spoken, meaning roughly "fuck off" in the crudest sense. Entirely unfit for polite company, by any proper Awyan's standard.
But Allora was neither Awyan nor polite company.
The gasp rippled across the room like a slap.
Four pairs of perfectly plucked eyebrows shot sky-high. A sugared date slipped from someone's fingers, bouncing off a velvet cushion and landing on the marble with a pathetic little splat.
The copper-haired woman's face went white, then red, then white again. "How dare?—"
"How dare I?" Allora cut her off, taking a step forward. "I'm sorry, did I stutter? Or do I need to repeat it slower for you?"
"You filthy?—"
"Careful." Allora's voice dropped quickly to a cold and dangerous cadence.
"Malec's within earshot, remember? And I'm pretty sure he'd be very interested to hear about how his sister's being treated by the Capitol's finest." She let the word drip with sarcasm.
"Or should I go get him now? Save us all some time? "
The woman's mouth snapped shut.
One of the others, a willowy blonde with ice-blue eyes, leaned forward from her perch on a velvet divan. "My, my. The little savage has teeth." Her smile was razor-thin. "How charming. Tell me, does the Commander keep you collared at night, or are you allowed to roam free?"
Allora turned to her, unhurried. “Tell me, is this how you usually behave, or did you decide to be reckless today?” She tipped her head, almost thoughtful. “I’m here for gowns. The kind worn at royal gatherings.”
A small pause.
Her eyes swept her once. “And you?”
A beat.
“Nowhere near us.”
The blonde's smile froze. "You have no idea who you're speaking to," the third woman hissed, a dark-haired beauty with severe cheekbones. "We could destroy you with a word."
"Go ahead." Allora spread her arms wide. "Destroy me. I'll wait, honestly I have nothing better to do. I really miss chaos." She let the stillness sit. Then decided to take a confident step forward, and the four pampered Awyans actually retreated.
"Here's what's going to happen," Allora said pleasantly.
"You're going to sit your pampered asses back down on those expensive cushions.
You're going to smile and keep your venomous mouths shut.
And if I hear one more word about Surian, one more snide comment, one more condescending look...
" She smiled, and it was all teeth. "I'll make sure Malec hears about it.
In detail. And we'll see how respectable you all are when the Silver Fox decides you're not worth the air you breathe. "
The heiresses didn't know what to make of Allora. Surian had always been fair game. She'd grown up around them, and she never wielded her brother's name or connection to claim power. An easy target for their cruelty, a safe outlet for their venom.
A Canariae should have been even easier. They had no standing, no rights. The worst consequence for damaging another noble's property was financial reparations. Simple. Transactional.
But this was uncharted territory.
Everyone had heard the stories about Malec and his Canariae.
Whether they were rumors or established fact hardly mattered anymore, because they circulated with the weight of law: how he guarded her with obsessive fervor, how he'd stood up to the King himself over a perceived threat to her safety.
How males who looked at her wrong simply disappeared.
So this situation required calculation. Caution.
They would have to tread very, very carefully.
Allora raised an innocent brow. "Did I say that wrong?" She tilted her head, voice syrup-sweet. "Or was that the right dialect?"
The copper-haired noblewoman's jaw opened. Closed. She took a step back, no physical threat needed, just the sheer gall of Allora's presence shoving her there. A storm in a borrowed gown, neither pet nor toy.
Surian's shoulders sagged. Then, impossibly, she let out a breathless, choked laugh that sounded like someone finally unfastened the corset she'd been wearing for ten years.
The noblewoman rallied, drawing herself up to her full haughty height.
"You," she hissed, "are?—"
Allora stood unbothered. She walked over to a dish full of candies and popped a candied nut into her mouth. "I'm exactly what you're afraid of," she said calmly, voice low and lethal.
The auburn-haired Karen, Lady Kirelle, still standing where she'd issued her oh-so-polite insult, looked as if someone had slapped her across her smug mouth with a silk glove stuffed full of manure. She blinked once. Twice. Like her brain had crashed and was now stuck rebooting mid-glitch.
Allora didn't spare her another glance.
She reached for Surian's hand, seized it with the quiet finality of a queen claiming a kingdom, and strode forward without ceremony to the circle of opulent, embroidery-drenched chairs clustered around the refreshment table.
Each seat was identical, sumptuous and gilded and stuffed within an inch of its life, but Allora's dark eyes locked onto one in particular: Lady Kirelle's chair.
Naturally, it had the most elaborately puffed cushion.
Without hesitation, Allora dropped into it, her skirts billowing around her as she planted herself like a conqueror staking her flag. She sat back, one leg sliding slightly forward in a posture so unladylike it nearly scandalized the room by itself.
Lady Kirelle's mouth worked uselessly as if she were searching for the words to reclaim her territory. Seated and comfortable, Allora lazily reached for a bowl of candied nuts, lifted one between her fingers, and finally deigned to look up at the gawking circle of women.
"What?" she asked, voice cool as glacial water.
Silence.
Even the birds nesting in the tailor shop's silverleaf tree seemed to pause mid-chirp, their beaks parting as if they, too, were scandalized. Surian, now seated rigidly beside Allora, covered her face with one delicate hand and groaned through her fingers. "Oh stars above..."
Then she risked a peek through the gap between her fingers. Her expression was a battlefield, horror warring with admiration. She hissed, "You are absolutely feral."
Allora smirked, unbothered, her mouth still half-full of candied nuts. "I know." She crunched deliberately, a single crumb escaping to drift onto her skirt. She paused, plucked it off her dress, and held it up with all the solemnity of a priest presenting an offering.
"Oh, I'm gonna save this for later," she announced brightly. "Like a squirrel. I'm saving my nuts for winter."
Surian made a strangled sound behind her fingers. Whatever chance there had been to smooth things over was gone. There was no salvaging it now, not with Allora wading straight into the chaos without a trace of restraint.
Lady Kirelle finally managed to reboot her delicate sensibilities. Shoulders stiff as marble columns, she approached with the slow, deliberate menace of someone who'd never once been spoken to without a title.
Allora didn't rise or even adjust her slouch. She reclined deeper into Kirelle's stolen chair, picking a stray nut fragment out of her teeth with her pinky like the most insolent queen the Capitol had ever seen.
"You need to behave yourself," Kirelle hissed, her voice pitched to carry just enough, still clinging to politeness like it was her last shield. "Malec or no Malec, I will not tolerate this kind of?—"
Allora lifted one hand, flicking a crumb off her nail with an air of supreme disinterest. "Or what?" she interrupted coolly. "What exactly are you going to do about it?"
She didn't even look up. Just raised a single unimpressed brow.
Lady Kirelle's eye twitched. "Do you know who I am?" Her voice climbed a panicked octave. "My father is High Strategist Alwen of the Second House of Thil, and my brother?—"
"Oh my god," Allora groaned, rolling her eyes so hard her head tipped back against the chair. "Yadda yadda yadda." She waved a dismissive hand. "Do any of you ever introduce yourselves without reciting your entire inbred family tree?"
Kirelle flushed scarlet.
Allora leaned forward at last, her smirk widening. "You want to settle this? Let's do it the traditional way. Like real women. Or, I don't know, females."
The room went still. The seamstresses watching from the corners froze mid-step.
Kirelle blinked, stunned. "You're joking."
Allora shrugged one elegant shoulder. "Am I?"
Kirelle's spine snapped straight like a rod driven into wet earth. "I refuse."
"Of course you do," Allora sighed, flicking her wrist as if shooing away an annoying insect. "Cowards usually do."
The insult sliced clean. Kirelle's nostrils flared.
But when she couldn't claw her dignity back from Allora directly, she pivoted like all bullies did when cornered, targeting the weaker prey.
Her gaze slid to Surian, her smile sharpening.
"Well," she purred, "I suppose you've always had a soft spot for Canariae.
Remember when you were little? Always climbing trees, wrestling the stable boys?
Such a tomboy. People used to say you were probably Canariae in another life. "
Surian flinched.
In the hush that followed, so thick you could taste it, Allora's dark eyes went flat.The silence stretched just long enough for everyone to realize the next moment would be both terrible and absolutely glorious.
Then SPLAT. A fat, sticky grape-like fruit struck Lady Kirelle dead between the eyes, bursting on impact in a vivid explosion of violet pulp. Sweet juice spattered across her nose, her cheeks, and most catastrophically, splashed straight into her wide, blinking eyes.
The room gasped in horrified unison.
Kirelle reeled back, sputtering, both hands flying to her face as she blinked furiously. "You—" she choked out, her voice strangled, the juice already starting to sting.