Chapter 19 #2
It isn’t long at all before the screen jerks open and demanding footsteps slap the tiled floor. They stop very abruptly and Amaranth grins, lolling her head to pin her gaze on the stunned beauty of Sidoné Rask, the small king of Sharp-Shin.
Sidoné’s wide eyes blink once, and then she spins around. “Your Glory!” she snaps in desperate reprimand.
“Sidoné,” she moans again, drawing out the final sound as she sits up. For Sidoné’s sake, Amaranth pulls her robe slightly together at her belly. It covers one breast, half of the other, and the long opening from navel to ankle slides open and shut over her groin and thighs as she steps closer.
“Your Glory,” Sidoné says as if she’s in pain, face turned away.
“Welcome to my morning ministrations.”
Sidoné snaps a hand up to her own face, shielding her eyes from Amaranth.
It makes the Moon-Eater’s Mistress laugh low and long. “Ah, Sidoné, you know, everyone knows, what I do for the Moon-Eater every day. What I do for the empire.”
“Knowing and—and being confronted by it are different.” It sounds like the small king is speaking through clenched teeth. Delightful.
Amaranth does not move closer. But she makes her voice soft. “You want to see Lyric. You want details and an explanation for your coalition.”
“Yes.”
“It’s impressive that a mirané small king would be chosen to lead a non-mirané coalition,” Amaranth says lightly, as if she’s just now considering it.
“My grandmother was a Bow queen. My mother was born on the border. I am barely mirané.” This Sidoné says harshly to the floor.
Her shield hand has lowered, and her three-quarter silhouette is easy to read.
A pinch of brow, a tension in the corner of her mouth.
And Amaranth can almost see the pulse beating in her lovely throat.
“There is only mirané or non-mirané, and you were blessed by Aharté,” Amaranth says. “Don’t you want to be blessed by the Moon-Eater, too?”
Sidoné scoffs. Scoffs! At Amaranth. Her Glory is taken aback!
But the scorching look Sidoné shoots her makes up for it. “What a line, Your Glory,” Sidoné says. It would be cold, if it wasn’t so dripping with something Amaranth cannot quite parse. Longing? Humor? Disdain? She should be able to tell.
“It’s a line, but I mean it,” Amaranth says, lilting her voice up to tease.
“Tell me plainly what you mean, or I’ll take my leave and my chances with the Vertex Seal’s body-twin.”
Amaranth sighs, lowers her shoulders as if in defeat. “I am sad today, Sidoné. Sad, and lonely, and it does not allow me to do my duty for the Moon-Eater.”
Sidoné frowns. She crosses her arms, and even under the armor-scaled sleeves of her jacket, her muscles clench gorgeously.
Amaranth probably weighs twice Sidoné, but the small king could pin her to the altar and do whatever she wanted.
If only she would. “What does that have to do with me?” Sidoné demands.
“You know,” Amaranth says, sliding closer without picking her bare foot off the cool floor.
“That is sacrilege!” Sidoné cries. It echoes up to the broken dome.
Amaranth puts a shocked hand on her collar. “I would never ask you to take from me what belongs to the Moon-Eater,” she whispers. “Never, Sidoné. He is mine, and I am his. That is not what this is about.”
Sidoné swallows. She studies Amaranth, taking everything in, and Amaranth believes Sidoné sees her.
Truly sees her, as if they’d remained body-twin and Mistress, best friends and sisters, their entire lives.
The small king’s short, curled lashes flutter as she looks away.
Mirané skin does not flush, but there is a subtle shift in her posture that shows Amaranth the desire in Sidoné’s whole being.
“Tell me what you would do, what you would want me to do,” Amaranth says. “If you were the Moon-Eater. If you could have me.”
Sidoné’s knees hit the floor hard. It sounds like it hurts, and Amaranth feels it in her heart, of all places. To hide the feeling, she laughs lightly. “That is not the position I’d have chosen, but if you—”
“Shut up, Amaranth,” Sidoné whispers. “Get on the altar.”
Amaranth sprawls onto the stone altar so fast she almost laughs at her own desperation. She throws the robe apart, but Sidoné snaps, “I didn’t tell you to do that.”
A gasp clogs Amaranth’s throat as her hands freeze. She can see the scars on the broken dome overhead, her eyes so wide and unblinking they dry out too fast. Slowly, waiting to be reprimanded again, she draws the robe closed.
“What do you think of when you do this, on a good day?” Sidoné asks, very conversationally.
“The Moon-Eater, the feeling of him when we come together. It is not physical, except that I’m coming, but I feel it in every part of my body.
I think of that. The—the release that is not release, but a—a…
” Amaranth shakes her head; she genuinely does not know how to describe the moment of communion.
Iriset called it love. She called it architecture.
Amaranth smiles crookedly, lazy, at the memory.
“I would kiss you,” Sidoné says suddenly.
Amaranth looks at her. Sidoné is nearer, gaze caught on Amaranth’s mouth. “And?”
“That’s where I’d start. I don’t know what next, if I could kiss you… That’s as far as I’ve imagined.”
“Kiss me,” Amaranth insists.
Sidoné shakes her head in denial. Her hair is cropped short, little curls clinging to the lovely shape of her skull.
Gold cuffs her ears. She’s got a mask of delicate metal around her temples like a diadem.
Little curlicues fall around her cheeks, and a few spike up like waves.
It’s simple, hardly distracts from the features an apostate could steal.
But it’s there, it’s a silver counterpoint to her rich mirané skin.
Amaranth wants to lick the tips, let it prick her tongue.
This is definitely helping.
Amaranth presses her hands down her sides, grips her own hips, and then spreads her legs wide.
Behind her, Sidoné sucks in a slow breath.
Imagining her watching, eyes locked to Amaranth, makes Amaranth tingle in a good way.
Burn like desire, not grating discomfort.
“It could be your hands,” she says, pinching a nipple, smiling with her teeth.
“It could be,” she murmurs. “The Moon-Eater wouldn’t mind having both of us, Sidoné Rask. ”
“I’ll stay here, thanks,” Sidoné says, obviously trying for snappish, but it comes out breathy.
Feeling irresistible really does it for Amaranth. Her body finally, finally responds. Hot, wet even, and she digs her fingers into herself, reaching to press against the rim of her hole, the Moon-Eater’s real mouth, ha ha ha.
“That isn’t what I would do,” Sidoné says.
“Hah?” Amaranth stops, two fingers tugging at the edges of herself.
“I would—would tease you, probably, because I’m not sure what you like. I’d kiss you, and touch lightly. It would probably feel like a tease.”
Amaranth hears what Sidoné doesn’t know how to say: She withdraws her fingers and skims against her clitoris instead.
She plays there, tapping again, again, teasing herself like she’s being toyed with by someone who doesn’t understand what the little knot is for.
It’s not her style, but it works, because Sidoné gave it to her.
As vulnerable as Amaranth is, should be, right now, Sidoné gave this to her.
“Sidoné,” she murmurs, then moans.
“Ah, no, Amaranth,” Sidoné pants, shoving away from the altar—who knew she’d gotten so close. “I can’t. This isn’t for me.”
Then she’s leaving, and Amaranth doesn’t stop driving herself closer to communion. “Wait outside,” she has the presence of mind to call before sinking into finally, finally, finally the Moon-Eater’s churning, tightening presence.
When the binding knot snaps back into place, when the unraveled Moon-Eater expands and contracts again, locking the Holy Design back where it belongs, Amaranth sighs in satisfaction.
A little while later, though not nearly as long as Amaranth would prefer, she’s got not only her godgrass robe properly tight around her, but an over-robe and a layer of wrap pants snugly tied to her hips.
Her hair is a mess and she needs her mask paint redone.
But that will all be part of preparing for Diaa of Moonshadow’s memorial.
She strides out to find Anis mé Ario, her body-twin, standing with Sidoné Rask, both of them leaned together. Their whispered conversation halts so fast they must have been talking about Amaranth. She snorts.
They look so guilty. “I don’t care,” Amaranth says. “I have too much to do, and you two couldn’t possibly out-scheme me. Anis is too easy to break,” she tells Sidoné, then to make up for it, to Anis she says, “And Sidoné wouldn’t even touch me with permission.”
Anis, used to her Moon-Eater’s Mistress’s ways, drifts over to take Amaranth’s hand. “We can still make everything on time if we decline the rest of the meetings and I paint you while you talk to Garnet and the Vertex Seal.”
Amaranth nods, though Sidoné frowns. “I want my audience,” the small king demands.
“You’ll get it. Come with—”
A commotion just outside the Moon-Eater’s Temple has both Anis and Sidoné tense, but Amaranth shoves them aside and marches out. Too much has threatened her and her worldview this summer. “What?” she snaps even as she winces away from the cutting sunlight.
Two Seal guards and one Moon-Eater priest are blocking someone.
The fourth person is a thin, conniving, but patient mirané prince named Hehet méra Davith.
He’s the head of the opposition faction of mirané princes.
And he’s never bothered to confront Amaranth about anything, much preferring to work through secondary or even tertiary sources, or if made to speak directly to power, he goes to Garnet or Beremé.
That he is here, when so much has gone so wrong, gives Amaranth a sick feeling. She doesn’t have time.
But Hehet catches her eye and smiles as if there’s no care in the world. He’s forty-something, carrying his age handsomely. There is a strange eagerness to him that she’s never seen before: Normally Hehet hides himself, plays neutral better than anyone.
With a flick of a delicately boned wrist, he holds out a very old-looking scroll. Slowly his smile turns catlike and dangerous. “Your Glory. I know what’s happened to the Vertex Seal.”