Chapter 12 #2
Stars blinked through her eyes. She pursed her mouth and sucked in short, quick breaths, as her mother had taught her. A finger twitched. She repressed the urge because she didn’t have the heart for Taven’s fussing, but she knew what was coming next if she couldn’t get a handle on her nerves.
“Each of them knew this could be their fate when they conspired with the murderer.”
Elloven’s eyes closed. Silent and still, she counted each of her ten fingers, her ten toes. Memorized the texture of her seat, how the air smelled and tasted. “What happens to the winner?”
Estelar grinned. “Wait and see.”
But she couldn’t bear to see any more. It was barbaric and inhumane, and even Taven seemed to be caught up in the spell. Nothing that had happened in Rivenholde had left her feeling foreign and out of place until then, and she felt a scream building, but she wasn’t quick enough to keep it inside.
Everything around her came to a crashing halt. The crowd, the marionettes, everyone was caught in suspended animation. Nothing and no one moved. Even the air had stilled. All except for her.
She couldn’t stay there. She couldn’t watch. She couldn’t control what would happen if she did.
When Elloven leaped from her seat, the spell broke.
She pushed past Estelar and down the short row to the entrance of the box.
Taven’s worries followed, but she lifted a hand and screamed no, a word she could neither hear nor feel in the melee but knew had happened because of how much lighter she was.
She’d needed to get that out since the moment she’d looked into the dead eyes of one of the men she’d frozen.
“Leave her,” Estelar commanded in the distance as she raced down the steps and out into the fairway.
Elloven didn’t stop running until she found a spot where she could be alone, behind the amphitheater, along a row of outbuildings that seemed to be for workers.
“Your first marionette show is always shocking, though you might be the only one who has stopped time because of it.”
Elloven startled at the sudden intrusion of the woman from supper who had declined to socialize or even introduce herself. Velanthe. Sister of Estelar and Laxius, which made her Elloven’s aunt. She held a pipe that billowed with a sweet-smelling smoke.
She rubbed her arms. “How can anyone watch such a thing? It’s horrifying.”
“Stopping time? Oh, I agree. You can’t know the consequence of such a choice.”
“You know that’s not what I meant!” Elloven exclaimed.
“Incarcerate criminals for their crimes, of course, but... this?” She thrust her arms toward the massive structure, where boos and cheers rose in crescendo, muted but still painfully clear.
Another man had died probably. “This is barbaric. Not even allowing them to fight of their own accord but dangling them and...”
“To others, a scaffold and noose might be considered more barbaric,” Velanthe replied.
Her cheeks puckered when she drew in smoke.
She was a lovely woman, though the deep lines around her face implied an age far beyond what she likely was.
Elloven could see Estelar in her, Acheron too.
It made her that more curious about the elusive Laxius.
“A man should settle his debts before the end.”
“We don’t treat people like animals, no matter what they’ve done. The noose is quick.”
“Too quick for the soul to repent, which is an even darker punishment than what you just witnessed.”
“What? Repent what?” Elloven demanded. “Is death not the ultimate repentance?”
“Their crimes in this life. We must all endure a review in our final hours, and the review determines our next destination. Another plane. Another body. Another light.” Smoke curled with her deep laugh.
The scent was noxious and slightly intoxicating.
“Or it did, before Infinita Mori became a tomb itself.”
Elloven was slowly losing her sense of rightness about the place, and she couldn’t let it happen. She needed to be in Rivenholde. She knew she did. In her bones. Her blood. If she started questioning everything, she’d never stop.
“You were brave coming here,” Velanthe said. It almost sounded like a threat.
“Brave coming home to my people? That speaks more of your judgment than mine.” Esmeray’s dire warnings nagged her, but Elloven had to find her own way, which meant finding another place to hide, where she could be truly alone, and think.
But first, she asked her aunt the same question she intended to ask everyone until she got a satisfying answer.
“Where is my father? Where is Laxius? Don’t tell me he’s resting either. ”
Velanthe appeared to weigh her answer. “You want to know about your father? About Laxius?” She checked the sky with a blown-out chuckle. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“To the Cry of the Ancestors, dear. His story should be starting soon.”
Jesstin followed Ryquin under a row of lighted arches wound in gold ribbon. The lights resembled tight clusters of berries, enveloped by briars. It was refreshing to see something other than the ghosts of the dead lighting up the place.
Even more invigorating was to be free of Lexsea, who had left them back in the garden.
“The Opal of Desire,” Ryquin said, walking backward to face Jesstin as he talked. “Where, for a fee, a man can have anything he desires.”
“I doubt that,” Jesstin said. They exited the walkway into an oval-shaped courtyard.
A ring of decorated stalls filled the space, but their interiors were obscured by curtains of many colors.
“Enchantments, Illusions, Conjurations, Desires...” He laughed as he read the signs. “We have swindlers where I’m from too.”
“Their magic is very real. Only rarely are they asked for refunds, which happens when someone wishes for something they only thought they wanted.”
The paradox of wishes. That was what Emrys had said when his affair had been exposed.
He’d wanted the other woman so badly, but the splinter it had caused in his marriage and family made him wish he could undo it all.
In the end, Fiona had stayed, but only because the children needed their father.
“Like wishing for their dead cat to come back to life, only for it to return as a demon who butchers the entire family in their sleep?”
Ryquin tilted his head back and forth. “Our wishes aren’t tricks.
” He pointed to the other side of the courtyard, where patrons huddled around a stall called Desires.
“Last season we had a man who wished for a tryst with a past love. He enjoyed himself immensely, but then his consort found out and murdered him. He got exactly what he asked for, but not the ending he had in mind.”
“Sounds like a trick to me.” Something dark occurred to him. “They forced this other woman to bed him?”
“The other woman was an illusion, but to the man, she was very real.”
“So, trickery.”
“Can someone be tricked when they know the truth?”
“Why would the consort murder him for fucking an illusion?”
“Should it matter, when he was seeking companionship outside his own bedroom?”
Jesstin wasn’t sure how to answer. He’d surrounded himself with the fluidity of shifting morality, of the idea that every man and woman lived by their own code, and as long as they adhered to those values, they could live well.
He’d never been committed to anyone, never been in love.
Love and commitment had no place in the Azure, or the Row either.
Those experiences were left at the village gates, and he didn’t know how the choices made in Mythgarde bled into his patrons’ real lives. He didn’t want to know.
“How would you feel if Aelloven was engaged in a tryst with someone else?” Ryquin asked.
“Elloven can do whatever she wants,” Jesstin said quickly. “This has been a breathtakingly pointless detour, but I need to get back to my friends.”
Ryquin gestured toward a stall labeled Conjurations. “I have a gift for you. I’ve already paid.”
Jesstin snorted. “No, thank you.”
Ryquin looked stricken. “Will you not humor a friend?”
“We’re not friends, mate.”
“I thought spending time together was how we remedy that.”
Jesstin crossed his arms and nodded at the gold curtains leading into the Conjurations stall. “You want me to guess? I won’t. I don’t care.”
“It’s a surprise. If I told you, you would think me a liar. If I show you, you’ll understand.”
“Surprises are just another kind of game.”
Ryquin pursed his mouth, thinking. “What do you most want?”
“You already know what I want, the bond undone without Elloven having to bond to the leering twat, so unless she’s waiting behind this curtain and your sordid sister is standing by to fix this mess, you and I have nothing more to discuss. ‘Friend.’”
“So you do love her.” Ryquin smiled.
“I’d never say those words to a woman,” Jesstin retorted. “Elloven saved my life. Twice. It’s the least I can do to protect her from another terrible man.”
Ryquin nodded at him, then the stall. “Lexsea will help you. But first you must help us. First you must see.”
“I can see just fine from here.”
Ryquin motioned for him to enter. “This is part of how you help us, Jesstin. It begins here. If you don’t understand what we need, you can’t deliver on it.”
With an unenthusiastic sigh, Jesstin shoved through the dense curtains.
The interior was much larger than the exterior would indicate.
It was as large as a palace hall, with colorful veils and pillows scattered across an endless, richly carpeted floor.
Dozens of people were dispersed along the pillows, enjoying drinks and conversation.
It reminded him of a brothel on the Row, the Never Choose, where for a steep fee, one could rent a lavish room for the evening and as many courtesans as their gold could afford.