by Elise Kova
Petra could stand for nearly anyone in House Xin, but not Cvareh. He was her brother and the chosen Ryu. All eyes turned to him to defend the House in her name and carry the title of Oji should she be felled in some form of misfortune other than a sanctioned duel. He would have to defend himself, or he would never be accepted as the Ryu again.
“How many could you kill?”
Cvareh considered it a long moment. The first time he’d really put training to application was on Loom, and that had been a failure overall. Though using any combat against Arianna was entirely unfair… Responsibility suddenly crushed him, the supports that held it over his head breaking the moment he awoke to the real truth of his standing.
“No more than three beads.” He put it in the perspective of the King’s Riders—a somewhat universal standard for the might of a warrior.
Silence was Petra’s way of screaming her displeasure. “You must work with Cain.”
“I will.”
“Daily.”
“I will.”
“Cvareh.” Her body was so tense he was surprised her muscles had yet to snap her bones from the strain.
“Petra.”
“You must not die on me. That is an order from the Oji to her Ryu.” The room was so silent he could hear her swallow. “We did not come this far together for you to fall to Rok scum. Go beneath the surface, find duels, gain practice killing.”
Unsanctioned duels were something the Oji should discourage at all costs. Yet here she was, doing the exact opposite. The ends would come before the ideals sacrificed to reach them. They were Xin.
“I will.”
A different sort of quiet passed between them. A comfortable separation of realities where Nova existed elsewhere and they were the only people in the world of Petra’s meditation tower. Cvareh played with Arianna’s name in his head, trying to figure out how best to broach the topic.
“Out with it.” Petra sensed his turmoil.
“Arianna and I… We went into Napole, and she wore the guise of a Xin.”
“Good. I could not handle dealing with the common populous knowing we harbored an odd Chimera.”
“I introduced her as an Anh.”
Petra didn’t move; she hardly seemed to breathe. “You are truly an idiot, brother.”
“I did not expect a Crimson Court.”
“No, and you wanted to make it known you had found a potential mate.” Petra’s tone was stretched between amusement, frustration, and exasperation. “She could have been nothing more than a slave, and yet you chose to give her a name of our House.”
Was that what it was? Cvareh wondered to himself. “I was merely trying to protect her.”
Petra broke the room’s stillness with unabashed laughter. “From what you tell me of our Chimera, you should be more worried about protecting yourself. I do not think the woman wants nor needs you to fight her battles.”
“You know her surprisingly well for someone who has spoken to her once.”
“Cain tells me things.”
It was Cvareh’s turn to tense. It was no secret that Cain delighted in his sister’s happiness. They weren’t a poor match, either. But Cvareh didn’t relish the notion of any man with Petra. Furthermore, the last one who had aspired ended with a few holes in unexpected places and a gouged out throat when he had ultimately displeased Cvareh’s sister. And Cvareh actually liked Cain.
“You’ve introduced her as your own. If she’s challenged, you’ll stand for her.” Duty pulled the command from Petra’s lips.
“She won’t be challenged,” he offered hopefully, not wanting to linger on the fact that Petra had just all but said that Ari’s life would ultimately be worth more than his. “Those who know she exists won’t care enough to interrupt the flow of the pit with all the duels we will be challenging in Rok. It would be against the spirit of the Court.”
Petra hummed in mild agreement, unconvinced. “Just make sure she stands out no more than she already will as the first by your side.”
Cvareh straightened away and Petra did the same. As comforting as it was to linger on one another, they both had work to do. Cvareh descended first, winding his way back to Arianna. His thoughts were gray and clouded, not unlike the Gods’ Line in the sun’s fading light.
He wandered back to the other woman who had given purpose to his days. Cvareh went straight to her room first, before even changing his clothes for proper evening attire.
He gave the door a soft knock, waiting for permission before entering. Arianna was positioned at her table by the Western facing window. He would’ve thought it would be too bright for anyone to sit in the sun like that, but there she was, day after day. For the first time, Cvareh wondered if she was even happy on Nova.
“Have you attended the Oji?”
“The Oji? You’re beginning to sound like a Dragon.” He closed the door behind him, crossing over to her desk.
She turned stiffly. He’d heard the sarcastic tone in the way she’d used Petra’s title. But Cvareh knew it would irk her more to play into it than make a fuss of it. The assessment seemed to hold true.
“What are you working on?”
“Hypotheticals,” she answered vaguely.
The schematics held a weird sort of beauty. Dark wound against light as ink on parchment. Seemingly chaotic conceptions became definite shapes punctuated with calculations that were a language all their own. And, if Arianna wasn’t going to decode their meaning for him, he was certainly not going to decipher it by himself. So Cvareh was left to quiet admiration, seeing the form before the function.
“You owe me an explanation,” she reminded him.
Cvareh caught her eyes, the demand in them apparent. “I do.” He sat back onto the bed and Arianna turned to face him. “The Crimson Court will be held here on Ruana in a fortnight. It is usually held on Lysip, home of House Rok and the current Dono. But Yveun has decided to have it here on Ruana.”
“This is significant.”
He could see Arianna trying to piece together the parts she’d been handed, but—likely to her annoyance—she had too many knowledge gaps still to truly comprehend the gravity of the situation. “It is. All named members of the hosting House must be in attendance. Usually, Rok is all too happy to have the advantage of their own turf and the inevitable outnumbering—”
“But this time they want to corner you.”
Cvareh held his tongue that it could be a literal “you,” as he was notorious for avoiding the Court. “Petra and I believe so, yes.”
“So what is the real concern? A noble court hardly sounds like cause for too much agony. Worried you won’t have the most fashionable garb there?” She snickered, but the smile slowly faded from her mouth at his solemn expression.
“The Court is not some place that we all gather and gossip; we have the tea parlors and wineries for that. The only way for people to advance in Dragon society is by killing the rank above them. To keep things orderly, these duels must usually be sanctioned by the Oji, except during the Court. Then, nearly all duels are heard and seen out… One exception being if the Dono himself decides to intervene.”
Arianna stared at him for a long, hard moment. She tapped her nails on the table in quick succession and glanced over her shoulder at the fading light outside. Her magic was as silent as her lips, her thoughts locked away in some place he couldn’t reach.
She turned back to him with the look of resolve he associated with overt danger. “You’re going to be challenged.”
“I have no doubt of it. It’s possible you will be too.”
“Me?” The idea shouldn’t have delighted the woman nearly as much as it did.
“I introduced you as a Xin’Anh today. It’s not impossible some woman who had been craving the idea of being my mate could challenge you in an attempt to earn my favor.”
As Ari
anna considered this, she folded her hands behind her head. Her grin only continued to expand. “Someone craving you is almost comical.”
Cvareh rolled his eyes, slightly stung from her words. Not overly so, but just a bit more than he’d want to admit. “I am something here on Nova.” He would never dismiss the title Petra had given to him, what it meant to his House.
“You are,” she agreed easily with a small spring to her feet. Arianna’s fingers were like wriggling worms attached to her palms. “And that’s why you deserve a real woman, should a woman be your desire.”
Arianna advanced on him and Cvareh leaned back, his palms spreading against the heavy duvet that covered her bed. She straddled his knees, looming over him. It was imposing and dominating and it made him want to wrestle her to the ground. It made him want to submit.
“How do you define a ‘real woman’, Fenthri?” His voice had shifted to something he was barely familiar with. He liked the molasses quality of it as it coated his throat and honeyed his tongue.
“One who doesn’t lurk in shadows waiting for opportune challenges because they know you would otherwise never support them at your side.” She spoke as though the fact should be obvious, but it was a somewhat foreign notion to Cvareh’s Dragon blood. Foreign, but not unwelcome.
Cvareh straightened some, closing a hand’s width of distance between them. Arianna was too smart for him to assume she wasn’t aware of what she was doing. But what was she doing? Cvareh didn’t know, but he wasn’t bound by her logical mind. He was a man who could savor beauty and relax in knowing something was because that was how it should be.
When she was near him, like this, everything was how it should be.
“So, when do we begin?”
“Begin?” He swallowed, the word having application to a seemingly infinite number of meanings.
“I may be challenged. You will be challenged.” Arianna held out her hands.
No, my brother’s hands, Cvareh reminded himself. The idea sobered him some. This entrancing woman who seemed to hold a universe of possibilities on her tongue—if she deigned to share them—was made of the pieces of his kin.
With far too much focus, claws jutted like magic from her fingers. Arianna’s mouth curved into a wild snarl, the somewhat sensual woman from before lost completely to a wild and equally thrilling side. Cvareh’s magic heightened as he was aware in a very new way that she had him trapped between her legs, every vital spot within a hand’s reach.
“I need to learn to use these.” Arianna turned over her hands in utter fascination. “Why don’t we help each other?”
“You want to spar with me?”
“I can always twist Cain’s arm into it,” she said, as lightly as if the proud Dragon had already agreed to the matter.
Cvareh placed his hands on her hips. They were wide with strong bones underneath the muscle and flesh. He pushed her away just enough to stand. Face to face, a breath apart, he kept her in his grip far longer than what was necessary, just to feel her pulse under his fingers.
She didn’t step away; she let him hold her there. That fact he was somehow keenly aware of, despite having no reason to know it. He nor anyone else would ever touch her, hold her, keep her, unless she willed it so.
“We begin at sundown every day.” Cvareh fought the urge to pull her the rest of the way to him. To press her so tightly against his body that they no longer knew where one of them ended and the other began.
“It’s sundown now, Cvareh’Ryu,” she observed quietly.
“I suppose it is.” Though he had long been admiring the way the sunset lit her white hair afire. “Are you ready?”
“Am I ever not?” She gave him what Cvareh would dare call a coy grin.
It was a question he delighted in not being able to refute.
23. Petra
Petra ran her claws along the unfinished banister that led down from her personal roost in the Xin Manor. Let it never be said that she didn’t make sacrifices on behalf of her House. She had reallocated all hands and tradesmen from finishing different parts of the manor for the sake of building an amphitheater for the Crimson Court.
It had been a couple hundred years since the last Court had been held on Ruana, long ago when House Xin was still in power and the gathering was known as the Cobalt Court. A crumbling reminder of the long-ago glory days of House Xin, the amphitheater had suffered from disuse. No Xin wanted to lay eyes on it, like a shameful scar that would never stop weeping blood.
Petra was determined to see the place resurrected not just to its former glory, but even better than before. The laborers would work non-stop until the Court to complete her grand designs. But they would make the usual venue for the Crimson Court on Lysip look humble in comparison. She wanted retractable sunshades over the stadium seating. Cushions, special just for this Court, made for every seat. Running water, box seats, food and wine service throughout—nothing would be spared.
If Yveun was going to hand them the Court, she would show everyone why they deserved it.
“How does the construction proceed?” Cain waited for her at the bottom of the stairs.
“Slower than I would like.” As was usually the case. “But well enough. The foreman assures me that we will have it completed in time.” There were only two weeks left before the Court would begin.
“Gathering offenses on House Rok has proved no real difficulty.”
She snorted, as if it would have.
“Any word from Finnyr on the matter?”
“He’s handed me some good bits of information. I have those who can make the claims already working on ways for them to ‘uncover’ these offenses on their own.” Petra trusted Cain. She trusted him as much as she trusted any other man—the length of her arms and the depth of her claws. But he’d proved a loyal leader within House Xin and a faithful friend to Cvareh. For those two things, she found herself able to appreciate his brisk mannerisms and focused nature.
“Finnyr has proved useful.”
“By some miracle,” she agreed reluctantly. By far the most helpful information she’d ever worked out of Finnyr was the knowledge of the Philosopher’s Box schematics. Petra had heard about the box from the snippets of details she’d managed to attain from the last rebellion. But it wasn’t until one night when Finnyr was well in his cups that he boasted he’d seen such plans with his own eyes.
After that, it was simply a matter of more wine, sending Cvareh to visit his brother more often, and patience. Thoughts of Cvareh shifted her attention.
“How do my brother and the Chimera fare?” Petra hadn’t been terribly surprised when Cain had informed her Cvareh had elected to work with Arianna over him. The woman had a certain appeal for Cvareh that Cain did not. And Petra was inclined to allow Cvareh his desires, so long as he was still ready for the Court when the time came. She’d set Cain to ensuring that much.
“Surprising progress.” Cain motioned for a nearby stair, and Petra nodded.
They progressed silently upward, the stairs leveling out upon a high arcade. From the vantage, they could look down upon a private pit she had seen set aside for use of her immediate family. There were few windows that oversaw this pit, and Petra knew who had access to every one of them. She cast her eyes downward.
It was the first time she had seen the Chimera’s Dragon illusion. It was skillful, tight upon her and smooth. There wasn’t a single kink in it and no bizarre ripple of magic. The pulse that radiated from it was nothing more than what one would expect of a Dragon’s magical aura in general. There was nothing about it that would alert even Petra to its presence if she hadn’t known it was there.
Arianna spun widely around Cvareh, bringing her fingertips into his neck—a kill. Petra watched as they backed away and lunged for each other once more. The woman tripped up Petra’s brother, stumbling him and grabbing for his throat in the process—a kill. The
y separated again and were soon tumbling, head over heels, until the Chimera had mounted Cvareh like a broken stallion with her fingertips pressing over his heart—a kill.
“She’s quite good, isn’t she?”
“She is known as the White Wraith,” Cain begrudgingly admitted. “At least she seems to have earned her infamy.”
Petra watched them round each other, again and again. The longer she watched, the more unsettled she became. It was not just because Cvareh clearly needed to develop considerable polish in the short time before the Court. There was an odd shadow puppetry before her; it ran deeper than the illusion and more mysterious than the woman’s apparent skill.
“Why do they not use their claws?” The woman was all teeth and snarls and pure attack power. Yet neither drew blood.
“Cvareh tells me it was her decision. A caveat to their arrangement.”
“Did he say why?” The notion seemed far too tender for the woman before Petra. She couldn’t imagine Arianna’s demand stemmed from mere sentimentality.
Cain shook his head.
Petra continued to stare, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. There was something amiss. She could almost, almost… smell it.
“There is something… off about her.” Cain gave Petra’s thoughts sound. “I thought it the first day she came. I’d mistakenly attributed it to merely being a Chimera, but it’s deeper than that.”
“Explain.” Petra would not rake her brain against something Cain had already begun to make sense of.
“She moves like a Dragon, she acts like a Dragon.”
“She’s clearly well educated.” The woman had designed the Philosopher’s Box, after all. Or so Cvareh claimed.
“She’s taller than the usual Fen. Her body is stronger. She has true weight to her.” Petra held her refute, allowing Cain to continue, hoping he would tell her something more meaningful than mannerisms and muscles. “She doesn’t smell of rot.”
Petra inhaled deeply, as though she could smell the woman in the pit far below from their obscure vantage. That’s what it is, she realized. All the Chimera she had ever encountered smelled fiercely of rot, of muddled blood and stolen organs. Arianna had no such scent about her.
