Amber & Dusk

by Lyra Selene

  But Thibo—Thibo brought forth an ease in Lullaby that I’d barely even glimpsed. Watching them bicker made me think suddenly of Luca and Vesh, separated by tides in age but so close in spirit. Melancholy clambered up my chest and tightened my throat. I could still only imagine what it must feel like to be so close to another person, to be understood so completely and loved so indescribably. To belong.

  “Did you pour all three glasses for yourself?” Thibo quipped from the chaise. “Or is one of those for me?”

  I snapped out of my reverie to see Lullaby and Thibo staring at me from across the room.

  “She’s a lightweight,” Lullaby said, hiding a smile. “If she passes out drunk you have to carry her home.”

  “I won’t,” sniffed Thibo, indignant. “Besides, if anyone’s passing out drunk, I can assure you it will be me.”

  I laughed, handing out the glasses before sinking onto the couch.

  “You two seem close,” I ventured, eyeing their arms, interlocked at the elbow. “How long have you known each other?”

  “Too long!” Lullaby rolled her eyes. “Thibo is here when I need him the most, and want him the least. He’s a terrible friend and an outrageous nuisance. I’ve listened to his extravagant tales and outlandish compliments more times than I care to count.”

  “I would pretend to be offended by that.” Thibo sipped from his glass. “But I really am an outrageous nuisance.”

  “Are you two—?” I cleared my throat, belatedly realizing it was probably impolite to ask such things.

  Thibo frowned. Lullaby stared blankly at me for a moment before her face fractured into amusement. Her laugh was the sound of clear water rushing on stones, lovely and merry.

  I couldn’t help but laugh too.

  “Oh, Mirage,” she giggled, “that’s not it at all.”

  Thibo choked on his wine. “Scion, you thought we were lovers? Lullaby, where did you find this simple-minded rustic? Does she also think babies are delivered by Dominion star maidens in the night?”

  I flushed to my hairline.

  “Don’t be cruel,” scolded Lullaby. Her soothing tones cooled the heat climbing my face. “Thibo prefers his, ah, intimate companions to be—hmm. Similarly male to himself?”

  “Oh!” Another wave of embarrassment flared in my veins. “Why in the daylight world didn’t you just say so?”

  “I’m not sure Thibo’s ever had to explain before,” shrugged Lullaby, her tone wry.

  “Speaking of which, I’m in love!” Thibo flung a mournful hand over his heart, then sat up with an eager light in his eyes. “Lullaby, do you remember Mender?”

  “How could I forget?” Lullaby shot me a spiky glance. “Mender is heir to the de Médeux estates.”

  “Compte de Médeux?” I wracked my brain. Just because we had company didn’t mean Lullaby was going to stop being my mentor. “Cousins to the Isamberts? They export beech lumber from the Arduinne Forests.”

  “I’m impressed!” Lullaby turned back to Thibo. “What about him?”

  “He’s returned to court, and he’s more beautiful than when he left!” Thibo sighed. “I want to steal the Moon herself from Dominion so I might hang her above his heart.”

  “I doubt the Sun would appreciate that,” said Lullaby.

  “Nor Meridian!” I added.

  “Nor the Moon,” we both said at the same time, before dissolving into giggles.

  “This is why I don’t fall in love with women,” snapped Thibo. “You’re so practical. No sense of the romantic.”

  “At least I know the difference between love and infatuation!” Lullaby scoffed.

  “Did Blossom know that?”

  Lullaby stiffened. Thibo froze.

  Blossom. I sat up straighter. The girl who painted my rooms. The girl who was—gone.

  “How dare you,” Lullaby hissed. “If you had only done what I’d asked—”

  “Now it’s my fault?” Thibo’s shoulders bunched. “You were the one who couldn’t control her outbursts, it’s no wonder—”

  Thibo’s white teeth snapped, slicing the words to ribbons. He cut his eyes to me, and Lullaby followed his gaze. I watched as courtly façades of feigned nonchalance descended over both their faces.

  “It’s well past Nocturne,” murmured Thibo, rising to his feet. He bowed over my hand. “Mirage, let it be known your company was as exquisite as your visage. I hope to impose upon your pleasure time and again.”

  “The pleasure was mine!” I demurred, barely hearing my own words over the thunder of questions boiling inside me.

  Lullaby didn’t move as Thibo slipped out of the room. Her slender fingers were clenched in her lap, and her eyes shone like sapphires.

  “Lullaby—” I began.

  “Don’t ask,” she whispered, her voice cold as a frozen lake. “Please, Mirage, don’t ask me to explain.”

  So I didn’t. I eased out into Lys Wing’s sun-bleached jardins, skimming my fingers over the heads of orange-painted callas and flushed asters. Blossom. The girl whose flowers crowded my walls might be gone, but she wasn’t gone. Her presence rippled through my days, intangible but undeniable. Who had she been? And where was she now? What had happened to her, that she should be so discussed with so few actual words?

  It’s none of your business. I tamped down the curiosity spiraling through me. My place at court was still unsure. My progress with Dowser was almost pathetic, and I’d only recently made any headway with Lullaby. Whoever Blossom had been, she wasn’t here now. And I couldn’t let myself get distracted. Not now, not when I was so close to earning my place here, in the world where I belonged.

  “What do you know about—?” I was already talking as I pushed my way into Dowser’s study, waving my hand to clear the smoky haze souring the air.

  Another week of twice-daily sessions with Dowser had cured my habit of knocking. But my voice shriveled in my throat when I saw who was already in my teacher’s rooms.

  Sunder stood across from Dowser, his arms braced on the broad desk. His suit was a crisp, stark blue: the color at the edge of the eastern sky. In the oppressive gloom of the study, he seemed uncanny—a creature blown from clear glass, or an icy breath on a cold morning.

  They both looked up. Sunder’s green eyes locked on mine, and I braced myself for pain. But there was none—just his cool, sheer regard and the throb of my own pulse in my ears.

  “You’re early,” said Dowser.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t—” I choked on my own words, suddenly flustered. “What is he doing here?”

  “He,” said Sunder, “happens to be your sponsor.”

  “Yes, but—” I struggled to maintain my composure, which felt suddenly frayed. “Why are you here?”

  “To check on your progress.”

  “But you wagered against me. You’re betting that I’ll lose.”

  “That’s a very simple way to think of a very complex investment.” Sunder’s voice was like polished marble, elegant and lavish and too slick to get a grip on. “And win or lose, the whole thing is bound to be entertaining.”

  The ember of resentment flared to life inside me, releasing a billow of rancorous smoke.

  “Calm yourself, Mirage.” Dowser stood smoothly, reading the mutinous fury that must have warped my features. “As your sponsor, Sunder does have the right to check on your progress. I would have updated him privately, but I’m afraid you interrupted us.”

  “And what were you going to tell him?”

  “There’s no need to tell me anything,” said Sunder. “Why not just show me?”

  Panic shivered hot through my veins, surely painting my skin in fevered shades. Since coming to Coeur d’Or, I had barely been able to conjure more than pathetic suggestions of illusions. Scraps of color, pulses of light. I would rather die than display my abundant failure in front of the lord who’d gambled on my virtue and wagered on my defeat.

  “No.”

  “What are you afraid of?” Sunder bared his teeth in what
might have been a smile. “Surely not me.”

  “Lord Sunder,” Dowser interrupted, stern. “She is under no obligation to perform for you before Carrousel.”

  “I’m under no obligation to perform for you ever,” I snarled, suddenly livid. “I don’t care how much you paid—”

  “Mirage.”

  “—if you think I’m some kind of dancing—”

  “Mirage.”

  The unexpected edge in Dowser’s voice made me swallow my fury. My teacher was right. I shouldn’t be wasting my time or my energy on this spoiled, sadistic man who called himself my sponsor. He was just a distraction, a stumbling block on the way to earning my place at court.

  “No need to mince words on my account.” Sunder cocked his head, amused, and the light from a guttering candle turned his hair to kembric. “I’m inclined to let the lady speak her mind.”

  “That’s enough, from both of you,” growled Dowser. “If you’ll give us the room, my lord?”

  Sunder tensed, and for the space of a breath I thought he might lash out. But then he bent into a practiced bow, inclining his bright head with such a degree of respect that even I recognized it as a taunt.

  “I’d hate to be an impediment to genius,” he murmured, brushing past me toward the door. I strained to keep my eyes unfocused, but the refined grace of his movements caught my gaze with jagged precision. He paused in the foyer.

  “Lady Mirage?”

  I gritted my teeth. “Yes, Lord Sunder?”

  “Why are you here?”

  The raw curiosity in his voice shredded my predictions. I dared to meet his eyes, and once again glimpsed the churning border of a bare kind of desperation I didn’t have a name for. My heart lurched strange in the cramped cavern of my ribs.

  “There’s no need to tell you anything.” I flung his words back at him. “In three spans’ time, at Carrousel, I’ll just show you.”

  Sunder’s smile was a sharp blade in the dim. And then he was gone.

  I exhaled.

  “Have you heard nothing I’ve told you?” Dowser’s voice was hard. “We’ve spoken of little else besides discipline. Restraint. And yet you lost every ounce of composure the moment you saw Sunder, and made no effort to regain that control.”

  “Did you hear what he was saying?” Pride quickened the coals of my resentment. “How could I allow him to treat me so disrespectfully?”

  “You are so naïve.” Dowser’s words stung, more now than when he’d slapped me. “You understand nothing of this place, this world you are now a part of. You came here with your heart held in your palm, never realizing that this court was full of carnivores who would devour it in an instant. The things that mean nothing whip you into a frenzy, yet the important moments slip through your fingers like desert sand. You are weak, and simple.”

  “That’s a lie!” Horror gripped me, and I fought for the words to explain how wrong Dowser was. “I am strong enough. I was raised in the grasping dusk. I discovered my legacy when a pack of feral village children beat me bloody into the dust. I survived a lifetime of being locked away and ignored by superstitious Sisters who treated me like I was cursed. I traveled a thousand miles with no money and little food to come to this place. I proved myself. Why isn’t that enough for you?”

  “Proved yourself?” Dowser chuckled grimly. The sound curdled my stomach. “If you’ve proved anything, it’s that you still have everything to prove.”

  I tried to douse the dueling flames of humiliation and resentment.

  “I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.” I turned my head so he wouldn’t see the gleam of tears in my eyes. “I came here because I thought this was where I belonged. Where I would be accepted. Where I would find the family I never had. But you’re telling me that none of that means anything, and I’m just some weak child too stupid to understand the intricacies of a world she wasn’t born into.”

  Dowser’s expression softened, and his black eyes touched my face with something not too different from sympathy.

  “You are weak,” he said. “And you are a child. But none of that matters if only you could admit to yourself that you’re both those things. Then try to be better. And try again, until you are wiser, and stronger. No one is born belonging anywhere. Nothing valuable is ever given. You deserve nothing that you haven’t first earned.”

  “I am trying!” My gut ached. No one is born belonging anywhere. What if that was my fate—to belong nowhere, forever? Not at the frigid edge of daylight, not with the rumbling convoy of ore transports, not here in the palais surrounded by the legacies of an empire.

  “Stop that.” Dowser stepped closer. “Feeling sorry for yourself won’t help.”

  “Why shouldn’t I feel sorry for myself?” A hot hand clenched my throat. “I’ve been working as hard as I know how. But my illusions are just as weak as they were when I first arrived. Weaker. I’m supposed to be transforming into the Amber Court’s prize fantast, not languishing in this study waiting for the empress or Sunder or whoever to toss me out on the street!”

  Dowser sighed. He pulled his narrow spectacles off his face and polished them slowly on the hem of his robe.

  “Your illusions,” he said, after a long silence. “Where do they come from?”

  “My bloodline.” He’d asked me this question before—I didn’t have a new answer. “Isn’t that how legacies work?”

  “That’s not what I mean.” His snapping eyes were a nighthawk’s, keen as knives. “Where do the illusions originate? How do you conjure them?”

  “I’m not exactly sure.” I hesitated. “I pull them from inside me. There’s a buzzing in my hands, and I push the illusions through my palms. Once I made a mask of a face—”

  “How do you control it? What are its rules?”

  I hesitated, struggling to find the words to explain. Every illusion I’d ever conjured was wrought in the dream-bright pulse of my quickening heart. A dream made real: ethereal symmetry unbound by earthly anatomy. Something of my very soul bursting out on the world. How did that have rules?

  “I don’t know,” I whispered.

  “How can you expect to master something you do not control?” Dowser shoved his spectacles back onto his face. “Perhaps if you assigned steps to the process, it might give your illusions structure.”

  “Steps?”

  “You begin by imagining the object in your mind, yes?” That sounded right, so I nodded. “Envision. Then you must somehow use the energy of your body and mind to give the image shape.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe?”

  “Empower.” Dowser looked pleased with himself. “And then you project the illusion outward. Express. Perhaps if you run through each step of the process with each new illusion, your legacy will adhere to the structure it so clearly needs.”

  Envision, empower, express. I rolled the words around my head. Dowser’s new steps made logical sense, I knew that. Rules I hadn’t intuited myself were probably better than no rules at all. But something rebellious and implacable railed against the rigidity of those three words. Three steps—three rules—for each new illusion, every vision I ever created.

  “I’ll try,” I whispered.

  Dowser studied me. “Perhaps that’s enough for today. We’ll give it a go tomorrow.”

  I bowed my head, gathering my skirts to leave. Surprise jolted my gaze back up when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder.

  “Mirage.” Something softened the spare, stern lines of Dowser’s face. “I’m not unaware of what this means to you. You may think me harsh, but I only ask of you what I believe you can achieve. I have high hopes for what you might accomplish.”

  I scanned his face, but his eyes were unreadable behind his spectacles. “Why?”

  “These Nocturnes, I dream too often of cold, pale faces and fractured heartbeats and invisible thieves,” he mused. “But sometimes, come Matin, the sun breathes an ambric smile and I remember what it was like to dream in color.”

  Surprise pressed a shive
ring smile against my skin. I waited for Dowser to continue, but the only sound was the hiss of guttering candles and my hitching breath.

  “That’s not an answer,” I said, at last.

  “I suppose it isn’t,” Dowser agreed, before turning away to his desk. “Come back tomorrow, and be prepared to work.”

  “You’re still mistaking the address for a duc with that of a compte, Mirage,” complained Lullaby. “It’s not complicated.”

  “Easy for you to say!” I groused. “I still don’t even know what the difference is between the two.”

  “A compte—” Lullaby flattened her slender hands. “On second thought, I give up. Let’s move on to wines, because frankly, I think I need a good, strong drink. You’re hopeless.”

  But she was hiding a smile, and we both knew it. I had spent so many Matins ensconced with Lullaby that I was finally—if too slowly for my mentor’s taste—acquiring something resembling good manners. My curtsies were no longer the wobbling stumble of a half-drunk goat, and I could pour a cup of tea without dumping hot water all over the table. Although I was still frankly incapable of telling a Belsyre ice wine from a coastal Cartoinne red, or a Devangelis ruby from a Sousine garnet.

  “Goddesses!” Thibo swept into Lullaby’s chambers with insouciant grace, clad in an outrageous suit the color of daffodils. “I come bearing gifts.”

  He tossed a few boxes of bonbons on the low table and flung himself dramatically on the chaise. Lullaby cooed over the patisseries, popping a handful of confections into her mouth. I’d asked her once how she ate such a staggering amount of sugar and maintained her slim figure, but she just patted her blue-tinged skin in obscure explanation.

  I almost didn’t notice the slender young man lurking in the foyer. I rose, curtsying in the manner appropriate for new acquaintances, and shot Thibo a questioning glance.