“I’m not made for patience.” She tugs her lip between white teeth, the gesture framed and made alluring by the border of her mask. “I’m more than ready for vengeance.”
“That makes two of us.” I offer her my arm and she laughs. I’m not joking, not with the chivalry or my remark. Kumiko, more than any of the Artifacts, has been haunted, silent, reserved. No more. She’s fearsome, has found her fight, her strength. She’s ready. They all are.
We are ready for the beginning of the end.
–The Ballroom–
Light fades, swallowed by the ballroom’s length, a room that stretches like a home-road disappearing on the horizon and growing two steps for each one taken. Gold-flamed torches between the columns seem enslaved. Their tongues sputter and dance, struggling to produce illumination swallowed by the floor’s black diamonds in twice the quantity that white tiles reflect it.
It’s enough for us to behold the hundreds of silhouettes.
A footman in a three-cornered hat and ruby velvet taps his little silver wand against a chime mounted to the balcony rail. In my father’s court arriving guests would be announced by the herald, twice and loudly. And even then, the newcomers would be missed by some, concealed by music and conversation that ebb but never halt.
Not so here in the dragon halls. Silence falls in a quick stroke like midnight, beating against my eardrums. Every head turns and now that my eyes have adjusted, I’m reminded again the firelight is more than enough. Eyes glitter from the depths of countless whimsical, menacing masks.
Curious eyes, mischievous, malicious, enigmatic; I may not have Kumiko’s ability to sense the deeper current, but I can read the crowd in more blatant ways. We’re an unknown quantity, and that’s going to be a danger. Maybe a boon, judging by a few traded glances across the sea of bodies, but a gods-damn danger for sure.
They’re clad in crimson velvet or sky-blue silk, every color of the rainbow represented, and more. In fact, the array of beings, of clothing, is dazzling, and doesn’t stop with the cut of a dress or a silken sash. Twisting horns, wreathed in amber flame, hover above a being whose face is so dark he looks made of obsidian, and when he turns to take us in, his body grinds slowly. Nearby, a woman whose dress is nearly translucent, revealing a golden body as perfect as Maeve’s, watches us avidly as a halo of ethereal lavender butterflies spins and dances around her. Still further in the crowd, a towering being enters the room, and his white silken clothes glow so brightly that guests around him shield their eyes. His mask sparkles with glittering diamonds, and a halo of light hangs above his head. As I watch, he apologizes, and his halo evaporates, replaced by a black shadow, and his costume and mask dim to absolute midnight.
A question for Kumiko dies on my lips as his outfit changes, and I realize that all the accountments, every fantastical thing I see, isn’t a hint to their identities because they’re part of their costumes. I suddenly feel drab by comparison.
Kumiko senses my self-consciousness. She tugs my ear. “It feels rather special, being with a man who doesn’t need any of that.”
They turn back to their conversations and diversion as we stay back, observing. Each of them oozes magic, and eldritch energy is so thick in the air that it’s stifling. These are ancient beings, from hundreds of realms, and the gathered power in the room is staggering.
Kumiko tenses. “Can you feel it?”
“Yes, but nothing specific. Just that we need to tread carefully.” I certainly sense something, but it’s equivalent to bees buzzing, and none of it sorts itself in my mind. Kumiko scoffs softly when I whisper this.
“There is volatile, tannic energy. But some…” She inhales, eyes half closed. “Like wines. New, sharp, and untested, and some distilled, long-aged. Ancient. Thought rare or even extinct.”
“I’m not surprised, a stone’s throw from the Bifrost, from the golden halls.”
“No. These are not just ancient beings. There is a current, a...subtle aura around them all. Akershus’ guests have been here a while. Melding.”
“How much of a while?”
Her eyes hold mine. “Centuries? Perhaps longer. It’s been a while since they’ve had new blood,” murmurs Kumiko, twining her arm around mine.
“Well, we’ve been announced. Let’s go acquaint them with it.”
Her fingers caress my sleeve. “Whatever happens, this is going to be fun.”
“Of course it is.” I peck a pale line of jaw beyond her mask. “Look who you’re talking about.”
Her throaty chuckle fades beneath the thaw. Our feet touch the first step; a violin sings a high sonorous note that flows into a woman’s laugh, muffled by male voices and the slight shift of animated bodies brushing one another.
Their movement wafts us with a blend of warm and cool air; cool from the terrace doors, a whole wall of them thrown open to the garden and the night. A floral, sea-salt night breeze whispers over the ball, catching sweat, perfume, desire, sweet pipe leaf, and heady currant wine. The odor envelopes us warm and damp, fresh but filthy like the scent of a beautiful courtesan. Each step down the staircase is a descent; my inhibitions fall like discarded garments. Kumiko feels it too. She sways more with each step, slender shoulders relaxed, breasts mounded perilously at the pink silk boundary of her bodice.
A black-haired woman in the midnight-and-plum colors of the nocturnal gives Kumiko a cursory glance. The woman’s attention is caught. She whips around, runs knuckles down Kumiko’s arm, inhaling deeply. Her mask is indistinguishable from her face, save a faint silver glow, melded and animated with skill I can’t imagine.
“So exciting,” she murmurs, resting the needle-point of a black fingernail on the soft pale swell of Kumiko’s right breast. Her movements hypnotize me, fine and practiced like a painter. The woman draws a little heart with her fingernail; not in blood or ink. Magic.
Kumiko takes slender fingers proffered by her admirer, and curtsies. And just like that, we’re abandoned. The woman turns back to her companions, men and women all equally pale and flush-faced.
“What was that?”
Kumiko shrugs. “I have no idea.”
“Are you worried about it? A visible mark in a place like this…”
“She is first among the races of the Old Ones.” Kumiko shrugs again. “It could be sinister; we’re in a sea of intrigue. But a heart? For now I’ll take it as a mark of distinction. A positive distinction.”
I nudge her. “Positive she’s set on getting her teeth in you.”
“Lir! Are you...is that jealousy?” She tsks, pushing through a crush of bodies. “Leave one or two gifts out there for the rest of us. Not everyone has your charm.”
“Not a chance. If you want them, you’ll have to fight me.”
We weave through throngs of fantastic creatures bordering the room. After Kumiko’s admirer and the Old One’s vampire companions, I expect to find these people congregated in cliques; immortals, sylvan creatures, fae and so on. Identities may be concealed, and even some true natures, but there are enough hints for me to gather the arrangement isn’t so straightforward. Something else, something more has cast the guests into living islands among the slow chaos: Factions, Red and Black.
“There are so many,” Kumiko breathes, staring over a crowd that nearly meets a horizon.
“And yet, not nearly enough.”
He appears; there’s no way this man approached us unseen through a crowd this thick. “De Pentave.” A deep bow pools his cloak like black water, its fabric sparkling and sheer and almost feminine. His face is the broad angled sort that steals chastity from women and stokes jealousy in men. I can tell this about his face because his mask covers little more than his nose and amber-shot eyes.
Svartr, and he doesn’t care who knows it.
I don’t introduce myself. Instead I step ahead of Kumiko. The Old One may have had benign intentions toward her, but hungry lust radiates from De Pentave.
“You’re both new to Akershus. What brings you to our masquerade?”
Silence. I’m not giving him a thing to puzzle over, work into a conclusion.
Pentave reads my silence for what it is. He smirks; we’ve seen each other’s stripes.
Full predator now, he circles. He presses up behind me and inhales at my ear. “You smell intriguing. And you…” He wedges between me and Kumiko, takes her hand and breathes in the length of her pale arm, tracing it with his nose. “You smell good enough to eat.” His teeth are beautiful, a white arc of peril.
Kumiko snatches away her arm before I can raise my hand. I step between them, hiding her entirely at my back.
“We’ll be going.”
“Our paths will cross again, I hope.” His smile is pure dragon, the grin of death for countless mortals, untold burned villages.
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll be seeing you.” I turn on my heel and lead Kumiko into the heart of the crush, but Pentave’s last words chase us like an ill wind: Not if I see you first.
–The Mansion–
“Where to begin?” Kumiko asks, grabbing two slender silver flutes from a passing tray.
“Let’s get the lay of the place,” I take a mouthful, wincing at sweet syrup, something like raspberries and lemons, and a definite hint of a magic intoxicant.
Kumiko downs hers in one draw and gives my look a raised brow, apparent through the eye hole of her mask.
“You’ve had some practice.”
She grins, taking my drink and finishing it. “Æsir revels are more...boisterous. But every realm has its delights and fetes. A benefit of my position.”
“Then I appoint you my hostess. I’ll watch for our nosey friend, and you lead the way.”
She takes my hand, drawing me up one of what must be a hundred staircases within the mansion. “He wouldn’t be so bold without cause.”
“Blaloch’s letter said the Svartr are close to overwhelming Akershus.”
Kumiko shakes her head. “Mm...in context, that could mean another thousand years. These are dragons we’re talking about.”
We reach the landing, move close. I lower my voice as we pass down a hall dotted with couples, women fanning themselves, men admiring potential targets in gold-framed mirrors. “If Pentave is Svartr, why don’t the Raudr move against him?”
“Look around,” Kumiko says behind her fan, trading winks with an ebony-skinned woman clad in beautiful purple feathers. “Can you say for certain which is which? And even if the answer seemed obvious, would you know if you’d been duped? If the guest was really what they claimed to be? The Raudr are unquestionably more powerful, individually, but Blaloch told us the Svartr are filthy between these walls.”
“A Raudr attacks Pentave and it gets swarmed by countless Svartr.” I begin to understand, and to grasp the double-edged sword of the masquerade.
My pace slows in the midst of fitting all this together. Kumiko strolls a few steps ahead. When I glance for her, my eye is caught by a couple admiring a painting of the fortress, hung between two sets of gold doors. The woman is clad as peacock, face hidden in a beaked mask. Her body and bare breasts are painted with such skill that her iridescent blue-green looks downy. Feathers just from the top of her amply-mounded backside spill to the floor in a shimmering sweep, half tail, half shirt. And somehow her companion has still managed to get an arm around her waist. He holds her to his chest, murmuring in her ear while they gaze at the painting.
What he’s dressed as escapes me, because as I get closer, I realize her tail is parted around his hips, nearly concealing their rhythmic thrusts. Her eyes are closed behind the mask, teal lips parted, and tiny pants escape, barely audible. His embracing arm caresses up, and he teases her nipple as a drop of sweat escapes his mask and runs down her back.
Kumiko’s realizes I’m struggling to keep up and turns back to fetch me. She wraps herself around my arm, warm breasts hugging my bicep. “Your mouth is open.”
I can’t help it, glancing back one more time as we move on.
Kumiko bumps me. “This must happen at your gatherings, sometimes.”
“It does.” I know it does; I’ve been a willing participant more than once. “But couples are more...circumspect. They sneak away, to an empty room, a dark garden path.”
“Oh, mortals.”
“It wouldn’t bother you even a little, making love with all these people about?”
“No! Would it bother you?”
It’s the challenge in the way she says you. Like she knows it would and she’s daring me.
“No. It would not.”
Kumiko grabs a fistful of my coat and drags me into the alcove of a doorway. My hand crushes her lips and mask, stifling a scream and a laugh when I snap her bodice below her breasts. If she’s throwing out the challenge, and there’s no way I’m letting her best me.
I drive her back into the wall. My lips run wild over her neck, her shoulders, the hard pink points of her nipples. I fall to my knees and ruck up her skirts. Silk stockings gartered at her thighs are where the undergarments end, leaving her bare to her pale thighs and the downy platinum hair of her cunt.
Kumiko slumps down the wall, knees bent, and feathers my hair. “Losing your nerve?”
I part her with my thumbs and devour her slowly, licking her clit till she moans and sinks lower. She pulls my hair. Desperate palms smack the wall and her thighs quiver.
Voices in the hall grow closer. They’re not wandering; they murmur excitedly on purposeful steps.
I hesitate. “Lick me harder,” Kumiko begs, hips rolling. “Suck me; I’m so close.”
I don’t, teasing the wetness that’s thickened between her lips. Closer, closer; I can hear their whispers now. Closer, closer; Kumiko’s body tightens and her little pants come faster and faster.
Kumiko stiffens, then cums, hot against my face, the lips of her pussy parting around my lips. They tremble with the waves of her pleasure, thicken, and I lick harder, long strokes against her clit that magnify her orgasm. Then, she slumps, trembling.
She tries to straighten, twists fingers in my hair and struggles to drag my face away. “That’s enough. That’s good; you proved yourself.”
“I’m glad you believe me.” I stab my arms beneath her full pink skirts, clutch her ass and lash her pussy to my face.
She yelps, bats at my shoulders, writhes. I grip tighter, chuckling against her clit.
The couple appears, slipping into our doorway. The woman gasps; they both giggle. I turn my head to watch Kumiko’s face and don’t stop fucking her with my tongue.
The woman leans over me and kisses Kumiko’s bare breast as she passes, murmuring her approval. Kumiko raises to the touch, moaning as the woman traces a soft nipple, biting softly, earning a long moan. The man whispers something I don’t understand, and they disappear into the room beside me.
Kumiko grips the fabric at my shoulders and hauls me up. “You.”
“Hah! I told you I was good for it,” I breathe against her mouth, snapping the buttons on my pants. My shaft springs free, unrestrained, aching for her. Raising her up the wall, I bury my cock to the hilt before her legs can circle my waist.
A moan echoes from inside the room, a sound turned sensation when I thrust into Kumiko.
The woman cries something; her man chuckles and groans. Kumiko’s fevered eyes hold mine from behind her mask, and she gives me a wicked smile. I drive into her hard enough that her tits bounce and her eyes roll back.
Absently I catch the rhythmic creak of some piece of furniture and the woman’s breathless ah-ah-ah. Flesh smacks like applause. I thrust into Kumiko, and her pussy gloves me, over and over, in time with the lovers on the other side of the door.
Kumiko arches, gasping, held to the wall by nothing but my fucking her. “The same time,” she pants, still grinning. “At the same time...”
I’m so close, it takes a second to understand: We’re getting off at the same time. Feral, intoxicated by our unspoken dare, I wonder if I can wait, or at least make Kumiko come at the same time as the woman, who
se cries throb against the door.
It’s too much, the moment, the heat of Kumiko’s body; too good. I bounce her up my hips, crush her to the wall and plow her till we fill the alcove with our cries. I cum with an ache, so much arousal, too much to spend in one go. Kumiko cums with me, lashing me with her arms, burying her cries in my chest.
We grind out the last of our climax while I listen to Kumiko’s soft gasps over the couple still fucking, flesh slapping wildly.
We kiss, the taste of raspberry liqueur and her cunt on both our tongues. Kumiko sucks it from my mouth. I let her go, her pink skirts crushed beyond hope. She slides down the wall in a heap, limp. A ragged oh-oh-ohhhh fills the room beside and Kumiko grins again, eyes closed. “We win.”
“You are horrible, and incredible.”
Her smile is incandescent. “Thank you, Lir.”
I quirk a grin. “For that? You don’t have to thank me.”
“No, I…” She hesitates, and her eyes roam me, open appreciation in them. “Before you, I’d never coupled for pleasure. It was always necessity. At fetes, or functions, I knew of others who did,” she says, nodding to the couple as they stumble, giggling, past us. “Not for me. My life was speed, efficiency. But you…” She runs a finger slowly up the lines of her exposed pussy, brazen. They part around her finger until she stops at her clit, and she whimpers at the slow drag of her fingertip. “Your tongue on me, how slow you take me...I never knew it could be so good.” She keeps flicking herself, her movements growing quicker, and I stare, rapt, as she pleasures herself. She cums, one last time, whole body shaking, then leans forward and licks a drop of cum from the tip of my cock. “I never knew it could be so perfect.”
“I’ve rather enjoyed teaching you,” I manage as I drag her up, and I’m ready to pull her into the room for more. But as we turn, weak kneed, we plow into an Akershus guard armored in black silk.
Temple of Cocidius Page 46
