Dark Lord's Wedding

by A. E. Marling

  “Why ever would I need that?” Tethiel winked. “I have full command of myself, as long as I do exactly as my magic wishes.”

  “I look forward to meeting the real you.”

  “As do I. It’s been too long.” Tethiel reached out with two fingers as sharp and slender as the bristles of a flytrap. He plucked one vial from the air. Then a second, and a third. “To know which thoughts are my own. To indulge in dreams again. To be free.”

  He took all the vials then snapped his hands closed around them.

  She distrusted his eagerness. Though he had promised to set aside his magic, she had trouble imagining him without power. No, that wasn’t accurate. He wouldn’t have illusions, yet he would still have his cunning, his persuasiveness. He could still rule.

  “You were right about the need for a subordinate Feaster,” she said. “A ruler of the night who wasn’t isn’t ruled by passion. A check to greed, and balanced by one of my enchantments.”

  “Celaise will serve,” he said.

  “Perhaps.”

  If he purged his magic, then Hiresha would outshine him in power. Their standing would mirror their beginning, when he had all the strength of the night behind him and she couldn’t stay awake. Now she felt the universe circling through her with stinging wonder, each moment planned since the birth of time. She and her enchantments had come further than the priests of the Fate Weaver could’ve ever believed.

  Her dawn-stone amulet glimmered on Tethiel’s vest. Day by day he was growing into a healthier man. What a strain for her to think of someone handsome to his degree as unwell. Rottenness yet persisted. Her magic would root it out and replace it with youthful strength.

  The garden glowed chartreuse beneath the fireflies. Hiresha walked over ponds choked with pitcher plants: some fat-lipped vases, others slender cylinders. One had shut, and it shuddered. The flickering insect trapped inside tinted the water the hue of periodot.

  Hiresha’s amethysts lit up the mouths and leaf heads of the pitcher plants purple. “Do you mean to retire from public life?”

  “Me, abandon the world? I’m not so cruel a lord of nightmares.” The vials glowed in one hand, and in the other he took Hiresha’s. “Giving up my passions will be a relief. I’ll lose myself in new and deadlier ones.”

  He didn’t lean in to kiss her. Rather, it was as if she fell toward him. The ground tipped and unbalanced her. Pitcher plants whirled around, and now their pigments had taken on the fleshy hues of enflamed red. They looked like organs dangling on vines, slick and engorged.

  Hiresha could’ve righted herself. She might’ve pushed away before her lips pressed against his, before a molten heat blasted through her, threatening to destroy her and melt her into gem shine.

  Afterward they walked through the garden arm and arm. Bats flitted overhead. The fireflies danced among the plants, going out one by one as they were smothered by leaves or drowned in digestive slurry.

  Hiresha’s body shivered and throbbed as if she were recrystallizing. The feeling likely came from the potency of Tethiel’s magic. If he purged it then she might never experience something so intense again, except of course for epiphanies.

  Tethiel rolled the crystal stopper of one vial against the crimson of his lips. “Would that I could partake now, but it’s too soon to transfer power. I must hold the dragon’s reins a while longer.”

  “I do question if Celaise is strong enough to rule.”

  “Never doubt her willpower. Look how long she’s left Jerani alive.” He slipped the vials into his coat. “The only snag in the succession is the Bleeding Maiden. She’ll seize the night.”

  “You cannot merely quash her?”

  “Smothering my strongest child will only unite the rest against me.”

  “Or send them cowering.”

  Tethiel kissed the gems on the back of Hiresha’s hand. “We must discredit the Bleeding Maiden first. The others believe she has the more delicious vision, that she’ll lay the best table. We must prove ours greater, or at least that the Bleeding Maiden uses the same shameful tactics.”

  “Such as?”

  “Conspiring with others against the family.” Tethiel pushed back her hair and kissed her ear. The sharpness of his teeth sent her nerves screaming down her neck, jolting around her sides and down past her waist.

  Hiresha stopped to touch her ear. No, he hadn’t bitten it off. She had seen a man nibbling a woman’s ear in the pleasure house in city with Miss Barrows. A similar intimacy with Tethiel might be worth the time. She could test it before the wedding, though a garden dripping with dew wouldn’t be the ideal place for the experiment.

  The foliage was growing. The sundew plants spread as large as ferns beaded with strawberry-sized globs of sticky death. The flytraps stretched skyward into snaggletoothed monsters. One snapped a bat from the air.

  Though she couldn’t be certain, she doubted she would desire to couple with Tethiel every night, even every month. He could well have different designs. Hiresha should talk to him about the glandular expectations of their marriage. He peered at her with his midnight eyes narrowed. He had to have caught a whiff of her concerns. Now was the time to voice them.

  She stepped away from him. “There’s something we must discuss.”

  “Yes, my heart?”

  No, this wasn’t correct. They should be holding hands when she asked. They needed to be close, yet she had stepped away. Hiresha would ask another time. They had more pressing concerns. “Regarding the Bleeding Maiden, I believe she instigated a clan into attacking my banyan fortress.”

  “She does pride herself in sloughing all her work onto others.”

  “I held one man secure under my dragon’s claw until he described how they had found the village. A woman in a dress of fire had pointed the way and promised they would capture many slaves. He described Celaise, who was comatose at the time. Another Feaster must’ve stolen her appearance.”

  “I’ll question the Mimic,” Tethiel said, “but it likely wasn’t him. He’s still alive, and the Bleeding Maiden would never leave a witness behind.”

  “You’ll have to prove her guilt to the other Feasters?”

  “In an outraged, off-with-her-head sort of way. She might’ve also whispered to the matriarchs, made them doubt my perfect femininity.”

  Hiresha slapped her hands together with a clink. “Then she’s responsible for this debacle.”

  “Entirely. You and I are above suspicion.” Tethiel scratched the fibrous bristles on the chin of a monstrous plant.

  A firefly lighted on his shoulder then flew off, leaving a speck of excrement. Hiresha stepped closer and brushed it off. She gazed into the bottomless depths of his eyes. Her abdomen muscles tightened, and her intestines pinched together. This would be difficult. “There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

  “It must be deliciously embarrassing.”

  Hiresha frowned and turned her shoulder to him. His teasing was one thing. Reading her mind was another. Together they pushed her too far. She would spite him by asking a different question. “You see gender as merely another coat, do you not?”

  “An outfit for every occasion,” he said.

  “Then I should like to see your other self. The Lady of the Feast.”

  All the lights in the garden had died out except for hers and his. He stared at her. The corner of his lips curled up and looped around in an impossible spiral, too small for anyone but her to see.

  “Then you will see her,” he said, “at the wedding banquet. I’ll wear her for a course or so.”

  “Then I had best return to making the wedding a possibility.”

  He bowed then stepped into the shadows behind a plant’s spiny maw.

  “Wait.” Hiresha lifted one hand in a brilliance of amethysts. “If you truly were a woman, would you tell me?”

  “Only if it’d please you.”

  25

  “No respectable party begins before dusk.”

  “The wedding festivities may
start in the evening. I and the ritual will follow after midnight.”

  “Entertaining such ferocious guests until then will be an ordeal. They’ll wish to see you, my heart, and the impatience of kings is a dangerous thing. Would it be possible to shift your dreaming, so that you may wake earlier to—”

  “Meddling with my dream inversion would work as long as I don’t awaken to find that you were a figment, this wedding a falsehood, and all this planning a waste.”

  “Well then, I hope no one dies from suspense.”

  Celaise had no choice. She knew she needed to go out. In the skin-scour of the sun, in the burning, in the unjust brightness, under the dragon’s eye, she had to risk herself. Celaise had to risk everything.

  The lord father should die. For making her do this, he should be nailed to a bridge for the gulls to eat out his eyes and piranha to strip the flesh form his legs. First the skin, then the meat, and his evil gristle too.

  She stomped, cracked the floorboards. She scoured the walls with her fingernails. She pushed Jerani away then pulled him close.

  Celaise was ready.

  She went out under the Winged Flame. The sky rippled around the god, recoiling in desperation. The sun seemed so close. If she reached up, her arm would vanish into the furnace of the dragon’s mouth.

  Her shawl could only help so much. The sun glared through it. Her poncho smothered her. She squinted out. On their right was a high wall stacked with beehives.

  “Wrong way to the forest,” she said.

  “Weren’t we going to the docks? For the canvas.” Jerani’s touch was too hot, but she held on to his arm.

  “To the forest. To find where she sleeps.” The lord father wouldn’t warn Celaise again. Thinking about him made her hurt everywhere, like her flesh was trying to peel off her bones. His fangs cut to her screaming soul.

  Celaise took her first deep breath after leaving the city. She gasped in the misty shade beneath the trees. The jungle air pulsed with insect wings and bird calls. She touched her face. She ran a hand over her legs. Still whole, still straight. The Winged Flamed hadn’t burned his curse into her again. Not yet.

  Jerani had brought their llamas from the city pens. The dear beasts bounded around the trees with their harness bells ringing. Jerani ran with them. Whenever he stopped, one baby llama with patches of orange and white ducked between his legs, hopping around and going under again.

  “Glad she’s not any taller,” Jerani said.

  The rocky tightness in Celaise’s stomach eased. She could fill her lungs all the way down to her belly button.

  Jerani took her hand. “Run with us.”

  “I can’t.” But she could, now. Even if she wasn’t fast like him, she did. He flowed. He bounded. She stumbled and staggered, but the baby llamas did that too. They still cried out in happiness.

  Jerani kicked off a tree trunk and spun around his spear to land on his feet. He gazed at Celaise with that adorable, scarred face of his. “You’re smiling,” he said.

  So she was. Her days were better, as much as the lady had been wrong to ambush her and rebreak every bone in Celaise’s body. Now Celaise had to catch the lady’s scent. Celaise couldn’t miss it again.

  “Is it almost noon?” She sniffed.

  Enticing smells wafted from the city, too many to pick out. It reeked like a warehouse filled with pastries melting on a hot day. Celaise needed to find the lady’s apprehension. It would be away from all the other delicious smells, by itself, coming fast.

  There! The tangy sweetness of honey pineapples. Celaise turned her nose to the left and right. It itched. She jogged forward. Had to be closer, but not too close that the lady would spot them spying.

  The pineapple scent deepened, and now the fruit was slathered over frogs freshly cooked with peppers. That smelled like fear. The lady was only frightened the moment before falling asleep, and the scent had grown stronger day by day. Or maybe Celaise had become more hungry. She wiped a bead of saliva from the corner of her lips.

  The aroma faded after the first waft. Celaise ducked her head down and ran toward its source. No, not that way. Back, beneath the forest’s wooden creepers. She slipped, muddied her knee. Jerani helped her up. He was always there for her. She had to hop over the spreading roots of each tree. They were like giant trunk legs of monsters with warped woody claws.

  Then she faced a true terror. The crystal dragon sprawled between the trees. Its tail was coiled halfway up one. Its claws stretched all the way around a trunk. Its spiky chin lay on a rotting log. The dragon was sleeping.

  Or Celaise hoped for too much. Its orb eyes were slitted partway open. Was its mistress also nearby?

  Celaise crept around it. The scent trail had gone cold. It was like sniffing the ashes of a cook fire. Where had the lady gone?

  Ringing bells warned Celaise that the llamas had caught up. Jerani gripped the harness of the lead one, but the baby llamas trotted past, closer to the sleeping dragon.

  “Celaise, help!” Jerani dashed after one baby.

  She scrambled toward the other, but the runt was too far to stop. The baby gazed at all its reflections across the plated breadth of the dragon’s belly. The little llama baa-ed then clattered onto up the dragon’s leg. It licked at the jutting crystal elbow. The scaled monster didn’t stir or wake. Its chest didn’t rise or fall.

  “It’s not alive right now.” Celaise pressed a hand against her breast. Her heart thumped through her ribs so she could feel it in her palm.

  “They’re both asleep, then? The lady and the dragon.”

  “Must be.” Celaise sniffed. Something pricked her nose, a whiff of peppered carrots. She turned around, but it wasn’t coming from Jerani, the llamas, or the city. It was sadness, too faint an aroma to be from any person nearby. Was she smelling the dragon?

  The monster’s eyes had stayed half closed even though two more llamas had scaled its back. They were such good climbers. Celaise crept closer to the mound of crystal, snuffling.

  The dragon reared up with a clattering boom.

  Llamas screamed as they tumbled off.

  Claws spread from a scaled leg and rushed toward Celaise. They crashed through vines. They raked the air.

  Celaise reached for her True Dress, but she couldn’t put it on fast enough. Not that it would help.

  “Celaise!” Jerani hauled her away.

  The claws slammed down and tore up the yellow clay. They left grooves as they dragged back. The dragon sat on its haunches, propped on its forelegs. Its eyes glittered down at Celaise and Jerani. They didn’t move. The dragon sat still as a statue.

  Celaise held her breath until she couldn’t anymore. She gasped. Then she laughed.

  “Close one,” Jerani said.

  “I think she’s in there,” Celaise said. “In the dragon.”

  “Asleep?”

  “She doesn’t smell awake. Hey, couldn’t you see all the way through the dragon before?”

  “Maybe so,” Jerani said. “Could just be dark here.”

  “I can see. The crystal is painted on the inside, or plated. The lady’s hidden herself in there.”

  “The dragon swallowed her?” The muscles of Jerani’s arms tensed around Celaise.

  “She’s still alive. It’s not like she’s dreaming, though. She’s further than that, and sad.”

  “Huh.” Jerani slid his hands over Celaise’s belly. “Glad we found her.”

  She peered up at the dragon. Didn’t look like it would budge again, unless they went closer. It was only a fanged gate, to keep people away from the sleeping lady.

  Celaise shivered as the crush of doom lifted. The dragon hadn’t killed her, and the lord father wouldn’t devour her. She throbbed all over, and giggles bubbled inside her chest. She nestled against Jerani. They fit together better now. She wasn’t jagged and twisted. It didn’t hurt to be held. One bur remained though, one bone shard digging in deep, too deep to heal.

  He would abandon her. Then she would have only the sw
eet smoothness of her magic flowing through her veins. She should tell Jerani to go now. She should push him away to save herself even more pain.

  Celaise kissed him.

  His lips pressed against hers. His tongue was a welcome warmth in her mouth, sliding wet against hers, tickling, playing with her. Their heat surged together. Celaise could feel so much life in him.

  The black wine in her backflowed in a cold riptide. She shouldn’t be kissing Jerani, not here in the jungle dirt, not among the llamas, not so near the dragon. Celaise should push herself away.

  She clung to him all the closer.

  He tore at her clothes. Jerani was attacking her. No, loving her. His kisses seared her skin. She pulled off his warrior robe. He rolled her atop it. They had to be near. Never apart, not ever.

  Everything seemed to drop away as she soared with him. All faded but them. The world was only him her love.

  Celaise wrapped her legs around Jerani and pulled him atop. He touched her with his manhood. They had waited so long for this. Celaise didn’t need her True Dress to be happy. She had Jerani. She pulled him into her.

  It hurt. And it got worse. A scraping, bleeding mangling.

  This should be right. It wasn’t at all. This had been their perfect moment, and it had gone wrong.

  Jerani was trying to hurt her. She had to defend herself. Celaise needed to Feast. He didn’t smell good right now, but he would be delicious once he feared for his life.

  She would roast out his insides. Ribbons of embers snaked into her fingers in burning streamers. Her True Dress would engulf him, and she would Feast on his charred meat. No man could hurt her and live. She clutched the first fiery threads of her True Dress, ready to slip it on in the jungle’s near darkness.

  But he was Jerani. He wouldn’t mean to harm her. Celaise knew that. She knew. Celaise wouldn’t wound him. She flung away her fire.

  Black wine roiled and frothed within her. It was a wash of emptiness, and only Jerani’s death would fill her and stop the pain. Her power wanted something she didn’t. She tamped its slurping coldness down, but it left her numb and dead everywhere.