Dark Lord's Wedding

by A. E. Marling

  “To be precise, I might be asleep right now.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” She had already tried explaining it to him in the sunset facet.

  “Thank you, for saving Alyla. Again.” Fos reached to his sister’s arm. Alyla didn’t look at him, and he pulled his hand back. “Sorry to say that Bracelets is dead.”

  “Are you really telling me about your pet snake?” Hiresha asked.

  “Well, I mean, I saw women wearing snakes here.” He pointed down. Viper armbands coiled around two low guests. “Thought they were kind to bring their pets to the party. But, no, they’re dead. And now I’m terrified.”

  Behind him, the Green Blood plodded closer.

  Hiresha had to be gone. “Fos, did you have something else to tell me? Merely don’t let it be a proposal. I don’t think I could bear another.”

  Fos’s mouth clicked closed. He massaged his jaw and the well-proportioned protuberance of his chin. “The vizier did want me to tell you something. Trouble is, I don’t think you’ll like it.”

  The Green Blood slouched behind Fos. Their orb eyes drooped closed. The inhuman hand that clutched the favor diamond had a hundred and twenty-two black speckles. Hiresha thought it a pity. One fewer and the number would’ve been the square of eleven.

  Hiresha nodded to the Green Blood then returned to her conversation with Fos. If she and he spoke long enough then the Green Blood might fall asleep or melt into a puddle of apathy.

  “Fos, I will listen to every offer.”

  “You can come back,” Fos said. “The empress will pardon you. She also, umm, promised to give you any bird you wanted. You can live at home, with all the tasty comforts.”

  The Empire, it seemed, was ready to be generous if it would keep her away from its enemies. “Yet you don’t think I’ll accept. Would I be forbidden to practice enchantment?”

  Fos’s ears had flushed to a darker shade of bronze. “Yes, there is that.”

  She considered the option of living out her days in luxury and peace. The Empire would only require she be powerless. She would have to end her dream inversion. Then, if the sunset facet were true and this one false, Tethiel would be dead forever.

  Empirically, she should not care overmuch. In that facet she had no reason to mourn the unforgivable. The more horrible side effect would be that her somnolence would return her to the colorless prison of terminal drowsiness.

  Hiresha couldn’t say she would be better off dead. She knew she’d experience glimpses of wakefulness. Her heart sank as if through the squirming mass of her intestines. It would be misery, yet maybe it’d be best if she gave up her power. To keep it she would need to sacrifice to the Winged Flame and kiss a Green Blood.

  This colorful individual, Ix had been good enough to wait, or they hadn’t cared enough to interrupt. Hiresha couldn’t avoid speaking to them much longer without a slight.

  Thankfully, Fos had more to say. “Won’t blame you for saying no. Just don’t marry that lord.”

  “And why not?” They all wished to control her. None of them trusted her to decide.

  “Look at your hands, your eyes. Your heart will be crystal next. He’s changing you.”

  “I’m changing myself,” Hiresha said. Fos had made no mention of how she had grown taller by fourteen inches. Perhaps he would’ve noticed had it been fifteen.

  “You never would’ve done that.” Fos nodded down to the patterns of brown-red clots on the glass floor. If only it wouldn’t be disrespectful to clean up blood spilled for a god.

  “You—” The Green Blood began to speak then croaked to clear their throat of phlegm.

  “Lady of Gems.” Alyla spoke over them, her voice quiet but alarmingly even considering her neck had just been broken. Another Bright Palm held her upright. “Do not wed the Lord of the Feast. In the Alliance of Masks …”

  Her words faded as her breath ran out. She had to wait until the jewel expanded her chest and drew in more air.

  “… He scourged the city of Harenton, killing some fifty thousand.”

  “That number or more die in every squabble of kings.” Hiresha had always known about Tethiel. She had seen his atrocities in the other facet. A hard sharpness still dug into her chest, as if Fos had been right and her heart was turning crystalline. “Has he caused similar destruction in the last four years?”

  “No,” Alyla said.

  “Then I’m surprised you’re not encouraging me to marry him. Correlation though it may be, I seem to have a mollifying effect.”

  “Don’t care who you marry,” the Green Blood said. They had finally gathered the initiative to speak. “But if you want gobs of venom spears, wed the King of Gangral. Or his boy-son. He’s a worm, but what does it matter?”

  “Your lack of conviction is refreshing,” Hiresha said.

  Their knobby-blue shoulders pushed up in a shrug. “You wouldn’t have to bed anyone. The king doesn’t expect it. Just wants your magic.”

  “You may be the most honest of ambassadors. I will think on your proposal, as well as everyone’s.”

  The Green Blood yawned, exposing a mouth as green as serpentine and lighter than malachite. If Hiresha had but known, she could’ve found a better color match.

  Tendrils stretched between his fangs, bouncing with yellow blobs. He held up the favor diamond. “Suppose we must.”

  “We needn’t, if kissing me is too distasteful to you.”

  The Green Blood made a wet churning in the back of their throat. “No, I think I have to.”

  “Then we will as soon as I return wearing a new dress.”

  Another guest might’ve taken offense at the delay, yet the Green Blood likely wouldn’t care. Indeed, his eye slits didn’t expand with outrage. They constricted with relief. The toxin master slumped into their seat across from the Talon, who hadn’t moved to stab anyone yet.

  Hiresha retreated to the changing room. As she started layering magic scripts in the malachite, she also thought over the proposals and warnings. The choice she made would change her life and the world. Between death and misery she must decide, between cruel compromise and overindulgence.

  She blinked. Her enchantment had a tangle, a flaw. She never erred, not in her magic. She had to tweeze out this one and repair. It was like uprooting her own eyelashes, stinging and too close.

  Any mistake she made choosing a groom wouldn’t be as easy to fix. Some paths, when left behind, could never be found again.

  44

  “Seat too many allies together and they’ll be united against you.”

  The guests were far too comfortable. Tethiel knew he must lure them to different tables or there would be not one memorable argument.

  He would corral the guests as best he could, through fears, through desires. “We’ve seen death tonight. A few have tasted it.”

  Tethiel gestured to the dead hanging from the hub column. He nodded to the recovering Bright Palm.

  “Let this remind us,” he said, “that life is fleeting. Truth is bitter, and true pleasures are few. All comes to nothing, so while we yet draw breath we should feast.”

  Servers marched to either side of him. The Chef waited with an upraised tray.

  “This eighth course,” Tethiel said, “will be the most pricy and most perilous. No man of faint stomach or small appetite would dare partake.”

  “Put it here.” The king brute slapped his table. He glanced to Hiresha, who was speaking with Fos the Swordskull. “Set a danger against me and I’ll eat its face off.”

  “No meat requires greater skill to prepare than manticore,” Tethiel said. “All the poison must be removed, or the ecstasy of eating will be followed by the delight of dying.”

  As planned, Hiresha lifted a sparkling finger. “Venom, my dear. Venom. The manticore produces its own toxins.”

  “Quite right, my heart,” he said.

  She shimmered around to the Green Blood. “Is that not correct?”

  “Meh,” they said.

>   The Chef lowered the tray of filleted manticore for the servers to take. He pressed his thick fingers over his heart. “No one in the Lands of Loam has more experience cooking manticore, and I don’t make mistakes.”

  “He’s seasoned it with pineapple and hubris,” Tethiel said. “Nothing tastes better than the monster who’d rather have tasted you, but I wouldn’t expect many others to dare try it.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Fos the Lummox said, “with Hiresha here.”

  “The Cloudcrusher King is not a coward,” the cowardly king said. Fingers like potato roots trembled when he reached onto the serving tray. Rows of fangs lined the plate as garnish.

  “Not so fast.” Tethiel motioned for the server to pull back the entrée. “The first and choicest cuts will go to the first and choicest guests. Consult the seating chart.”

  The matriarch received her alternative, a deathbloom sea anemone. The first serving of meat went to the Bright Palm, to the expected outrage of all.

  The jaguar knight whipped his tail.

  “She can’t lift a hand to eat,” the king brute said.

  “The Bright Palm is sitting at her assigned place,” the Chef said.

  The Talon blinked, stopped his muttering, and fluttered to his feet. “Another insult? You profane us chosen? Give Xochi his meat. Give Ix their poison.”

  “I have collected all the manticore venom.” The Chef held out a bowl of vibrant orange doom beside the matriarch. “If Lord Ix would care to sit in their seat …”

  The Green Blood stared at the entrée. They sniffed then oozed out a sigh.

  The kings gestured for Ix to come back. “The Dominion stands together,” the Talon said.

  And sat together, so it seemed. The Green Blood turned from the tempting bowl of well-seasoned death and trudged back to their table. Tethiel saw that the ploy may fail. Hiresha would of course have chosen this moment to change dresses. Tethiel was on his own, with the fear of shame his last weapon.

  “I cannot blame any of you,” Tethiel said. “If I’m the only man brave enough to face his dish at his place, then I’ll have to eat it all.”

  “We’re hungry for it,” Fos the Tadpole Cock said, “just serve it.”

  In reply, Tethiel kissed a sliver of manticore meat, tickled it with his tongue, and then gulped it whole. He licked his lips and reached to stuff a handful in his mouth.

  “Lord of the Feast.” The Talon set a flask on the table. “You’re being challenged to a drinking game. If I win, then it’s the gods’ wish for you to serve us first.”

  The copper bottle had to be full of poison. The Talon’s fear was richer than flamingo boiled in pomegranate wine. He worried Tethiel wouldn’t accept the silly contest.

  The winged warriors snatched two chalices from trays then dropped them rattling on the table. The Talon caught them before they rolled off.

  Tethiel would do the right thing and toy with him. “You do know my daily drink is the most potent in the lands?”

  “Not so.” The Talon jerked out the stopper. The red liquor he poured shimmered upward as if it were flowing back out of the chalice. “Nothing is stronger than dragon’s blood.”

  “Lovely.” Tethiel hadn’t heard of priests bloodletting their god. “You give so much to the Winged Flame it’s only fair he offer some in return.”

  With a beat of blue and green feathers, a winged warrior towed a burning torch to the Talon. He heated the dragon-blood liquor before sliding it to Tethiel. In the kingdoms they would’ve shoved a hot poker straight in the cup to mull wine. It wasn’t any less barbaric.

  Tethiel lifted the crystal. He wouldn’t drink. Eddies of crimson and orange swirled in the cup. It hissed and bubbled.

  “To the Lady of Gems.” Tethiel raised his chalice.

  He drank and he didn’t. He swallowed the wine and he only sniffed it. He downed the cup and didn’t sip a drop. The guests would see one truth, and he could live another.

  The liquor turned the blue of frozen dreams. The glass palace lit up with streamers of blood. An inferno burned in Tethiel’s chest, and his head burst with dying stars. The fires seared away his restraint. Shadows fumed off him. He was free and helpless, naked in his coat.

  This was wrong. He shouldn’t be feeling this. He hadn’t drank.

  His chalice simmered. Those bubbles, how hilarious! His laugh silenced the dining hall. The dragon blood was releasing a vapor. That’s what had intoxicated him. A gas of madness, it almost rhymed. Now he was going to die, him or everyone else.

  “Ha-ha! Was it venom or poison?”

  The Talon must’ve held his breath. Or he was resistant. There he stood, broiling in his own fear juices. Tethiel had to open wide and eat him, then the rest of the guests. The tables were full of rashers of bacon.

  No. Couldn’t disappoint the lady. Who was she? His control was giggling out of him. He had to get away.

  Tethiel flew or ran from the dining hall. Out, out, away, up, forever, up, streaming skyward with lights careening around, colliding, and exploding.

  Except he hadn’t moved. The Talon was still before him speaking, even if his lips didn’t match his words. “Your heart will satisfy the Winged Flame.”

  “And yours will be the only thing I won’t eat.” Tethiel reached, and his palms flapped open with skin peeling back from fangs. Drool sprayed from his arms.

  His dandy guards leapt out of the way. They made room for his meal.

  The Talon upended his dragon blood into his mouth.

  Tethiel had to choose between eating him feet first or headwise. Or start with the belly? Tethiel would do all three. He had enough mouths. He leaned in, and his face stretched into a pit of molars.

  The Talon spat the liquor at Tethiel. It ignited in the torch. It blasted with hate and lust. The fireball smashed into Tethiel.

  The glass palace tilted and flipped. Tethiel was soaring. Then falling.

  His coat was burning, his coat, his coat. Flames clung to it. They were eating through him. His nostrils filled with the shattering pureness of his own fear. How embarrassing to die at your own wedding.

  He tumbled around to face the onrush of the floor. Guests scattered. He reached to pluck them up. He would die well fed.

  He wasn’t the only thing burning. A purple sun scorched closer.

  45

  “Love was understood in Morimound to be a lie. Evil men from other lands used it to ruin daughters.”

  “That is most unfair, my heart. Love also ruins sons.”

  “We did believe in soul matches. When a diamond is cut, its octahedron is split into one large jewel and one smaller. These soul stones are traditionally displayed together, and we’d call a particularly suitable couple a soul match.”

  “That sounds too true to be poetic. One greater jewel and one lesser, and being dominant is so degrading. Which of us must be the larger?”

  “Neither.”

  While Hiresha’s dress burned with illusion, Tethiel’s coat blazed with a fire all too real. As far as she could derive, he had been set alight and hurled from the ceiling. He fell toward his death. Someone wanted to kill Hiresha’s betrothed. They thought they could control her. The murderers believed they could decide whom she would marry.

  Hiresha leapt, jewels gusting ahead of her. In a priceless constellation, she caught him. With precise spellcraft, she would save him.

  He burned. She had dressed herself in amethyst flames. The synchronicity of the moment resonated into timelessness. The random movements of the universe had brought them together, fire and inferno. Pattern had resolved from entropy. Hiresha and Tethiel were a glimpse of unity. The coincidence chimed. Dream shine vibrated through her, across her back and rippling between the blue diamonds there, around to her flickering fingers, and then rebounding into her skull with a spiraling flash.

  She had to tear off his coat, except his sleeve had melted into his right arm. An ooze of wildfire was eating its way up his wrist to the elbow. Whatever this magical slime was, she cou
ld find no hold on it with her power. The blinding sludge seethed past his elbow. She had to act or he would lose more than his arm.

  Inaction was a choice. She could allow Tethiel to perish.

  Fangs unfolded from him in all directions like a shattering obsidian orb. They would skewer outward in his death throws. In the other facet, a crater had opened beneath him in a pit that had engulfed a city. Here, his spreading teeth would lance through all the guests and everyone within a radius of some miles.

  One spine bored through Hiresha’s waist with cold finality. It pierced through time and space, a tearing, rending nothing and everything. Hiresha pressed onward. She reached through the flames to touch Tethiel’s face.

  “You’ll not die.” She rested her blue paragon on his brow, her pyramid diamond over his triangle stigmata. “Only sleep.”

  She planned to remove him from pain then sever off his arm. He had to trust her to save him, not to deceive and destroy him like she had done to the dagger Feaster seventeen minutes before. Tethiel needed to withdraw his magic before he slayed everyone. He too must value his and her burning synchronicity.

  Though his eyes were awash in darkness, he was gazing at her. She could sense it. A freezing brilliance crashed over her even as his lashes drooped.

  He could die with power. Or he could trust her. This would decide everything.

  Tethiel smiled. His fangs faded into a mist of possibility. The spines narrowed into dark threads then frayed into nothing. The one that had speared Hiresha now had never been. The whites returned to his eyes the moment before they closed.

  She had him in deep sleep. The fate of the Lord of the Feast rested in her hands.

  The liquid fire crawled to his shoulder while her thoughts raced. She could give him a peaceful end. Hiresha could expunge all worlds of the Lord of the Feast.

  What a dreadful monotony that would be. Trying to align her facets would create a sickening infinity of mirror images. He had trusted her. She wouldn’t betray him.

  Hiresha whisked him away from the gawkers in the reception hall. Down a crystal passage, they left the shredded remains of his coat in a smoldering trail. Gold thread curled in on itself. Cloth smoldered to ash.