Her jewels clamped his blood vessels at the shoulder. She pulled away his burning arm two seconds before the ooze would’ve melted its way into his chest.
The exposed arm socket was not overly becoming. She folded loose skin over it then bound the wound closed. On his remaining hand he had lost a finger, which seemed careless. The stump bled on his hand, and she tended it as well. She deadened various nerve fibers then released him from his dreamless prison.
He did not wake at once. They floated over the maze of thorns. The crystals had pierced enough guests that veins of blood branched throughout the room. Judging by a filigree of green amidst the red, the Green Blood must have misstepped.
Tethiel’s charred limb smelled of burnt meat and tarnished copper. Even the bones had split under the heat. As she couldn’t salvage it, she hurled it to the farthest corner. Making Tethiel see that as the first thing upon waking would be a cruelty. Fortunately, as a Feaster he wouldn’t smell his own charred flesh, only her fears for him.
His eyes snapped open. He peered at his right truncated shoulder and the space where his arm would be. He gazed back to her with grave seriousness. “Then there was no saving the coat?”
“Tell Celaise to bring the one in my dressing room. I designed it for you and hadn’t yet decided if you deserved it.”
“And now you are certain?”
“Certain that you’re in need of a coat.” A smile edged its way onto her face.
“I fear I won’t fit it.” He nodded down to the missing arm.
“How irresponsible of a groom.” Hiresha pointed to his missing finger. “And how did you lose that?”
“I believe Guile stole it.” He peered through the space between his smallest finger and pointer. “Her idea of a jest. Lucky we will exchange necklaces, not rings.”
“You’d dare put on an enchanted necklace? It could make you forever young.”
He met her gaze. Though they levitated above the blood thorns without moving, everything seemed to spin in a scintillation of half-seen facets. He wore only a charred vest. Spectral vestments flowed around him in robes of magnificent shadow.
“Yes.” His four-fingered hand reached to hers. “I will wear it.”
“For how long?” She pulled back and folded her arms into the sleekness of her flames. The fire gown fluttered against her skin, cool as a breeze, hot as expectation.
“My heart, tonight I’ve kissed death, and after that flirtation I’m more than satisfied committing to you.”
“Forever?”
“That does sound like a long time, but I can be happy knowing murder can snatch away our bliss at any moment. That will make it ever precious.”
Hiresha’s heart pressed against her lungs and diaphragm as if it could fill her entire chest with warmth. Yes, she might marry him. His absent arm was a small matter; she could regenerate it in mere weeks. He and she could follow through with their plan to the end.
“I didn’t want to live forever until I met you,” he said.
No one had ever told her something so lovely. She thought she might reach out and take his one remaining hand. He lifted it to her with the mar of the missing finger. She might fold his between both of hers and kiss him.
Instead she stepped back. “First, I must confess. I killed you in another world.”
He did not blink. “I am certain I deserved it.”
“If I’ve seemed distant tonight, that’s the reason.”
“You were right to tell me, my heart. Marriages would be happier on the whole if every husband believed his wife capable of killing him.”
Hiresha raised a palm to keep him a step distant. Heat shimmered over her hand in the mirage of a glove. “In my other facet you were terrorizing the night with the Bleeding Maiden. You must promise you’ll not do the same here.”
“I’d never stoop—”
“If I don’t marry you. You must swear you’ll still oppose her.”
He traced his hand over his shoulder stump. “I would succumb, I fear, willing or not.”
“You could purge yourself with the wild magic. Then I’d arrange your stay among the Bright Palms until you could be certain of your safety.”
“Nothing is more grim than a certain future.”
“You have to promise nonetheless,” she said, “or the latent threat forcing me to accept you will compel me to refuse.”
“Ha-ha!” He gazed around him to the thicket’s eighteen-thousand points of crystal. Each thorn contained its own bramble with just as many branching veins: patterns within patterns, facets within facets. He straightened the blackened hem of frayed fabric over his stump. Bits of his coat crumbled off.
He must answer her soon. Each second of delay forced her to envision a new lifetime apart.
Tethiel yet said nothing.
“Speak now if you’ll not promise.” Her jewels tore through the air around her in jagged orbits.
“I swear,” he said, “and you already know I would keep my word. Allowing you to put me to sleep meant surrendering myself to the deadliness of your decisions.”
Yes, Hiresha could believe him. This wedding had included a few mishaps, yet it could still be one-hundred-karat perfect.
He raised his hand, now with five fingers. She suspected he had covered the blemish with illusion for her sake. She took it. They embraced, and he wrapped two arms around her. Her gown didn’t burn him. His touch brought the ache of a forgotten dream that would one day be remembered, the shrill contentment of a fleeting delight that would come again.
She could trust him, unless he had spoken and done what he had only to trick her. Wearing her last dress, she hadn’t been at all certain she had wished to marry him. One change later, and everything was different. Perhaps she only believed he had lost an arm to fire. He might have deceived her into thinking she’d had him asleep and helpless, when he had been in command the entire time.
The illusion would have needed to have been an intricate perfection, a work of peerless complexity baffling in its scope, and as subtle as a falsehood learned too early and taken for granted for too long. In short, it would’ve required a true master, which he was.
Or she was. Tethiel could be a woman. She or he was, above all else, a mystery.
Hiresha pushed back to arms’ length.
“You’re right to fear, my heart. All I’ve done these last years has lured you into flying me above this thicket of glass. Do you believe you could drop me to a pointy death? You are wrong. You have no choice. Now you must marry me.”
Hiresha had to laugh. The alternative was too terrifying. “Then I must consign my ensorcelled heart to an eternity by your side.”
“Woefully so.” He extended his right arm for her to take, the one she had seen melt away to ashes and warped bones.
Hiresha took it. She grasped her destiny. The sapphire passageways of her future aligned into a streaming endlessness, down which she plunged. She was breathless and beyond breathing. She hadn’t any words planned but knew exactly what to say.
“Tethiel, I never wanted to rule the world, until I met you.”
“May we despair of ever being apart.”
Hiresha assumed she was grinning like an idiot. She had no right to be this happy. They had a staggering amount left to achieve before the end of the wedding. Then again, maybe a certain amount of lunacy could be allowed for the sake of joy.
“Before we return to the festivities, I too must make a confession,” Tethiel said, “one darker than yours.”
PART
III
Hiresha walked with Tethiel over the fluorescent beach. A leap had carried them out of the crystal palace and through the moonlit fog. The wispy silver flowed softer than silk. Her toes landed in the cold firmness of sand. It massaged her bare feet. Algae between the grains shimmered like corundum jewels of green and blue. The lights sprinkled over the surf.
“I do hope,” Hiresha said, “not all the guests kill each other while we’re away.”
“We’r
e shamefully greedy to steal this time for ourselves and absolutely right to do so.”
“I’ll stay as long as Jerani is protecting what’s important, the fennec.”
“Of course.” The sand darkened around Tethiel’s boots then lit up purple behind them. “When we first met, my heart, I told you I’d started Feasting to save my family. Sometimes I believe that’s true. Sometimes, I doubt.”
Hiresha remembered the night. Rain had fallen around them like sapphires. Tethiel had warned her never to Feast. It wouldn’t help her. It wouldn’t cure her. It would only fill her with regret.
“I have splinters of memory,” he said, “shreds like past dreams. There might have been a girl. Nothing of her remains to me but a sense of shimmering youth. I think I wished to win her. To steal her away from my older brother.”
“Then you began Feasting?”
“It may be so. I know, I know. My infamy might never recover if people thought I began indulging in forbidden magics for the sake of love.”
He didn’t know what in his past had been real or false. Hiresha could say the same of her present. What a terror to always doubt oneself, to never have any certainty. She took his hands in hers and cradled them. Real or false, they were his. “Memories reflect our beliefs more than truths. Perhaps your history is changing with you, though I hate to think you’re believing increasingly in love.”
“Sentiment is the most pretentious thing you can wear. No, there’s a more comforting answer. My magic is corrupting my memories. And my present.”
Fog rolled overhead as surf churned nearby. Warmth breezed over Hiresha and enlivened the flames of her dress. “You mean, constant Feasting on human fear changes how you perceive the world? What a revelation.”
“True power requires an unhealthy and unreasonable belief in yourself. What you call my illusions, I see as truth. The world changes around my will, sometimes without my even knowing.”
He lifted fluorescing sand and threw it in a spray of fluttering fireflies. He had used his right hand, the one she had seen charred beyond function.
“Did the Talon burn off my arm with an explosion of dragon blood? Or did I make everyone believe so? I do not know my present or my past. Maybe I don’t truly enjoy your company, or you mine.”
A groaning bellow echoed through the mists from a distant monster at sea. Hiresha faced Tethiel, lacing her fingers with his. Waves crashed nearby with the same rhythm as the flow and ebb as a spinning intensity that coursed up her hands and into her arms.
“Maybe that’s all love ever is,” he said, “a spark of truth created between two minor illusionists.”
The phytoplankton twinkled over the beach and crashed in the waves as brightness. Hiresha waded into the star flow with him. She said, “I can accept love as a pleasing illusion.”
“It’s more than that. Sometimes it’s agony.”
Then perhaps she did love him from time to time. She wouldn’t waste long pondering semantics, not when she had many more intriguing questions. “You told me your magic obscures your past. Does this mean even you don’t know if you’re a man or a woman?”
“And everyone who might remember is dead.” Tethiel’s vest had taken on the pattern of whitewater, with serpent coils writhing in silver thread.
“You will know after purging yourself with the wild magic.”
“I am frightened to find out. A man may wade through a hundred lies only to drown in a puddle of truth.”
They had each of them sacrificed certainty for power. Hiresha knew she might dream. Tethiel might lie. No one in the world would understand except for each other. The tensions in Hiresha drained through her bare feet into the moist sand. She wriggled her toes, and their jewels twinkled. Only one doubt remained.
“I should’ve spoken of this before,” she said. “I understand how marriages are consummated, yet beyond that I likely won’t wish to spend too much time in the bedroom.”
His gazed at her but did not reply. Each quarter-second felt to her a small age of anxiety. He might call her inhuman in her needs, or lack thereof. Tethiel would be more correct to call her unreasonable, for her to hope he shared all her desires and disinclinations without having discussed them exhaustively before their wedding. At least he had refrained from agreeing too quickly that he had as little lust for her. As much as Hiresha was above petty insecurities, they might still smart.
Hiresha’s face was flushed and nipped by sea spray. “Poets confuse love and intercourse. I do not. One is affectation, the other sensual. I appreciate the latter, within reason.”
“You care more of trust and regard, deep as ocean depths.” His easy tone concealed whether or not he mocked her.
“We should reach an understanding now, in terms of matrimonial expectations.”
The sea breeze ruffled his hair, which was dark but had luster as bright as silver. It fluttered and became mist then sifted back into being. “You are too good to be true, my heart.”
“I should hope not.”
“You needn’t worry. I am potent in my spellcraft but less so in traditional ways.”
Impotency didn’t correlate strongly with a lack of desire. Though she hated to suggest it, she said, “You may not be aware, yet I have enchanted a peculiar sort of ring to aid older noblemen.”
“It is enough to possess your time and your high opinion. I savor your fears, few and precious.” He dared to wink at her then. “Sex is a childish pastime.”
Against all odds they were in near agreement. He had to be as amazed and nervous as she, wondering how so right a pairing could be probable.
Hiresha didn’t have to rise to her tiptoes to kiss him. When their lips touched, the world trembled, and a pinging sound crossed between Hiresha’s facets. In one, he lay dead in her arms, his heart stopped. Here, his heart thudded against her chest. His touch was a painful necessity, like a salve rubbed onto an open wound.
“If you’re a dream,” she said, “at least you’re most diverting.”
“That is my only goal.”
Flying back with him to the wedding palace, Hiresha collided with a thought. They stuck in the air. “Your magic is what makes you impotent?”
“Yes, and the opposite.”
They had lost their momentum. Hiresha had to sink down to a rooftop before they could jump skyward again. “Then, when you stop Feasting, your former desires may return.”
“Let us not dwell on it until after the ritual. We have greater troubles waiting for us inside.”
He was all too correct. She couldn’t help but imagine abandoning the last hours of the wedding. Leaving seemed infinitely easier than dealing with the guests. “Must we even marry? We’ve agreed to a moderation of intimacy and have no aspirations of children.”
“Marriage should always be a goal, never a means.”
“Excepting, I assume, how it’s critical to our plans.”
“There, you see,” he said. “It is important to us, and that’s enough.”
“I wonder if it is. Nothing as flimsy as love could ever suffice to bring a couple through marriage.”
“No rite of passage involving blood, terror, or deprivation is half so harrowing as a wedding,” he said. “You cannot expect anyone properly wed to be sane, loving, or fit to raise a family.”
“Then it is well we have a deeper bond,” she said. “More sensible than love.”
“More complex than lust,” he said.
“As a wedding is a parade of bothers, we must dress ourselves against them.”
Jerani and Celaise waited before the crystal doors. They had brought the coat. Jerani spun to face Hiresha and Tethiel as they dropped from the mist. Celaise kept composed; she must’ve smelled them coming.
“Wear armor,” Tethiel said, “and people will want to bash you. A fine enough coat makes a man invulnerable.”
“Especially when that coat contains an inner layer of armor,” Hiresha said.
Jerani held out the vest first. Hiresha had designed the outfit wit
h the golden ratio, and math made everything handsome. The red handkerchief in the chest pocket was folded in progressively smaller triangles. The black fabric glossed from purple to green depending on one’s vantage. The cuffs mirrored the collar to give the impression that his hands were dangling heads.
“You will note, the fractal embroidery,” Hiresha said. “Looking closer will show you the same pattern as at a distance.”
Tethiel held out his arms. Jerani and Celaise slipped on the coat. He rolled his shoulders into it and sighed.
Jerani asked, “Will you kill the Talon? For attacking you.”
“Cannot you allow a man a moment to enjoy the best coat he’s ever worn?” Tethiel asked.
“You’re far better without that decrepit lapel flower,” Hiresha said. “As far as the Talon, we need him alive, for tonight.”
“Best to pretend the attack never happened. It’s my fault as much as his.”
“Absolutely not true.”
“My mistake, his malice.”
“I’ll execute him slowly,” Hiresha said. “An enchantment will fill his bowels with tumors.”
“You’re the rarest of delicacies.”
While Celaise dressed Hiresha in her gown of victory, the fennec bounded out of the double doors. He carried a terror bird feather as big as him. The fox dropped it at her feet. He chirped in proud ascending trills at his theft.
“You mustn’t slaughter all the terror birds, my brave fox, or they’ll go extinct, Hiresha said. She told Celaise to place the feather in her dressing room beside the statuette of the pink hippo.
“Shall we?” Tethiel beckoned her back into the dining hall. “May they see us together and despair.”
“I have my fox.”
“I have a new coat.”
“The world could array itself against us,” she said. “We would still conquer.”
Jerani made sure not to step on the lady’s long dress. It dragged behind her, wrapping around the column and strangling it. The cloth writhed when she walked across the ceiling. Something wasn’t right about the way the dress gleamed. No guest could look away. None dared look too close.
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