by May Peterson
“You won’t do it?” I tsked. “We both know why. If you kill me, you risk that the calyx charm on you will fade. Magic doesn’t tend to outlast the mage who makes it. You lose your trump card if I die. But if I live, your death is certain. What’s it going to be?”
They glared, stunned. No way in hell had Father predicted this. He wasn’t a man of instinct, but of calculation. He and Serafina both played with people like game pieces, but she had the soul of the bandit in her, ready to seize the moment. Father liked leaving nothing to fate. That was why he had me.
I was tired of calculating. Tired of second-guessing every breath. I would never get out of the labyrinth that prescience had made of my life.
I shoved my forehead into the tip of the barrel. “Kill me now or get out!”
The soldier gasped, tried to yank back his gun hand. I wrestled with him, the barrel all but swiping my face as we struggled. A clicking sound caught in the air. In the shreds of a second, I nearly saw it with prophetic certainty—the bullet firing, striking me. But in the next instant, Father’s arm shot forth, swatted the gun from his man’s hand, pushing me back into the table. The gun clattered to the floor.
The three of us stood in a triangle, panting, the dull silence of the inert firearm like an aborted song. The soldier was backed up against the wall, not even bothering to retrieve the weapon. Father looked pale and sweaty, like ice that was melting.
When I spoke into the brittle silence, I felt halfway in a trance, my words charged with holy fire. “You want to know how to convince me that you care about me? You should have let me and Mother go. You should have let Weifan kill you. You should have let Tibario kill you. You shouldn’t have fucking raped me.”
The soldier mechanically stooped to take his weapon and stood woodenly behind Father, who watched me and did not move.
The scent of apocalypse was thickening around me like smoke. “Hear me, and hear me well. I speak as the Honored Child. You have prospered, you have ruled, you have brought this land to its knees. Now my dragon-soul is coming for you, for this city, for the world. The only future that remains is devastation. Now get out of my fucking flat.”
I was left catching my breath, fingers clenched on the side of my table. Father’s lack of response was as loud as a gunshot.
Stiffly, he turned to open the door. Before passing through, he glanced back at me. “I’m interested to know what your mother would make of this.”
In the next instant, he and his man were gone. I waited several minutes before scrambling to the window, seeing all evidence of his presence flush out of the street.
I stood there in my little flat, the end of the world coiled around me like a serpent’s tail, and watched the sun descend in the sky.
Chapter Thirteen
Tibario
The message came at the cusp of nightfall, stripes of gold and red yet ringing the sky. Martina bore news of Leo, speaking of a mutual friend. I didn’t need the message decoded.
It took me five minutes to straighten my tail and throw on something presentable, and Leo was waiting for me at a quiet corner of the city, and sure enough—Violetta was with him. She was draped in indigo, hair flowing free with a crest of pink flowers at her temple.
I’d woken up excited to see her again. Maybe it was cliche to think that after making love, I felt closer to her than ever. But it wasn’t only that. She had given me the chance to make something safe for her. She had once shielded the whole nation. Now I could be her calyx, her shield against the evil her life had been.
She hadn’t merely let me in. She had forgiven me. Time was rapidly drying like the residue of rainwater in the sun, evaporating into the dust and wind our lives would become when we were gone. And in this fading time, when I had no years left for dreams of redemption, she had forgiven me.
“Tibario.” Her voice scented the air with honey and regret. “You came.”
“I said I’d come.” Heat rushed to my face. “I’ll always come. As long as there’s something of me left to show up.”
Leo’s sigh was heavy with familiarity. “Before you start mooning, let’s go to the Rose where we can have some peace.”
“No.” Violetta shook her head. “We stay away from there. And you and I are parting ways after this, Leo. We need to minimize being seen together.”
Leo’s lips parted, but he offered no protest, as if this was an argument they’d gone through before.
Before I could respond, Violetta gripped the front of my jacket, leaning in with sudden urgency. “Father found me. He may have always been able to find me. I wasn’t sure where else to go, there are too many places he can follow me, too many places that aren’t safe, that stopped being safe—”
I squeezed her shoulders, made a gently soothing noise. Her speech was tipping into mania, the fervency I had once associated with her childhood prophecies. “It’s all right.” No seer needed to tell me why Casilio would disturb her like this. “I’ll find somewhere we can go. You don’t have to explain.”
She paused, took a deep breath, and nodded vigorous with appreciation. “Thank you.”
Leo clasped his arms over his chest, giving the impression of restraining another rebuttal. “I don’t like it, but I’ve learned not to argue with you about the future. I want you to come back to me if you need anything, understand? There are dozens of hidey-holes I can arrange. If I find out some new apocalypse is descending on our heads and you left me to sit on my thumbs, we’re talking parsnips. Got it?”
Uh, parsnips? Neither of them explained; Violetta said farewell with a hug and a kiss on the temple, and led me down the street.
“Father knows.” She scanned the streets, mantle closed around her, voice rife with frantic energy. “He knows you were the masked attacker. He thought I was in on it with you and Serafina, but my prophecy set him right. I don’t know what he’ll do now, but he has to know targeting you is pointless.”
Her breath pounded out fast, and I stroked the back of her hair. It was taking a liberty to touch her like this, but her tension unsettled me. “Breathe. We’ll figure something out. Where do you want to go? I can take you anywhere. One advantage to being dead, you know.”
The attempt at lightness had some effect, anyway. It seemed to pull her out of her urgency long enough to blink and lean into my touch. “You are a wicked cat. I don’t think there’s anywhere for us to go. It’s all the same now. The same story is unfolding for everyone, and it’s all ending in the same place.”
It was as though we’d all been traversing separate winding paths, trapped in the private labyrinths of our twisted lives, and the doom prophecy was pushing all those walls down. It should be a more grim thought, but there was a breathtaking unity to it that I couldn’t help but find exhilarating. “If it’s all the same, let’s just spend what time we can together. I’ll take you back to your flat. We don’t have to let Casilio take that from you.”
Worry shivered from her in physical waves. “No. It’s already spoiled for me. I’m afraid to go back. Father suggested he knows how to find Mother. He could still track Rosalina, Weifan. He’ll bear down every trick he has left if he thinks it could change his fate. Immortality doesn’t protect you from him perfectly, and he knows that. He made certain I understood that.”
The darkness in her tone turned my guts. This would always be how Casilio played, inflicting every wound Violetta’s heart could bear while he still had the chance. If he couldn’t best her in power, he’d abuse her in spirit.
“Then come with me.” I wrangled both of her hands gently and clasped my fingers with hers. “Let me take you home. My home. If all roads lead to the same place, we can at least be together. I won’t leave you again, not even for a day. This time nothing will stand between me and my promise—I am with you until the end.”
A meek smile quickened on her lips. “Your mother is going to hate having me underfoot.”
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“That’s the spirit.” I squeezed her hands and nuzzled her. We stood in plain view of the street, but the only passersby were other charming lowlifes like us. Violetta took the cue and embraced me, hair fragrant and soft against my face.
She had spoken of lovers avoiding closeness with her in public, and a sharp understanding of that shot through me—not agreement with their shame, but a sudden grasp of how intense this must always be. I feared for her. Even in this part of town, an obvious mollyqueen snuggling her lover was not a sight I wanted many people to see. If someone got a mind to make trouble, she’d be the one most hurt by it. A lightning rod for stigma.
Being a mollyqueen must be like being half in shadow, a moon never fully seen. Even if I never felt a tinge of embarrassment to be seen next to her, eventually my fear of public mistreatment would grow. And if I came to part ways with her, how would she ever know that it wasn’t because I’d found that fear too high a price to pay? In her world, the danger to all her lovers was first and foremost the danger to her, and if it didn’t harm them it would drive them away. This rose up between us like a live thing, an intelligence molding our bond into its own shape. I felt it as sharply as I hated it for her. Because of a violence that could never be her fault, it would take courage to love her. One day even the bravest lover may walk away, leaving her alone in the embrace of that violence.
What about her bravery? What about the courage it took her to live in shadow each day to have a life at all?
* * *
The Deep bore the scent of my death. Passage through it was my memento mori, the proof of my immortality and mortality both, the two bound together by definition. I told Violetta to hold tight to me, and I clasped her with all my supernatural strength. We dropped through the eternal night of the Deep in a spangle of amber lights, the autumnal glow of my cat-soul.
We materialized in my house. Shimmers of virtue-light faded slowly against the gleam of her hair. A sleepy relief shone in her eyes as she drew breath again.
Would I ever have bared my heart to her, if I hadn’t died? Would I have left her alone forever without having my soul quite literally knocked out of me?
Maybe. That was the core of my rage, that I had been so comfortable behind the glass shell of the son I strove to be. I had to be broken apart to dare look past it. Not one but two deaths had been required to get me to brave the truth with her. She braved it as easily as breathing, unable to escape the challenge her life demanded of her.
This wasn’t merely shame, though shame certainly abounded in my hollow little heart. It was the outrage of a doll waking up, only beginning to inhabit life once it had been damaged. I was cracking down the middle, and that alone put breath in my lungs.
But that was still the lesser of two wrongs. The worse evil was how contentedly I had been to be that doll until it became impossible to keep being it. It wasn’t a question of whether I’d ever have brought Violetta to my home without a death prophecy numbering our days. Of course I wouldn’t have.
As a wicked cat, I was furious at her abandonment. But when I’d been a virtuous doll, my entire nature had complied with the forces that’d caused that abandonment. I preferred myself as the wicked cat, but I had no more chosen to become it than I had chosen to be Tibario the good son, the left hand of House Gianbellicci. I would have kept up Mamma’s game forever, if she had only squeezed me less tightly.
We had appeared in the hall of the upper floor, overlooking a balcony and courtyard view of the garden. Our house was a luxurious place by my childhood standards, though it somewhat paled next to the palatial shadows of Violetta’s pre-runaway home. Violetta stalked quietly to the window and ran fingers delicately over it, as if afraid to touch anything with too much force.
I whispered into the settling dark, watching her scan the hall. “Mamma and Martina will be asleep. Mamma has been...unsettled lately. I’ll deal with her when morning comes, but I can take you back if you change your mind.” Her attention seemed to be half on me and half consumed by the view. I sniffed. “You all right?”
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head, voice thick with ambiguous emotion. “I didn’t expect to feel this nostalgia being back here again. When was the last time I was in your house? I didn’t think I’d ever see you in your own home again.”
That strummed a tender place deep inside me, as if she were touching a sleeping region of our linked past. “I didn’t either. I’d always wanted you to stay with me longer than you were allowed to. I had fancies about us being together once we were older.”
The expression she turned on me was a marriage of fond smile and sad frown. “Tibario, I can’t get used to this. You were the first one to tell me how you felt. Never in my life had I imagined you were matchmaking us in your imagination while I was doing the same. It still shocks me when you say these things. How did we get here? In a prison made out of illusions.”
It appeared to be the way of things. For all of us, the disillusion had only truly been made possible by death. The deaths we’d endured, or the deaths still coming.
In spite of my cold-resistant body, a chill ran through me while I led Violetta to my room. The illusions weren’t dead yet, and they could do immense damage as they fell apart. My original problem was still here, in this house. Mamma could still try to hurt Violetta. I had too few ways to protect her, and she had spent too long desperately trying to protect herself in vain. Bringing her here was at an unsettling risk.
Mamma would have to be dealt with soon enough. A piece of me hoped she would change so I wouldn’t have to fight her.
Violetta drew into herself. In my room, she gave little mind to my things, the familiarity she may have found here. Instead, she collapsed on my bed, arms pulled around herself like armor. I didn’t know what to do except stand there and give her time. For all I knew, she hadn’t had a moment to feel truly safe and alone since seeing Casilio. Now, sinking into the privacy we shared, she appeared abruptly fragile. She fell back on the bed, hair covering her face. You would never think this was the same witch who’d defeated an army of living-again. She looked now like she had looked asleep on that dais in her golden chains: defenseless.
After a few moments, a strange movement began running up her body. Uneven, sporadic tremors. Then it made sense: she was sobbing. Holding her tears inside, only emerging as faint gasps of air. My urge was to run to her, hold her tight. But I knew better. Touch, even kind touch, wasn’t necessarily welcome. I had to suppress my need to make her feel better. It may not be what she needed.
I turned to my bookshelf and made a show of not noticing her so she would have time to collect herself. But it felt cold to ignore her for long. When her breathing began to calm, I sat down next to her on the bed, and the indentation my ass made caused her to roll against me. As if by reflex, she wrapped both arms around my waist and pressed her face into the side of my thigh. Aw. Vi.
I kept my voice low. “Can I comfort you?”
She nodded exaggeratedly, moving my body with her. I laughed and cupped her head, running fingers through her curls. She leaned into the touch as if hungry for it. Fates knew I was. She somehow managed the trick of sitting up without letting go of me, and we moved into a full embrace. Once more she was folded against my chest, the scent of her skin rushing headily into me.
“I hate him.” Her voice was muffled by my clothes. “I want to kill him.” She detached, sighing, her manner a touch more natural and relaxed, as if she’d exorcised a force of rage from within. “I dream about it. About...doing violence to him. I’ve never hated anyone so much in my life. I always thought it was evil to hate anyone. If it is, I’m an unrepentant evil witch.”
I nuzzled her cheek. “Fuck him. He deserves hatred. I bet all the best witches hate him. You’re in good company.”
She revealed her face, scrubbing red eyes and swiping hair from her brow. An air of wounded innocence emanated from her like a halo, mystic
al, prophetic. She could have been an omen of everything to come. Hell, there must be seers that prophesied with tears. Magic always seemed to have something to do with pain.
Her smile was so tender, so suddenly happy, that it broke my heart. “We’re all in good company now, considering we’re all sinking on the same boat. But it feels good to let myself hate him.”
Images of Mio saying he hated Mamma thrust to the surface of my mind. And my suspicious lack of agreement with him.
We held each other for a few moments more. Violetta then whispered damply into my neck. “What I really want right now is to have your dick in my mouth.”
I blinked. Was it daytime already, or was my body temperature rising on its own? A glance at her showed a fresh blush, all the way to her ears, and that smile was shyer now, perhaps afraid of my reaction. But her new audacity just about put me into heat.
“I.” A moment to clear my throat. “I. Would like that. But you’ve been crying, Vi. I brought you here for safety. I’d feel like I was taking advantage.”
Her bashful chuckle was adorable. “Maybe I can take advantage of you, then? It can be fun to play seductress. After all. It’s not every day a girl gets her childhood sweetheart alone in his bedroom. It has a certain charge to it. Fuck, we played here as kids.”
That had no business being as arousing as it was. But, god fuck it, she wasn’t even close to wrong. It was almost hypnotic to imagine getting to act out my earliest fantasies and attractions with the exact person I’d first wanted, in the place I used to lie and picture her while I brought myself off.
All right. She wasn’t putting on a face—Violetta had never been good at hiding her emotions. I could believe her. And considering I was already hard as steel in my pants, the play was either to give in or go relieve myself in private. The latter seemed unhospitable, all considered.
“Vi.” I took her hands and adjusted her so we were face-to-face, my desire naked. Her pupils looked huge. “Are you offering to ravish me?”
