Dark Lord's Wedding (41 page)

Tethiel had sworn he and Hiresha must not undermine each other’s wishes, yet he had done exactly that. She had been right to kill him in the other facet, even at the price of dead friends, even if it had bordered on catastrophic.

Her skin tightened her face into a grimace, and clenching spasms bent her forward. No matter if these youths saw her in agony. They might not even be real. If they were, they would likely all be dead soon anyway. All withered and perished. Even enchantments faded, and priceless jewels broke.

“Let us leave,” Naroh said, her cheek smashed against Sagai’s elbow. “We’ll go far from you and never come back.”

“That was my offer after the first time you tried to murder me. I shouldn’t have given it then. The only question remaining is how you must die.”

Hiresha could tear the couple apart with the suddenness of cracked necks. She could bring them to the wedding and execute them as an example. Their partnership would end for Hiresha’s to begin. Perhaps there was only so little happiness in the world. To extract joy from the equilibrium, Hiresha would have to inflict pain.

“You grew up afraid of the sea, Naroh, did you not? My guests might enjoy seeing you thrown overboard and fed to some manner of monster.”

“Hook you!” Tears spurted out of Naroh’s eyes as she shouted. “You salty assed miser! You could’ve stayed in the Empire and had all your servants, all your rich food, but you wanted more.”

“Proud words, from a maid who seduced a prince. Or was it the other way around?”

“They disinherited me,” Spellsword Sagai said, “and we’re still together.”

“Now my dragon will rip you apart piece by piece. I should think it only fair.” Hiresha waved a hand, and the crystal ball of the dragon’s eye rolled back into its ocular orbit. Scales slid together again.

“Enchantress Hiresha,” Sagai said, “free us, and we’ll serve you as spellswords. We’ll swear on our blades.”

Hiresha took his enchanted sword and snapped it in front of his face. She could make a better one, not that she would, for him. She needed to repair her dragon. Without it she could hardly present herself at her wedding.

Naroh had cleaved through the crystals of the dragon’s right fore claw while defending Sagai. He had lopped off the head. Hiresha fitted those amethysts back together, though the guests might see the cracks. Her dragon would never be as it once was.

No, she knew that wasn’t true. She might polish new crystals, though not tonight. The damage could’ve been more extensive. Sagai had only stripped off enchantments from the ventral scales rather than bashing his way to her.

Her vision warped from the pressure of her anger. She had to question if she should judge anyone now. All she could see was death. Her heart had rarely beat with such vicious speed. She took hold of herself, and enchantments began to relax her bodily systems.

Her insides rebelled with cramps. More adrenaline squeezed into her blood. No, she couldn’t be calm, not with all that had happened tonight. There was too much to forget and even more to do.

With her dragon now whole and kneeling before her, she turned to the pair of assassins. Blood covered Sagai’s face and pooled in his eye. A bronze shard from his sword had opened his cheek. He couldn’t move except to blink.

Hiresha touched him, and his wound closed. “I have invited friends to my wedding but more enemies. You’ll both not be so very out of place.”

They gazed up at her with four eyes. Hers squinted with distrust. His were puckered with grief.

“Don’t torture yourselves with hope.” Hiresha unbound the couple and lifted them upright. “You’ll likely die before next I sleep, and in the interim you’ll hold nothing.”

The star sapphire and ruby drifted past Hiresha’s shoulders to slap into the hands of the assassins. The gems Attracted fingers into fists. Sagai’s smacked into Naroh’s. The two were locked together again, if not as contorted.

“I’m so sorry,” he said to her.

She grimaced at him. “And I’m not.”

“Touching.” Hiresha motioned with a finger, and the dragon ate them alive.

Their shouts were muffled by the plated gullet of crystal. The couple tumbled into the cavity in the dragon’s chest, where they had recently disturbed Hiresha’s rest. They could simmer in the irony.

With a symphonic warbling, the fennec leaped down toward her. He must’ve finished chasing frogs in the canopy. An enchantment in his collar Lightened him and he swam the rest of the way into her arms.

“Would you have spared someone who’d attacked you twice?” Hiresha smoothed his whiskers back with two fingers. “But then, how could anyone pierce your armor of adorability?”

The fennec sang an aria of chirps and squeaks to Hiresha and Celaise. The youth left the young warrior’s side to kneel.

“My Lady,” she said, “may we begin your first gown?”

“We may. I imagine Tethiel is already satisfied with how long I’ve kept the guests waiting.” A tremor of pinching unease ran through her. Earlier that evening she had killed Tethiel in the dusk facet. Tonight in this one she would marry him, if she could bear to.

She shifted the fennec to her left arm. The right she extended. She blocked all its nerves before she willed her skin to part. Paired Attraction spells resulted in a precise cut. She folded her skin back to reveal the jointed marvel of the hand. A glove of white connective tissue enclosed her new fingertips. The glistening redness of muscle clothed her arm bones. The graceful ulna and tibia twined about each other and she rotated her hand.

Enchantments would keep her bared self free of contamination units. She wrapped her loose skin in the same protective magic then tucked it out of sight beneath the skirt Celaise was crafting.

The girl’s brows were taut with concentration, hooks tufting up at either end. Her lips puckered as shadows flowed around her. She wove them around moonbeams. The gleaming threads were sculpted, and she hardened them around Hiresha with puffs of breath. The touch of the Feaster’s dress was more invigorating than ice, more exciting than the recent fight.

Hiresha regarded her dress from all sides in the reflective scales of her dragon. Every skeleton inspired her with evolved proportions and grace. Celaise had made only two errors in curvature, which she soon mended.

“You are a meticulous craftswoman, and I respect that,” Hiresha said.

The girl inclined her head. She was not one to bow. One day she might make an excellent lord of the night. Behind her crouched Jerani, massaging his leg.

Hiresha might have been too critical of the young couple. “Celaise, you killed the Feaster accompanying the spellsword assassins?”

She licked her lips. “Yes, My Lady.”

“And had you not been there, this Feaster would’ve been able to detect me within my dragon?”

Celaise seemed to consider before answering. “You smelled strongly tonight.”

“My dreams were fraught.”

Jagged shadows of fanged terrors seethed across Hiresha’s other facet. Death flashed, and betrayal seared. Screams reverberated within, threatening to fracture her. Hiresha wouldn’t waste time deliberating whether she had slain the Tethiel of truth or dreams. In any event he had not died easily. He had scrabbled at her world, tried to sever her fate.

As powerful as she was, she could die. Whatever wonders she built could be broken. She understood now; all her knowledge could be lost. Her blood may spill in waste and chaos, rather than in an artful arrangement.

Her jewels didn’t match the starkness of this dress. She plucked them from her left hand and let the cavities fill with a luster of blood. Had anyone else done this to her, it would’ve been mutilation. This was control. This was freedom. She would’ve had neither, if not for Celaise and Jerani.

“Celaise, Jerani, I’m sure you performed admirably for your parts.” Hiresha waved to them with her bare arm. A lacework of veins that had looked blue when hidden under skin now had their true crimson revealed. “I was wrong to raise my voice to you. If there’s any fault, it is with your lord.”

“And the Bleeding Maiden,” Celaise said. “Her and Angler were close.”

“‘She,’ not ‘her,’” Hiresha said.

“Well, she’s going to be jealous of this dress.”

“Only if she has the least aesthetic sensibilities.” Hiresha opened the principal veins in her wrist. “Let us finish the skirt.”

A warmth greater than black wine’s poured through Celaise. Just looking at the dress sent whirling gusts over her like she had leaped off the mountain heights. She could stand as tall as those cliffs, and she breathed in deep enough to take in a world of crisp air.

Not even the Bleeding Maiden could’ve imagined such a gown. All the guests would be spellbound. Celaise may have just made the most dazzling dress in all the Lands of Loam.

It shone in the darkness and glared in the light. Pale as fear, it was whiter than true bone. Droplets of blood stood out on it like rubies.

Below the skeletal bodice, streamers of blood flowed around the lady in a skirt. They branched in vein patterns, connecting to her wrist, and the red drapery lifted with her hand.

This dress exposed much. The lady had flayed her right arm to the shoulder, and her left leg to the hip. Her skin peeled back in flaps like butterfly wings to show the sides of her ribcage, bands of red and off-white.

Celaise asked, “You don’t want me to darken the dress to match your bones? Or the other way around?”

“Let us not change plans now,” Hiresha said. “We haven’t the time. And I prefer the natural color of my skeleton.”

She glanced to the left. Jerani dragged in the dead Angler. Celaise wouldn’t stare at the Feaster’s corpse. That shriveled body wasn’t who he had been. The sun dragon’s curse had stolen away the Feaster’s true self. The Winged Flame had power even in the dark of night, but somehow the lady had outdone him. Celaise was more her true self during the day than most Feasters.

The lord father had been right to choose the lady. She understood the beauty of Celaise’s dress. And the lady had power over the sun.

“You’re very brave,” Jerani told the lady. “No warrior asks for so many marks. And so deep.”

“No, you were brave, to test your pain thresholds against scarification.” The lady peeled off a circle of skin from her brow. It filled in red. “I am very calculating. I’ve prevented myself from feeling the pain, from being infected, and from drawing too much blood.”

Jerani huddled closer to the lady and frowned down at her legs. Celaise began to wonder what he was thinking, that the lady had shapely muscles in her thigh? The tendons running tight over her knee and around her shin were smoother than silk. He would see every contour of her flesh.

“I also tested that I can autograft the skin in its original positions and regenerate its connective tissue.”

She had even stripped her foot, and chords of white stretched from her ankle to toe bones like the most intricate shoe. Celaise would never be able to look like that.

“Jerani,” Celaise said, “don’t stare.”

“How couldn’t I?”

The lady cut off a last few strips of skin with a glance. Her fox tried to bat at them, the fiend, but she kept them out of reach. Nodding, she turned to her dragon. It lofted the Angler’s corpse with one hand. Wings pressed against the trees.

“Its right foreleg was damaged. You’ll be carried alongside each other with the back ones. I hope that will suit.”

Celaise glanced at Jerani. Crystal claws closed around her and him.

The dragon hauled them skyward. Branches were swept aside. The sky opened up in its full glory of night. Great wings beat. Bats whirled away. Celaise matched the level of the full moon, skimming over the glowing fog. Dew gusted its chilly sharpness across her face. The domed palace that raced toward them looked carved from starlight.

Celaise smiled at Jerani. He smiled at her. For now, they were alive.

“
Then if I must decide, I’ll request jewels and gold but not demand. Should anything else be given, I’ll smile then sell it later.”

“
Delicious!”