Dark Lord's Wedding (6 page)

He held the fox at arms’ length. “We thought you—”

“Bring him to my banyan stronghold at midnight.” Hiresha hopped into the air and Attracted her boots on. Her robe swirled around her, concealing the brilliance of her dress. Her paragon diamonds whirled around her upraised hand. She glanced back to the tribesman and the Feaster woman. “A man may come asking for me.”

Jerani stopped cringing at the fox to look up. “What?”

“He likely will have an overgrowth of tattoos.” Hiresha had to leave this instant. “He’ll be dangerous. Neither of you should try to fight him.”

The young man exchanged a look of unease with the Feaster woman.

Hiresha dipped down to Attract a cave-slime stain from Tethiel’s coat and then launched herself into the sky. The rain parted from her. The forest canopy beneath her was a swaying sea of rushing green.

She kicked off a tree trunk for greater speed. Parrots squawked in an outrage of blue and orange.

One feathered creature was less innocent. It had the shrunken face of a human. She had chanced upon one of the Dominion’s hexed abominations. A man they had transformed into a monster. The winged warrior turned to her the moment she darted around a swaying branch.

He would have glimpsed her, yet he might not believe his eyes. A woman flew over the jungle without even one feather. If he had spotted the spinning arcs of her jewels and known them, that would ruin her.

He could not know. He couldn’t guess. This land had no enchantresses. And there were no enchantresses like her.

The winged warrior flew around the tree spire and into view. Hiresha dropped into the cover of the canopy. She careened around mossy branches, between woody vines, below flowering bromeliads. Even if the winged warrior couldn’t match her speed, he could follow her by the sound of surprised howler monkeys.

She slingshotted herself higher into the rainforest mist. The condensation bit into her skin as she zoomed from wisp to wisp around the treetops. The necessity for evasion slowed her. She would be late. She could not be.

The sun neared its zenith. That smeared blast of light in the clouds would strike her into slumber. She should find a place to rest in a treetop. She could secure herself and await her shift to her other facet in safety.

Any jaguar could find her while she lay dead to the world, any honey hunter, any winged warrior. No, she had to reach her reliquary.

She sprang over the village mining her amethysts. A glance told her they had unearthed a promising collection of material. Nahui wasn’t in sight. The girl could’ve been sent underground again. She should be convalescing, yet Macco the pit boss might’ve ignored Hiresha’s advice.

Hiresha could not stop to check. She skipped over the banyans of her stronghold, past them, across a jungle basin and into the misty ridges of eroded limestone. Blackness closed in on her vision. Everything flickered; the jungle vanished and became the etched interior of a sarcophagus.

The other her was waking up.

Hiresha had another three seconds. She had fallen on a rock formation and broken a rib. Inconsequential. Skimming over a last rock ridge, she fell into a sulcus in the limestone and onto her reliquary.

The immense geode opened at her touch, and she swung inside. Amethyst crystals enclosed her, each reflecting blue and red from her paragons.

She fit her red diamond into her engagement necklace. The claw tines cupped the jewel. All was well.

Hiresha closed her eyes.

She awoke in another world.

Last breaths sweetened the adobe house. Tethiel stopped before the doorway and inhaled.

Flies buzzed in celebration. A corpse lay at the threshold, and the ground bore gashes from when the man had tried to claw his way forward on his belly. He had wanted escape, the poor dainty, and he had found the only true one. The rictus of his open mouth revealed teeth sharpened to points. He had been a warrior. He hadn’t stood a chance, not against the Bleeding Maiden.

Tethiel knew the Feaster was still here. Her scent of rotten roses oozed out of the house. He had to look his best for his would-be rival.

Daylight stained his coat, but after he stepped into the delicious darkness of the house, the smears vanished. His loose threads knitted together. The gold embroidery rewove through his satin into a dragon nibbling a rosebush. A mist-maiden flower grew from his buttonhole, its five pale petals unfolding. The Bleeding Maiden would have every chance to appreciate it. Nothing spoke louder than subtlety.

He tied his cravat from shadows. The handkerchief he held in his left hand was a spider web of the finest lace. He tucked terrors up his sleeves. One held an ogre with venomous beer breath and fists ready to express his bruising love to his weeping wife. Up the other cuff lurked the old standby of the abyssal dragon. Tethiel was ready.

He walked deeper into the house and over the detritus of the living. A rack of drying shoes had tipped over into the hearth embers. Flaccid cactus stems drifted in a pot of soup gone cold. A chicken pecked at a dead man. Above the doorway hung the shriveled umbilical cords of the household’s children. A grand tradition, that.

One of those children had slumped in a corner. The dead girl wore a rumpled skirt with glyph designs. The doll she gripped had its face painted in angular patterns of orange and red. What a dreadful toy. Tethiel would have to remember it.

He weathered the thunderbolts of pain from his knee so that he could crouch and wipe the dead girl’s face free of spittle. How tragic to die so young, and how beautiful. She wouldn’t have tasted any of the bitterness of life’s joys.

The girl’s final fears lingered in the air as an aftertaste of vanilla. Tethiel left her in search of a stronger scent, one of roses. The flowery reek was so powerful he might as well have drowned in petals.

“They really shouldn’t have let you in,” he said to the Bleeding Maiden, “but there’s nothing so captivating as mortal anguish.”

She hung against the wall, hair draped over her face. Petite and perilous, she looked less like a woman and more like a figurine of porcelain. The least misfortune would shatter her. And it had. Blood covered her dress.

An iron spike had been driven through her neck. Another, through her leg. The last, into her heart.

‘
The third shall impale the heart, so the Feaster might not live.’
The Bright Palms would’ve cited the tenet while pounding the nail home. They had found this house of death. They had taken their joyless revenge of the murderess. The scene was clear. And glaring truths could never be trusted.

“Exquisitely done as always, my cream crumpet.” Tethiel reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. “My child.”

The Bleeding Maiden was grinning. She sprang off the wall, and the nails ripped out with her in a spray of red clay. She dripped as she curtsied. “Father, I was ever so worried for you.”

How his death would delight her. “If the lady had refused me I’d be in agony. But she accepted, so the anguish is greater.”

“Then it’s true? You’re engaged to the gem witch?”

“The Lady of Gems told me yes. Which just goes to show that even a woman as spectacular as her has her failings.”

“I’m so happy for you.” The Bleeding Maiden clutched the nail driven into her heart. “May your nights be starless glee. May you never have cause to regret.”

She hid her true feelings well. He couldn’t see or smell any hatred in her at this news, no fright that any moment might begin a fight to the death. Or maybe she wasn’t scared. Maybe she didn’t fear him anymore.

He could never allow her to rule. She had no appreciation for clothes. Look at that dress. No substance at all. It was mostly blood.

Hiresha, now there was a woman who knew her clothes. You could see her genius in their cut, their patterns. And she was hiding them under plain robes. She should never live in fear of the opinion of others. They should fear hers.

The Bleeding Maiden twisted at the nail in her chest as if she lacked the strength to wrench it free. “I never would’ve had the courage. To marry an outsider. The others, they’ll say the Father of Nightmares should wed one of his kind. Or no one.”

Tethiel brushed at his coat as if to remove a bit of lint that wasn’t there. He could never be happy if he weren’t courting disaster.

“Love must’ve made you fearless.” She reached for him with a trembling arm. Blood was livid on her palm. “So many of my brothers and sisters will say the gem witch is muzzling you. That you’re making yourself weak to please her.”

The Bleeding Maiden thought that. Her and far too many other Feasters. He said, “I pride myself in my weaknesses. Because of them, seven Bright Palms were extinguished tonight. While your strength has only murdered a few villagers.”

Her upraised hand fluttered over her shoulder in a pose of perfect helplessness. “What will my brothers do? Once they were proud hunters. What will my sisters do? Once they ruled the night as queens.”

“Those who aim high will always hit low. That’s their tragedy. Those who aim at the middle will always get it. That’s theirs,” he said, “I aim low and am thus blessed.”

“They may say you betrayed your family. All for the gem witch.”

“If you ruled, then you would have your petty Feasts.” He waved to the corpses. “Your peanut victories over towns, over a city or two. Like so many lords of nightmare before you, now long dead.”

She wrenched at the nail in her chest. It slid out an inch.

“Your success would be your ruin. The Lands of Loam would fear you, enough that every third son would spit out his soul to become a Bright Palm. The realms would unite against you. You’d make heroes of your enemies. They would sing ballads of how they butchered you and your brothers and sisters. If you ruled, you would die.”

The nail slipped from between her breasts with a sucking sound. It clattered to the floor. She pressed her fingers against the wound, trying to staunch it. There was too much blood. Her lips mouthed, “Help.”

Tethiel tightened his hands at his sides into fists. How impossible not to reach out to the Bleeding Maiden. To save her. To earn her thanks and her trust. Even though she was in no true danger. Even though it would be him who drowned in her blood.

He mustn’t succumb. A gentleman did not propose to a woman then allow himself to die the next day.

The Bleeding Maiden staggered to him. Collapsing, she reached for the lapels of his coat. “Please, Lord Father, don’t marry her.”

He shadow-stepped, vanished, and re-appeared behind the Feaster. As if he would be fool enough to let her touch him. She would stain his coat. “Would it satisfy you, my child, to know I’m only wedding her for power?”

The Bleeding Maiden had landed on her knees. “If only I could believe you.”

The distrust reassured Tethiel. The only motives you could never be certain about were your own. Hiresha was more wonderful than a night without dawning, but did he love her? A man might not be able to love once his heart had been pickled in black wine.

“Defang us all, and gain what?” The Bleeding Maiden slumped. “No woman could be so powerful.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“It must be love.” She painted a glyph of blood across the floor as she crawled toward him.

Everything dripped. Redness spread and smeared. He could even taste it. His mouth was full of coppery tang. Blood in the water. Blood in his throat. Predators circling ever closer.

No, he couldn’t let her sway him. That wasn’t her blood in his mouth. It must have been his own. The heat trickled down the back of his tongue, but no harm came of swallowing your own blood.

She asked, “Does any of the family want this? Angler? City Bane? Lyss Oil Bones?”

In her own little slippery way, the Bleeding Maiden was stronger than all of them. He had to convince her or kill her. “Once I rule with the Lady of Gems, you will have a meal every night. Not a binge like this, but enough to keep your black wine flowing.”

“I’m afraid. To not kill, it may kill us.”

“You could still execute our enemies. Fight in our guard. Cruelty has its place at the heart of any well-ordered nation.”

The nail in her leg scraped across the gravel floor and must grind against her bones. Her bare foot twitched, toes curled to the breaking point. “The gem witch must adore you for everything you risk.” The Bleeding Maiden’s voice was hoarse from hours of screaming. “She wouldn’t think of breaking the engagement. Would she? What an insult, our family would never forgive it. Or her.”