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Chapter Text

“To my fiance, for you and only you—” Theodore raised his glass high and pulled Lillith’s body to his, his fingers soft over the bare skin at her back. His eyes were only for her as he said it. “You will have a planet as a wedding gift.”

A declaration. A promise of power bought and soon to be paid for. She was almost convinced it could be real.

He knows he’s being sold to your family. Why would he owe you anything? You’re his jailer, Lilli’s mind whispered, He’s doing it all for them. Not for you.

And indeed, for him the assembled highborns of the Empire’s disparate worlds gave a riotous cheer. Friends of Theodore’s gathered at the front of the room whistled at him suggestively. Lillith’s father clasped a couple of proffered hands outright. Even a handful of the consulate guard gave their chests a hard double thump.

The fact that most everyone was cheering threw those who weren’t into stark contrast, especially one Lillith recognized near the front, his face was drawn and tight, though his glass was raised regardless.

It was foolish of Kai to come tonight. He’d make this more difficult for everyone involved, regardless of his noble intentions. Worse, she could make out the brass shine of his pistol beneath his coat.

A few more frowns were scattered towards the back of the room, men who stood on the shadowed fringes here and there. Towards the front, a Gnyssian highborn hid thin displeasure behind sips. A Zalhdriizelitz House Lord scowled for having lost the chance to snap up this match for his own daughter. A stranger, his long, black outer robes trimmed and patterned with gold and brass, leaned against a column beside the shadowed aisle on the outskirts of the room, afforded a rather muted reaction, nodding politely but with a careful hand resting on the glinting hilt of his sword.

Only a handful of men…and Lillith herself, which she realized a beat too late as she stood in stunned silence, lips slightly parted in the ghost of her gasp.

“A gift within reason of course, my lord Theodore.” The Heir to the Empire cut through the noise, her voice soft and lilting, an enchanted lullaby carried on the wind.

The crowd calmed, though the grins remained unstifled.

Theo turned to her with a wink and a wide, practiced smile, exposing the long, sharp dicanines that marked him as highborn. The careless tilt of his glass sent the periwinkle cocktail sloshing precariously, upsetting the delicate spiral of syrupy red threading through the bubbles. 

“Of course, divinity. Well within reason. Come now, political marriages are meant to end wars not start them.”

The elven Heir’s face was at the best of times nigh on unreadable. So, the slight raise of her brow now spoke volumes…as did the suggestion of a smile playing at a corner of her lips as she raised her drink nonetheless.

Lilli felt Theo’s nervous little chuckle more than she heard it. To the gathered crowd, he hadn’t missed a beat. 

If she had to admit to it, she had a kind of admiration for his ability to twist the preening masses around his fingers. But it was a knife that cut both ways, leading inevitably to crumpled up sheets and sleepless nights, staring at the ceiling and wondering what was real.

“And finally, to another union of Zalhdriizeschi and Gnysis. Two worlds bound in a partnership that remains undimmed by the centuries. Our glory shall be eternal—and so too the beauty of my bride!”

Once more, the assembled tipped back their crystal to a chorus of hollers and cheers; the chime of flutes clinking against one another. 

A flurry of ghostly moths released in celebration mingled with blackberry-purple petals, drifting down from above like a snow’s earliest flakes, where flowering climbing vines had grown along the arched bones of the room. Carved depictions of clouds and wingtips emerged from between the foliage where the flowing latticework sloped and curled down. Leaves blended seamlessly into their intricately painted counterparts on the frescoed ceiling, where richly depicted dragons wheeled and twirled amongst smoke and sky, over the faint outlines of Zalhdriizeschi’s eight moons.

Yet, at the moment of the toast, as their worlds cheered for their victory, Lillith looked at her fiance. 

And he gazed back. The way he always did: with war playing out in his eyes and written in the cataclysm of obsession on his face. Perhaps she was his lifeline…or perhaps his tragedy. Perhaps she was the only light in the dark universe, perhaps his damnation to the endless night. She could be his heaven, but he worried this thing between them would drag them both to the underworld.

She knew the way this dance went. They’d performed it all their lives.

“Lilli…” he whispered.

One wrong step and she’d be trapped in a gravity well she couldn’t escape.

She was suddenly very aware of how close they were standing…and of the fact his hand had never left the exposed skin where her skirts dipped in the back, fingers that trailed softly now up towards her ribs, playing with the delicate jeweled chains that hung from her top, lighting the nerves beneath his touch on fire. So for a moment she stepped a toe out of line and let herself believe it was all real. And in that long moment she thought perhaps she could allow herself to want him. And want she did.

On the planet Gnyssis the flow of time was slow and strange. Outside this world, given enough time, lives could begin and end, dynasties could rise and crumble, distant stars would wheel and change. But this…this living thing between them, the dimension that wove itself into being for them: each second held infinity. Here there were no families to please. No highborns. No expectations. The Empire itself disappeared. The universe narrowed and emptied until there was only them; overwhelming, but in the way nostalgia’s wave took you as you returned home from a long journey.

And then they blinked. The spell shattered. It always did. That was the problem with the beautiful violence of their falling in love. Entirely bloodless affairs, but with twin, inevitable casualties every time.

Theo cleared his throat, loosening the cravat at his neck, tapped his glass against her own and tossed back the liquid within.

  In the space afterwards—written in the thick hesitation that settled over them—it seemed as though he wanted to say something. His fingertips quickly skimmed over her cheek, tucking a stray hair away. The smile he gave her was ruinous.

Or it was, at least, until he turned away.

He always turns away. He looks at me and he hates himself for it. Am I really so abhorrent?

He started to step in the direction of their Empress Ascendant, and—

“Theo, wait—”

Gods when did I lift my hand? Her fingers gripped the brocade of his waistcoat tightly. She released him like the fabric had scorched her, eyes blowing wide.

“Is everything alright?” he asked, brows knitting as he drew near. 

There was nothing for it, only the plunge. “I just—I wanted to know—was all of that just for them? Or did you mean it?” she whispered. 

His face suddenly seemed so close, the endless mists of his eyes searching and hesitant, wanting and drawing her in all the same. He started to close the distance, pulled by their attraction, such a natural thing, even if forever unspoken. His breath ghosted against her lips, “Lillipad…”

He stopped and stepped away from her, his lip pulled between his teeth. Whatever was written across his features didn’t look like love to Lilli; it looked like shame.

“Listen Lillipad, let me just—I gotta—” He swallowed, tangling a hand in his hair, mussing the already-fragile hold of the styling. “I actually really need to talk to you too. Can we sit down later? I promise I’ll have an answer for you then.”

She nodded.

But as he moved away from her, she felt as though the gulf between them was being ripped wider and worse than ever before, utterly uncrossable.

That settles it, she decided. Tonight was the night she’d run.

The next hour was a swarm of floral silk and perfumed guests from every corner of the Imperium in an endless reception line; low curtseys and small talk; and most of all—between conversations—it involved watching Theodore lead the Heir and her ostentatious contingent of golden guards on a tour of the consulate.

He gestured to the massive chandelier that sat at the front of the room: long ago fallen, fracturing the patterned grey tile beneath. Tonight it was aglow with a dozen candlesticks nonetheless, in true Gnyssian fashion. Decorating the interior in an artful imitation of overgrowth: a swath of delicate florals bloomed amongst deep and fading green mosses; tangles of blackberries entwined with vines scattered with cloud-like puffs; deep wine-red pomegranates spilled to the ground amidst muted leaves and tall lacey stalks. There was nothing highborns did better than making something out of the beautiful timeworn decay that affected their world. 

Lilli’s lips thinned as she watched him move through the crowd, his mouth moving in to whisper here and there, the long points of the other woman’s ears twitching with an ethereal laugh.

That had been her own dynamic with Theo once. 

What changed? 

She scoffed, eliciting a sideways glance from the aide just behind her.

What a foolish notion. Everything has changed. Everything had been so simple in their youth: it had been easy to forget that this arrangement essentially was the sale of Theo’s autonomy to her family and even easier to turn the future wedding into a far-away threat, a problem for another time, another them. No wonder Theo couldn’t stand her company now. 

Her aide stepped forward, pulling Lillith out of her thoughts with a light tap on her shoulder. “ My lady allow me to present Lord Achilles Fontan and his wife, the good Lady Anastasia Fontan, until recently of the family Rosier…”

Lillith gave them a pretty smile. 

“It’s lovely to see such a thing for Theodore,” said Lady Fontan. “He looks radiant tonight. You’re a lucky woman.” Her husband’s mouth quirked in amusement, as if he knew full well there would never be a threat to his wife’s affections for him, flaxen-haired highborn adonis that he was.

“Ah yes,” Lillith’s voice was careful, words deliberate, “At the risk of sounding self-serving, I know many are excited to have made such a match—my family, especially, are thrilled this marriage is finally coming to pass.”

“I’m sure you can’t wait to begin your lives together. Have you decided which world you’ll be living on?”

“No, not yet. I’m sure we’ll discuss it when the time comes.”

“Oh!” Anastasia gushed, “Inter-planetary marriages are so romantic!”

Achilles slipped his arm around her waist with a crooked grin. “Are you saying you’d rather have had some exotic off-worlder?” The tips of his canines flashed.

“Are you jealous darling? You know I heard there’s a dashing Stryxie pirate around here somewhere.”

Lillith felt her attention drift back to her own fiance, wishing she could give the Fontans anything more solid than base platitudes.

The flowers Theo had been admiring had been imported quite specifically from some beautiful, faraway planet. The aggressive Gnyssian atmosphere had already set about eating away at them, leeching their color, each of the petals wilting and browning at the edges. You can always tell when a flower doesn’t really belong here.

Lilli looked down at her hands and considered whether the atmosphere would devour her too. Better to get out. That way she’d never need to find out. Better to see the Empire, to find my own place. She couldn’t stop her bottom lip from trembling.

“Are you alright, my lady?” Drat. She’d worried Lady Fontan. “If there’s anything the matter we’d be happy to help.”

“Yes, I’m sorry.” Lilli blushed. “Just a bit tired.”

“We’ll leave you to the last of your guests then. It’s a beautiful party!” Anastasia clasped Lillith’s hands tightly, beaming before she and her husband departed, arms entwined.

“You have just one more, my lady,” said Lillith’s elderly aide.

“Excellent,” she replied, voice weary, her answer feeling distant. 

Vaguely she registered a consulate guard coming and going, leaning in towards her aide to mention something tiresome about an open door that wasn’t meant to be. Then again, Lillith would gladly investigate it herself if it would stop this torture, even if it was self-inflicted.

Like a moth above an open flame she couldn’t help but watch Theo as he led the Heir. The candlelight caught his hair as he bent, turning his waves into copper, uncharacteristically dark for a Gnyssian. Though, Lilli supposed, that was part of his appeal as far as her family was concerned. The Zalhdriizelitz did love intriguing genetics.

They aren’t doing anything remotely untoward, her mind chastised in a futile effort to return to some semblance of sanity. 

It was true enough: Theo was more than likely merely discussing the history and age of the building or complimenting the decor for the night. The Heir would be nothing but respectful. Her floor length veil created a physical barrier between herself and anyone else, with the exception of the hand resting lightly on Theo’s proffered arm.

She’s the highest ranking person in the room and Theo is both the guest of honor and the host. It’s protocol. See now, that is rational . These were normal thoughts to have because she was feeling completely rational about this. Besides, the Heir could have us all killed and she might do, since Theo decided to offer a planet to me that technically belongs to her father and that sounds—from a certain point of view—a bit like a declaration of war. And while we’re on that topic what was all of that anyway—

“Honored sir, you have the good fortune of addressing the Lady Lillith Hemlock, a Daughter of the Blood, born below the red moons: the Spider and the Hurricane; Princess of the House of Pearls, noble scions of the white Flame of Absolution, the second dragon in ascendance under the Poison Moon.”

Lillith’s eyes snapped to her final caller, widening as she beheld him: this was the “dashing Stryxie pirate” Lady Fontan had mentioned?

Pirate prince seems more accurate Anastasia. 

Hanging from his waist, its scabbard wrapped in silks and tasseled woven cord, the sword that had drawn her eyes during the toast was even more magnificent up close: pale gold and gleaming gunmetal filigree curled through wrappings on the hilt and wove into the the disk-like guard, shaped by a master metalworker into cresting waves; several feet long, with a wicked slight curve, this was a dueling sword of the highest order, straight out the adventure stories that had once filled her off-hours.

He gave a quick, deep bow at the waist, tucking a hand into the deep vee where midnight blue inner robes crossed loosely over the linen of his underfrock, just above his wide belt—wrapped layers of dark embroidered silks that lay below a band of etched brass, accented overtop with thin braids and twisted cords of patterned silk.

Several strands had escaped the tousled mess of black hair and thin rope braids that twisted into his high bun, falling forward into his eyes.

Her aide continued, “My lady, allow me to present the honorable Bennedict, second sword of the clan of the Lightless Forge and representative of Stryx Zuthus.”

He raked a hand over his face; an action born of habit, it seemed, more than any futile attempt at fixing his errant locks. They hung over his forehead still, brushing against a nicked eyebrow and about his temples, framing sharp cheekbones made asymmetrical by a scar against the bone on the left hand side.

“Bennedict of the Lightless Forge serves well enough,” he said, voice gravelly and with a certain natural warmth, “though, you’re welcome to call me ‘Ben’ if you’d like. I’m sure you understand far better than I feeling as though you’ve spent half your life hearing your own titles recited.” 

She smiled in spite of herself. “Yes, I do, to be quite frank.” Her aide shot her a look, which she pointedly ignored.

The corners of his serious mouth drew up, revealing a surprising number of lines that pleasantly crinkled the angles of his otherwise focused gaze; his eyes, the striking, molten yellow-gold of his people. “I wanted to stop by to give you my congratulations and those of my sister, the first sword of the Lightless Forge.”

“You have my thanks.” Lilli trailed off, chewing at the inside of her cheek between her teeth as she twirled one of the pearl rings on her fingers. 

Now or never.

“I wondered, sir, if you’d allow me to speak with you alone.” She glanced over at her aide, making sure that Ben saw the nonverbal cue. “Indulge me. You are my last caller after all.” 

A ghost of a frown creased his brow for a fraction, but he agreed, “Of course, my lady.”

“If you would walk with me?”

He gave her a curt bow and extended an arm, which she took with a delicate grip.

“I’ll find you later,” Lilli shot over her shoulder, stopping her aide in her tracks as she moved to follow them. She needed this to be a private audience. Normally it might be difficult to shake her assistant—her ‘minder’ really—but her guests were in the midst of providing the perfect escape. “It seems there’s some commotion near the bar. If you could, I’d appreciate if you would lend your assistance.”

A somewhat burly guest had elbowed others out of the way in order to secure his free liquor and Gnyssian nobles, as a rule, never took kindly to a lack of manners, whether the man was present as an off-world delegate or not. Someone’s fangs were already out and the pistols were surely not far behind.

“And I think there was a security concern earlier? Can you ensure that’s seen to?”

“My lady, I’m not sure it’s proper—” quavered the aide.

“I’m sure the ‘second sword of the Lightless Forge’ is quite capable of protecting my propriety.” She turned to the man in question. “The culture of Stryx Zuthus is built upon honor is it not?”

“Indeed, it is,” Ben quickly replied.

The older woman nodded graciously, but vexation tinged the scales at her cheeks pink. If she bothered to help sort out the guests at all, it was only a matter of time before she went to Lillith’s father.

Lilli would need to be quick.

Consulate it may now be, but in truth—like all grand buildings on Gnysis—this was an ancient palace, repurposed after millennia of being lost and reclaimed, its origins lost to time.  Centuries ago, its new Zalhdriizelitzen occupants had done much to erase whatever had come before. But, their Gnyssian hosts greatly disliked building anew and short of ripping out every lichen-spotted stone and rebuilding from the scorched ground there was no hiding the influences of the consulate building’s forgotten history. However, they soon found that that same quality came with its benefits too: namely quiet corners and architectural oddities ripe for scheming—and there was little the nobility of Zalhdriizeschi loved more than hatching plots in furtherance of power.

So, as Lillith pulled Ben into one such secluded corner her mind churned. Notions of ambition sat heavily there, as did power and its price, and her years of tutelage. She was a Zalhdriizelitz after all. Even if it was just this once, it was time to prove it.

Hidden away behind columns covered in dense foliage and a waterfall of gossamer fabric, part of the spider’s web that draped a massive, candle-laden and wax-covered chandelier suspended from the ceiling of the adjoining room. 

A scant few out of the hundreds that decorated the palace floors, scattered clusters of candelabras and tapers flickered in the vast space that lay beyond their alcove. Their glow lightly graced the mirror-like water ahead of them, where the consulate’s sprawling indoor pond lay still against its nearly invisible edge. Drowsy white-winged moths—larger than dinner plates—fluttered along the length of the overgrown, crumbling bridge that spanned the water and sat amongst the leaves on the ceiling and walls of the room around them.

“This may sound completely mad,” Lillith began, grabbing Ben by the arm, “but I won’t mince words. If I wanted to help someone disappear and begin a new life would you have the connections to facilitate that?”

“Perhaps,” he said, eyebrows raised slightly.

She hadn’t lost him from the first, so that was one hurdle down. “You’ll have no judgement from me, nor would I out you to any Imperium authority. Gnyssians may be too soft and loyal to the Empire to even think of discussing dealings with the underworld, but the Zalhdriizelitz know the value of having friends in places high and low—especially with the kind of power that is said to dwell in the Dark Empire.”

His eyes sharpened. She could almost see the gears turning in his mind, deciding whether or not she was a threat.

Maybe I prodded a little too far. 

Lillith looked away, losing her nerve under his scrutiny, and turned her attention to her reflection in the water beside her. Her dragon skull crown cradled her head in its ‘mouth’: the lower jaw cupping her own, while the upper shone stark white against her black hair. Clusters of pearls nestled among its fangs, part of a cascading net of delicate silver that twined through intricate braids to where her hair hung loose—mirroring the chainwork that flowed down her chest and looped around her exposed torso. Fierce horns curled up and away from her head. The irony of the maw did not escape her.

“For what it’s worth you’re under no obligation to answer,” she muttered. Few would risk discussing the man who had all the underworld beneath his thumb. A mere mention of the idea of him was enough for a sanction under Imperial law no matter her status.

She heard a long, slow breath beside her. “If you’ll forgive me, my lady, may I speak plainly?”

“Certainly.”

“What is this all about?” 

His words were deliberate—without a trace of scorn—and his tone weighty, low and steady, like he knew she was caught in a storm and he was the rock against which waves battered.

“I can’t stay in this marriage,” she whispered.

His voice turned to steel, “Is he mistreating you, my lady?”

“No, no nothing like that.” She spun her pearl ring, drawing blood as she bit her lip. “It’s just best that I go.”

“Respectfully, I don’t believe that to be true.”

“I always knew I was destined for a convenient marriage. And I always knew that would be with a highborn Gnyssian—I actually knew Theo for quite a long time when I was a child, as the arrangement was being settled.”

“But?”

“ But that was all on Zalhdriizeschi. It’s quite different now that we’re here.”

“Gnysis has its beauty.”

“A desolate kind perhaps.” She shuddered. “This whole world feels like a mirage—a beautiful trap. What’s worse is that you know you’re stepping into it. You can watch it wear away color and life in real time.”

“Have you spoken to your betrothed about this?”

“He wouldn’t understand—or—I don’t know. I’d be asking him to leave his home. In many ways he’s just as trapped as I am. Theodore is essentially being sold to my family and I’m his shackles. His future has been stolen under the guise of advancing his station.”

“If he took issue with that, why isn’t he here asking me to spirit him away?”

“I’m not sure he realizes he has a choice. For him this is an honor. You saw him up there.”

“I did,” he let out a soft huff, part disbelief and nearly a laugh, “and frankly he looked like a man hopelessly in love and entirely unsure what to do about it.”

“You think I should stay in this arrangement? A marriage outside my choosing? Outside of Theo’s? Truly? I thought you more noble—that you cared for what was right.”

“I care about the Empire. The wellbeing of its people. This marriage is the start of a new peace. I understand this is the first match of its kind in a few generations. These two worlds are in dire need of this alliance. Otherwise, conflict is inevitable and imminent.”

Lilli scoffed, “Maybe he thinks he loves me. Sometimes.” The ring twisted, round and round. “But if anything, he doesn’t realize what he’s marrying into. This marriage places my family in a position of utmost power. To them he’s a commodity like any other.”

“Is that all such a bad thing? The House of Pearls is not considered a particularly hostile or violently ambitious House, compared to some. Where the stability of the two planets and the Empire itself is concerned, they could do much worse.”

“For now…”

Voices neared. Before Lilli could react Ben swept her out of their hiding spot and guided her along the water’s rim in the direction of the bridge, the iridescent pool of her skirts training behind her like liquid dusk. A protective arm reached around her back and hovered where her skirt began, just over the arc of the platinum flanc-pellion that lay like two petals over her hips.

They’d dared the bridge, stopping in the shadows of the small pavilion at its center before Lilli spoke again.

“What I’m about to tell you stays between us. You trusted me, I’m trusting you now.”

Lilli wasn’t sure why she did, but Ben just seemed so…straightforward. She’d grown up around the kind of people who would have you poisoned at breakfast while they ate beside you if it would advance their family. But Ben read as an open book. Nothing in his manner or speech or even his body language spoke of hidden meanings or motives. He was simply: Bennedict. No more, no less.

“I have everything to lose here.” But the truth was like a drug. She’d started and now she didn’t want to stop.

Bennedict nodded. 

“On my homeworld I am considered a bit of an oddity. Born without a physical trace of the Blood of the Great Wyrms aside from my eyes, so they thought. A mongrel daughter, so they called me. Destined for nothing. The lowest in our hierarchy one could be. It brought my mother and father such shame they had Zalhdriizelitz geneticists confirm I wasn’t a bastard or some kind of mistake. And that was when they discovered my inheritance: one that lies within.”

She ran the tips of her fingers over weathered stone scales. A dim lantern dangled from the wyrm’s jaws, formed from paper-thin mineral into an ephemeral orb and ensconced in a curling metalwrought frame. Many more hung at varying lengths from the trees, dangled from the ceiling, and floated in miniature over the water amidst a host of small candles. They were meant to be moons, but the similarity to pearls was no mistake. Symbols of her family’s triumph.

“You are a true Daughter of the Blood,” Benedict whispered, running a thumb over his lips in thought. “A drop of dragon magic runs in your veins.”

“Not just a drop, so they think.”

“Your family—they’re patrons of the White Flame…” His eyes widened.

“Yes, one of the dragons who wakes under the poison moon. The absolution he brings is in death,” Lilli chuckled grimly. “I suspect a single vial of my blood in the wine could kill everyone here.”

He thumbed his etched metal pommel of his sword, humming, “This all begins to make a lot more sense. I can only imagine the delight of the Blood Scribes if they found out.”

“They have.”

He appeared so calm as he froze, but his attention was intense, hot and bladed.

Tentatively, Lillith took his hand and drew it towards her exposed midriff. He let her do it, though she could feel an initial light resistance in his muscles. Probably concern over laying his hands on a betrothed princess, she chuckled in her head. I suppose if the wrong eyes spotted us here it might become a bit of an incident. But he didn’t fight her or comment. He knew this was her choice and he likely knew what was coming.

Lillith ran the pads of his fingers along the invisible runic scarring that covered her ribs and waist.

Ben’s frown deepened.

“These are hidden behind blood magic glamours of course. My family was concerned given our formalwear.” She gestured to the cropped velvet and armor of her spenseraigne—ending just under her breasts—and where the top hem of her skirts dipped into a low curve under her navel. “Though I think that was more about protecting the treasure in my blood, rather than any aesthetic purpose.”

“How extensive are they?”

“They cover my entire right side.” Lillith unclasped the metal torque-regna and pulled at the line of bows tying the garment beneath. Ben blushed, moving to turn away but she waved him off, wriggling a shoulder and arm out. Lines of thin white scarring covered her pale skin. “On the easily obscured parts of me they didn’t bother to hide them.”

“My lady I…why was this allowed?”

“Power.”

“But to subject their own daughter to this.” He shook his head.

“I take it you haven’t been around Gnysis or Zalhdriizeschi much, delegate?” Lilli sighed, “They keep their specific practices with their family Scribes secretive where the rest of the Empire is concerned, but you’ll notice many highborn Gnyssians have similar scars if you look for them. Gnysis is known for its blood magic and it made for the perfect partnership when my world was joined to theirs centuries ago. Our geneticists often work alongside Scribes and Sages.

His lips parted to pursue the matter further but Lilli cut him off, facing him straight-on as she re-fixed her top. I’ve wasted enough time already. Time to lay out all my cards.

“This is important for you to understand because my concern isn’t so much for myself. It’s the children they envision between myself and Theo. My blood is a powerful poison, yes, but it’s not well suited for the work they do. The children of a true Daughter of the Blood and a Gnyssian heir with a bloodtype proven to be ideal for blood magery would be a formidable weapon—if not used like cattle to produce powerful elixirs. I cannot stay and allow myself, Theo, and our future children to be used.”

Ben rubbed at the close shorn hair at the nape of his neck where it met the high collar of his opulent outer robes, revealing the edges of swirling blue-black tattoos that disappeared towards his shoulders and back. “I understand why you want to leave. It is the easiest choice.”

“Precisely. I plan to leave as soon as possible. Tonight, even.”

“I can arrange it easily. I can take you with me this evening in fact. But…” His eyes narrowed, looking past her to a distant consulate guard whose attention had been stolen by some rowdiness in the main room. “Before I do, I’d like to counsel you. From a, shall we say, well connected second blade of Stryx Zuthus to a princess of the Zalhdriizelitz.” 

“I told you before: there’s no need for formalities. Speak plainly.”

Bennedict replied simply, with a minute cant of his head, and began, his tone determined, “You need to understand that there is a path here you haven’t seen. You have the advantage here and there are those around you that don’t want you to know it.”

Lilli’s brows shot up. “I’ve told you. I’m a pawn. No better than prisoners or indentures…”

“Not if you beat them at their own game. Not if you weaponize your power yourself under your terms.” The yellow in his eyes turned to embers in the shadow. “You’re the highest ranked daughter of the most powerful family on Zalhdriizeschi and you’re about to be married to a Gnyssian lord with excellent connections, despite what they might say about his birth. He has powerful friends. More than that I think there is much that lies below the surface of your young lord you may not realize. He just stood before all of them and promised to deliver you Gnysis. You could rule these two worlds and shape the systems here into something better. You want this exploitation to stop? You hold that power. You hold the power to fight for what you believe is right. And my sources tell me the Heir would be very amenable. She doesn’t want the power plays of the noble or mercantile worlds getting out of control. Too much power today could lead them to ideas beyond their means. The day they forget who really rules them will see the armies of the Imperium on Gnyssian and Zalhdriizeschi soil.”

Lillith gaped at him. What he was suggesting was impossible.

Whatever was going on in the other room had escalated. Guards were hustling past in the halls now.

A hand gripped her wrist. 

“I haven’t been entirely honest with you, my lady,” said Ben.

Lillith took a step back, but he halted her retreat.

“I’m not really here as a delegate.”

“What!” Her eyes blew wide.

“Not just as a delegate,” he amended.

No—no I thought. Have I trusted the wrong person? Panicking, she yanked at her arm but he held fast. His other was tight on the grip of his sword.

“I’m not a threat,” he grimaced. “There’s just no time—”

Bang!

Lillith twisted in the direction in the main room. Those are shots!

Pop-pop-pop!

“My lady, your enemies know about everything I’ve just told you.” 

Bang!

She turned back to Ben as the blood drained from her face, her jaw going slack.

“I’m here because there are men here to kill you—”

The rock beside Lilli’s head puffed with a shower of dust. Ben’s sword was an inch from her face, the bullet he’d deflected buried deep in the stone.

Chapter Text

Ben shoved Lillith down. “Are you alright?” he asked, hushed but hurried, his expression tense, every muscle wound tight.

She blinked at him, some disconnected part of her feeling a little dumb as she did. Her eyes drifted up to the hole in the wall behind them and blinked at that too, lids heavy and slow. Her ears were ringing—or at least she thought they might be. Ben sounded like he was underwater.

“My lady we can’t stay here. I need you to come with me now. Stay down. Stay with me.”

She summoned a stilted nod for Ben. Following him as he had bid, they crept to the other end of the bridge, her legs stiff but moving, though not because she’d really told them to. 

“What are you going to do?” Her voice wobbled, “Who sent you?”

“Protect you. Kill them,” he grunted. “Someone with a vested interest in the stability of the Empire.” Together they moved through the thick shadows, Ben snuffing flames as they went, surrendering to the sickly Gnyssian atmosphere, the ravenous dark consuming swathes of the atrium.

Steps from the doorway, Ben peeked out from behind a thick column. Immediately he jolted back, pushing Lilli into the leaves and pulling them both into a crouch in the deepest dark.

Lillith’s death slithered through the arch ahead.

Heavily armored and muscled, the Zalhdriizelitzen Elite had his longsword already drawn—man, serpent, and draconic ancestry in unhallowed union. The rifle that had fired at them clicked into place between small vestigial wings. 

The Heavy Dragoon paused, looking around with a frown at the lack of light and the sliced candles. His nostrils flared. A long tongue, thin and split, flicked out and rolled over flat lips.

He knows he missed his shot—that we’re still alive.

Ben turned to Lilli, pressing a finger to his lips.

She didn’t dare to breathe, shoving a palm flat against her mouth and nose so hard it almost hurt.

“Get her out of here!” a snarling voice echoed through her mind: the lord of the House of Pearls, borne on the fragment of a memory long buried by time, shredding its way back up into her consciousness.

She didn’t remember how it started, though it had been innocent. She knew how it ended. Ghostly white forms, sheets covered in rapidly spreading red. And above them: the hulking scaled body of one of the House’s few Elites. She’d looked at it as her nursemaid dragged her off and in its old, black gaze felt the mortal terror of a sheep within reach of a dragon’s jaws.

Lillith’s body fought against the lack of air, wanting nothing more than to pull it down in heaving breaths. Thundering heartbeats pounded through her chest and into her throat. 

“I can scent your warmth, little princess, taste your scent. You and your foolish guard.” The Dragoon’s voice held the promise of all the violence he’d been created for. “Little warmblooded prey, doomed to die.”

Lillith slid down the last of the wall, suppressing her fear, a scream caught in her throat. The fear Elites wrought was biological, even if the only truly natural aspect that remained of their birth was the act itself.

Ben gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, slipping silently out of his outer robe and draping it carefully around Lilli.

Her eyes widened at the newly revealed short sword tucked into his belt and the row of throwing knives strapped over his bicep. He pulled one free, motioning for her to stay put. 

“Come out and face your fate,” called the Elite.

Ben crept forward in silence, hugging the column in front of them. He threw the knife. 

Not at the Heavy , Lillith realized as it curved through the air, but at the remaining candles on the other side of the entryway, plunging them into twilight. Shards of purple coalesced, scattering themselves along the floor, dancing amidst the perpetual green cast, filtering through the windowed ceiling as a violet sky peered out from behind banks of eerie cloud.

The Zalhdriizelitzen snarled, tongue snapping out and curling, “You think you’re so clever, but there is no winning here. You can extinguish every light. I’ll find you before long.”

Ben glanced back to Lilli and gave her one more signal to stay put, along with a sharp nod.

At first it felt like reassurance, until panic sank in its claws and dragged Lillith, screaming, down twisted roads: A final salute when hope had gone. Is this goodbye? Her lungs stuttered and strained in her chest and she pulled Ben’s robe tighter around her, allowing herself to inhale, flooding her mouth with his comforting scent: smoked vanilla, blackberry and blackcurrant.

Please don’t leave me alone.

With a silent vow across his lips, Bennedict slid out of cover and into the shadowed light.

“There you are.” The Dragoon’s mouth stretched into a foul fanged gash of a sneer. “You do yourself a credit meeting your end so openly. Though I see no trace of the Princess with you. Will she be slain cowering for her life?” He let out a scathing hiss, borne from the back of his throat, rough as gravel on metal, and spat at the ground in Ben’s direction. “I cannot imagine such dishonor. Zalhdriizelitzen blood is strong, seeded by the Elder Dragons with power that made them as gods. It is only right for such a weak female to be culled from the brood.”

“You will not speak of her that way.”

“Give her to me and I will allow you the chance to try and run.”

“You will not have her.”

The Elite’s huge coils curled over the ground, readying to strike. “Confident words from a man about to die.”

“If I am to die, what cause do I have for caution.”

Their swords met in a grating shriek, metal sparking as Ben brought his arms up, catching the Elite’s high strike in a glancing blow off the flat of his blade. He slid steel beneath steel, his feet twisting and dancing to the side, his sword revolving beside and over his head—too fast, far too fast for the Heavy whose momentum had continued carrying him forward. The long blade whirled, looping in a tight circle and sweeping into a deadly lateral arc before him.

Blade met flesh in a spurt of blood. 

The Heavy contorted, gurgling and clutching at the deep rip in his throat. Ben pivoted, stepped in close, his sword raised high, and with an animal snarl, cleaved down in a single brutal strike. 

For a moment there was silence, but for Ben’s hard breaths and a sickening thud as the Heavy’s head rolled away from his shoulders. His body dropped like a stone, a puppet with its strings cut. 

Still in the shadows, Lillith remembered she needed to breathe again. 

On shivering legs she stood and crept over to where Ben wiped down his steel on a scrap of the Heavy’s uniform, careful not to let her dress or his robe drag in the pooling blood. She tried to focus on the soft berry and currant and the warm woods that lay below, instead of the way the air was now rank with a tainted tinge of metal and excreta.

She thought she might scream or faint seeing the dead right in front of her—or at the sheer volume of blood. But when she opened her mouth to say something, nothing but a bit of air came. She was just standing there. Blinking down at the corpse and its departed head with round eyes.

“You’re safe. He likely made a lucky guess, otherwise others would’ve come with him. We should be clear for a few minutes, so take a moment to breathe. Once we begin moving into the embassy-proper I doubt we’ll be able to stop,” Ben said, watching her with an empathetic little wrinkle between his brows. “Maybe don’t stare at the head too much.”

“I—I—just…” Lilli started.

“Your first brush with real death I take it?”

She managed to drag her eyes away from the Elite’s sightless ones. “Just death like…this. Zalhdriizelitzen so rarely kill in the open. It’s considered…uhm…” she swallowed thickly, her mouth dry and tight, “indecorous.”

“If you need to vomit, please just let me know. I can easily give you some privacy. There’s no shame in it.”

“No—no—I’m fine.” Lilli took a clipped breath and shook herself. “I’m fine. I think it’s just a bit of shock.” 

He nodded in understanding, his warm eyes flashing an unearthly metallic as he did, a sliver of light revealing the reflective layer that lay behind his retinas.

“The stories are true,” Lilli murmured, blinking as if it’d just been a trick of her vision. “It’s not just training. The blood of the first forge-tribes runs true to this day, in both its daughters and sons. Your clan’s gift lives on.”

“Indeed.”

“The Houses believe that the human influence had diluted all of that into irrelevance long ago.”

“The Houses are arrogant hypocrites.”

“Well, you’d best hope you don’t die here,” Lilli’s voice sounded strange to her own ears, filled with a dark, haunted kind of amusement, “The geneticists will requisition and disappear your corpse for study faster than your family could stop it. There would be celebration amongst the Houses, behind closed doors though it may be.”

“I don’t plan to die here.”

He said it so matter-of-factly: confident but not cock-sure, like it was a simple law of the universe, as if he knew when his end would come and it wasn’t here.

Lilli wrapped her arms around herself without really thinking to, running her hands over her arms and his stiff brocade that covered them, metal-threaded smoke tendrils and dark florals pricking at the pads of her fingers as they passed. A comfortable silence stretched as Ben watched her and waited, allowing her time to figure out how to breathe normally again.

“I have to admit…and it’s not that I doubted you before…” He chuckled at that. She tried again, “I really thought…” Lillith pulled the inside of her cheek in between her teeth. Would I care to start over for the third time? Gods above and below, I sound like an idiot . “I know about Elites. What they’re meant to be. And do.”

“Oh your geneticists can do much, I’ll grant you that. Warriors that can sense heat will always render stealth futile in the end. One must face an Elite or accept death. And in the doing, their prey so often winds up dead anyway. It makes them cocky. And perhaps they deserve to be somewhat.” Ben’s mouth twisted up into a little grin. “Unfortunately the balance of all of this—” He pointed back at the head with the tip of his sword. Lilli had to stop herself from getting stuck staring at it again. “—is poor eyesight that becomes almost worthless in low light. They become slow and stupid.”

“By your standards perhaps.”

“The only ones that matter with your life and mine on the line,” he said with a shrug. 

“Other Houses want to perfect them,” said Lillith quietly, “Though the House of Pearls is against it. They always have been. My father thinks it's impure and the whole Elite class are monsters. Even the ones that are less modified. We had a few but only out of necessity.”

“Your House has the luxury of other plans.”

“True enough,” she sighed.

“Should your people ever crack them, war in the Empire would take on a new dimension, to say the least,” he grimaced, “But of course, Imperium would not allow them to exist if they actually became the perfect warriors they believe themselves to be. That, I think, would be a very short conflict indeed—no matter the purported strength of your Elites. All the genetic mods in the world mean nothing when they’re ash under the feet of a Mage…” He raised his chin from the corpse before him and locked eyes with Lillith intently. “Like I said earlier. Surely you understand that you and yours are not the only path that leads to the desecration of your world. The Houses are schemers. They need someone to control them or keep them busy. They see just such a person about to come into power. And it scares them.” 

As if to emphasize his point, he rested the tip of his sword on the chestplate of the Elite, beside the crest set into its center.

Lillith stared at the body and tried not to think about what it lacked, but rather what it had. Gunmetal armor…Embossed in sigils of the House of Steel. Her mouth dried out again, her stomach twisting into a threatening knot that clenched tighter and tighter, sending a sharp cramp streaking through her abdomen.

Kai ordered my death. A half-forgotten moment sparked, like a match struck in the dark of the atrium: a flash of brass during the toast, the pistol he’d brought tucked away into his coat.

Not just ordered. He’d do it himself.

They hugged the walls, hiding amidst the shadows of the leaves and vines when they could, taking shelter now and again behind unlocked doors as they worked their way towards the entry hall. Dead guards lay piled in the halls. Shouts and gunfire emanated from the wings around them and was only growing louder.

The smell of death en masse assaulted Lillith around every turn. There was no getting used to it. There was only the endless nausea and ceaseless effort to stop herself from losing what little she had in her stomach. Her kerchief, hardly more than a scrap of white lace crumpled and shoved against her nose, did scant little to stop the stench.

Ben had said assassins were here for her and for Theo, but as they ran it was clear that the conflict had grown into an attempted coup. Or, at the very least, the opportunity for the wanton slaughter of political rivals had been seen and seized by many a rogue force. Such was the way with her people. Most especially our mercenary forces, her good Zalhdriizelitzen upbringing and tutelage supplied—somewhat unhelpful at this juncture, she thought in retrospect. No other House employed them as readily as the House of Steel.

The consulate was in uproar, as screaming guests rushed around in confusion, sometimes accompanied by one or two harried bodyguards. Many were trying to escape and quickly realizing that despite the building’s size, the number of exits were few by design. Enemies had been quick to block the most accessible and it sounded as though the thickest fighting was now occurring near the emergency passages. That they were meant to be a secret mattered little when the threat came from within.

An open-air courtyard to their left side was strewn with the recent evidence of a large skirmish. Many warriors of Steel were dead by conventional means, while others lay purple-faced on the stone, grasping at their shredded throats, blood leaking from their mouths where brass-and-gear respirators had been broken by careful strikes. And among the slaughter, forces who bore no breathers at all.

The Fontan’s household guard, Lillith realized dazedly, remembering their colors and sigils, feeling as though she was analyzing the battlefield through a lens instead of through windows. Not every House nor Gnyssian noble here was involved in the conspiracy. Nor did they take kindly to their lords and ladies being murdered in the halls.

Her attention caught on a dark red and copper tabard. She stumbled.

Theo’s men. Those are Theo’s men.

Her breath stuttered. “Ben?” she managed to squeak out, but it was lost under the tide of the surrounding violence. She reached out for him, but her fingers met only open air.

Was the smiling couple, who had so warmly congratulated her on her engagement  before, laying out there somewhere? Was Theo beside them?

Frenzied, her eyes darted around the battlefield, desperate to catch sight—or rather not to catch sight—of pale copper hair, of those sad, handsome eyes she might never see again. Would she never have the chance to speak to him again? Never learn how he really felt? Never find a way to heal them? Never feel his hands on her skin again? It was an insurmountable word: “never.”

Lillith stepped gingerly over gore spattered over the floor, trying to keep up with Ben even as she surveyed the dead. Some part of her brain was still very much fixated on trying to keep her hems out of the blood, though it was beginning to become an impossible task. 

Maybe it’s a little crazy. She must have misplaced her sanity somewhere in the halls. Or maybe when I realized I’d been betrayed by someone I’ve known since birth. My former friend. My former—She banished the last, shoving it into the furthest corner inside her head. If she started thinking about regrets now she might just collapse. Maybe she wanted to cling to this simple thing as the last semblance of normalcy she had left.

“My lady, please,” Ben paused and beckoned to her, his face pained, “we cannot afford to slow down. This is the last stretch.”

“It’s—I’m sorry I’m try—”

A knife whistled past Ben, who ducked it at the last moment. Another missed Lilli’s head by inches, drawing drops of blood across her cheek. 

Lilli caught the growl under Ben’s breath, “Shit.”

A man in black exploded towards them, a long, thin blade outstretched.

Ben flung her behind him, blocking the quick blow. The man jumped back, pulling another knife from his coat.

“Stryxie,” the stranger said, voice slimy. “I’ve never killed a duellist.”

He flew forward, flinging another throwing knife as a distraction, forcing Ben to dodge. Sidestepping the long sword’s straight thrust, the soldier closed the distance, slashing at his opponent’s throat and chest. Ben flowed around the outstretched dagger, his own initial thrust a feint. He twirled and came up behind his attacker, catching his shirt in an iron grip and brought the edge of his short second sword to his throat.

“But I’ve killed plenty like you,” Ben muttered. 

The other man’s blood doused the floor in crimson as his throat opened. Ben shoved the still-dying body away to the floor.

Lillith stumbled back, scrambling away from the spray, but as she did her soft-soled foot went out from under her, sliding across the slick lacquered wood. She tried to right herself, her arms flailing through emptiness, tried to catch herself on the wall on the other, and found only a door left slightly ajar; her skirts were all but forgotten as the world tipped. Ben lunged back for her, but she tumbled away, landing hard on the bloody floor, her ankles caught over a frail fallen body. 

Ben’s robe. I’ve ruined it, her thoughts felt like sludge.

He rushed to her side to help her up. She took his hand and started to rise—

And screamed at last in earnest. 

Lying beside her feet, her dead assistant’s milky eyes stared back at her, her wounded belly a still-spreading red bloom, her face frozen in surprise.

“I sent her to check on a—a guest—a side door,” Lilli started to babble, heedless of her noise. “I’ve known Nimah my whole life. She doesn’t make trouble with people. She was meant to just go to my father. Our guard would be right there. They were safe. They should’ve been safe.” Her head whipped around looking for him. The entire room she’d fallen into was awash in cooling bodies and pools of blood, which now soaked into her heavily-stained skirts. “Did I kill her? Did I kill them both?” She was in freefall. The creaking beam of control she’d been trying to balance on from the start of this nightmare was slip—slipping—gone from her grip. “I killed them both!” she sobbed.

“No, my lady—Lillith—no.” Ben was trying to help, she knew, but it felt a thousand miles away. 

Her eyes suddenly caught on a familiar sleeve further on, almost lost in what looked to be the remains of a last stand or an ambush. A familiar hand with a familiar House ring lay still within it. She didn’t dare to let her eyes travel down the rest of the arm and take hold of all the weight seeing that body would bear. 

She spun and convulsed, gagging, though nothing came up; her eyes squeezed shut, each breath a conscious effort as she fought the volatile wrongness that threatened to take her over and the liquor of her engagement toast that turned sour in her stomach.

“Look at me.” Two hands gripped her shoulders tightly. Hesitant, she opened her eyes to look at Ben, who filled her field of view. His own gaze lingered just over her shoulder, looking over the scene that’d caused her violent reaction, his mouth tightening into a thin line as he realized fully what she’d seen and what it meant. He refocused on her, yellow eyes hard, grabbing both her hands. “Lillith, you’ve been strong so far. I need you to remain so just a little longer. You are now the last hope of the House of Pearls.”

“I’m not. I can’t,” she said, voice scratching in her throat. “How do we come back from this?” She stared down at their clasped hands. My hands look so small in his.

“You are. You must. There is no one else. Your brother is a child—”

“Wha—what? How do you know about that?”

“It doesn’t matter. Should he even survive long enough to mature and attempt to assume Lordship, your House will never follow him. That is what matters. You know it to be true.”

Lillith looked back at the carnage spread over the room and clapped a hand to her mouth, starting to gag again. She slammed her eyes closed and shook her head.

“Steady a moment,” he said, all steadfast grit and a warm breath beside her ear.

Lillith registered only his disappearance as she stood trembling. Even wrapped in the security of blindness, there was no real escape.

“Open your eyes, Princess.” 

With gentle movements he took up her ring finger on her left hand and onto it slipped her father’s heavy signet of the House of Pearls. Not my father’s anymore. Mine. 

Before her, Ben knelt onto a knee, a fist held fast over his heart. His head dipped into a bow and when he looked up at her there were embers in his eyes. “I am either going to deliver you into your fiance's hands or get you to safety to recover and decide your next move. This is my oath. Either way, I have you. We will not die here. And, should you will it, you will have the power you are owed and your vengeance.”

Lilli raised her hands up and gazed, wide eyed, at the mirrored bonds of duty that now graced them: on her right her betrothal ring, on the other the symbol of leadership of her family. With one act Bennedict had taken her from Lillith, the princess and pawn, to the Lady Lillith who determined the House of Pearls’ fate and commanded their forces.

“My Lady?” 

She looked up at him, let slip a last little heaving sniffle, and nodded.

He leaned at the doorway beside them, cocking his head, listening. He frowned. He risked looking out and the frown deepened. Nothing there. Sword at the ready, he led Lillith carefully through.

“Don’t let go of my hands again,” she whispered.

“I will try, my Lady. Perhaps we can agree to just one?”

“I suppose we could.”

Hand in hand they raced down what remained of the hall. Another attacker ran at them, only to find himself bisected on the floor a moment later. More enemies stepped out ahead, the threats Ben expected, drawn by Lilli’s screams. In a blur, all fell to his blade and through it all he kept hold of her hand.

The last stretch. And then: safety.

They burst through the double doors and into the antechamber of the entry hall.

“Down!” Lilli shrieked and pulled Ben to the floor as she ducked herself.

A heavy sword passed over their heads with a whoosh and crashed against the floor, fracturing the tile. Lilli scrambled away, giving Ben space to move.

Bennedict ducked below another weighty, looping blow that buried itself into the floor. Darting in before his enemy could rip his massive sword free, he sliced up towards the other man’s neck, only nearly missing the lethal strike he’d intended as the man flinched away.

The beast of a man howled, staying on his feet, face turning red, his blood dripping from the long cut that stretched down his shoulder and upper arm.

It’s the man from the fight at the bar , Lillith realized. Her fists clenched, the thick band of the House ring still unfamiliar as her joint curled over it. The one I sent Nimah to tend to. Low in her stomach something stirred, something wholly different than the panic and nausea.

He swept towards Ben in a rage, descending on him with a torrent of chopping strikes. They were blocked and dodged every time, but Lilli could see the strain in Ben’s muscles as their swords locked and the sweat dampening his forehead. After so many enemies in the halls he was tired. Adrenaline would only carry him so far and though he and his opponent were matched in height, this monster and his blade were built heavier.

Ben jumped back, staying low, baiting him in. The huge sword swung and he jumped, body twisting over the blade, his back passing inches from the edge. His feet had hardly met ground once more before he advanced with a blade dance, forcing his opponent off balance as he drew near. He ducked another sweeping swing, let his grip switch to a single hand where his sword was blocked again, and punched his enemy in the mouth.

The other man stumbled back several feet, leering at Ben through blood-coated teeth. He laughed as he dragged his arm over his mouth.

Bang!

His body spasmed at the impact, blood blooming over his chest.

Bang—bang—bang! Clink.

  He crumpled. The look on his face was utmost confusion.

Lilli’s hands shook where she clutched the revolver she’d found on the floor, her finger still on the trigger despite the jam.

Ben tentatively approached and gave her a lopsided smile. “Thank you,” he said as he carefully eased the weapon out of her hands. Nudging the cylinder with his thumb he checked the rounds remaining, refilled it and aligned the next shot, brass casings winking in the gloom. “You alright?”

There was lightning in her veins instead of dragon’s poison. She still trembled but she nodded, short and sharp, jaw set. She knew Ben could see it in her eyes: the first blood on her hands and the first step taken, her first taste of the highest power, of dealing out death and feeling… only satisfaction .

Half-cocking the hammer, he handed her back the revolver saying, “You can hang onto that if you’d like. Cock it all the way back or pull hard on the trigger again to fire it. Just uh…” He kneaded the muscles at the back of his neck, looking at her sideways. “Please don’t accidentally shoot me.” His eyes darted over her shoulder to the space there their salvation should’ve lain at last. 

It didn’t. 

Without a word he stepped around her and planted himself between her body and the cadre that now blocked the doorway, gunmetal-grey armor shining, rifles raised.

“My you’re a difficult pair to pin down. But I think that’s far enough.”

Ben readied his sword. Ice claws raked down Lillith’s spine as she sized up their commander: a reedy, sharp-eyed and cunning Reaver Captain, another Elite though much more lightly muscled and less overtly inhuman as the Heavy.

“Woah there Stryxie.” He held his hands up in mock placation, but with a simultaneous wave of his fingers his contingent of soldiers chambered their rounds, bolts snapping into place in a synchronous clatter. “We just want to talk.”

“Why waste the breath. We know how this ends,” Ben shot back.

“Note the way we haven’t killed you yet.”

Ben relaxed a fraction, but remained a shield in front of Lilli.

“We’re still following our Young Lord’s orders, you see. And he wants to talk.” He made to smile but it looked wrong on his hybridized features. “So if you’d be so kind and come with us, we’d appreciate not having to explain how this went sideways to the powers that be.”

They were allowed to keep their weapons. Supposedly ‘ a gesture of goodwill ,’ so the Reaver had called it. ‘Orders from the Young Lord. He wants you to feel secure—comfortable. He just wants to talk. ’ He’d tried to do his odd smile again and succeeded only at highlighting the thick blue-green scales that covered most of his head and face. 

To Lillith it seemed like a lazy oversight. That is, for the all too brief moment until she discovered that the consequence of said ‘goodwill’ was that they would be walked back to the ballroom with rifle barrels nearly flush to their heads.

“Wait here,” grumbled the Reaver. He slunk off towards his masters with a hunch to his shoulders and hands in his trouser pockets, like a beast expecting to get the cane.

Then the doors opened.

The room was still as beautiful as she’d last seen it. Excepting the gore splattered up the walls, that is. And the new pockmarks in the columns. Lillith’s eyes drifted to the twining vines, still lazily dropping petals, the painted ceiling, all seemingly blessedly untouched and surreal. A pang of deep, raw grief coiled in her heart. Another version of her had stood right there for her engagement toast only hours before: A version had been killed the moment she’d seen her father lying in a room full of dead men and Ben had placed the signet of the House of Pearls on her finger. Or perhaps it had been when Ben had deflected the bullet on the bridge. Or perhaps it was when I decided to run away from my proper destiny in the first place.

She let the waves of fresh anguish wash out of her with her breath. Just the wheel of her mind spinning more and more circles down the rocky inclines of her thoughts and the things she couldn’t change. How she wished she could break the spokes.

So, Lillith braced herself anew and gathered all her fractured, scattered selves, and readied herself for the greatest challenge this room would bring. She knew what she’d see. She was ready. She’d been readying herself the entire walk here. And thus she let her gaze pass over him with the fluid ease of water over river rock.

Kai, Son of the Blood and Prince of the House of Steel— and more titles besides— stood in all his dark splendor in the middle of the room, his curving, draconic horns gleaming over the back of his slick black hair as he argued heatedly, with a thin older man who looked down his hawkish nose at Kai with only contempt. The other man’s own horns were woefully pathetic. One of his uncles, if Lilli had to guess. Still, whatever the matter was it looked like Kai was making very little headway. ‘The Uncle’ must be enjoying a taste of power. And Kai wasn’t the Lord of his House quite yet. To turn away to acknowledge Lillith’s entrance would be to give up ground and neither was ready to do that.

“For the last time, I said to quiet the prisoners down!” bellowed the older man over Kai’s shoulder. “We’re trying to have a discussion here!”

Myriad other captives slumped, stood, and sat clumped in a corner and along a wall, weapons trained on them in the hands of more dark warriors. Eliciting a sharp intake of breath, one caught her eye immediately— the most heavily guarded, but also the least threatening: her father’s favored young concubine, his chosen partner for the evening. She sobbed in a heap of low-cut velvet that was a little too revealing for the occasion, her hair a collapsed mass and makeup running in rivers down her face. 

“Shut that snivelling woman up!” thundered the older man beside Kai. The concubine brought her hands to her mouth to stifle her tears. Still, they did not stop.

Lillith didn’t know her well. During the party she hadn’t warranted a thought. Lilli had been left only with the impression that this was a fairly simple woman with fairly simple wants and needs and merely the latest in a long line of ephemeral possessions that had supplanted her own mother. Lillith almost felt bad for her now…almost. 

She must’ve been grabbed early on. Lillith’s mood soured. That or she abandoned my father and tried to hide. Lilli knew what seemed the most likely.

Among the same group Lillith noted the lord and lady Fontan, who—though dirtied—seemed healthy. Achilles sat on the floor with his arms around his wife, who leaned her head on his shoulder. Both were staring down the guard that held them. Other Gnyssian nobility was muttering aggressively over the illegality of their being kept hostage and threatening to cut ties with Zalhdriizeshi altogether.

As if the House of Steel’s forces cared about legalit y at this point. 

Proof positive of that very fact: Lillith spied delegates from a few other worlds amid the assembled as well. A Hainan, clad simply by comparison to his fellows—and likely invited solely to foster trade with the Empire’s newest addition—sniffled wetly, his long, soft ears quivering. 

Poor thing probably had no idea what he was getting into. 

An opulent Rhujhadi, by contrast—a merchant-king of the clockwork world and no stranger to this style of politics—sat quiet in his bright finery, picking at a loose golden thread and looking really quite pissed off. His assistant perched elegantly beside him in slinking black silk, her face mostly obscured from sight by both the angle in which she sat and a curtain of tumbling hair the color of milky tea. As Lillith and Ben were brought in she leaned over to murmur in the ear of her employer as if reporting on a change in the weather, then resumed sketching in a small journal and flirting with the warrior that was meant to be holding her hostage, resting her fingers on his arm as he hovered ever closer to watch the work of her deft pen.

That explains why the Reaver was so insistent on keeping peace, why they were willing to follow Kai’s orders to the letter, and why Kai’s at odds with his uncle. Liralrujhad at odds with Steel would be disastrous. All their fancy weaponry would be nothing if not for the clockwork kings.

Clearly Steel’s soldiers and mercenaries weren’t all very good at keeping the bloodlust from rushing to their heads. They’d overstepped and now were trying to figure out how to get out of this without making enemies of the rest of the Empire. 

She sighed, though any relief still felt so very far away. Many prisoners. No Theo.

“Now, with all of that settled, what have we here?” 

Goose-pimples broke out over her flesh. ‘The Uncle’s’ voice and eyes were oily as they turned their attentions on Lillith and Ben at last. Kai stood beside him without a word, his expression stoney.

“My lords, I’ve caught you your prize,” said the Reaver. “ The Princess of the House of Pearls—or should I say it’s new Lady.” That sent telling sniggers amongst the soldiers. “And her loyal Stryxie brute.”

‘ The Uncle’ guffawed, “Look at this! The little Princess has hold of a hand gun. Isn’t that adorable? Have you ever seen such a thing Kai?”

Lillith’s cheeks heated.

“Do you know how to use that?” asked Kai.

“Imagine it,” said his uncle, patronizing her with every breath. “No matter. She can keep holding it if it makes her feel strong.” He motioned to the man behind Lilli. “If she tries to use it just shoot her in the head,” he chuckled, “Look at her hands shake. I very much doubt she can shoot straight, let alone kill anyone. And that's if she knows how to get it to fire to begin with.”

As he turned to Ben, however, his puffy face warped into an ugly sneer. “Now this one…I similarly cannot imagine the idiocy that led to him arriving here with all of his weapons, given who he is.” With a snap of his fingers men surrounded Ben. “Hold him. And shoot the idiot who let him stay so armed.”

“But sir the—” The Reaver looked desperately to Kai. Every part of his body language begged for aid, but none came. The next second he crumpled from the force of the shot, his clawed hand gripping the wound at his shoulder. Too expensive to be killed outright, after all.  

“Get it out of my sight. I’ll deal with it more later.”

The Reaver whined thinly as he was hauled away by his men.

“Search him. I don’t want him interfering,” ordered ‘The Uncle,’ focused back on Ben. His laugh was loud and sour as he amused himself with the handful of men that worked to subdue Bennedict, who struggled as the warriors roughly searched his person. Most of his effort was against the man trying to pry his sword out of his hands. With a jerk, Ben twisted the handle up, slamming it into the nose of his captor with a sickening crunch. 

The other man stumbled back with a yelp, yanking the weapon away from Ben. “Hold his arms!” he barked through the torrent of blood flowing down to his chin.

“No!” Lillith screamed.

Two men moved into place as the other man, broken nose audibly whistling with each labored breath, reared back and socked Bennedict in the stomach.

Ben wheezed, hacking coughs, but spit at the man that assailed him.

With a crack a fist collided with Ben’s face, splitting his scarred eyebrow. Another and his head flew back. Ben slackened, his lips oozing red-tinged saliva.

“That is a delegate of Stryx Zuthus!” Lillith cried, “You put us all at risk!”

“What have we to fear from Stryx? They have no magics. No great armies. A planet of brigands and blacksmiths wielding the tools of an bygone age that our firearms will soon render extinct,” ‘The Uncle’ laughed. 

“Now!” He clapped his hands together. “With the brute out of the way we’re free to have a talk with the Princess here unimpeded.”

“There is nothing you could say that I want to hear and nothing you want to know that I will give. I know what you’ve done.” Lillith’s free hand clenched into a tight fist at her side. “How dare you murder the Lord of a great House off-world! Off-world and on neutral ground! You who were invited here in peace!” she shouted, “He was a Son of the Blood, blessed by the White Flame of Absolution! Do you think our patron will accept this without retaliation? Do you want to see the dragons go to war? My father lies dead at your hands and now you detain his successor.” Lillith held the ring of her House aloft. “I am the White Flame’s truest Daughter in centuries. Will you have my blood on your hands too?”

“The dragons understand power and strength,” ‘The Uncle’ drawled with a long roll of his eyes, “They’ll understand what’s happened here today. That’s if they care at all for events unfolding off-planet. You put it so aptly: ‘there is nothing you can say.’ You can only cooperate. Do so well and we will grant you a far cleaner death than we gave your father.”

“I have a question for your ‘Young Lord,’ if I’m allowed.” She was pleased in how clear her voice sounded, despite the storm within her chest, addressing the man that she thought she knew, who stood behind his uncle quietly and watched it all happen.

He looked at her without a word, most of his body angled away, as if the subtle distancing made it easier to live with everything he’d done.

“You used to stand for the good of Zalhdriizeshi. You spoke to me often about ensuring security and plenty for our people. When did that change?”

“It hasn’t.”

“Liar.”

“Think what you wish.”

“I ask: how could you stand for this?” She glared daggers at him, holding in her expression all her horror and her rage.

He didn’t give her the courtesy of a response.

“If we could move along please?” ’The Uncle’ beckoned his men forward and they dragged her father’s concubine, howling, from her place with the prisoners to the center of the room, beside Lilli.

The woman—‘Temerli’ Lillith thought her name was—blubbered as they hauled her limp form, to anyone that would listen, “Please I don’t know anything. I’m no threat. I promise I’ll go home. I can live in peace. I’m from a small village. My Lord! Young Lord it’s near where your mother is from. We are friends of the House of Steel. I can go back there. I don’t know anything about this.” She crawled towards Lillith, beseeching, tugging at her dirtied hems, “Please, Lady—please. I served your father well didn’t I? Help me...”

‘The Uncle’ ignored her pleas. “Nephew?” He opened a hand to Kai who placed within it a small ruddy vial and uncorked it.

The color drained away from Lillith’s face. Blood magic.

Chapter Text

The man descended upon her first. 

She shook involuntarily as he did, either from old, anticipatory terror or the unending adrenaline that left her frayed. The revolver slipped from her trembling grip. His hand fisted into her hair and she yelped as he dragged her head back, the teeth of her loosened crown biting into her skin. He drew the runes onto her exposed throat without care, the magic searing and slicing as it sank and settled into the flesh alongside all her others.

Temerli screamed as it did, inexperienced as she was with the pain. 

To Lillith this was child’s play: simple coupled runes to elicit truth. Unsurprising, really, her thoughts came from a comfortable distance outside herself. Anything more complex would require a real Gnyssian Blood Scribe and more trust than Houses like this are willing to give. The formula it paired with was exceedingly expensive and too rich, it seemed, for even the House of Steel’s blood, as this particular concoction wasn’t particularly strong. It would force the truth. But not for all that long. 

“I’m sure you understand. Just a bit of insurance for us so that we aren’t wasting our time. We have a couple of points of interest we believe either one of you might be able to assist with.” He knitted his hands over his armored waist. 

Lillith glowered at him and his complicit nephew. Her neck stung as if she’d been attacked by wasps.

“First, a bit of a long shot. We’d like to know where your darling fiancee is, Lillith. He was last seen in the company of many high profile attendees tonight, including your father and this pretty little thing. In fact, we believed that was who he was with when the attack began. Unfortunately, when we came upon your father and all his men, dear Theodore was nowhere to be found.”

“You should have asked them where he went then.” Blessedly the truth rune did not stop Lillith from making this as odious a process as possible.

“Alas, accidents happen,” he said, examining his clawed fingernails. “Imagine our joy when we secured your companion there,” he gestured to Temerli, “as she attempted to hide. She was more than happy to tell us that Theodore was headed to you. Isn’t that right dear? Were you telling us the truth?”

“Yes,” sniffled the woman. “He said to hide. He said he was going to get Lillith. I ran.”

“He didn’t find me,” said Lilli. “I’ve been with Ben the entire evening. One of your goons did come upon us in the atrium. Perhaps he killed Theo before he arrived. I don’t know.” She gritted her teeth and bit out the words. “Shame Ben killed him or you could’ve asked. But, you know, accidents happen.”

“No matter. As I said, it was a long shot. Your fiancee is wily I will give him that. Trust in us, though, dear Lillith. We will find him in time.” His curved nails clenched. “And we skill skewer him like the lone feral beast that he is.

“Our next concern is much more pressing. And interesting, as I’d not heard tell of any of it until quite recently, all thanks to our Young Lord.”

Lilli’s eyes flicked over to Kai, her heart fluttering in her chest.

“We’ll begin simply enough.” ‘The Uncle’ pointed at the sorry woman beside her, but addressed Lillith. “This obviously isn’t your mother.”

“Obviously.”

“Your father did always discard his toys so easily.” He said in an aside, his voice warping into an oozing mockery of sympathy. “I can’t imagine a father bringing his new plaything to the wedding proceedings of his daughter by another woman. I’m sure you’ve felt quite bereft.”

“I’ve gotten used to it.”

“You see, we’d like very much to know where your mother is…”

Lillith opened her mouth to reply.

“—and the brother we know she hides.”

She snapped it shut with a clack , fighting the rune.

“This pathetic creature doesn’t seem to know much of anything,” ‘The Uncle’ continued, “aside from how to get on her back.” His wan lips contorted into a pout. “Shall try it again for your Lady, Temerli? Tell me: does the House of Pearls have another prince or princess?”

“They do! They do,” she stammered. “They hide him. They don’t talk about him. I only know because I saw him once, by accident.”

“Stop!” Lillith seethed at this betrayal.

But the concubine blathered on, “He’s young. Weak. Sick. Not ‘of the Blood.’ Not at all. That’s what all the wives say behind closed doors.” She gasped, finally managing to stop her wagging tongue.

‘The Uncle’ looked smug and not at all surprised. “From what I understand your mother has had a difficult enough time keeping him from being murdered by your own House members.”

Lilli’s eyes drifted slowly to Kai again, who avoided meeting her gaze. 

He’d told them everything. All that she’d said in confidence, out of stress when she’d needed a shoulder to lean on. “How could you?” she growled at him. Her heart broke anew with every word, anger lacing through heartache. “After—after everything we…I thought if nothing else we were friends. Instead you’re a gods-damned, murderous traitor. And I’m sorry I ever loved you.”

“Likewise.” Kai’s eyes were cold and hard…but he wasn’t quite good enough at lying to sell it completely. 

At one time Lilli had loved that quality about him: the honor and honesty in him that he just couldn’t shake, so antithetical to the way they were brought up and the culture in which they lived. Now it just showed the betrayal that dwelt in his heart. Her low lip threatened to tremble, so she stabbed her teeth viciously into it instead.

“A little more truth than we bargained for ‘eh nephew?” guffawed ‘The Uncle’ up at his kin, earning himself a dirty look he cared about not one whit. “So, Princess—”

“I am the Lady of my House and I will have respect.”

“Fine then. Our new Lady of the Pearls. Where are they?”

“Why do you want them?” The compulsion rune burned in protest. Lillith ignored it, letting the effort out in a ragged, grinding groan through clenched teeth.

“Tell me what I’d like to know. Where are they?”

“They are in hiding,” she sneered, with force behind the words as they tore the information from her. “I know not where. As you said, they are targets for the more zealous of my House. They cannot stand for us to be ‘impure,’ cannot stand a child born outside of our patron’s gaze, especially not one born to the Lord of the House. Just as they once thought of me. My father’s final gift to my mother was allowing her and her son safety. She believed I was safe—could fend for myself. So she left with him.”

“Then how did this doll happen to see him? How do the rumors persist?”

“It was just once. An emergency.” In Lilli’s mind it was hazy. The earliest hours of the morning. Hushed voices and hurried feet along the walkways outside the residential rooms. A small ragdoll hanging in a small hand and a shock of shiny black hair. The guilt that spilled from a mother seeing her own daughter for the first time in years. How few words she’d had to say. She swallowed the memory and let it sink. “I saw him for only a moment. As Temerli said: he is a very sickly boy. My mother needed the geneticists and healers of the House proper to save his life.”

“So, we may not need to lift a finger. This problem will take care of itself.” ‘The Uncle’ leered, his victory alight in his eyes. “A House without heirs, doomed to crumble.” He snapped his fingers twice at the soldier beside them. “We’re finished here.”

“Release us or let us join your prisoners. We are of no more use to you at—”

“Quite so.”

Bang!

A scream. Her own. Her palms flew to her mouth, as the woman beside her collapsed forward, and lay unmoving. Lillith’s head swam, ears briefly deafened. A fine red mist dotted the backs of her hands, already starting to dry. She wondered if she’d ever be able to scrub it off.

“What were we saying before? Something about accidents?”

“You’ve just killed an innocent woman.” Her heart throbbed in her chest.

His expression warped, his disgusting act gone in an instant. “There is no innocent member of the House of Pearls,” he said venomously. “There are only enemies in our way.” Crowding her, his own face inches away from Lillith’s, he spit out, “Unfortunately that means you most especially. The Lady of the House is most certainly in our way.”

At the side of the room, Ben had been roused by the noise and looked aghast at what had transpired, frantic eyes moving between Lillith and her imminent fate.

“You asked before why we want your mother and brother? It’s simple: so that after we eliminate you and your father and your meddlesome fiancee and all of your allies here tonight, celebrating the power they took from us, we can ensure that the job be finished. We will rip this weed out root and stem. And when we are done, the pearl-ways of Zaldriizeshi will have peace, for there will be no one left to disturb their waters.” ‘The Uncle’ prowled around Lilli and the way his eyes glittered sickened her. “What a beautiful flower,” he whispered. She recoiled, a sallow finger stroking a long line as he circled, from her cheek to the now-dormant, fresh rune scar. “What a shame we must prune it.”

“Don’t touch her!” Ben snarled, struggling against the men that held him.

“Get your grubby hands away from me you disgusting inbred rat,” Lillith hissed.

Kai’s uncle’s face twisted into mock injury. His breath was rank next to her ear, “Oh? Does she have thorns?” 

“She was born under the Spider and the Hurricane, Uncle,” Kai interjected, tone wry and brow raised. “Think her soft at your peril. And that’s aside from the poison in her veins.”

‘The Uncle’ shoved his boot into Lillith’s knee, forcing her down and signaled to the man standing with his rifle still trained at her head. “Give me your sword,” he ordered. “It really is a shame, Princess. My nephew insists you’re useful and your whelps will be even more so. Do you hear him? ‘Underestimate her at your peril’ he says. Mewling over there like he isn’t a love-sick youngling, even though he ails so that you can practically smell it on him.”

Lilli gazed up at Kai from where she’d fallen onto bruised knees; up through the frightful, damp, messy strands of hair that’d fallen across her face, her crown now askew; her hands smacking painfully on the ground, catching herself as she was forced to grovel.

She didn’t look like the Lady of a grand and old House. Nevertheless he stared her, rapt. Periwinkle eyes searched deep green and found there such softness. It reminded Lillith so much of Theo…the same way it always did. 

Except with Kai, instead of war, of fiery infatuation, and insatiable craving, here there was only peace. As if she was precious: a crowning jewel, the most beautiful thing in the world; a dream of a heaven made manifest in flesh that he could never touch, deliverance in a woman he would gladly worship just for a taste of paradise.

But so too did she see his surrender laid bare for all to witness: the torment and forgone hope of a drowning man staring up at the dimming sky. The pain of betrayal met the ache of years of longing. Years of hope that just wouldn’t die. And then, of course, the agony of a heart that believed it had been toyed with, who had been given everything he always wanted, who had tasted his heaven and then had it all be taken away.

She could practically see the memories playing out in his mind and the gears turning, deciding if he could handle watching the woman he’d always loved curled on the floor with his uncle’s sword at her throat and whether the fact that she could never truly love him the same way was enough to condemn her to death. And that was the problem wasn’t it? There was never any future here and they both knew it.

“ We can convince them to change your betrothal agreement,” he said, leaning over to kiss the bare skin on her shoulder. “Theo is gone.”

“Even if that were possible,” she murmured, “my father would never promise me to you, if for no other reason than spite. He would never empower his greatest rivals.”

His lips trailed down, down, down towards her spine, making her shiver. “We can make him see. I can make him see. You should be here with one of your own, helping our people. We don’t need Gnysis to be great.”

A pretty dream. One that had left them waking up cold. “This was a mistake, Kai. My mistake…My favorite mistake I’ve ever made, but a mistake nonetheless.” And that was the last time she’d seen him. She’d turned and walked away and it was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Left him beautiful and heartbroken on a lakeshore, wondering if there was anything he could’ve done better and wishing he could turn back time.

“My heart bleeds for this reunion,” jeered his uncle, dragging Lillith out of the past. He scoffed, “You know what I think Princess?” The edge of the sword nicked the skin at her throat, before it was quickly raised, preparing for the strike. “I think you’re better off dead.”

Somewhere in the distance Ben was shouting. “Lillith look at me. Look at me!”

Lillith closed her eyes.

Pop-pop-pop-pop!

Lilli flinched and instinctively rolled, shoulders slamming hard against the floor as she scrambled onto hands and knees, moving into the space the soldier beside her had once stood and his corpse now cooled. 

The sword landed with a clang where her body had just been.

Her palm landed on her fallen weapon.

Furious, ‘The Uncle’ roared and spun to face her.

‘Pull the trigger…’  

She brought her revolver up, and pulled. Over and over again. Until ‘the Uncle’s’ chest was a red mess and his body lay unmoving at her feet.

Looks like I can shoot straight enough.

The room erupted into gunfire.

I’m alive. 

Somehow I’m alive.  

An explosion thundered somewhere in their vicinity, shuddering the foundations. The world was tilting around on an axis but Lillith forced herself to her feet anyway. She didn’t really think. There wasn’t time for it and she was used to this now. She just moved.

Another man fell to the floor nearby, his rifle sent clattering.

Kai stepped forward, his pistol raised and still smoking. He gave Lillith a tiny smile, a nod and a shrug of a shoulder, then raised his weapon and continued executing any man holding a firearm too slow to realize their Prince had betrayed them.

Freeing one arm, Ben grabbed for the grip of his sword. He unsheathed the blade in a wide arc, killing the distracted captor who had held it, and then bent, narrowly dodging a bullet aimed at his head. He crouched low, left the other man holding his lower gut in his hands after another forward slash, and kept moving.

Lillith sprinted for the cover of the room’s aisles and dove behind a wide column. Shutting her eyes, she rested her head against the cold stone, her chest heaving and eardrums aching.

Take a breath. Everything keeping her alive sounded like Ben.

Her eyes popped open. The thought hit her oddly late for how obvious it was: the prisoners were all gone. Beside her feet a corpse lay with a curious fountain pen stabbed deep into an orbital socket.

The same guard the assistant had been flirting with, she realized. His weapons were gone.

Lillith risked a peek from behind her column.

The surviving captives had made it to the other side of the room. The Rujhadi himself was busy shepherding the group. His aide wasn’t anywhere in sight, but the merchant king’s elegant, now slightly tattered, robes fluttered around him as he kicked down a side door. Anastasia Fontan had taken on the effort of calming the still-panicking Hainan, while also periodically shouting out targets to her husband. Lord Fontan, who had taken up a pistol, bravely shielded them both and picked off any stray guards that dared head their way. Wherever the Lady Fontan’s finger pointed, Achilles delivered death with surprising accuracy.

Ben fought his way towards the center of the room, body spinning in strings of concentric movements. Yes this…this was the ‘Second Sword of the Lightless Forge’ worthy of the name. His blade whirled, creating circles around his body, before reversing at his back, slicing upward and spiraling over his head, then arcing downward into a diagonal slash in front of him. His wrist rolled as it twirled the sword again and again, shredding through men that dared match blades in a twisted dance. He did not stop or slow, only pushed forward through his score of foes.

Forward, but… A lone, careful man picked his way towards Ben’s back, daggers gripped tight.

Lillith thought to cry out, but didn’t want to distract him. No. No. She pounded her fists in frustration. No!

Suddenly, a flash of black and cream caught the corner of her eye.

The Rhujhadi aide emerged from the shade of the colonnade, black silk rippling as she darted forward with a preternatural burst of speed, slipping low over the slickened floors and ducking beneath a wild blade that swung over her head. She slowed her slide and twisted, picking a dropped sword off the ground. Reversing her grip she killed the man attacking her, then, without stopping, took it up with both hands and drove it through the back of the man coming up behind Bennedict.

Ben spun, finishing the last man in front of him, rolling his blade around—not so unaware after all—and stopped, blinking in surprise, as he was met with a hapless impaled corpse, rather than a raised sword.

The assistant kicked the body of her victim off the sword with one long, bare leg, exposed by a slit in her gown that ran nearly to her hip. She drew the tip of her blade up to Ben’s chest, her head rolling from one side to the other, considering.

And then she winked. 

Murmuring something to him out of Lillith’s earshot, she then spun on her heel, racing back to her employer and the rest of the evacuating former-captives, carving through those few left that tried to stop her, and vanished through the open door.

She’d left Ben standing stock still, slack-jawed and trying to find words, surrounded by not a single enemy that still breathed.

“Ben!” Lillith shrieked, sprinting from her cover. He gave her a tired smile as she ran to his side. He looked well and truly spent now. Lillith immediately began dabbing at the wounds on his face.

“Are you alright? They hit you so hard—I’m so sorry—but you were incredible. You’ve done incredibly,” she babbled.

“I am whole, my Lady. You need not worry for me. Are you alright?”

“Yes. Yes. Fine! You can see I’m fine.” She swatted at his hands as he tried to stop her fussing over his face. 

“Are you sure?” He reached with careful fingers to unhook the lower half of Lillith’s dragon crown away from her jaw, where it now dangled precariously from a crack earned at some point in the night. “Certainly don’t look whole to me,” he said with a little quirk of his bruised lips.

Lillith clicked her tongue at him and tucked the piece away into her skirts. “Trust me. You’ve no need to worry.”

Ben let out a long breath, his forehead furrowing as Lillith worked to staunch the cut on his brow. “My Lady, could I beg a question of you?”

“Anything.”

“Do you know who the woman in black was?”

“No, I’ve never met her before. I’d have remembered her from the reception line.”

“Had strange scars on her face…” His expression grew wistful, his mind far away reliving the shock and transcribing the image of the stranger to memory.

“She saved you, but it also seemed like she threatened you? What did she say?”

“She just said ‘you owe me’. That’s all. It’s just that I don’t know how I’m meant to—”

A shadow fell over them, booted feet clicking against the tile. Lillith whipped around, snapping her pistol up, finger on the trigger. “You bastard.” Her lips twisted into a snarl. One last round waited in the cylinder of her weapon. She was happy to use it on the last member of the House of Steel left standing. 

“No, no!”

The gun was smacked down before she fired. Kai stood frozen, hands raised.

“Beast!” Lillith hissed over Ben’s shoulder as held her hands down.

“We’re friends, my Lady, we’re friends!” Ben said in a rush, grimacing over the use of his bruised muscles.

“Explain.”

He gave Kai a tight-jawed greeting over his shoulder, “Sorry my lord.” Turning back to Lillith he continued, “Kai is the one who sought out my employer’s—and my—aid after he learned what his family planned tonight. He helped me secure my attendance. I believe he’s trying his best to protect you. You know he is.”

Lilli narrowed her eyes and lowered her revolver, though she didn’t move her finger far from the trigger. The tear-streaked face of her father’s concubine flickered through Lilli’s mind. She didn’t look at the spot her body lay. Kai might be trying to help, but only her and only up to a point. “Fine,” she said, “But if he does anything I’m killing him. Or rather you’re gonna hold him and I’m gonna kill him.”

Bennedict’s brows inched up towards his hairline.

“Who gave her a gun?” muttered Kai.

“It’s for her own safety.”

“You don’t give flaming kindling to a little bird” said Kai, stepping around Ben and tried to snatch the weapon away while Lilli evaded him.

“I’d say she’s doing fine so far.”

The slightly exhausted prince gave up his futile effort.

“Where is Theo. What have you done to him?” demanded Lillith archly.

“Nothing,” Kai sighed. He did not at all look convinced that Lillith wasn’t going to try and shoot him.

“I’m sorry. Truly.” He said, taking in Ben’s bloodied eyebrow and lip with a wince. “My uncle arrived unexpectedly shortly before you did, prisoners in tow, and refused to leave.”

“Sorry? ‘Sorry!’ It strains credulity,” Lilli shook her head. Her eyes lit on the cadaver of the young woman lying still in the center of the room, slain for nothing more than the great misfortune of coming to the attention of Lillith’s father. She’d had no great protector to spirit her through the halls. A small fish, lost in a cold and traitorous sea she thought she knew.

Lillith folded her arms over her chest, decisively crossing over to where she’d been forced to kneel and the other body that lay there. The one I put there. She spat at it. “ I’m not sorry by the way,” she said to Kai, setting her jaw.

“I wouldn’t expect you to be.”

Lillith gave him her back rather than face the palpable sadness in his tone. It didn’t keep her from hearing his long, defeated exhale that followed.

“This is officially out of our hands—and Bennedict, you don’t have much time. Your boss’ worries were unfounded. Theodore might be Gnyssian but he’s not forgotten what he learned on Zalhdriizelitz. Several of Steel’s cohorts are still spread throughout the embassy, but his household guard has arrived in full force and I suspect were ready to move as soon as the fighting began. More are on the way.”

That got Lilli to turn around again. Theo?

Kai had beckoned Ben over to a table a short distance away, set up beside the dias at the front of the room. Beside an awaiting pair of brass respirators, a scroll lay unrolled on its surface. Pointing to it at various points, Kai continued, “They besiege the consulate on all sides. That’s why I had to stop you before the door. You’d have run right into them. Trust me, you don’t want to be caught and questioned.” Lilli noted that there was dirt and dried blood spray on his hands, face, and chest too, like he’d been fighting at more than just a safe distance. She couldn’t help but wonder precisely who he’d been killing.

“I’m well aware,” came Ben’s voice. “Should we worry about the delegates and nobility that fled?”

“No. They have the Fontans with them. Their forces are allied. I think the couple only landed here in some ridiculous effort by my uncle to leverage their warriors.” He cut his eyes away sourly. “As if that wouldn’t just make them fight harder.”

“I’m curious about—”

“Before you ask: I’m curious about her as well. ’An aide from Liralrujhad’ is all I really know. That being said: this event—and certainly all that has followed—has drawn eyes from all over the Empire. Not just your employer’s. Assuming she’s an agent for another syndicate would be fair.”

“It sounds as though most of the high value targets have made it out of this unscathed. Largely the outcome we hoped for.” Ben considered it, slowly rapping his knuckles on his chin and his mouth in thought. “What other news do you have for me?”

“Scant little you don’t already know. Like I said, the best thing you can do now is get out of here while you still can.”

“Surely I can afford to remain a few moments longer, lord.”

The gazes of the two men locked in terse, invisible conflict.

“You know what I’m after,” said Ben.

A muscle ticked in Kai’s jaw, but he played it all off with a shrug. “From what I understand, the people in question didn’t want anything to do with this and had no issues cutting down anyone in their way. I wouldn’t worry.” He reloaded his gun with almost lazy assurance.

“And yet, I find that I am.”

Kai’s eyes darted over to Lilli.

She flushed and feigned disinterest, taking a few steps away and busying herself with pillaging spare rounds to refill her own weapon. Just far enough that she could still hear their quiet conversation at the edges of her hearing and watch them through the corners of her lashes.

“Is this you asking or your employer?”

“Let’s call it professional interest on both our parts.”

Kai wearily rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes, alright, fine. I came across her right? And when I did…” He gave a small involuntary shudder. “I tried to help but she looked at me like…like if I laid a hand on her either to help or hinder she’d cut out my heart and eat it alongside a fine glass of Hainan sunset-red. That is the person your boss is looking to tangle with.”

“Interesting,” Ben hummed, expression closed. “The rumors are true then?”

“I can’t say with any certainty. Any fighting was done before I arrived. I didn’t witness any of it.”

“Fine. We’re finished here then. Or I am at least.”

What was all that? Lillith wondered and a part of her mourned for simpler times, when her greatest concern was whether Theodore really loved her. It seemed to her, ever increasingly, that while her engagement party turned to ash around her, it had become about much more than two people. One marriage. One family. More than one planet. Maybe it always had been.

Around the table, the men had moved on.

“Do you have an exit strategy?” asked Ben.

“Your best bet is the low balcony down the hall.”

“That’s not ideal.”

“Would you call any of this an ideal situation by any stretch?” Kai scoffed. “This is better than any other alternative. And a relatively simple journey over the grounds to the street,” he continued, ignoring the other man’s visible irritation. “You’ll need to be quick.”

“You have my thanks. And my thanks for doing what you could here. You’ve done well,” Ben said, thumping a fist to his chest with a shallow dip at the waist. Simple, business-like, but not cold. There was no real ill-will to let fester. What’s done was done. He extended a hand to Lillith, looking to her expectantly.

He remembered, she realized. ‘Don’t let go of my hands again…’ 

She took it and was surprised to find the callouses to be something soothing. She took a few trailing steps after Ben, then stopped.

“Hold on Ben…”

She spun, walking back to Kai, drawing close, closer to him than she’d been in a year.

“Lilli—Lillith…” he stammered. There was so much left unsaid, so much more in the emerald of his eyes. So much of the good man hidden within somewhere, stifled by a home filled with monsters.

There wasn’t anything ‘fixed’ between them. Not really. But maybe it was best it stayed that way. It was time to leave all these old wounds in the past and relegate the battles that had drawn them to history, to bandage their hundred bleeding cuts and let scar tissue form. Maybe if they did, one day something could grow that wasn’t so contaminated.

Lilli reached up and traced her thumb along that beautiful scar across his lips. And then she asked after the very man that put it there, “Theo—is he alive? You know where he is don’t you?”

“So far as I know, yes. And yes.”

“Tell him the Lady of the House of Pearls has dissolved his betrothal contract. Tell him I’ve freed him from any promises that have been made.”

“What—I can tell him but—Lilli wait—” But Lillith didn’t want to wait anymore.

Ben kept hold of her as they flew towards the balcony.

Shouts went up behind them but they did not stop. The open world—freedom—rushed towards them with every pounding step. 

Freedom from the blood. From the suffering. A chance at last to put all this behind me.

Lillith’s skirts churned around her as they stumbled to a harsh stop, slamming through the doors, the pair of respirators that Kai had supplied secure over their faces.

Ben started to ease himself up onto the balcony rail. Just a short drop to the grounds below.

As Lillith moved to join him, the air shifted about her and a hand shot out to catch hers.

Lilli froze.

Ben looked up and grinned. “I’ll wait for you on the far side of the grounds for a time. Know that should you choose to stay, I wish you nothing but the very best of luck, Princess. Though, I don’t think you’ll need it.” he murmured quickly to her, sweeping her free knuckles up to his lips in a chaste kiss. A goodbye. Or perhaps a promise. Settling back atop the rail, his smile was devilish as he looked over her shoulder. “Time to make your choice.” He dipped his head, tapping his forehead in a small show of respect.

Theodore stood frozen on the threshold of the balcony, his eyes wide as he watched their interaction, clutching her small free hand desperately. He drew his dagger—

And lunged forward, blade outstretched, with an angry shout, “No!”

Lilli whipped back around, but Ben was already gone and she was left alone with the one man she’d wanted to find and equally wanted to leave behind.

“Theodore,” her voice cracked over his name, slightly metallic beneath her breather, emotions a knotted ruin.

“Lillipad…” He shoved her bloodstained handkerchief at her, lost and forgotten long ago. “I found this for you.” Theo looked away, down at the hand he held, turning it gently as a heavy silence settled over them. Lillith caught a hint of a swear, muttered under his breath.

“This isn’t how I wanted this to go,” he pleaded. “I have so much to say to you…but let me just say this: Stay. Please.”

“Theo,” she tried again. Hours ago they’d stood beside each other and looked at one another like they were the whole universe. Now that was another lifetime. ‘Princess Lillith’ had run through all those bloodsoaked halls looking at face upon sightless face and wondered if she’d ever see him again. Yet, that had become another lifetime too. Now, as Theo stood before her, he just felt like a stranger. “I freed you. Your life is yours again. I saved you from us—from all this.” She gestured at the smoking consulate that loomed at his back. “You aren’t shackled anymore.” 

His brow knitted and he shifted back a step. “Shackled? What?—”

Why does it feel like I’m saying everything wrong?

“No more obligation. No more performances. No scheming nobles from a world that isn’t really yours. No more future that isn’t really yours. You can do anything you want now, Theo.” Lillith’s voice dropped to a somber mutter, “You aren’t sworn to me. You can find someone you truly love.”

“I—I didn’t ask for any of that. That’s not what I—” His face scrunched, bottom lip caught on a fang. “But, I guess I had this all wrong,” he breathed, then raised his eyes to hers and said, louder, “I don’t want to take your decision, your own freedom from you.”

He was letting her go, Lilli realized. No matter what he said he didn’t believe it. Longing lay in his eyes, a shattering yearning that mourned her loss before she’d gone; a foregone conclusion and a future that dwelt only in their imaginations.

Lillith reached up to his cheek, tucking a stray wave behind his ear, as she’d done when they were children. He closed his eyes as her fingers brushed his skin, bracing for the inevitable goodbye.

“Come with me,” she whispered, like a wish or a prayer, in the rush of a single breath.

For a second she could see him consider it, his heart fighting over it with his head. She dared to hope. 

“I can’t. You know I can’t.”

Her mouth quivered. “You’d choose this over me?” Throbbing pressure gathered in her chest, threatening to choke her, and lurked behind her eyes. She squeezed them shut and blinked it all away. She would not cry. She didn’t think she had any tears left anyway.

“No. I—no that’s not it,” he stammered, capturing his hair in a desperate hand. “So I leave and—and what? Leave everything I’ve done behind? Everything I’ve given to restore the family name? It would become meaningless. Listen—” His face transformed, alight with a sudden passion. “Me and you. We can claim power together. Rule together.”

“You think this is a good plan!? You eagerly gift me planets as if your words don’t hold weight. An entire House just came to kill us both! They almost succeeded!”

“I meant what I said. And I had it under control,” he shrugged, like it was nothing. Like the new rune scar on her neck wasn’t still raw. Like she didn’t have a dead woman’s blood smearing on her skin. “I knew they were coming today. I had my household guard ready to engage as soon as the fighting started and we had them trapped.” 

The world stopped. Her breath escaped her, stuttered, and stopped. “You knew…”

It was like he didn’t hear her. “I wanted to make a statement—not only to you, but to them as well.” His mouth set, grim and determined, and grew vicious. “They have no idea who they’re dealing with or what I would do to keep us safe.”

“You knew everything?” She stumbled a step away from him. 

He stepped forward after her. “Yes, days ago.”

“And you decided you wouldn’t tell me. You decided you wouldn’t tell my family? Theo…” She felt as though still hadn’t started breathing again. Like she’d died and her heart had stopped and gone cold. “Theo they’re all dead! ” The last word was like a knife, twisting and tearing and taking her frozen heart with it.

“I—”

“You? What?” 

Her voice sounded so quiet. Hushed. Almost calm. Somehow she wasn’t shouting, though she wished she would. Shouldn’t I be? But the depth of the hurt was so unfathomable that it felt as though she had nothing left to give but scorched earth.

“I tried to save them. Your father especially,” he said quietly, looking at his shoes. “I’m sorry.”

“The only wedding gifts you’ve given me are lies. And look at the ruination they’ve wrought,” Lilli hissed.

“I can’t turn back time. There was nothing I could do—”

“I’m meant to be your partner in this life.” Lillith’s skin was so chilled that she was shaking, but it wasn’t from the night air. “But more than that, I thought you and I had trust. Apparently we don’t even have that! Oh gods ,” her voice broke, “Tell me you didn’t. Please. Tell me you didn’t do this.”

“Now you’re free of them Lillipad! Free to lead the way you deserve to. All of it is yours now. Your father’s death has meant your rise. You can protect your House, advance it better than that old, lecherous man ever could.”

Smack!

The blow smarted against Lillith’s palm. Theo blinked at her with wild, wide eyes, raising a hand to his reddening cheek. 

“How dare you act as though I should be grateful,” she said, lowly. “You know what? You’re right. This is a power play in my benefit. And I will protect my House: my mother, my brother, our lands. I will rise. I’ll see our enemies bleed. And tomorrow—maybe tomorrow I’ll celebrate being free of that man. But today? Today I mourn the power you paid for with my family’s blood. My blood.”

“Lillith…” He stepped in close, crowding her, cupping her face in his hand, drawing a soft finger along the line of her jaw as he gently pulled the mask away from her face. “When I’m Consul of this world I can bring your enemies to you on their knees. You can have everything. We can have everything. Why can’t we do this together?” he begged, his breath warm against her lips.

He let the respirator fall. And before the toxic air could flood her lungs, he hungrily covered her mouth with his own.

Lillith let her fingers tangle into his shirt, her eyes fluttering closed. And for a second she let herself melt into him, into the wonderful illusion of him that lived in her mind. Theo could be her whole world just for right now. She could still pretend the way she used to…just for a little while.

And it was… everything. Balance: heat and light and ice and darkness; insanity and enlightenment; the poison and the cure. His hand, still clasped over her own, tightened and here was sanctuary and peril. He moaned into her mouth and here was joining and unmaking. Every frenzied breath lead to collision, fusion, woven into a song of oblivion.

Until she came to her senses and buried her teeth into his lip, the fever broken. 

He yelped, startled, his fingers coming up to blot the dot of blood that decorated his kiss-pink mouth as he staggered back.

“Tell me you love me and I’ll stay,” Lillith panted, a rough and hoarse whisper. “Tell me you’ll make this up to me. Pretend there’s some way you can.” She took up her fallen respirator and sealed it back over her mouth, its mechanisms ticking and spewing small jets of air, protecting her from harm. “Tell me you’ll make this world safe for us. Tell me there is no power you love more than your love for me as if it’s true.”

“I—”

“Perhaps that’s too difficult a request. Let me ask this instead: If I asked you to come with me again would you say yes?”

He ground his jaw, the grip he still held tightening.

“It’s a very simple question.”

“No.”

She knew he’d seen the decision she’d made in her changing expression, the choice she’d made long before she’d stepped onto this balcony. She watched him realize that for all his plotting he’d ruined whatever he’d planned when it came to her. Here was another man who had surrendered her despite every chance to fight. 

Lillith laughed bitterly within her mind. The two men who’d held her heart in their hands were more similar than they liked to think.

He tried to bridge the distance to pull her close again and stopped short.

“Don’t.” 

Lillith’s revolver glinted, drawn without hesitation from her skirts and primed with a click . She tried to pull her other hand free, but he held fast, as if his fingers were the one part of him that refused to give her up.

“So that’s it then.” He muttered, his expression closed, eyes haunted. “If you don’t want to be ‘shackled’ to me, to build you own life out there…” He gestured at the world that waited beyond the balcony. “If you want to leave me, then so be it.”

“You left me first!” she shouted and with it buried memories threatened to eat her alive, free at last after all this time.

The past is the past. She remembered the tender way his lips had felt the first time they’d ‘practiced’ kissing. She remembered the innocence. It’s done. She remembered the fire when the innocence burned off and left passion in its wake. She remembered what he’d whispered against her skin. We’re different now. Everything is different now. And she remembered how she felt when he’d walked out the door a few days later, called away to claim his family seat; the promises to write and to return, all of them empty. Look at us…not just a shattered ruin. No. What love we had has burned to the ground. There’s no repairing what no longer exists. 

He wouldn’t even look at her.

“You didn’t do this for us. You did it for you.” Quieter, she continued, “And you don’t know what you’re getting into. You’re trying to fit into a world you think you know so much about, even though you know nothing. You leave my House to slaughter and call it good fortune. And you think to involve me in all your plotting without being open with me.” She shook her head. “There is more at stake here than just you or me. And I won’t let myself and my future be caught up in the games the Houses play all for a relationship that only exists in dreams.”

She uncocked the gun and strode away from him, forcing her steps towards the balcony rail against his stillness, straining his hold on her hand.

“I don’t know much about love, but I can’t—I refuse —to believe it’s meant to feel like this,” she said, twisting just enough that she’d be left with one last glimpse of his face.

Then, with a final tug, she slipped her hand free from Theodore’s and fell away into the night.

A hand was proffered to her. She took it without hesitation and climbed aboard a sleek skiff, hovering easily over a shadowed street, lit by a scant few flickering lamps. Several other official-looking skiffs glided by in a hurry, headed to the consulate some blocks away, unaware of who they were passing by.

“Where to, my Lady?”

“You promised to take me to safety Bennedict. It seems we have a ways to go yet.”

“As you say, Princess.” The engines rumbled to life. “It’s been a long night. You should get some rest.”

She nodded, leaving her rescuer to pilot, curling into the pillows in the small cabin.

She was free. Free to hide and have as simple a life as she wanted, just as she’d hoped. She was free to run.

But that wasn’t her. She knew that now with certainty. And she’d done enough running for a lifetime.

She was the Lady Lillith Hemlock, a true Daughter of the Blood, born below the red twin moons: the Spider and the Hurricane. She was the honored Lady of the House of Pearls, the chosen of the white Flame of Absolution, and death ran in her veins. She would be no one’s tool. Her future was her own. Her power and status was her own. And she would have it.

Gliding over the cracked cobbles and crumbling roads, they descended into the long dark maze of decrepit Gnyssian city streets. And there, in the shadow of monuments to rulers who had long since met their downfall, she began to plan her rise.

She imagined all she could be. She imagined all her many threats and she imagined her own hand, steady now on a revolver, making them all disappear. She imagined home and climbing up the short flight of stairs to sit the throne of a dead man. She imagined she might learn to love it. It was easy to dream.

Or at least it should’ve been. 

It would’ve, were it not for the lingering ghost of a great love that haunted the corners of all her thoughts, the memory of a kiss, and the taste of his blood, lingering on her tongue, like the most wicked and wonderful of poisons.

Chapter Text

Theo ran his fingers over the small ring of pearls and thought about his secrets. 

He’d only meant to keep Lilli safe. Better for her to know nothing, to draw in our enemies who watched her so closely. All the better for me to eliminate them. His time on Zalhdriizeshi had taught him much about waiting for the right moment to strike. He’d thought she of all people would see that.

Why can’t she see?

His lips drew back over the long points of his canines, scowling at nothing. Because she isn’t here. To see or be shown or otherwise. Only the black city sprawled before him: quiet, indomitable, and uncaring, the rattling lungs of a world that had grown old and thick with the bones of empires long before it called itself part of this one.

He caught the faint outline of his reflection in the windowpane and winced, his scowl deepening, watching as his face twisted further—a certain ferality in it, as if Gnysis had long since worn down the civility in him and left only scars.

He’d tried to find her before the attack began to explain, to keep her close. But she’d disappeared. And then when that moment came on that balcony…Theo growled, looking down at the ring she’d left behind. 

A lingering pain burned within him, like he’d scorched the inside of his chest and although the flames were gone, it throbbed and seared, his nerves continuing to flay themselves raw. He wished she was here, wished he could hold her, could shout at her, could get on his knees for her.

He wished he could argue: For himself. For the future. For them.

I could’ve convinced her. I should’ve. It should’ve all gone to plan. And it didn’t. And she was to blame.

But so am I.

Some member of his household staff was nattering away near the doorway to his drawing room saying…something Theo decided could only be of little consequence. Their voice buzzed on and on, grating on his ears until—

He spun on a heel, scooping up his crystal glass and hurling it into the windowed wall. “To my fiance, for you and only you—” The lavender liquid drizzled weakly to the floor.

Whomever had been talking behind him quickly made themselves scarce.

If she was here would anything change? Would she choose me or just the comforts of this life? Would I just feel guilty for having coerced her into taking the easiest road? 

He’d gotten it all wrong. He saw her out there, clearly meaning to leave him, and all the pretty, honest things he’d thought he wanted to say were nowhere to be found. His carefully rehearsed plans unravelled until they had never existed at all. All he could feel was the betrayal of it. 

Not that she’d known about the plan she was betraying...Not that she really knows the man she’s betraying, his thoughts dripped poison into his ears, What loyalty does she feel for me? Why would she want me?

He tucked the ring safely away into his waistcoat, wishing he could banish the memory of Lilli as easily as he could the remnant of her. Maybe he was still a little angry with her…maybe he was still so very angry with her. Why would she want me? Why…why…why…

And so the hurt squatted in his blood like a misbegotten curse, acrid and unnatural. He wasn’t used to bitterness when it came to Lilli, nor resentment. But here it was.

The door creaked. Probably that useless cretin coming back—

“My lord, Theodore.”

Shit.

He composed himself in the fraction of time it took to turn.

“Divinity.”

He dropped into a low bow, which he was quickly relieved of. The Empress in Ascendance, chosen Heir to all the worlds of the Empire, had come to call.

Which, frankly, is quite shit poor timing and just what I need right now.

“It seems you’ve had an accident,” she said, indicating the shattered glass and pooling liquid; her gesture turned ghostly by the diaphanous sheath about her, its folds suspended around her body from an elaborate Imperium headdress. She didn’t bother apologizing for ‘the interruption’, she never did and never would.

“It’s nothing—”

“I’ll summon my Handmaidens to tend to it.” 

Theo opened his mouth to try and stop her, but it was already happening. 

She motioned to one of the silent cohort of Guardsmen that flanked her, gleaming in heavy plate. “I’m in need of them anyway,” she continued with an idle sigh, as if to no one in particular. 

Theo watched, resigned, as the warrior set off. He tried to keep smiling as turned his focus back on his unwelcome guest.

“Now, I’ve been quite looking forward to speaking with you, my lord,” she said, her enthralling voice strangely light as she moved into the room.

“Ah—yes—”

“What an evening this has been.”

Theo stilled. “Yes, I’m glad to see you hale and whole.” He immediately fixed a dazzling picture of ease on his face, in an effort to match the sweetness in her words.

As she moved towards him, each step whispering susurrations as the train of her voluminous outer-robe dragged against the floor, leaving a faint red trail in their wake; the embroidered gossamer moth—a symbol of the ephemeral Imperium Heir—shimmered like a nightmarish vision, its delicate wings dipped in blood.

Her head tilted, lips pressed into a tidy, demure little line, a furrow in her brow and eyes wide with consternation, discernible even though the weave of her veil was most dense towards the top of her face. All was so perfect, so polished, and all careful theatrics; a viper trying on the feathers of a songbird. And, worryingly, doing so with just enough effort so Theo would know it wasn’t real. “I cannot say that my Guard, my Aegis, or my father is particularly appreciative of bloodshed in the halls of an embassy. They appreciate even less the lack of warning.”

The Heir’s Guard widened their stances, shifting in perfect synchrony to rest the metal-capped ends of their halberds on the ground. The strike tolled against the tile like a mourning bell.

“Alas that is the least of their troubles. And the least of your own,” she purred. “What ever shall we do?”

For all that he tried to force it back down, Theo’s heart-rate had crawled up into his throat and lodged itself there.

“This—ah—gambit unfortunately could not be parted from its risks, donnhalin,” he admitted, hesitant, exchanging Common honors for the added reverence of High Imperial.

“Several of my Guard were cut down, my lord. Warriors of Gnyssis and the Zalhdriizelitz dared commit violence in my presence. I’m sure you can imagine the seriousness of the Imperium’s feelings on such things.”

Theo realized with some horror that his secrets might actually also be the reason he was about to die. It’s all been for naught if the Emperor puts me to death because of a little mistake with his Heir.

The countenance of the Guard was left entirely to mystery beneath their solid brass masks, which Theo never failed to find more intimidating than he’d like. Impossible to know if they were here to haul him away for execution. Equally impossible to charm them out of doing so. He coughed and resettled his cloak, thumbing the emergency blood vial pinned there, wondering if any of its uses would make a meaningful difference against the very warriors that had built this Empire, knowing how quickly they would cut him down.

The gaze of the Heir traced the motion and she gave an incredulous scoff—or what Theo imagined had to be one—under her breath.

“Please, dominarhae,” he said with the warmest tone and smile he could conjure, letting their most vaunted honorific roll off his tongue and praying to all the gods—higher and lower—that the extra show of respect might save his life. “Accept my sincere apologies and convey them to both the Eternal Emperor and to the Dreamer who stands at His shoulder. I did not doubt your safety, otherwise I would not have attempted what I did.”

Her mouth quirked up into a ghost of a smirk. “Yes, that is what I told my Aegis. He will placate the Emperor. It seems you had everything well in hand…or most of it rather.”

Theo had no doubt she’d noted his breath of relief—not that it would really weaken his position with the Heir. He was most certainly a songbird in this instance and—gods—was she making him sing the tune she wished.

And that’s fine. He would do what he needed to do, perform whatever way he needed to, as he always did. Though the thought stung with a drop of ire.

He quietly thanked the highborn Gnyssian culture for its love of High Imperial and a certain beleaguered Gnyssian tutor for continuing to teach it, regardless of their unruly student insisting it antiquated. He couldn’t be sure it’d helped, but he decided it didn’t matter so long as he still drew breath. Thanking the nobility? That’s a first.

Clearing his throat, he clasped his hands behind his back, thumping his fist against his spine, and began, “It’s true, I was aware of the threat in advance. However, there wasn’t the time to confirm how deeply the conspiracy ran and which precise families would be involved, nor how they planned to infiltrate the event beyond the obvious. Better to let them take the easiest paths than force them to pivot and make my own job harder. The situation demanded adaptability and action, more than precise planning. And, of course, divinity, secrecy in the utmost.” 

Deference may be appropriate, but the Imperium did not broach nor reward weakness. He’d been counting on it, in fact, both in terms of the Exalted Council sanctioning his actions after the fact and as contingency, should something go wrong. 

Which, he chuckled to himself, it seems it has. He walled off any thoughts of the other part that hadn’t gone according to plan.

He’d built a life asking for forgiveness rather than permission. It hadn’t failed yet. “I simply wanted my enemies well and truly snared before I closed the trap. Nothing would stand in my way of carrying out my duty tonight.”

“Effective.”

“I don’t know what they were thinking…bringing in mercs, escalating this,” he muttered, running a hand over his face, trying in vain to swallow his heart at last. “And now they scratch at the hand that feeds.”

“Oh, I don’t think there was much thinking involved.”

“I can only hope I’ve proven my own competency and that I’m deserving of your backing.”

She hummed rather than respond, her tone cooling. “Rather regrettable collateral damage is it not?”

“Regrettable of course—as always.” Theo clenched his teeth, his jaw so tight it was almost painful. “But these deaths, as ever they do, rest on the shoulders of the Houses.” He snorted, “They came here to kill my bride and me and they couldn’t help but make a mess of it. They’ve always lacked finesse. The violence tonight is the natural consequence of the merchant nobility believing that they can do anything they want and balking at the notion someone seeks to bring them to heel. This was but the last gasp of a dying regime. These lives will be avenged as we begin a better age.”

The woman nodded.

Is that approval?

The doors of the room creaked as they swung wide, admitting four Imperium Handmaidens, who glided in on soft-soled slippers. Their movement was uncannily graceful and near silent, despite the utterly opaque red veils that lay beneath long, dark wimples and obscured their faces, save for the curve of their lips and the tips of their noses. The only sound came from the clink of fine girdle chains as they swung over the rich embroidered scripture that adorned their vertical stoles.  Running from waist to ankle, they rested atop smooth skirts and the ruffled, angular layers that perched at their hips.

The last maiden split from the flock to tend to Theo’s still-spreading mess. The lead—designated by her carven brass and frosted-glass mask, rather than a veil, and the spired Imperium rays that sat behind her head—carried a copper tray laden with a collection of small steaming hand towels, arranged into the shape of a blooming Gnyssian flower. The Heir let out a tiny—so common seeming—sound of relief.

They swarmed her like bees, aiding in lifting her veil away and back, revealing the long, distinctive points of her ears, which extended well beyond her hair and curved slightly towards the tip. They were nearly the same age—or so he understood it—but it never seemed that way. Even now, with her face bared to him for the first time since he’d met her, he had difficulty believing it. Whomever had started the commonly held thought that highborn Gnyssians could pass as elves was clearly stroking the Gnyssian ego.

Two Handmaidens materialized at the Heir’s sides to help her shed her trailing outer-robe. One of her Guard stepped forward to hand her a cloth and, as she lifted her arms to take it, her hands, hidden all this time within the depths of her sleeves, emerged.

Blood.

Her fingers were coated in it: deep red that had begun to flake, running in streams over the intricate tattoos on the backs of her hands, spattered up to her wrists and over the fitted half of her gown’s sleeves.

She turned back to where her Guard waited, ready with a second damp cloth. “A welcome relief,” she sighed to Theo, “I quite hate gore under my nails.”

He found his body taking a step back before he’d really realized he’d done it, caught up as he was in reevaluating the woman across from him, realizing all that the overlarge robe and the dark red of her gown had hidden. At first he’d assumed it was a natural consequence of the state of the floors, but…this…wasn’t that.

The gore was most vivid at the bottom of her dress, soaked deep into the edge of the heavy ma’thrah silk and the veins of its subtle quilt, and streaking the embroidered border where the gold swathe met lace. Amidst the layered dozens of embroidered moth wings and the filigreed lace that formed the rest of the dress, even more stains were setting.

The maidens had now busily set about wiping clean the splattered metal elements of her gown: an ornate, embossed chestplate at her breast that extended into a curving lattice of Imperium symbology, clinging tight to her waist; rose up her chest to an elegant collar, which rested atop the sheer fabric that lay beneath her gown, covering the top of her chest and shoulders; and arced outward into sculptural, winged pauldrons that capped the voluminous start to her upper sleeves.

Theo had thought it was decorative, but…The Imperium hadn’t been caught off-guard at all. 

Impatient, the Heir made to sit, dismissing her fussing maidens and snatching up the entire towel tray for herself as she shooed them out, the movement so quick and fluid she could’ve been dancing. In one motion the Guard stepped forward to stand in a line at her back. Her near-white irises caught Theo’s eyes as she settled, alight with a strange fire as she continued rubbing away the carnage written across her flesh.

‘Corpse-eyed’ they call her…’mistress of the reaper’… spectral whispers stirred around his ears.

“They tried to kill you directly?” Theo murmured.

“They tried,” her voice wind-chime soft, as if only very mildly bothered. “Quite a mess made indeed.”

Theo watched her, speechless, opening and then closing his mouth, trying to puzzle out if there was more penance required of him. Like some kind of stupid fish, for that is what they have made me.

Power…real power and its demands…the concept rotted as he held it in his mind. The whole conversation had been a show of power. First of the Exalted Council’s—and further, the Emperor’s—in the games of their merchant Lords. Theo had known that. But the knowledge twisted and blackened with the realization that the Imperium had not only arrived well equipped to play, but also happy to let all the pieces fall as they may.

And all of the gore now? This was the Heir’s power, as calculated as the rest. It wasn’t subtle. It didn’t need to be. She was showing him who she really was, unafraid to lean into the rumors that swirled through the Empire in her wake, because of the obvious understanding of what would happen should the story of this encounter leave the room.

He’d thought the intel regarding the plot was known only to him. And maybe it was. So he’d sought to impress the Imperium in handling this alone. He thought the show would be his to conduct. He thought he was ready to prove himself to his rulers. All the while, the Imperium’s foresight had simply borne the precise fruit they’d expected. Or near to it. The anger the Heir alluded to could still be very real. 

“Fret not. It was diverting.” The Heir’s lips curled so prettily, but Theo only saw the threat in them. “They’ll soon understand the mistake they’ve made.”

What world have I joined?

The froth of her bustle and train spilled around her, like so many bloodsoaked petals, dirtying his settee. He found he didn’t much care. His attention was captured by her fingers as they drummed against the arm of the couch, to the glint of light as it caught on the shard of translucent crystal that twirled over her knuckles—glass rent from nothing more than atmosphere and reforged into a deadly solid, created with such natural ease he hadn’t seen her do it.

It’s magic. True magic: the kind that wasn’t found anywhere else in the Empire; not in ritual, nor in blood, but within something transcendent; the real, inborn gift that anchored all the might and authority of the Imperium.

“What do you know of the House of Steel’s current Prince?”

That put a stop to his staring. “Kai?”

“Yes, I find myself uncertain of what to do with him. I’d been considering having him killed.” A long finger tapped against her mouth in thought. The glass chimed quietly, rolling about her hand. “They have so many other potential heirs, you see, and Imperium will be braying for blood. And yet…whispers reach me that he may have had a larger role to play in what’s unfolded here tonight. I decided I’d like to hear your opinion on how to proceed. You know him far better than I after so many years on Zalhdriizeshi.”

“Kill him.”

She studied him for a long moment, the cold beauty of her features impassive and her voice emotionless as she asked her question: “Are you certain?”

Theo drove a fang into the corner of his lower lip, tasting the sharp bite of his own blood on his tongue. We aren’t friends. 

In his mind two boys—not yet men but who believed themselves to be—sparred every day with wooden blades and sipped iced fruit juice together on a wide lawn. They swam in clear, cold lakes beneath many strange moons and roasted fresh-caught fish over a bonfire. Then, together, the two young men would turn and with equal, barely concealed reverence watch a young woman arrive to join their revels, as if they were witnessing dawn break over the shoreline. 

Except, of course, one of those boys’ futures lay with her in every way that really mattered. That’s why he was there, after all. And then it seemed her heart lay with him too. 

So, the swimming turned to races and sour looks over the dying glow of the fire. The slow evenings by the water grew infrequent and then not at all. Suddenly it took every effort to stop those wooden blades from turning into edged steel.

Theo of the present gave a curt nod, sharp and hard, for that was the desolation he required of his heart.

“Well, if you’re quite sure then…” With two fingers she beckoned one of her guards to her side and began murmuring orders to him.

“Wait.”

“Oh?”

It was as if the word was coated in acid for all he scowled over it, how it stung in his mouth and bit at his throat. He should be able to condemn Kai easily for all the bad blood between them. It almost was easy. But if the Heir was right—and there was little doubt she was—and Kai had helped save Lilli tonight, then Theo owed him that much.

“Don’t kill him. He could be useful to us in future.” Theo snaked a hand over the back of his neck, kneading muscles so tense they just felt sore. “If the Imperium wants blood there are plenty of other members of the House of Steel for you to execute. I can easily support the Imperium in having one of his uncles arrested, one who I know was one of the masterminds of this attack. With a little pressure he’ll flip on all his co-conspirators, which includes, I’m sure, Kai’s father, their current head of House. I understand you to hold justice in the highest regard, donnhalin. Serve it to those truly responsible for this.”

“You’d install your rival as the head of his House?” she prodded. A contemplative purse of her lips flickered into existence, then vanished under a wave of control, here then gone.

“I do think Kai should face some sanctions to keep him in line—to ensure no threat of reprisal. Though I’m uncertain if that’s yet my decision to make.”

“But if it was?”

“I—I’m not sure. I’m happy to let the Imperium decide how they want to proceed with the House of Steel.” A flush was creeping up his throat, he could feel it. “It’s not my call. I really just want peace between the Houses and Gnysis. There’s no need at the moment to destroy him.”

“Indulge me.” An order, not a request.

He rubbed the juncture of his neck again and absorbed himself with the space his glass had once sat. His guest said nothing, simply waited and watched him and the indecision that he may as well be painted with.

Fuck. Silence yawned. I’m fucking failing.

With some effort Theo dragged his gaze back to meet his guest. She raised a brow. “Will you be a king? Or are you merely a pawn pretending at power?” it asked. 

It was time to stop cowering. He’d made his choice. He’d wanted to step into this arena from the start. 

“You didn’t do this for us. You did it for you.” Lilli echoed in his mind the way she always did. Alright, he thought. He’d own that.

Theo straightened, drawing up his spine to stand tall, squared his shoulders and faced the Heir head on, his dicanines bared. The weight of his life, of all his work; the burden of the phantoms of his ancestors, who walked always behind him; the power that they had held and lost; all balanced on his shoulders. And he did not bend. Not now, when his victory lay just beyond his reach. 

“Something needs to be done to make that House less attractive to those of the Gnyssian nobility, who so eagerly back them and profit from their designs. The entirety of the House of Steel has gotten overconfident in what their fortune affords them. They now apply the impersonal nature of their weapons manufacturing to every facet of their scheming. They believe they are the untouchable, far-removed dealers of death.” His jaw set and voice rising as he snarled out his last words like the damnation they were, “I would have them remember what it tastes like to be held face down in the mud.”

The Heir studied him, leaning forward a touch to rest thin wrists atop crossed knees; a well-fed predator sizing up a meal she’d been playing with, deciding if it was still worth the chase. Theo did not shy away. 

“You will have some fewer enemies,” she let the words drip from her mouth, let them drift over him in a slow silken caress, looking at him all the while up through her lashes. “And a clearer path to a role in the planetary command of one of our wealthiest merchant worlds. Two perhaps, even if unofficially, through the influence of your possible marriage and, now, a Lord that will owe you a life debt. That is what you want, is it not?”

“Yes.” No tremor snuck into Theo’s reply. There was only iron and surety.

“Good.”

And then, and with all the same ease, the viper shed her skin and every bit of the gentile, coy pretense fell away. “Your enemies are slain, yes, or soon will be. And I don’t expect you to mourn them. Nor should you. They do not deserve your consideration. But the lives you yourself have changed in service of your goals, the pain you’ve wrought tonight and is still to come: understand that that is now written into your skin. Those stains will never be erased.”

Theo’s gaze fell, looking at the floor, the ceiling, everywhere but at her, the guilt buried in shallow graves creeping back to gnaw on him until—

He felt a sharp prick just under his jaw, excruciatingly cold, trailing carefully along the bone until it came to rest against the column of his throat. His chin was forced up and with it: his eyes to meet her unyielding ones. A nip of pain sparked as he swallowed thickly, the scratch leaking a single drop of hot blood that slid to his shirt collar. He didn’t dare look down.

“Do not lie to yourself. It only makes you weak.” She smiled and it was both beautiful and terrible. “You cannot hold power in these worlds and remain clean.”

“However.” He was frozen in place, her ethereal voice only desolate ice and lush with menace. “See that your scheming doesn’t become a wasteful habit. “I would hate to see one with such promise become despotic or overreach.” Theo watched as one of her wrists rolled to reveal another near-invisible stiletto cradled in her palm. She flicked her fingers and it revolved, floating above her hand, scintillating from lethal point to lethal point in the lamplight. “I would hate to see you undergo the same lesson that the House of Steel will soon learn, especially after all you’ve done to pull yourself from the muck.”

She settled back on the ruined couch and her weapons dissolved away, scattering into stardust and then to the gaseous molecules from whence it came.

Theodore blinked and let his breath go in a heady rush. I’ve done it. The Exalted Council will back my rule. He’d passed the final test. He knew it. The Heir knew he knew it. She gave him a subtle incline of her head.

Theo dropped into a low bow. “I’m loyal to the Imperium and to the future of Gnysis. I will not fail you. Vas imperitrhas.” He raised his head, giving her a hard look of his own, a vow. “Zhehirat ithelin, dominarhae.” For you, my life, Empress Ascendant.

“Vas imperitrhas.”

She eased him from his bow and turned to her Guard, sending them out of the room to stand at the door instead. She seemed to soften around her edges when they’d gone, the set of her shoulders going a little looser. “Speaking of the future of Gnysis...” The mischievous tilt was back in her face, which only worried Theo. “I say you have ‘most’ things well in hand, rather than ‘all’, because it seems that as you crushed your enemies in one fist you might’ve lost what you hold most dear from the other.”

Oh hells. 

“Unfortunately, my lady has a strong will of her own. It seems she had her own plans to keep us safe and secure her seat. I believe she was under the impression our…situation…wasn’t something I was in support of. She wants to establish herself alone, without my aid or interference.”

It all came rushing back. He’d walked away from the smoking ruin of his heart, drowned out the howl of his soul, out of necessity—and perhaps a bit of panic—and managed to forget for a few minutes the sheer scale of how incredibly fucked it all was. A part of him begged for a return to mortal peril.

“I’m told she was spirited away by a rogue foreign agent. One of the swords of Stryx Zuthus it seems. Quite fascinating is it not?”

“Yes,” Theo ground out.

“You know, from what I understand, politics and love have much in common. Though I’ll admit to my limited experience with the latter.”

“I thought your own betrothal was a successful one?” It was out of his mouth before he could stop it. And right after I’ve so deftly saved my own life. He blamed it on all the alcohol and the state of his temper where Lilli was concerned.

The arch look the Heir gave him told him that she too was going to ascribe that comment to his obviously declining mental state and wouldn’t be dignifying it with a response. “And you’re…what? Just letting her go?” she pressed.

“It’s not so simple.”

“After all you’ve done you’re ready to throw away your key to Zalhdriizeshi? All because it’s a bit difficult. The planets are bound tightly, yes, and you’ll wield quite a lot of influence as the Gnyssian Consul but all the pretty power plays we’ve laid out here amount to very little if you cannot secure them. Dethrone the House of Steel today, see the rise of a different Zalhdriizelitzen House tomorrow.”

“She doesn’t want me.”

“That’s not how it looks to an outside observer.”

“She’s angry with me.”

“She’s a puzzle box like any other person. Apply the right pressure, make the right moves and it’s solved easily enough.” The Heir knitted her fingers beneath her chin, eyes calculating. “I suggest you apply some of the same lessons we’ve learned here tonight to your dear departed love.”

Theo frowned, shuffling foot to foot, his hands finding their way back to his pockets. The Heir rolled her eyes at him and he nearly gaped at it—though she’d have probably found that proof of incompetence and gone back to contemplating killing him.

“Tell her the truth: that while you know how to stand alone, you could be stronger with her. That you need her and aren’t just using her. She’s just become the new Lady of the House of Pearls through machinations you were a part of. And she knows that, I’m sure, given your…” She waved her fingers at Theo’s general person. “…Angst. Lillith is not some pretty little empty headed doll, bought and paid to please you. She knows she’s your key to her homeworld. Lillith—like most women I think you’ll find—wants to be wooed.” She huffed, like Theo was the stupidest man in the Empire. “You’ve proven yourself to me. Go prove yourself to her. Stop dithering.”

Theodore turned away from her, contemplating it, all the anger he’d felt earlier bubbling back up, stinging his raw heart. He slipped the pearl ring back out and spun it between the pads of his fingers and then onto his little finger.

His blood vial came unpinned easily. The metal case, fitted perfectly in his palm, warmed to his skin, the viscous red within burbling as the brooch’s unfettered central mechanism slowly revolved, gleaming as it dared him to open the cap.

Gnyssian blood magery wasn’t a blunt instrument, but a thin knife. It had specialized uses—wasn’t ideal for big flashy displays or combat. For certain things, however, it was unmatched: all manner of potent poisons and potions and body modifications, to be sure; bind locks and seal unbreakable contracts; show what had been hidden…or find what had been lost.

He could stand alone. He’d control Zalhdriizeshi one way or another. But…he’d rather they stood together. And would all this power have been worth the trouble without her? He'd done it all for her.

The seal on the gold stopper cracked loose with a sigh.

The real question was whether he’d want to live at all without her. Hardly a question. He knew the answer.

“I told Lilli that she could take her power back alone, chase her destiny in the wide world—that she could go.” His eyes cut over his shoulder, the windows’ violet haze casting his form in shadow and light. “I never said I wouldn’t chase her.”