Trinket (Reverse Harem)

Bad News, Bird

"You can feel their song?" I asked blankly.

"It's Ethat, isn't it," Soir said with that cagey grin. "So I hear a chorus of bugs, like a summer evening. Intriguing. I hear the anger in the song, the threat, the menace."

"I--"

"Unless..." Soir pressed a manicured finger to his cheek. "When you say their you are not trying to be coy with gender, but you mean the plural. As in, more than one."

"I cannot fathom why you and Korr do not get along. You both enjoy games so much," I said dryly.

"Too much alike, I imagine," Soir's grin didn't waiver.

Was this the power of a SongBird? And it wasn't just one song. I hadn't said anything to let him think I had multiple consorts. I pulled my trinket out from under my silks. He swept close, in his way, and examined it even more closely, head tilting one way, then the other. He used a sharpened nail to turn it to see the full scope of it, tapping each of the thorns. Then he ducked back, expression dark and curiously veiled.

My scars pulled at my skin. A strange crawling feeling started in my bones. My body was terrified, but my brain wasn't. Ravens descended onto the rooftops and ledges.

Well, this was... not good. Soir didn't take bad news well.

Fuck. I was such an idiot. Why had I thought I knew anything about anything?

Soir gestured once more to the table with one hand, and held out the other to me. "Come sit. As I said, on my lap. Or would you prefer we move the table over here so they can have a better view?"

My body tingled with filthy excitement. Or fear. One of the two. "Soir, I've reconciled. I'm--"

"Have you? I hear hesitation in your voice."

"Don't use your magic on me!"

"That's like trying to tell me not to desire you. It happens as it happens. Ravens make off with the things others have been careless with, and we craft them things of beauty and worth, to be bestowed upon those who understand true value. And very clearly, your consort has been careless with you. Or consorts. I suspect consorts, since I have seen that thorn design before."

My heart skipped, then restarted. "Soir, if I didn't know better, I'd say you're offended by a clever lie."

"Offended?" He asked, tone sharp, staccato, and his head tilting one way, then the other in quick, sharp movements while his clothing fluttered around him in a strange dance. There was something inky and sharp in his tone, like getting buffeted by silk wings. "I am not offended at all by a grand puzzle, but are you sure the puzzle has been solved?"

I backed up a step. A breeze pulled at my silks and hair and tried to lift the skin off my back as all my skin seemed to disconnect from my soul for a heartbeat, then my heart disconnected from my skin in another instant, and my mind blanked like lightening had shot across it in a blinding instant.

"Not solved," Soir said, advancing with one outstretched hand, and he was saying something, his song lifting my skin off my bones. "Come sit. We will discuss this."

"No," I said, struggling as my mind twisted and tangled.

"Theia," his voice pulled me like a fishing line hooked through my lip--but I'd never been fishing? How did I know that?--and he said, "come sit. I promised you a meal, take--"

"Stop it!" I shouted. "Stop it!"

He jerked back in a flutter of silks and robes and hair and shock, and the song stopped and a rush beat my brain like a rush of wings and binding thorns.