Korr caught my wrist. "Theia."
"What?" Korr wasn't usually so serious unless he was being very serious, which was never a good thing, really. But it was also a good thing that he was feeling good enough to be serious. In the shade of the temple quarters we'd been given, which was cool and refreshing, his frigid gloss had started to return.
"He's about to say something about the Pantere Priestess doing more than tasting your dreams," Ormiss said from the window, specularly silhouetted against the evening sun. He'd shed his necklaces again and now just stood in his low-slung skirt, all the shadows and hollows of his muscular body on display.
I gulped. "She said she just wanted to taste my dreams."
"And I'm sure the cat just wants to play with the mouse and not eat it," Ormiss said.
"Oh, she wants to eat it," Itek said.
"Are we still talking about a mouse?"
Itek snerked.
"But..." I didn't know what to say. I looked at Asund, who looked mildly uncomfortable. "Do you think she..."
"She's a Pantere," Asund said. "I have no idea what's going to happen tonight."
Korr tugged me wrist gently. "What happens will happen. And I for one give my blessing to whatever happens."
"Blessing!" I gasped.
He kissed me lightly, his lips not quite cold enough for my liking. "Oh, and you must promise to tell me all about it."
Ethat, shyly, and shimmering with fireflies, added, "I can deny you nothing."
"So long as Theia denies you everything?" Ormiss inquired.
Ethat shimmered with even more fireflies. Ormiss rolled his eyes.
Itek shrugged and had a little smile on his face. "I'm a cat-bird. I am loyal to a fault, but my species isn't. I won't begrudge you a little fun with a pretty Pantere. Since you'll have Asund with you."
"Exactly," Korr said, nodding to Itek. "She has one of us with her."
"I'm not going to have sex with her!" I exclaimed.
"Well, don't rule it out," Korr said like it was stupid that I'd rule it out.
"Ormiss?" I couldn't believe I was looking to Ormiss for sanity.
Ormiss glanced at Asund, then at me, and said, "A Queen decides who she beds, and a King accepts this. If he isn't enough to hold her attention, that's his problem."
Na-uh. "That isn't how it works. And it has nothing to do with holding my attention. Are you lot insane? We have trinkets!"
"And trinkets pick the most perfect consorts," Korr said. "Your consorts happen to not be paranoid about who you bed. And note that the one consort you have who would be very unsettled by you going afield is the one you're bringing with you. So you aren't actually going afield."
"So the Trinkets just give us an excuse to do whatever we want because whatever we want must be okay?" I could not believe what I was hearing. "Are you going to be like oh, well, she was pretty and I was attracted and it must be fine, so why are you hurt?"
Korr frowned.
Ormiss chuckled. "You're really putting your foot in it, dragon. Some diplomat you are."
"I admit my powers of communication seem to be lacking in this regard," Korr told him.
"You lot are going to kill me," I muttered. I wasn't dumb enough to say if I'm a unicorn, this is how you break my heart and I die where the Pantere might hear. They knew what I meant. Hopefully.
Ormiss actually smiled--his real smile. The one that made my heart do pitter-pats and reached his garnet-and-obsidian eyes. "You'll have Asund with you. Be careful of the Pantere. They love to play games. That's all it will be to her: a game."
"I can't believe you all are suggesting I'm... going to... do something with her!" Trinkets were such a load of shit.
"You don't have to do anything," Itek said. "We're just saying if one thing leads to another..."
Ormiss gestured his agreement with his hand.
"Is that the excuse I'm going to hear?" I snapped. Because if they thought that I was going to put up with those words coming out of their mouths when I found them balls-deep in something pretty, they better hope they were wrong about me being a unicorn, because I'd find a way to shift and run them through with my horn. And if that failed, I'd just grab one of my fancy hair pins and start poking whatever looked softest, or most engorged.
"No, of course not," Itek said while Ethat fretted. "We are saying the four of us are fine with what happens. Asund would not be fine, but he's going with you. And you would not be fine, so we'd never do anything. It's not betrayal if we all agree it isn't betrayal. The Pantere Priestess of Dreams isn't some random raven page-hatchling who caught your eye. That'd be insulting."
"Details. Bring me details," Korr said with a wicked grin. He gestured to his brother. "And trust me. Ethat is trembling at the thought of you bedding someone not him so he has to grovel at your feet and hear all the sordid details of what you did with them and not him."
Ethat's skin seemed powdery like he was coated in pollen.
Korr stepped closer and said out of the corner of his mouth, "And then you deign to humor his courting dances, and then he grovels and impresses you with his skills and makes you forget anyone you had before. Trust me, he loves the competition and the threat of losing. But he has a strange idea of conquest when it doesn't involve eating his objective."
"We're very competitive," Korr added.
Ethat nodded, somehow seeming both incredibly smug and incredibly fidgety.
"There are four of you if I want to bed someone not him and tell him about it."
"And I suspect the Pantere is going to want you to share your toys." Itek pointed one finger at Asund.
"Gasp, the wolf? That's our wolf!" Korr mock swooned. Then he stumbled because he was still weak and Ethat had to catch him before he ended up in an undignified heap. Ethat set him down on a low couch and chided him for doing too much.
"Listen to the cat-bird," Ormiss told me. "His species is notorious for their appetites. Like the Pantere."
Listen? They weren't listening to me. As usual.
"Is that really such a surprise?" Itek ran his hands down his tawny hair, stretching his body in a distinctly feline arch.
"Not even slightly," Ormiss said. "The gods must have fashioned you into a very strange cat-bird to be paired with Theia. Talk about two otherwise incompatible species."
Itek shook out his hair. "I suppose that's true. There never really were any of those hybrids, were there?"
"Not enough to establish a new breed," Korr said. "I'm sure it happened."
"I'd never thought of it that way before. Interesting. Perhaps that has something to do with it."
So a bunch of unicorns mated badly? If you could die of a broken heart, wouldn't you always go to the churn? Ug. The trinkets were such bullshit. I stalked off to one of the open windows. I needed some fresh air.
Itek's voice said behind me, "We aren't trying to insult you."
Well, I felt insulted. Like I'd go off and fuck this pantere because she was pretty and seductive and was going to taste my dreams. Even Ormiss was like sure, go do whatever you want. I didn't actually believe he was okay with anything happening, but more like he was too afraid to stop me. And it was so insulting! These were my consorts, there were five of them, I hadn't even fucked two of them, how could they just say sure, go do what you want?
And how could I ever trust any of them if this was their attitude? How the hell was I supposed to love any of them when they treated everything so casually, or like they couldn't be bothered to care about what I did or who I did it with? Maybe someone else would love that kind of thing, but not me. It didn't need to be complicated with all these weird not-rules. And I got that the gods had given me all of them and they were probably all made a bit different so they wouldn't be jealous about everything but...
I closed my hand over the trinket between my breasts. The spikes dug into my palms. Such bullshit. The trinkets were just such a fucking lie. I was paired with a bunch of high-breds, just like Tynne, of course they'd be cavalier about who I fucked. They'd probably be cavalier about who they fucked, even if they claimed to be devoted now. They were only devoted because they hadn't gotten what they'd wanted: Ormiss wanted me pregnant, I hadn't even fucked Ethat and Korr, Asund probably just wanted to be able to tell his brother he'd won over his mate so no harm done, and Itek? Itek had gotten laid and not even a sideways glance since.
Yep. Confirmed. They hadn't gotten what they'd wanted (except Itek), so the hunt was over. Just like Tynne had wanted to get me pregnant, since he'd apparently gotten everyone else pregnant and Theia, the worthless little foundling, refused to let him finish inside her and wouldn't take his potent masculine seed.
It was all so gross. And the Priestess would make a move on Asund, because she'd pretty much promised she would.
Maybe she'd have some wine or whatever this heady scent was that infested this place so I could be fucked up enough that I could tell Asund to go for it and he might actually believe me, because might as well just get it all over with.
I rubbed one of my scars. They ached.
"Theia."
"Go away," I told Itek. "I just want some air."
"Looks like you want to stab all of us," Asund commented.
"I'm not looking at any of you, so not sure how you reached that conclusion."
"Exactly."
"Oh knock it off. I don't want to talk about it." Because there was no point, they'd just tell me I was imagining it, or misunderstanding. Nope. I wasn't misunderstanding a damn thing, but a bunch of high-breds sure would like to tell me that.
"Is there something to talk about?" Itek prodded.
With a bunch of high-bred ambassadors and a Lord-Regent? There sure as hell was not. "No."
"But you just said--"
"Leave me alone," I snapped. "Go fuck whatever you want to fuck. Don't bother me with it."
Itek frowned. "Theia--"
"Go away." I pointed back towards the others.
"What's wrong?" Korr asked. "I'm not quite sure where things sideways."
"You really are failing at Ambassador lately," Asund grumbled.
I squeezed my trinket. The spikes pierced my skin. Lies. All lies. Perfect consorts and dizzying love my ass. And if I was actually a unicorn? Not a chance I was letting these guys break my heart and kill me. Itek had already dropped me once. What happened the next time one of them decided it's fine, it's for her own good? Or some other I know what's best, it'll be fine and it broke my heart and killed me?
"Theia," Korr started to say.
"Don't Theia me!"
Ormiss pushed off the wall he'd been leaning against. His necklaces rattled like bones. Anguish hit me, hard. He'd be the one I'd be able to keep the longest, if he hadn't already gotten what he'd wanted from me. Korr tried to stand, but Ethat held him down, gesturing nervously with his free hand while fireflies rose off his beautiful hair.
My heart broke and the pain went through my scars. I hadn't walked out of that enclave and into this life to die from a broken heart because I let myself love the wrong people, and the trinkets were damn lie. They were a lie. Who had multiple consorts? No one. And weren't my consorts supposed to love me and want me just for themselves? They fought with each other, but the instant a Pantere looked my way, they didn't care what I did? And Korr and all his seduce a necromancer talk.
What did they think I was?
"Leave me alone," I said again. "Do whatever you want, but leave me out of it!"
"What are you talking about?" Ormiss demanded. "You're our consort, we can't leave you out of anything!"
"The trinkets are such lies," I snarled. "None of you actually love me the way it promises, because it's such a lie!"
"That isn't true," Korr said immediately.
"Shut up! You're the worst of them, you've been on me about seducing a necromancer the longest! I'm just a conquest for all of you! You don't actually care what or who I do as long as it gets you what you want, which could be anything from the princess to me not getting in your way. A little tit for tat, like high-breds play!"
"Keep your voice down," Itek hissed.
It hit like he'd punched me in the chest. Pain ran through all my scars. "Sure. You got what you wanted, so you're the first to stop caring. The trinkets are such bullshit. Perfect love that makes you happy my ass. I guess I'm as fucking torn up as my body is, so my love is all warped and ugly like my skin is. I'm not dying for this lie!"
I yanked my trinket off and flung it through the window into the ocean below.
/********
PEEPS
OH SNAP. I BET YOU DID NOT THINK THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. THEIA IS DONE.
To be fair, I didn't know that was going to happen either. Probably time to make some TikTok reaction videos to my own pantstering because this chapter went TOTALLY pearshaped as I was writing it.
Fuck. Well. Now what.
Anyway.
I'm sorta into TikTok at this point, although I am really just there for the animal videos, but dear god, it really needs to stop showing me heartbreaking ones. I JUST CANNOT. I just need WHOLESOME AF ones. At least I've trained the algorithms that I don't want to see zit bursts and that sort of stuff.
Like WTH is up with that. I have it on a phone I reset and wiped all data from before installing it (because I do NOT trust TikTok's background processes AT ALL. I film everything on my other potato phone, edit it on my iPad, then push everything to the Plague Phone via USB) And what did TikTok present me with right off the bat? Mostly zit bursts. Like...the algorithm says "okay, new user, no data we can paw through on the phone to get an idea for what they like, what should we show them to get them hooked? ZIT BURSTS AND MAGGOTS IN WOUNDS, YES!"
Me: "AH, NO. QUICK. KITTENS. SHOW ME KITTENS." (And I had to search kittens and like a bunch of cat videos and it still took about 10 hours before the algorithm was like "FINE. I GUESS YOU'RE A WEIRDO WHO DOESN'T LIKE MEDICAL MAGGOTS /POUT")
On the other hand... maybe that's part of the plan. Show the user a bunch of stuff they probably won't like to force them to input stuff they DO want to see....
Huh.
:: reaches slowly for tin-foil hat. Applies tin-foil hat to head. ::
~ Merry
(paranoid pantster)
********/