"No!" Ormiss bolted to the window, slammed into it, gripping the edge, and then looked at me, his garnet-and-obsidian eyes wild and his hair crackling with magic.
"I'm not dying like this," I said again, ignoring the pain in my scars, the anguish in my chest, how it felt like I couldn't breathe, how the grief crushed me, the bitter taste of betrayal. The trinkets promised perfect love. This wasn't perfect. This was so fucking far from perfect everyone probably thought it was perfect because nobody would ever accept the gods had fucked up this badly.
Or that the gods could be fucked with this badly. Or that the trinkets were a lie.
I was something that shouldn't exist. I was maybe a monster of spare unicorn parts cobbled together by some sick sea-serpent or demon. And I'd been given this warped, fucked love where my consorts loved me but didn't. Just like I was a shifter, but wasn't.
It was warped... but it didn't sustain me. It'd kill me, because it was an abomination.
"Theia," Korr said quietly, now rising back to his feet while Ethat steadied him. All the magic seemed to drain out of both of them.
"Don't Theia me," I snapped again. My heart hurt. My body hurt.
"No, no, no," Ormiss jerked as if to sprint, then held his ground, necklaces and skirt swishing.
"I don't want it back," I said. It could sink into the realm of the sea serpents for all I cared. "The trinkets are a lie."
"They aren't a lie!" His voice cracked.
I was done with trinkets. I was done with consorts. I was going to figure out where I'd been all my life, free the hippocamp princess if I could, and then I was just done with all of this. The trinket said my consorts were supposed to love and treasure me, but they didn't. They didn't care what I did, as long as I went along with their whims and politics. They didn't care who I did, as long as I told Korr about it or Ethat got off on it or I acknowledged Ormiss as my preferred partner and gave him a baby to sit on the throne. Itek and Asund didn't even want that much.
They only wanted something from me. Ormiss a queen, Asund the ability to look his brother in the eye again, Korr and Ethat and Itek political leverage and whatever else they could get from me. Hell, Itek only wanted to fuck me and once he'd gotten what he'd wanted, he'd ceased to be interested. He hadn't even wanted to use me politically, just for sex, which was the most base thing anyone could do.
And if I was a unicorn, I wasn't going to let them kill me. I'd rather live and die on my own terms.
They'd kept me as an interesting pet... and that's really all I'd ever been. A very interesting pet. A puzzle. Something mysterious they wanted to keep out of the hands of anyone else until they figured out what value I had, and now that was the only reason they wanted to keep me.
"Theia," Korr said.
I ignored him. Ambassadors couldn't do much with the silent treatment.
"Theia," Ethat pleaded. He approached.
I glared at him. "Go away."
"Theia," he whispered.
"You just want to get laid, Ethat," I snapped at him. "Go away. You're not getting any, so make peace with it. You too, Korr."
Ethat looked at Korr, who looked at his brother, and he eyed me like he didn't dare say a word.
"Theia," Ethat tried again.
"No," I told him. "I am going to deal with the Pantere Priestess, then we are going back to Haven, and I am done with all of you. If you don't want to take me back to Haven, fine. Leave me wherever you want. I don't care."
Korr put his hand on Ethat's shoulder and shook his head.
Smart.
"Theia," Ormiss whispered.
"Yes, that's my name. No, I won't be your Queen." My heart hurt saying that, but I didn't care. "Go find someone else to wear a trinket for you. I'm not playing this stupid game anymore."
"I have waited for you," Ormiss pleaded. "I built the garden for you. It pleased you. Everything I built for you, it pleased you. You are my consort, I knew you even before we met!"
"You know that garden's really pretty, right? Anyone with taste would have liked it."
"But it was built for you."
"And you might have gotten me pregnant like I was some broodmare," I said flatly. "And Itek dropped me, and Ethat and Korr made me wear a collar. And Asund rejected me. The only thing making any of you be nice to me was the trinket. But shouldn't you be nice to me without the trinket staring you in the face? Exactly. You're only kind to me until you get what you want. Thankfully I figured it out before I fucked all of you. Or even most of you."
Itek tip-toed in my general direction. I glared at him. "You can fuck off more than any of them, Itek. You dropped me, you fucked me, but not so much as a hug since then. You got what you wanted and I don't matter anymore."
"Dear gods, Theia, that isn't true," he said. "It isn't."
"Then what is it? Because you know how it looks, right?"
I waited for him to correct me, but he didn't. He wrung his hands like Ethat. Bless him, he did try to figure out what to say. There just wasn't anything he could say. At least, not without lying.
"At least admit it, Itek. Or is it impossible for an ambassador to tell the truth plain?"
He looked stricken and looked at Korr, who seemed stricken as well, and Ethat's hair was turning gold at the roots.
They got caught in their games. They could suffer for it. I thought I'd loved them, I'd tried to be the good consort, and all this made me fucking sick and my body hurt, my soul hurt. But I wasn't going to let them kill me, because they would kill me. They'd get what they wanted from me, and then they'd be fucking my handmaids or whatever, and my heart would break and I'd die. And I'd die an idiot. And if I didn't die, I'd just be a stupid little moron who had believed the stories.
I had always promised myself I wouldn't be stupid. I might be uneducated, but I wouldn't be stupid. It's why I'd never let Tynne finish in me. It's why I'd always been careful. It's why I'd kept my head down and not gossiped in the kitchen. It's why I had tried not to pick fights. Because I'd said to myself I wasn't going to be stupid. Hell, I hadn't even wanted to go to the Churn because I'd been afraid of what I'd get.
They didn't love me. Not really. Not like I wanted to be loved. They loved me like they loved a horse or a dog.
I loved them. I'd let myself love them. I'd believed that stupid trinket lie and let myself fall in love with each of them.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Time to haul myself out of the love-pit before it turned into my grave.
I used the heel of my hand to rub tears away.
Itek crept closer, moving slowly like a cat sneaking up on prey. "Please, lets talk about this."
"I have been talking! You haven't been listening! And I'm not stupid enough to play talk-games with ambassadors!" I rubbed at the tears and sniffled.
Ormiss broke from his position, snatched his lantern-staff, and rushed out through the door, then onto the balcony. His shells clacked and jangled, his skirts swirled. He gripped the edge of the temple, peering into the sea below. Then he bolted down the stairs. He ran full speed down the stairs, his hair shining in the sunlight, and he was so beautiful I almost regretted lobbing my trinket away.
It's for the best. They don't actually love me. I'm an object. I'm Unicorn. Not Theia.
Ormiss made it to the second tier, lunged over the railing, and dove into the frothing ocean.
Even if he found it, I wasn't wearing it again.
The sun hit the edge of the horizon, fiery red and angry, casting its light into the room. Two pantere with tails entwined padded into the rooms. The clinked their tails, shifted into human form, and said, "The Priestess is ready, Lady Theia, Captain Asund."
Asund glanced at me.
"Well, let's go," I told him. "She's expecting us."
"I--"
"I'm not fucking you, Asund. But you can fuck her if you want." Saying it hurt. I bit down on the pain. How deep did it go? Oh, it hurt. But if I was going to die from this, I was going to make it fast.
I marched up to the Pantere. They stared at me with unblinking eyes, expressions unreadable, then shifted back down into cat form, clinked their tail-rings, and padded into the hallway.
"I don't want to fuck her," Asund muttered under his breath as we followed the Pantere with their entwined tails that they clinked together occasionally.
"I don't care one way or the other."
"You do care. I can smell how much pain you're in."
"Better this than letting you guys kill me with your lies."
"None of us lied to you."
"That's the thing about high-breds. You don't think a lie's a lie. You don't think betrayal is betrayal. You think of them as tools and they are necessary, and that makes them forgivable, because one day, someone else will do the same thing to you and that's just the way things are done. Sex is nothing more than a conquest or a task. You don't think about what anything really costs, because even if it costs something today, you'll make it back later, so the ledgers will end up even in the end. But what about the low-breds who can't lie to you or betray you because you'll kill them? What about the low-breds who you ruin by fucking them? A high-bred you can keep as a pretty skirt, and her son as your spare heir to acknowledge when it suits you. What about the low-bred maid you knock up and abandon because you've moved on to something else and the kid's no use to you? What about every other low-bred you lie, cheat, swindle, scam, or abuse who has no ability to make you pay your debts? To you and all the others, it's not a lie, and none of it's wrong, and it's not a problem. I'm the one who's wrong. Because in your world, this is how it works. What was it Lucreita said to me... just business and I needed to stop being naive? Took me a while, but I've figured it out."
He tried to grab my wrist and stop me. "Theia."
I yanked myself free and spun around on him. "The only reason you're using my name right now is because you realize I'm not going to play your games, and you're about to lose. And if there's one thing high-breds hate, it's losing and knowing they'll never get a chance to get the win back because the other person has left the table. Don't forget: you were the one who told me trinkets were mass-made and just because we had matching ones didn't mean we matched."
He went ashen under his tan. "It was a dream, Theia."
"And in the dream, you could have taken me with you. In the dream, you didn't love me. You could have had kinder words. Even in a dream, which isn't real, you found an excuse. You found an excuse, and you know what, I'm not sure you were wrong. Because if the trinkets are supposed to bring you your perfect consorts, they have pretty low standards for perfection."
"I did love you in the dream," he said quietly.
"Then that makes walking away and what you said even worse, doesn't it."
The Pantere politely ignored our squabble as they led us up to the next level to massive doors inscribed with beautiful carvings of pantere moving through what I guess were vivid dream worlds.
"Theia, I love you. I have not regretted or missed my enclave even a moment since I came to find you."
I wanted to believe him. I wanted so badly to believe he loved me, and he probably did: we just had different ideas about what love was. Amazing how you could say the exact same words and they had completely different meaning.
Except there was that small detail that his brother had made him go after me. He hadn't volunteered. He'd been shamed. His dreams had become real and his reaction had been nope instead of it's been ordained, I must be with her. And while he'd never said anything because he considered himself the least of the consorts (and a low-ranking wolf shifter wouldn't speak out of turn), he wanted to go back to his family and pack.
I turned towards the doors and nodded to the Pantere attendants. "I'm ready."
They pulled the massive doors open.
/*******
PEEPS--
We have crossed the 150K word threshold. AND we somehow got this boat to 1MM reads.
YAY FOR US, RIGHT.
I am not quite sure how to process it. The 1MM reads, that is.
:: ponders ::
So anyway.... Husband got me a dozen roses for Valentines day, and I just tossed them and he's been like "why do you still have those, they're dead" and I'm like "they aren't dead enough, I'm using them for something" and he's likes SIGH. And yesterday I finally was like "these are dead enough" and I used them as a prop for a video and THEN chucked them and was like "ALL DONE, LOOKIT MAH VIDEO" and he's like SIGHHHHHHHHHHHH.
And I'm like tee-hee.
Cheers-
Merry
(~paticularly pantstery)
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