"I would have come to you," Soir told me, trying to slide a hand around my waist. I moved away, and he gave me a sly look.
I had half-expected him to reject my expectation he host me for dinner again, but Marcus had gone and returned within an hour that the Lord-Raven would be delighted to have my company. Something about the way Marcus had said delighted had sound like Soir--like one raven had been mimicking the song of another.
I didn't hear a song, but part of me wanted Soir to embrace me. I wanted to feel what I expected would be a frosty, silky touch. My trinket sat under my silks. Time to get this over with and get out of here--Korr had been very clear to not linger. Even if I could hear Soir's song, I apparently wasn't immune to it, or at the very least, not equal to sparring with the Raven. "Soir."
He cocked his head to the side, suddenly serious. "You are here to reject me."
"Soir--"
"No," he said with a single shake of his head, sending his inky hair drifting and fluttering. "No. I have not pled my case, I--"
"Soir, it's impossible." Get this over with.
"It is not impossible. Your voice is a song, and I know you can hear mine, as much as it does not seem to reach you save as music over a loud room."
"It is impossible." But I hadn't expected honesty and an abject confession of affection.
"No, it is not," he said with a firmness that sent nervous tremors along my skin. "Tell me what would make it possible. You've offered rejection so quickly. Tell me what is required to earn more time to solve the puzzle."
Oh, he was making it simple then. "No, Soir, it has nothing to do with anything you've done. It's simply not possible. I went to the Churn months ago."
He straightened and went very still. "What? You went to the Churn?"
"Yes. That's why I left my home enclave. The man who you guessed broke my heart tricked me into going to the Churn to get rid of me. I left and came to Haven." Korr had also told me to give Soir the truth but keep it simple and not get baited into a conversation or giving details.
He cocked his head one way, then the other, gaze intense, bewildered, and cunning. "Have you found him?"
I held out my hands. "Yes. I never intended to lead you on. I've been estranged. I never meant to give you or anyone else the impression I was single. It was something we were struggling through discreetly. Or trying to."
Soir weighed me with violet-black eyes, exceedingly still yet moving at the same time. "You say this like your honesty or this truth is an obstacle. I also suspect that you are not actually over your struggles, but feel compelled to set them aside and return to your Churn-chosen because I have intruded. Then let me tell you that I do not consider you having gone to the Churn a problem, and if you wish to reject him, I'm hardly afraid of the controversy, or knowing he watches me make love to you from the shadows. I know he's watching now. I knew he was watching last night."
This had gone off-script. Korr had not forseen Soir brushing off the truth. Neither had I. I stepped out towards the terrace since Asund had told me to stay in Itek's line of sight... but not to look at the skyline. Too late, though: Soir had already figured it out?
"I wasn't sure what I was hearing," Soir added with a feral smile better suited to a wolf or dragon, reminding me he was a creature that would feast upon anything. "Because I hear multiple songs, all focused on you, and I hear more songs tonight than last night, a chorus singing to you. My ravens cannot see him, he is well-hidden, but he is nearby, watching. Intriguing, just another part of the puzzle, but if it is freedom from a bond-mate that does not please you, nor appreciate you that you want... sit. On my lap if you wish to enrage him."
"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.
Itek dove into the middle of us. Ravens erupted from crevice and mantle and hidden shelf, squawking and screeching, and half a dozen dropped down onto the balcony in human form while three tore at Itek's ruff with claws. Itek swung his beak at them, snapping, and they screeched. Feathers flew. Itek whipped his feline tail around towards Soir, but Soir ducked and dove backwards out of range of capture.
Korr's large white form seemed to blot out the sky as he snapped his icy wings out wide to arrest his dive, and he transformed, neatly dropping to the ground in a swirl of white hair and blue silk. What was he doing here? He wasn't supposed to be here!
Ethat crunched onto the roof, shattering tiles, and swinging his neck to smack into some Ravens, sending the birds tumbling and feathers everywhere. Ravens screeched guards, guards! and more dropped out of the sky onto the balcony, sharpened nails and spears at the ready. Footsteps moved through the house and the song was defeaning. Soir's song rose through it all, even though he wasn't speaking.
Ormiss vaulted off Itek's back, wearing just a pleated leather skirt, and carrying...
the whip.
It dragged across the ground with all the sound of souls dying and added to the song piercing my brain, while my soul jostled and twisted as if the whip was being drug across it.
Soir's tone bit into bone. "Quite the entrance. You realize I allowed it to be that easy."
Lightening crackled down the length of that terrible whip. Ormiss shifted his wrist and the shards rattled and screamed. "She is not for you. Accept the rejection and do not menace her."
Soir pressed his fingertips together, and when he spoke, his magic coiled in his voice as intently as the lightening crackling over Ormiss, or the frost swirling about Korr. "An intense conversation about things of profound interest to a Raven is not menacing. You clearly misunderstand, as usual, Lord-Regent. Take your crippled dragon friend back to your abode before you cause an incident he cannot talk himself out of. Not that I think he can talk at all right now, for the energy he is spending to appear as though he is fine, when he most obviously is not. My, my, Ambassador, what did do that to you?"
Korr, under his blue silks, had a visible black blot where the bug's leg had pierced his side.
And Soir's question was actually honest inquiry: he very much wanted to know what had caused that injury. But in the same breath, he tilted his head upwards to look at Ethat, still withered and dry and wilted. "And I see her rejection of you had a profound affect, Green Dragon."
Ethat barred his teeth and snarled. I moaned as it added to the song raking my soul.
"Oh, I know, I know, she used you for her pleasure in my pantry. I am not offended. I wouldn't even object if she cared to flit off and let you pleasure her, so long as you didn't spill inside her. That would be mine," Soir's song mingled with the sound of the whip, "and mine alone."
Ormiss moved and the whip smashed into the stones with a sound so terrible even Soir backed away. "She is not yours! Do you know, bird, why she is a Hippocamp lady? Because I made her one. Because she is my consort."
Everything about Soir seemed to sharpen and darken and the song became an awful, incessent pounding of rain. He took in the two dragons and gryphon and then looked back at Ormiss. "Typical. Storming up to a fight that doesn't exist, but summoning one all the same, even if you have brought allies. Interesting."
Allies. The flames of the word licked my mind.
"She," Soir ground on, "left you. And she invited that green dragon to please her."
Ormiss smashed the whip. "And you need to understand no is all the answer you are ever owed. Release her from your song, SongBird."
"I am not holding her in my song. And it is Lord-Raven, as you well know."
Korr stepped between them, frost and icicles on his fingertips as Ethat growled above us. Korr summoned a ring of rotating shards of ice, holding the delicate frozen blades in balance with just a single raised hand. "We are not going to start a war over Theia. Release her, Soir."
"A Hippocamp's consort but playing with the dragon in my pantry? Sounds like starting a war and if not, I'm not sure what will," Soir said with honeyed menace. His dark eyes flicked over all of us, his song rising even though no one sang. Like he weilded a blade with his gaze, he observed the trinket around Korr's neck. The ravens watching flapped and screeched, while a dozen armed guards clustered into the room, and everyone's song devoured my mind and every word from Soir's lips tore and twisted my soul and my skin.
"No..." Soir said, his tone melodic. "Oh no, I see." He tore his gaze back to Ethat. "How did all of you manage so spectacularly to drive her away? And it's draining you dragons, and that gryphon is preening himself bald, and where is that wolf? I imagine that wolf is part of this too. She has a veritable menagerie. What an exquisite puzzle. One I cannot look away from."
"You will look away," Korr's voice was ice and deep winter death and bones and it mingled with the terrible scraping noises of the whip.
Ethat barred his fangs at Soir, then snapped his teeth and mimed a chomp chomp gulp. The increasing number of Ravens squawked and screeched.
"I thought so," Soir's voice pitched perfectly like a blade under Ethat's scales. He flipped his sharpened fingers, rings jangling, and some sort of magic pulled, and it grabbed like wires through all my scars.
I gasped and jerked like a puppet on strings.
Korr unleashed the ice, and another motion, scooping a blast of frigid air at Soir. Itek dove forward and swooped me up in his wings, shielding me, as Soir was blasted backwards in a tumble of black silk and feathers. The yank didn't break and I jerked again. Itek clutched me in his wings just as I fell.
Soir transformed and his wings caught the cold breeze. He was larger than other Ravens, and a beautiful, shifting purple-black, each beat of his wings shedding feathers, and around his neck and draped across his wings were delicate silver chains set. The claws on his feet were black and sharp. Each beat of his wings created some kind of music that pulled at me like the beats of a silent song commanding my skin to tear and move.
I screamed and clawed at my scars.
"Now I'm angry," Korr's voice was the sound of glaciers crashing down hillsides. He summoned another wall of ice-shards and slammed them into Soir.
Soir ducked around them with ease, singing a song no raven I'd ever heard made, haunting like funeral bells, and he dove at Korr, transforming just before they collided so that he swept Korr up in a dark, fluttering embrace. "Now, now, dragon," his music swept through all of us, "you're misunderstanding."
Ice shards danced on Korr's fingertips, and his hand disappeared into Soir's fluttering bound-clothing as Ethat roared a warning, but Soir's black, sharp nails were buried in a handful of Korr's white hair. Korr smirked at Soir. "Then there is about to be a misunderstanding that disembowels you, bird."
"The best puzzles require the most difficult solutions," Soir's song drowned my soul in black silk and ice. Itek hissed like a cat. I pulled myself up to my feet by clutching handfuls of his ruff.
Ormiss' whip snaked through the air and Soir ducked, but the whip, like it still hungered, followed and peeled off several of Soir's feathers.
The Ravens screamed and a cloud of them descended on me.
I shrieked as they encased Itek and I. Itek raked at them with claws and his beak, his wings shielding me as they pecked at him. The chorus of ravens tore at my soul and neck.
Itek swept aside a curtain of ravens with one wing. Birds tumbled through the sky. My eyes watered and I grabbed my neck, expecting to feel blood and tattered skin.
Soir's song yanked all the ravens back. The beating of their wings struck the air.
Soir pinned Korr with his dark gaze. "Tsk, tsk, Ambassador. You're about to negotiate a needless war."
Korr's ice audibly cracked and ground as he summoned more and more frigid magic, drawing all the heat out of the air around us and frost started to fall onto the ground. I croaked for him not to do it as the dark hole in his side spun and spread across his pale skin, but he did not hear me. "Sounds like I was averting one, or do you really expect Ormiss to be the reasonable one?"
Soir moved in a blink of silk and purple and darkness. He grabbed Korr around the neck with one arm and jerked him so close their lips almost touched. Frost misted off Soir, stilling his fluttering garments and freezing them in the hot summer night. His breath frosted. "So you do have a temper and some magic beyond keeping drinks at my parties cool. I'm going to release you, dragon. And you may all leave with my regards. I meant her no harm, and you have all over-reacted."
Korr shoved Soir back, a blade of ice forming in his hands. "You call that no harm?"
Soir turned and seemed to notice me, crumbled by Itek's front talons, for the first time. My neck felt torn and rended and my soul reverberated inside my skin like a pot struck against stone. He moved a hand--
"No!" Korr shouted as Ethat lunged and caught three ravens in his mouth.
The ravens shrieked in chorus. I screamed with them. Soir spiraled up into raven-form and his song tore through the air and my mind. Ravens dove on us in a fluttering black mass. Soir's song echoed through me with a thousand others, different from the others, but drowned out by a thousand, a million, echoing and echoing and stretching. Ethat's neck twisted about with the song that demanded he release the ravens.
Stretching my neck right off my shoulders, trying to twist--
No, that wasn't his song--
A shockwave smashed Itek and I apart. Ravens tore at me with claws, cawing ours ours ours ours. A blast of frigid air sent them to the ground with feathers encrusted in ice.
A dark war-form plunged off the rooftop with a howl. Asund scooped me up just as another shockwave smashed into the stones, sending him and I sailing through the air.
The stones of the terrace pulled away as we went up, and we went over the edge of the building.
Itek will catch us...
The going up feeling ended, for a second we seemed to be suspended in air, then...
"Theia!" Korr's shout tore at my soul. Ethat roared.
I'm sorry...
CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACKLE
It sounded like oil and water splattering in a pan.
Asund twisted in the air, and the ground, now shining and white, rose up to meet us.
He landed, and we slid downwards with his claws slicing through something and frost erupting around us. Above us, Itek launched into the air with a shriek, shaking off half a dozen ravens, while Asund and I still slid down.
"Hold on," Asund said aganist my ear.
Then he held me tighter, fell backwards, and we rolled along stones. The impact knocked the air out of my lungs.
Over, over, and Asund sprang up neatly, with me in his arms. He growled lightly as he looked behind us at the new noises.
Wolves howled throughout Haven, and more Ravens descended on Soir's house, and people came out of their houses and peered up watch. Korr had cast an inverted bridge of ice running down from Soir's terrace, and Asund had slid down it with me in his arms. The ramp shone like crystals in the summer night.
"Korr!" I shouted. Asund set me down. My knees barely held my weight and my head wobbled on my shoulders.
Ethat's withered green form, visible in the flickering torchlight, backed up over the terrace, his tail swishing and smashing things while Ravens pecked him and a thousand fireflies tried to swarm the Ravens. Little bits of green and wheat rained from the sky.
Ethat's scales. They were pecking him alive!
Ormiss appeared at the top of the ramp, dragging Korr over his shoulder. He stabbed his staff into the ice, shouted at Ethat, and slid down the ramp barefoot, dragging Korr, hair whipping in the wind.
Asund moved so fast he was a shadow, and he somehow caught Korr from Ormiss, spinning around with the ice dragon in his arms while Ormiss went flying and somehow sommersaulted across the rocks in a tangle of skirts and dark hair. Itek dove at ravens and batted the smaller creatures from the air.
"Let's go!" Ormiss shouted at Ethat as he grabbed my arm. "You have him?"
Asund hefted Korr over his shoulder as Ethat jumped back off the balcony and snapped his wings open with a great thump! but still landed hard on the stones. He shook himself and threw his head back to bellow a roar that made the wolves in the distance howl a challenge, but everyone else in the vicinity bolted.
Itek flew overhead while we bolted back to the house.
Ethat slammed the door shut with his tail as Asund set Korr down in the foyer.
"Well," Ormiss said in the sudden, temporary quiet, "that went as well as I expected it would."
/********
Peeps--
I did not get nearly what I wanted to get finished finished this past weekend. SAD FACE. I must either figure out how to be more productive OR stop over-scoping.
._.
And I did not know this was a thing, but... apparently there is PRESS ON WALLPAPER NOW? Like PEEL AND STICK? 0_o THIS iS A THING? You should have seen me head explode like that emojii. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this information, but I probably am going to do something with it. We live in a rental, so painting the walls is not going to happen (I am trying to convince husband to let me take our cabinet doors off for an airier look in the kitchen) but if you've seen my earlierTikToks, you know our walls are... BROWN. Unrelentingly brown. Every room: brown. With no crown molding. And beige carpet. I AM EXCITED TO LEARN I MIGHT BE ABLE TO FIX THIS.
~Merry
(peppery pantster)
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