I shifted my shoulder and rubbed the joint. My fingers crept towards the scars.
"Sore?" Asund inquired. He seemed absolutely no worse for wear after the previous evening. His hair, wet from a bath, clung to him in ashen-gray curls.
"Some."
"Was it the sex or getting thrown around at Soir's?"
The broad muscles running down the back of my thighs still felt trembly and tired and very sore from being bent into an assortment of positions. And my privates were chafed and still swollen--Ormiss had made good on the threat that once for each of them wasn't going to be enough. I picked at my big scar. It ached deep inside and when I pulled at it, it felt... odd.
"Theia."
"Oh, tired," I said. "There's one of me and three of you, and you all wanted to go twice."
"We wanted more than that." He smiled and kissed me, slow and savoring me. My ravaged body responded anyway, and heat coiled in my belly while my swollen bits got dampened all over. Asund's tongue toyed with mine, light and airy, and the jerk was just teasing me, and he knew it.
"How can you still--?" I couldn't get out the rest of the words. Too breathless.
He glanced down at the swelling shaft lifting his pants. "It's been at least three hours. Do you need some more attention? I think you might, considering the scent from between your thighs right now."
"It should just smell ravaged." A flush crept over my cheeks.
"It does. It also smells like wanton need. Would you prefer to line all of us up and have your choice?" His gray eyes flickered with wickedness.
"Why don't you go see if Itek or Ormiss will amuse you? I need to go see Korr and Ethat."
He picked up my right hand and flipped it over. In the middle of my palm was the puncture mark from Ethat's tooth. It had a thin crust on it. Asund asked, "Does it hurt?"
"No. Looks like it's going to heal quickly." I pulled it out of his grip and returned to feeling along my shoulder. It did ache. A dull, bone-deep aching occasionally pierced by something sharp and metallic. Asund had just bothered to put on some pants so far, and the day already promised to be hot, with the air coming through the windows carrying a suffocating heat, and it was barely past dawn. But it was all Asund's scars that held my attention.
Wolves didn't tend to scar, but Asund had more than his share, and Ormiss' whip, while he'd healed quickly as wolves did, had left deep, cruel scars where the cursed thing had flayed him especially deep.
"Do they hurt?" I asked him.
"Some do," he said. "But they don't bother me. Something is bothering you? Besides worrying about Korr. Last night?"
The previous evening had been... wonderful, but terrifying too, and it'd been like I'd been fighting my body the entire time. It felt like there'd been layers of me, and some of those parts of me had wanted nothing to do with what had been happening. I needed some time to think about it. Definitely didn't want to say anything stupid... again.
Asund, in true wolf fashion, didn't let the thread drop. "I know there were moments last night that...not frightened, but... perhaps that is the right word. I could smell it. I'm fairly sure Ormiss sensed it. Itek saw it in your neck."
"I don't know, maybe. I can't think about it right now, and I'm not ready to talk about it. But no one made me do something I didn't want to do, and I'm glad we all ignored it."
"Fair enough." He gave me a brief, gentle hug and caressed my messy hair.
"I need to go see Korr and Ethat." I at least owed them a first-thing-in-the-morning kiss so they knew I hadn't flitted off like they didn't matter.
Asund nodded.
"Why did you bring Korr last night?" I asked him before I left.
"He refused to stay behind, and Ethat refused to make him."
Figured as much. And what were the others going to do against two determined dragons? It would have ended in a bloody brawl before they had even gotten to the brawl.
The house was cool, but not the usual chill that indicated Korr's magic was as it should have been.
Korr, Ethat, and Itek had rooms on the floor above mine, while Ormiss and Asund had claimed the rooms on my level. Usually, Korr would have been in the sitting area on the main landing of my floor, but neither he nor Ethat were there.
Still, it was early. Itek was still asleep in my bed, draped across the bed on his back like a content cat. Ormiss did not seem to be about. It was barely dawn, and he'd still managed to disappear somewhere.
I ascended the stairs to the next floor, crossed the floor to Korr's room. The door was cracked. I pushed it open slowly, trying to be as silent as possible, and not sure what to expect, since I'd never actually been in or seen Korr's room. Or Ethat's, for that matter. Did Ethat even have a bed?
Korr's room was simple, decorated in undyed wools and silks of varying shades of creams and pale browns. The curtains were parted, but the windows were misted over--partially--with frost, and the air was cold, but something told me it wasn't as cold as it should have been. There was a desk stacked with papers and ink wells and pens, wax sticks, leather envelopes in varying magically dyed shades, diplomatic pouches and scroll cases, and a massive, detailed map of the world, and many, many, many massive leather-bound volumes lining the wall behind the desk.
Something flickered over my senses as I crossed the threshold. I flinched but ignored it.
Ethat was in human form on the bed with his brother, wrapped in a green silk robe. He was propped up against the headboard, arms crossed, chin on his chest, green-and-withered hair in a thick, mused sleeping braid. His bare feet stuck out from under the robe. He was missing three toenails, and the ones he still looked like a horse had crushed his bare feet.
He did not raise his head, but opened one eye, bright and brilliantly green.
Next to him, asleep and under the blankets, was his brother. Someone--Ethat, likely--had braided Korr's hair, and appeared to have carefully arranged him on a large sloping stack of pillows. The tail of Korr's braid had been decked with a large white satin ribbon tied in a bow.
Korr opened one of his wintery eyes. His pale lips twitched in a smile.
"Look, brother," Ethat said, "our consort has deigned to enter our nest."
"Do you think it pleases her?" Korr's voice sounded pale and fragile, like there was no strength in his chest to shape it.
"No." Ethat clicked his tongue like this was some old argument they'd had. He gestured towards Korr's work area.
Korr's smile got a little brighter. "Do not be shy, my love."
"I am not shy." It still felt odd and unreal to have run of the house. The upper levels of Tynne's house had been strictly forbidden, and I'd never gone beyond the first floor. Severe punishments had been meted out for the idiot servants that had thought they'd sneak up to the upper levels to snoop around. Stepping into the Lord of the House's room felt dangerous and presumptuous, like it couldn't be real, and I had gotten confused somewhere.
"So very shy, but determined," Korr said while Ethat gave me his sweet smile, still not raising his chin from his chest. Korr shifted as if to push himself higher up on his pillows. Ethat's hand snapped out and pinned Korr on the shoulder. Korr glared at him. Ethat glared back and clicked his teeth. Korr clicked back.
"I came to check on you." I wasn't sure what to say. "I guess I woke both of you."
"Dozing," Ethat said. "We sensed you wake up."
"You can sense that?"
"Of course. You moving through the house shifts how the magic moves," Ethat said. "Korr's magic chills and stills everything. When you move through it, it is like the light from a candle being carried through darkened rooms."
"Have--have I always been like that?" I sat down on the bed next to him, careful to not jostle him.
"Stronger now." A smile lingered on his pale, drawn face. Ethat was still holding him down. "Brother. Let me up."
"No." Ethat gave him his sweetest, most evil fuck you, no smile.
"I am fine."
"You are a liar. You tore that all to hell again." There was something faint in the air now that I was close to him. Not fetid, exactly. More like musty. Ashy. I worked my tongue in my mouth. It seemed to be more a taste than a smell, but it was sort of both. His skin felt warm to the touch, and didn't have its frosty veneer, and all the signs of magical fading were present. Ethat withered, dried out, like grass. And Korr seemed to... melt.. But instead of turning into water, he just sort of... dulled and faded away.
"Worth it."
I snuggled down next to him. He shifted his good arm around me and sighed contently, his cold-but-also-warm fingers lightly caressing my beck while I tucked my knees up against his thighs. He twirled a pattern. "Perhaps you will tell Ethat and I the details of your evening."
Ethat leaned over towards me, green eyes dancing with wicked mischief. "Yes. Tell us. Tell us how many times you took their cocks. In what manner. And--"
"What makes you two think you deserve any reward other than being forced to listen?"
Korr laughed, then caught himself with a wince and snickered through clenched teeth, making alternating sounds of pain as his body spasmed on pain. I bolted upright. He wheezed, "I'm fine, I'm fine," while also trying his best to not laugh.
Ethat fluttered his eyelashes at me dramatically.
I would have blushed if I wasn't so worried about making Korr laugh. I pulled the sheet down over his chest to reveal the wound, which was not bandaged, and just sat as a black pit punched into his side, with a sooty halo extending around it. Without the sheet, the musty taste-scent hit me.
"Korr," I said softly. It had somewhat healed on the way back from the temple of dreams. The flying had taken its toll, but he'd managed. And this had not been a thing. The sootiness, yes, but the pit, no. But it was an odd wound--I could clearly see the bottom. Not a puncture wound (like it had been originally), but a pit in his side a finger deep and almost a wrist wide. Like a pit in the ground.
Or a grave.
Korr captured my hand before I could touch it. He ran his thumb over the little rough scab patch in my palm. "What happened with Soir last night?"
"You were there."
"His song. What did it do to you? You were in pain. You screamed, and I felt it."
"We all felt it," Ethat added with a dangerous growl.
"I don't think he was trying to do anything." Couldn't I at least have some tea and breakfast before thinking about the first part of the prior evening?
"Theia. He is a dangerous SongBird, and has a chorus of Ravens." Korr looked at me with total don't be an idiot disapproval.
Yes, Soir was dangerous. And yes, it'd been terrifying and painful and confusing and if I thought about it too much the wings started to beat my brain again while all the parts of me shifted and pulled and oozed and slid over each other and I no longer felt real. But I hadn't been scared of Soir.
Maybe that was the magic.
I pulled at the biggest scars over my shoulder.
"Let her have breakfast, brother," Ethat said softly. "She was up all night."
Korr glanced towards the rising sun coming through the barely-frosted window.
He was right: we might not have much time, and Soir wasn't going to just let me go. He'd be back, along with every Raven he had, which was a lot of Ravens. "It felt like wires. Have you seen the hooks meat hangs from? Like those under my skin and pulling. But it wasn't just my skin and my body. It was my soul. Like all the parts of me... like I'm not whole. And it felt like my mind was being beaten with wings."
Korr frowned. Ethat clicked in his throat.
"A song," Korr said. "The chorus of ravens. They can buffet your mind like that. Like they have descended on your mind."
I shivered.
"But not the pulling," Ethat murmured, concerned. "I saw no hooks."
"The hooks are different. Perhaps Ormiss would know." He took a breath and painfully dragged himself a bit more upright, but the effort left him even more gray and melted. He clearly wanted to say more, but had to limit himself to, "Pieces?"
I shook my head. Too hard to describe. And something else was more important. I pulled free of them and headed towards Korr's desk.
"Don't go through those," Korr said.
"Diplomatic mess," Ethat added.
I surveyed the stacks of papers. "I can't read any of it, remember?"
I wasn't looking to spy on Korr's correspondence anyway. Nothing was out in the open, either. Just evidence of massive amounts of work and correspondence and documents, but not so much as a scrawled reminder of something. So this was what a desk looked like. And the little vials of ink in varying colors. Black, bright blue, red. Stubs of wax in colors too, but most of them were a silvery-white wax with a pearlescent blue sheen. But it was the letter-knife I had wanted.
I'd never seen a desk before, but I had seen a letter-knife on multiple occasions. Tynne's mother had stabbed hers into more than one pert servant.
It wasn't difficult to grab the knife and use the sharp, pointed business end to stab into the scab on my palm.
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Peeeeeepssss...
It's a bit too early (and I am only on my 1st cup of coffee) to type much of a comment here or anything. But I did get to use the word "pert" in this chapter, so that's fun. Pert is just one of those words that sounds like what it is. PERT.
~Merry
(presently sipping coffee pantster)
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