I touched his withered cheek. The skin flaked under my thumb. He leaned into my hand for a moment, eyes closed, before he opened them again. He looked distraught. "I've made you cry."
"Because I love you. Now will you come out of here? You have to face the others sometime."
"No, I don't. They don't want to see me. You should return to them, though. They need you and love you, and they are good to you, won't hurt you like I will...and have."
"You can't hide down here forever and Korr wants to see you. He's so much better, Ethat."
Ethat shook his head.
"Please?"
"No. I am a monster. I belong down here. Go be happy with them. I am happy knowing you still love me."
"Please?"
He sighed and drew me close against him. He smoothed my hair before releasing me retreating back into his corner. He shifted into dragon form, tucked himself into the corner and burrowed his head under his loops of neck.
Fine. He couldn't stay down here forever. Maybe Korr would know what to say to coax him out. But I wasn't going to drag him out by his tail, and it wasn't going to be easy to face the others, especially when they were still good and mad about it.
I retreated into the hallway, where Itek and Asund still waited.
"He won't come out," I said.
"Good. I don't want to see him," Asund said. He glared at Itek. "You could have warned us how dangerous he was."
"He's never attacked a lover," Itek retorted.
"He didn't attack me," I hissed. "And keep your voices down!"
"He grabbed you hard enough to leave bruises and rattle your teeth."
I threw up my hands. "I'm not arguing this."
Asund tried to pick me up. I snarled at him.
"You can't walk up all those stairs with your leg. Be mad at me all you like. You think my last charge didn't get angry at me when I didn't let him do something foolish? You're an amateur in the anger department." Asund clearly gave no shits.
Itek shook his head at Asund. "I'll do it. Sometimes you have no polish, wolf."
Asund glared back at the room where Ethat hid.
"You'll tear your leg up walking up these stairs." Itek loomed close to me.
I sighed and looped one arm around Itek's neck. He picked me up easily and carried me up the stairs. Asund stomped after us, grumbling to himself.
"Ignore him," Itek murmured.
"I heard that," Asund said.
"Ignore him," Itek repeated, louder this time.
Asund fumed while Itek carried me up the stairs, and returned me to the room where Korr waited, his beautiful face drawn in concern. He and Ormiss had been having some magical conversation that dropped once we arrived.
Itek set me down carefully.
"Did he speak to you?" Korr asked.
"He did, but he won't come out. Tell me he will come out. He thinks he's a monster who deserves to be in a dungeon. Do not," I pointed at Ormiss and Asund, "say it."
Ormiss and Asund exchanged glances. They shrugged at each other.
I sank down next to Korr. "Tell me he does this and will come out."
"He does, but it can take a while. And you... you're different."
"Korr, you know he didn't mean to hurt me. He's not a monster."
"I know he didn't mean to. He never does. But he's explosive and flails and people get hurt, intentionally or not."
"You've been cleaning up behind him for a while," Ormiss said.
"Smoothing things over. Which I am sure the wolf next to you has done on more than a few occasions."
Asund shrugged. "I am not going to discuss my previous charges."
"I wasn't aware you had retired at all, and that your brother had just given you leave to pursue your mate. Or more like put the whip to you if you didn't."
"Technically, still a Captain. My brother's messenger will be here soon. Why, Korr, do you want to go live with a bunch of wolves at a distant enclave?"
"Not particularly, but I'm not ruling it out." Korr turned his attention to me and stroked his fingers through my hair. "Leave him be for now. He's always come around before, but it takes time. No one is more scared of Ethat than Ethat is."
"He should be scared of me," Ormiss said. "I am not forgiving or excusing this."
Asund grunted, and Itek clicked his jaw. Korr held out a hand. "Let the dust settle. He'll be below for a while. He's still her consort and she still wants him."
"And what happens when this happens again?" Itek asked.
"What if it happens if she's pregnant?" Ormiss raised a brow.
"What if he does worse than shake her?"
"And what if nothing ever happens again?" Korr said.
"You'd gamble?" Ormiss snapped.
"I don't know," Korr said, half-defeated. "I do not know. I know that my brother and I have always been together, and I know that Theia is his consort. Those things mean something. You three have said your part. It weighs heavily. Let it drop."
"You clamped a spiked ice collar around his throat to pull him off her," Ormiss said coldly. "You told her to run. Fuck you, Korr. That is damning and you know it."
"Please stop," I said. "Just... stop. For now. We can figure it out later. He's hiding in the basement, isn't he? What more do you want from him?"
Grumbles.
"We have other problems," I reminded them. "Soir? Ravens? End of the world? War? The fact humans think I'm human, and shifters think I'm a shifter? Asund's brother's messenger? That I might end up Queen of the Hippocamp? The bugs? My beautiful blood? What we pulled out of Korr? Who made me what I am? The fact I'm an idiot at best, and a monster at worst?"
"You aren't an idiot," Asund said.
"I am an idiot." I picked at my shoulder scar. "Let's just admit it, Asund. I'm not very smart."
"You learned whatever that bubble taught you," Asund said with a hint of steel in his voice. "And perhaps that bubble taught you to always feel like you were stupid."
"Were you listening in to what I said to Ethat?"
"Sound carries."
"Then I guess I'm too dumb to realize I might have been manipulated from the start."
Korr shifted, moving somewhat stiffly, but moving, and he pulled me against his side--gently, and with a bit of a wince--but his robe and his chill enveloped me. He kissed my temple. "Your life was a dream, but it was still your life. And it sounds like many parts of it made sense. You were raised a foundling. In total poverty. You survived the usual things children like you had to survive. You were smart enough to not fall into the usual traps, and never discount how smart and determined you had to be. It might seem simple, but if it was simple, and easy to do, everyone would do it, yes?"
"I suppose," I said evasively.
"But still enough of a unicorn to put your faith in love. The secret of the best lies are to entwine them with snarls of truth. Your life until the moment Tynne broke your heart made sense. It made so much sense not even we realized it wasn't true."
True, true. And I'd been honest with them.
"And think what the dream told you to do," Korr added, lines furrowing between his brows. "Tynne, who pursued you not because he loved you, but because you refused to risk pregnancy by him. And your friend, who chastised you for not being smart enough to become a skirt, and who said she had secured her future by being the mother of Tynne's spare heir. That both outcomes would improve your position somewhat, and ensure a better position for your offspring."
"You're saying the dream's story was to... break me down into having a baby?" I asked.
"To be fair, the narrative you were told isn't particularly unique: strategically use sex as currency. So perhaps it was just the same story that's been told a thousand times. " Korr twisted to me--again, somewhat stiffly and favoring his side--and caressed my cheek. He was so beautiful and cold my heart broke with each beat that he was somehow, impossibly, mine. "We will not betray your faith in us, my love. And if one of us falters, there are yet more of us to catch you. And I imagine my brother has promised to be beside you in all things. And although we promise to be those things, you trust that he can keep that promise better than any of us."
It was like he'd shoved his icy claws right through my heart. I loved them all so much, the thought of losing one was too much--how could he say they were failsafes? Even losing one of them would tear pieces out of my heart.
"I know my brother," Korr said with a sad smile. "We were hatched together. We have always been together. I know him, and what he wants more than anything. And he wants someone who will love him, I think only as a unicorn can."
"And what do you want?"
"I want you. And for my brother to be happy. And for Ormiss to teach me this fabulous braid." Korr smoothed the intricate plate adorned with those pale pink ribbons. He caught one of the ribbon tails and noticed it was pink, then looked at Ormiss.
"You had the ribbons, dragon," Ormiss said, unapologetic.
"Perhaps they were not for use on my hair."
"Oh, tied around your cock like a gift? Would explain why you have five. You need all five tied in bows to convince observers it is, in fact, a gift."
I tried not to giggle. Asund and Itek just looked at Ormiss like what the hell, I'm glad that wasn't me.
Korr's eyes narrowed and his lips curled at the corners. He held out one elegant hand, fingers extended, and he curled one at a time. "Hippocamp, that's one ribbon for my cock, one for each of my hands, one for my tongue, and one for my magic."
"All those advantages and you still need five ribbons."
Korr cracked a wicked smile and flipped his hand around to point at Ormiss. "You have not seen my cock, horse-fish."
"Are you delusional, dragon? Of course I have seen your cock. At this rate, the entire world has seen your cock."
"In its erect state, which is the only state that matters for the sake of this conversation."
"Says you."
"So you enjoy flaccid, spent cocks. Noted."
Ormiss gave him a searing-hot smirk that made me blush and my nethers tingle. "I enjoy observing my victories."
Asund and Itek shared an oh my look.
Korr grinned at Ormiss. "And I enjoy facilitating victories. When they are victories for my side of the diplomatic table."
I tried not to break into laughter. Korr turned to me and said, "My love, my brother and I promised each other we would enjoy you the first time together. Can you make do with your other consorts until he has finished his pity party?"
I reached out and caressed his cheek, grateful to finally feel the bite of frost against my fingertips. Was he really on the mend so quickly? "Perhaps you can go use those diplomatic skills and convince him to come back upstairs."
"Ethat is immune to my powers."
"How long does he usually sulk for?"
Korr managed a shrug. "Impossible to say. Sometimes a few days. Sometimes weeks. Sometimes months."
I wasn't going to let Ethat beat himself up and sit in a corner for months. We'd be seeing about that. Although Itek, Ormiss, and Asund seemed satisfied when Korr pronounced Ethat might be sulking for months.
I shifted closer to Korr, ignoring my cut up leg protesting, and kissed him. A shiver of pleasure ran over me. Not the same sort of pleasure of him touching me, but like remembering something wonderful and familiar. Cold settled over my skin, then the soft sensation and silence of snow falling, the hush, the scent of the air, the feeling of the world being still. My thoughts fractured like a pane of glass, and in the split pieces, there was a scene: a mountain cave overlooking a circular gorge, and a range of mountains, sharp and peaked like a crown, covered in snow, piercing the clouds, the sunlight shifted blue and gray and serene through the thick low-hanging clouds, and snow falling in slow, fluffy flakes.
The memory was so wonderful it seeped through my whole body. I felt it. I lived it.
No taint, no corruption, no stain on the world.
Why couldn't I have been there, instead of that enclave?
I sighed.
Korr pulled back just enough to look at me, his wintery eyes swirling with snow and that strange, beautiful light. That was what color his eyes were: the color of snow-heavy clouds, with fleck so white, but with a shine as hard as ice.
"What did you see?" he asked.
The cracked glass disappeared and my mind re-assembled itself to focus on him. An unpleasant shiver replaced the cold, exquisite caress. "See?"
"Ice dragons have a similar magic to Glass dragons. You saw something. A memory."
I reached for the memory again, and found it, but it seemed oddly distant and far away and small, like it was something I had imagined after hearing about it from a story. "Snow. In mountains. Maybe it's one of your memories?"
"That's not how the magic works," Korr said, searching my eyes with his own, "It's not my memories you see, it's yours."
"But I don't have any memories," I said. "It's like... something I remember being told about. Like some story I heard as a kid and imagined. It's not attached to anything."
"Beloved," he said, brushing his cold lips against mine for an instant, and his fingers pulled gently as my silk. "It's your memory."
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Peeeeepppssss--
I am hungry as I type this. I REQUIRE LUNCH.
:: mashes update button as quickly as possible so she can get to lunch ::
:: squish mash mash squish ::
~ Merry
(priority #1 is eating right now pantster)
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