"Aurelia!"
The distant voice sounds as though it is coming through a tunnel, all thick and desperate, faded and hoarse. For a moment, all that exists is the echo of that voice, filling the black void. But she follows it and the feeling of her body comes rushing back to her.
Her heart is beating a sharp, staccato rhythm, bruising her ribcage. Her lungs burn as she struggles to catch a breath. There's a ringing in her ears, so loud it is deafening. Aurelia blinks, and slowly, the world comes into focus.
At first all she sees is red. It's splattered against her bare thighs, drenching her hair, smeared over her hands. Her gaze focuses on her wet, sticky palms, and she spends a moment staring down at the ten trembling fingers attached to them. Red constellations are splattered against them, smeared between her knuckles.
Her gaze drops to her knees, which are sprayed with drops of scarlet, spread wide apart, straddling a pair of familiar, sturdy shoulders and digging into warm flesh.
All sound filters away. All sound save for the uneven rasp of her breath and the pounding of her heart. Aurelia traces the familiar tanned skin with her eyes- the white nick of a scar in the hollow of the throat, the prominent Adam's Apple, dusted with a fine coating of blonde fuzz. The strong jaw that she has peppered with kisses, which has rested over her breast, listening to her heartbeat. Which has clenched tight and ticked with anger- the only warning sign before...
She blinks again and the fragment of a thought is gone.
The face... the face is not quite so familiar anymore.
Eyes as blue as chips of the sky are unrecognizable now. One is gray and glazed. The other... there is no other. Where it had once been is now a mangled mass of flesh, still oozing, the blood so thick it's black rather than red. A hair stick protrudes from the bloody, gaping hole, smattered with bits of flesh and gore.
Aurelia half expects life to flood into the man's remaining eye, for his hands to regain their strength and wrap their way around her windpipe, squeezing until she begs for breath.
He doesn't move.
"Ari," says the voice that had called her from the void, and she turns to find another familiar face attached to it- deep bronze skin faded to a grayish pallor, jade green eyes blown wide. The blue light cast from the floor to ceiling, underwater plasti-glass window adjacent to the bed paints him in shades of blue; it makes him appear nearly as much a corpse as the cooling body beneath her thighs.
She looks back to what remains of the corpse's face, and swallows.
"I think I killed him." Her voice comes out soft and hollow, as empty as an echo.
She has no recollection of any of it. Just the bottomless abyss that pressed in on her from all sides until Kaol called her hazy mind back into focus. The memories are there, like the frayed ends of cloth- the more she reaches out to pull at them, the more they unravel and slip away from her.
"Yeah," Kaol rasps, and looks past her searching gaze to the remains of the once powerful man, bleeding out onto soiled sheets.
Aurelia's fingertips snake forward of their own volition, slipping along the man's chest, leaving a streak of blood in their wake. She presses them against his throat and waits for the faint beat of his pulse to prove her assumption wrong.
He can't be dead.
The man is invincible.
She hears Kaol's voice again, but the words are distorted. They sound like they are spoken underwater- captured by the tide and pulled away before she gets the chance to interpret their meaning. She keeps her attention glued to the stubbled flesh beneath her fingertips. If she blinks, if she moves, if she breathes, she'll miss it.
She waits, and waits, and waits... but nothing. No thrum of blood, no twitch of vein, no beat beneath golden flesh.
Aurelia feels strong, calloused hands against her shoulders, and then she is being pulled up and away from the cooling flesh beneath her thighs. Her legs are wooden, rubbery, when she is set on her feet again, and she nearly collapses to the floor.
Strong hands grip her firmly around her ribcage- the thumbs at the small of her back, the forefingers brushing against the underside of her bare breasts. She holds onto that feeling, the hands that are the only anchor to reality.
The hands leave her for a moment, and she feels something cold pressing against her back. She loses control of her legs and slips down, the bare flesh of her bottom making contact with a slick, cool floor.
Suddenly, there is a splash of warm water against her skin, the scrape of nails against her scalp, the sting of saltscrub lather in her eyes. She looks down, sees blood floating in pink rivulets down the shower drain, notices that her body has been scrubbed clean of sweat and sex and blood.
"He's dead," Aurelia says, and she feels the fingers scrubbing saltscrub through her hair still. Her voice comes out a little stronger than it did before.
"I killed him," she adds. "With my hair stick."
As she speaks, she can feel the hard grain of it in her hands, the tip break as it lodged against bone.
"He screamed," she whispers. The sound of it reverberates through her skull.
"Yeah," Kaol murmurs again. He lightly places his hand underneath her chin, tipping her head back. "Close your eyes," he says, and she immediately complies.
It feels good, now, to have someone to obey. To take the burden of this moment off of her. Kaol guides her head beneath the shower jets; warm water streams through the suds in her hair, washing the remnants of blood down the drain along with the fragrant lather.
Aurelia opens her eyes again once the sound of the water has abruptly cut off, and finds Kaol stepping out of the shower stall, his underwear clinging to him much differently than it had when they had been children. She quickly averts her gaze as he presses a towel into her trembling hands.
She doesn't realize her teeth are chattering until Kaol helps her dress and wraps her goldsilk shawl around her shoulders. His fingers play over the material for a moment longer than necessary, and she knows what he is thinking- the cost of the flimsy piece of fabric could have easily paid off either of their educational debts to their respective Guilds.
It had been gift from the dead man lying in a pool of his own blood in the room beyond- one which had barely put a dent in his wallet.
Aurelia wraps the thin, glistening material tightly around her shoulders and refuses to think of what gifts like this have cost her.
She steps out of the bathroom, and studiously avoids looking at the bed. In her avoidance, however, she catches sight of something she hadn't noticed earlier in her shocked haze.
On the floor, there is a rag-doll of a man wearing a uniform that matches Kaol's- black and gold, with the gaping maw of a barracuda embroidered about the high collar. Clotbur, her brain supplies her with the name, even as her stomach flips over at the panicked expression frozen on the corpse's puffy, mottled face; the terror that still gleams in the glazed, bulging eyes. He looks like a man drowned.
Kaol doesn't meet her eyes as he knots something around her waist; she can't bring herself to look away from the gruesome scene long enough to see what it is.
"It was necessary," Kaol says, softly, something as sharp as broken glass lacing his voice. She hears the echoes of the regret she can't yet bring herself to feel in his words, and a piece of her mind slips back to place in response.
All at once, she's hit by the enormity of what they've done.
"I'm going to drown," she whispers. Kaol's jaw tightens.
She has murdered the son of a Sevenist- the political leaders who wield all the power of Glascoast. She will be executed for this, despite the fact that it was self defense. Despite all of the horrible things the dead man had done to her. Simply due to his bloodline, the facts won't matter. She'll be lucky if she's even given the formality of a trial, and if she is, it certainly won't be an impartial one.
And Kaol- who has spent his entire life clawing his way out of the pit of his bloodline, who has sacrificed everyone and everything for success- has just cast his future away with both hands.
For her.
"Not if we get you out of here," Kaol replies.
He doesn't mention what will happen to him. They both know all too well that he will drown alongside her for killing Marcus' bodyguard, a member of his own guild.
Aurelia swallows hard, squares her jaw, and forces her feet to carry her to the prone corpse on her bed, painted in shades of cobalt and navy by the ocean's glow. She dips her hand into the corpse's blood, and it glimmers scarlet and indigo on her palm.
Before she can second-guess herself, she quickly crosses over to Clotbur's prone body and wraps her hands around his already crushed windpipe, smearing her fingerprints and the dead man- Marcus'- blood across the guard's neck.
She feels Kaol's stare resting heavily between her shoulder blades, and turns to face him, wiping her hands off on the expensive, plush rug that carpets the bamboo floor.
"They'd know it was you for sure if there wasn't any blood on him," she explains, the words like sandpaper in her mouth. "At least one of us should survive. For your parents' sake. "
Kaol says nothing. Rather, he grabs her by her wrist and jerks her out the door of her private suite. She stumbles after him, none of her Courtesan training evident in her clumsy gait as they rush through the dimly lit, empty halls.
"Where are my maids?" Aurelia asks as Kaol half pulls, half guides her to the lift.
"If they find us, we're both dead. Hurry," he replies gruffly. Aurelia's limbs feel wooden, but she forces herself to move faster. Every corner, every shadow of the deserted halls seems treacherous. A glimmer of silver scales passes one of the underwater windows, and Aurelia shudders. Even the ocean feels malevolent tonight.
When they arrive at the lift, Kaol presses the call button and shoves her inside as soon as the doors open.
"You're not coming with me," Aurelia says, and feels her stomach sink heavily toward her pelvic floor at the realization.
"No," he replies and with that, Aurelia knows their truce will end here. Even though she had willingly provided him with a case for reasonable doubt by stamping her bloodied handprints across his fellow guard's neck, a part of her had hoped he would remain by her side. However, it is clear that once she is safely across the bay, Kaol will do whatever he needs to in order to spare himself. The next time she sees him, he will likely be on the witness stand, testifying against her.
He cups her cheek, his eyes tight. "Stay alive," he says as he steps back and the doors slide closed, obscuring her view of the man who would save and condemn her both.
Aurelia swallows and leans back against the cool, metal wall for a moment, wringing her hands. The image of Marcus' ruined face rises up in her mind, and she swallows down a wave of nausea. She cannot think about it now.
The lift hums softly as it works, passing the servant's floors and family quarters, where Marcus' parents, wife, and two young children sleep snugly in their beds. She wonders how deeply the blonde slip of a thing he married- who bore his children but shares Aurelia's bruises- will grieve his passing.
The elevator glides to a gentle stop, and she steps out at the base of a set of stairs made of carved coral and bamboo. There are no servants in sight, so she slips up the staircase, through a room walled entirely in glass, and steps out into the Helborus family's garden.
She pauses for a moment to take a last look at what has been her sanctuary for the past several years- the frothy pink blossoms of the floss silk trees, sweetbriars blooming in bunches at the base of their spiny trunks. The coral hewn pathways shadowed with night, the arching fringe of palms that rise to shade the walkways from the stars.
Then, she turns away from it all to the water, lit with a soft, teal glow from the triangular and diamond shaped modules that float within the ocean and serve as the homes of the Senatorial elite. Once she swims past the man-made island, there will be nothing but the black bay and the pearlescent gleam of Glascoast on the horizon.
She takes in a deep, shuddering breath, lifts her dress up high over her thighs, and ties it over her hip bones to allow her legs free range of motion. She takes a second gulp of air, and then dives.
Her hands cut through the water- warm, in these miserably hot, summer months- and her body carves a path in an arc through the waves until she surfaces, the salt stinging her eyes as she opens them to get her bearings. She catches sight of the moon gleaming off the whitewashed buildings of Glascoast in the distance, and kicks her legs to propel herself forward through the water.
For a time, there is nothing but the moon and the sea and the salt in her eyes. Her body finds a rhythm, and it is mindless- the motion of arms and legs and hips and abdomen, staying afloat and propelling herself through the water. Automatic, natural, like breathing.
And then breathing gets harder.
Then there is nothing but pain and fire and aching lungs, sore muscles and gasps filled with more water than air. It burns and it aches and it hurts, but to stop and rest is to drown.
Time has lost its meaning. The sky is still as black as the sea overhead, but she can no longer feel her limbs. The waves roll over her head, and she loses sight of what she is swimming towards. The gleaming white of the city is lost in the sea foam.
She takes in a breath, and water rushes down the back of her throat, burning her lungs. She coughs and coughs, but when she gasps for breath, more water rushes down her windpipe. It is like scalding oil pouring its way into her body and setting her ablaze with pain from within.
Her eyes are hot, but she can't tell if she is crying; if she is, the tears mix too thoroughly with the water and salt of the ocean for her to sense the difference.
Just as she begins to give up, as her lungs nearly burst, she feels herself yanked roughly from the surf and up into someone's arms. She is coughing, choking, her hair plastered around her cheeks, streams of snot and tears pouring down her face as she gasps and gasps for breath.
"...look just like a wet, fucking rat," she hears a gruff voice slur, and then she is deposited roughly onto the sand.
She has never been more grateful for the scrape of it against her cheek, the grit of it beneath her molars. Her body is aching and boneless, lying limp on the shore; she can't focus her eyes, can barely breathe. She opens and closes her mouth, gasping like a dying fish.
Her rescuer makes no further move to help her. She sees his feet- clad in leather sandals- planted by her shoulder, sees the outline of his knees as he bends down. She feels him rub the goldsilk of her shawl between his fingers, and knows what he must be thinking.
He can take the shawl and leave her to die. No one would ever be the wiser. He could make himself a rich man.
"Water trash," he mutters the slur under his breath, dropping the shawl like it's burned him. "Probably some senatorial whore," he grumbles. Aurelia hears the sand shift as he moves to walk away, and if she had the energy, she would cry.
She hasn't spoken to, or seen, anyone on the mainland in over two years. She hasn't interacted with anyone at all besides Marcus, her ever-silent maids, her bodyguard Kaol, and Marcus' haughty family. She had been forced to cut off anyone who loved her, anyone who had any support to offer.
However, there is one person who might still care.
She struggles to find her voice, to push it out from a sore, salt-stung, aching throat. It finally emerges, soft and hoarse and weak. "Cam," she gasps, rolling her head to face her somewhat-rescuer, sand clumping in her tangled hair.
"Courtesan. Cam." She tries again, breathing heavily, her throat burning and punishing her for her meager efforts. She coughs, her fingers twitch, and she somehow manages to find the strength to reach out and rest her hand against his foot. "Please. Camellia Straemus. I'll pay," she forces out through gritted teeth, and tastes rust and salt at the back of her throat.
For a long time, the man says nothing. But neither do his feet move from where they are planted in the sand, halfway turned from her prone form.
She counts her breaths as she waits for his answer- fifteen, twenty, thirty. Finally, he makes a low noise at the back of his throat- the frustrated growl of a bear she's seen in the nature films of the far-off polis of Blueridge.
"You'd better," he mutters, before hauling her back up into his arms and tossing her over one shoulder, as though she is nothing more than a sack of rice .
She can't control the sob of relief that escapes her throat in response.
He makes another sound, somewhere between pity and disgust, and walks forwards, uncaring of the way her body bounces against his back with every stride.
Aurelia barely feels it herself.
Her eyes are slipping closed again, the void rushing up to claw at her, to pull her back down into its depths. But something catches her eye- a glint of gold, in the starlight, a familiar, well-made form. The stranger carries her away from it- from the silent, motionless figure she knows so well.
A hairstick protrudes from his eye, the blood glinting in the moonlight. He begins to follow them, tracing the footprints in the sand of the man who holds her so carelessly now. His steps leave no marks of their own.
She feels panic begin to crawl up the back of her throat. It's talons gouge into her vocal cords, paralyzing them. She opens her mouth in a silent scream.
Still, the figure follows.
Aurelia's surroundings funnel down to a dark tunnel as all at once, the breath is stolen from her lungs again. She feels the same awful burn as she did when the ocean forced its way between her jaws.
Marcus walks on, silent, bleeding, accusing.
All the tension drains out of her limbs and she tumbles headfirst into darkness.
* For those who have not seen a hair stick, here is an example*