Asund deposited the tiny bag on Korr's desk. "As requested."
Korr picked up the small bag by one ribbon. "Where is Ormiss?"
"Dispersing a massive storm he summoned. Soir showed up and pleaded with Theia to be his puzzle box. Left her a gift. Ordered Marcus to remain and serve her faithfully. Write the announcement, dragon. Soir clearly doesn't respect the Churn, so if he's going to be a problem, Haven should at least know what they're seeing. He also clearly has some magic that affects Theia. Badly. She collapsed."
He didn't need to make it sound so dramatic. I grumbled and rubbed my shoulder.
"What we saw before?" Korr asked, giving me a quick glance then returning his attention to Asund.
Asund nodded. "And there is a wolf-pack headed to Haven. Marcus believes it is my brother. Not a messenger. Lord Alpha Perhon."
"Was he invited by the Lord-Wolf?"
"Doubtful."
"Then why would he make the trip personally? That is a very long trip on foot."
"I have no idea what would bring my brother out of his territory."
Korr nodded, tapping his fingertips on the back of his chair. He smiled at me. "You don't have to lurk in the doorway, love."
Korr's room was blissfully cold and my aching scars numbed. Korr told Asund, "I don't believe your brother could already be here. Wolves travel fast, but they don't have wings."
"So my brother was already on his way, or it's not my brother. Write quickly, dragon." Asund spun on his heel, gave me an affectionate look, and left Korr's room. .
Korr, now actually dressed, even in just some pants and a loose top, his hair still in that fanciful braided arrangement and pink ribbons, twisted on his chair. The hair didn't match the current casual attire. There were a large number of large pieces of paper all curled and rustled on his large desk, along with several pens and various other implements. "You look unwell, my love."
"Do I?" I hadn't been able to shake the sausage meat feeling. It also didn't matter, because we had other things to worry about. Like this announcement that needed to be nailed to every fucking door in Haven right now so if Soir was going to keep up with this insanity, he'd have to do it with everyone in Haven knowing who he was squawking at. "What are you going to do with the pearl powder?"
He extended a hand towards me. I went over to the desk. He looped his arm around me and pulled me down onto his lap. He flinched slightly and I froze.
"I'm fine," he said. "Ribs take months to heal, and I doubt even a unicorn can overcome that."
He sighed contently and drew me against his body, his magic burning cold but not the kind of burning cold ice caused. And under the intense chill, warmth. It was the reverse of being snuggled under warm blankets on a bitterly cold day. I asked, "Are you sure?"
"That a unicorn probably cannot speed the pain of ribs? No. But I think the gods reserve broken ribs as a special kind of hell." He bumped his forehead against me, and I felt him smile. HIs breath was cold against my skin. "You feel warm in all the ways I don't enjoy, my love. How bad was the bird's singing?"
"I'm fine. I don't think Soir means to hurt me, I really don't think he does, but I'm also an idiot who thought he wasn't going to do anything the other night either. I hear what he says but everything..."
I stopped talking before I confessed I found Soir charming and enjoyed his company, and how I knew he'd never hurt me, even though he clearly had, and even now I was dead-sure he hadn't meant to hurt me, and it upset him, and he wanted to help.
I shivered and grit my teeth against a sticker-like pain rattling through my scars.
"Theia?" Korr asked.
"Just trying to figure it out," I said quickly. "Soir doesn't care I'm taken. I'm just a puzzle and that's what he cares about. He even gave me a gift. This announcement isn't going to stop him, it'll just be another knot to untangle. Why is he so obsessed with me?"
"I can tell you why I was obsessed with you, but I had an excuse. The Lord-Raven has an agenda."
"Tell me what you're doing."
"I am drafting a formal announcement to tack up in front of the Temple." He picked up a pen with his other hand. "Just deciding on the wording. Since it has to be delicate, lest anyone think this creates a formal alliance between the wolves, dragons, gryphons, and hippocamp. And I need to dodge questions about your exact nature, since humans believe you are human and shifters believe you are a shifter. But I must also acknowledge that you are the Lady-Consort of the Hippocamp, while also properly paying respect to the very likely outcome you will be declared Crown Princess at some point in the very near future."
I rubbed my cheek on Korr's shoulder, then squirmed out of his grip entirely. "You didn't tell me what you're going to do with the pearl powder."
My rump was numb from sitting on his lap, and my scars twitched and itched. I picked at the one over my shoulder when I really wanted to scratch the ones on my face.
Korr twisted in his chair. His eyes narrowed slightly, but he said, "I'm going to mix it with a particular shade of ink and some magic, then use it for embellishments. Since Ormiss is the highest ranking of us by a considerable margin, the Hippocamp presentation should be weighed most highly. Theia, what are you doing?"
I caught my hand picking at the scars on my neck. The entire thing still itched/hurt like I'd been bitten up by bugs, scratched myself raw, so now everything hurt and itched. Everything from the neck to my shoulder blade felt like it was full of bugs trying to crawl away the same time it was tearing apart. "They're just bothering me, that's all."
"Your scars have never bothered you before."
"Well, they're bothering me now. Sunburn, maybe. Don't you have some fancy lettering to do?"
"Theia."
"Focus on this announcement. If Soir's going to keep acting this way, at least Haven can watch. And if that is Asund's brother on the way, we need to beat him to the Temple if he's here to cause a problem."
"Lord Perhon is the one who sent Asund after you. Theia, did something else happen with Soir?"
Everything had happened with Soir, but nothing at all. Something else? Was Korr suggesting I'd done something with Soir? That those tipped nails had been raked along my skin or I'd been tempted?
My scars crawled and my seams tugged and all my parts twisted and it was hard to think. "I wasn't alone with him! Asund told you everything."
"Theia, I wasn't suggesting that."
"What were you suggesting?" My voice rose. "Just because I believe he's not trying to hurt me or that he didn't kill the Princess that I want him?"
Korr stood.
I backed up, shaking. Korr's pink ribbons fluttered as he moved. I sobbed once, and rubbed my palm over my scarred shoulder. It wasn't bleeding or moving. Just the same old fucking scar that had always been there.
Korr approached. I bumped into the wall. Korr captured me and pressed me between him and the wall. "Can you hear his Song? Even now?"
"No." I turned my cheek to the wall. The door was half-closed, so I got a view of Korr's collection of ribbons. There were a lot of ribbons.
"Sweet love," he whispered, "come back to my desk."
"I should go..." do... something. There had to be something for me to do. Like try to scribble the first few letters of the alphabet. Maybe I could make some bread. I made good bread. Would that be disgraceful?
He kissed my cheek and turned my head to face him. "Little unicorn, you should do as you're told. I've been unwell so long you've forgotten your manners."
"My Lord Dragon, I never had any manners."
He caressed me with his fingertips and kissed me, long, slow, gently. Everything about him was hot and cold at the same time. Everything about him felt as fragile as ice crystals, and as unforgiving as a frozen pond. His tongue explored my mouth, caressed mine, hot and cold twisted together. He drew me closer to him and pushed his gentle hands over my neck, over my scars, down my sides to wrap me in his embrace.
I had wanted him to kiss me like this forever. A hot tear burned the corner of my eye. I loved him so much it hurt. I loved them all, but something about Korr made it all feel like desperate, anguished yearning.
"I love you so much," he whispered, tracing the scars on my face with a cold finger, numbing the pain but it didn't reach the so-tight-I-couldn't-breathe feeling of pulling at my seams. "I've loved you my entire life, been without you my entire life, and now that you are here, I love you so much it hurts. Like frost and ice." His thumb caught my tear and smoothed it over my cheekbone in a burning wash.
"Not too much, I hope," I said, although I knew exactly what meant. It felt like anguish. Sweet, sweet anguish. Where I was so happy it hurt. Like he was so cold, and so hot at the same time.
He very gently bit my lower lip. "Did you see any other memories?"
"Wait, were you trying to get me to remember?" I drew back, stiffening at the possible betrayal.
"Of course not. I'd never impose that magic on you. I also might not be able to control it. I'm too busy controlling myself from something else."
"Go sweet-talk your brother out of the basement," I suggested. The sooner Ethat dragged himself out of the basement, the sooner I could have my way with both of them.
He peered at me, and drew his fingertips down the scars on my face again. I inhaled and held my ground, everything in me tense and not wanting him to touch me there, even though they'd never bothered me before. The seams tore at the same time my skin felt made of a thousand metal needles.
He closed his hand over mine and tugged me back towards his desk. My heart beat crazy-like, but didn't match the sensations going through my scars. I wrestled it all away and focused on what Korr was doing with the strange pearl powder. Once this announcement was done, Soir would have to back off. One less thing to worry about, and maybe the stress would stop making my scars hurt so damn bad.
Korr turned back around and unfurled a particularly large, luxurious-looking piece of thick, bright-white paper. He smoothed it across his desk, pinned the corners down with small rocks, then took a few more tiny jars and vials and on a little plate, and mixed an inky concoction on the little plate. He further divided this five more tiny portions in littler plates, and set those aside. To the remaining largest plate, he tapped in the pearl powder, all while his hands swirled with a mini blizzard and his hands seemed to be ice claws more than fingers.
With his hands still swirling with ice--and the temperature in his room so cold my breath frosted and frost crackled over ever surface--he bent over his desk with a fancy-looking quill coated in ice, and started to write. I couldn't read a word of it, but the ink crackled and frosted as he shaped each letter. I craned my neck to get a better look. The color of the ink was like nothing I'd ever seen before: an intense bright blue like the ocean shallows in the south, but also the same color as the underbelly of clouds at dawn, but also the color of sunlight at dusk. It shone with a smoothness that was slick as ice, glossy as liquid metal, and firey like a faceted gemstone.
Every few seconds, Korr glanced up at the scrawled notes on the scrap paper before shaping another word in letters that looked more like artwork than anything functional.
When he finished the words, Korr started drawing elegant, swirling designs in each of the corners. I crept closer to get a better look as he drew graceful swirls and tendrils, then inked in flowers and feathers and bugs and other creatures and things I didn't recognize. He got the ink to appear different colors depending on how he struck the tip of the pen to the paper and how his magic struck the paper and the pen, achieving the multitude of light-shifting shades all with the same shade of ink. He worked quickly, but with great care, the focus draining his magic like water flowing from a pond.
I wanted to tell him he needed to take a break, he was still unwell, but I might have disrupted the flow of magic and ink and ruin everything. The room was so cold my fingers and toes were numb.
He sank down in his chair and the pen fell onto the desk. He took a breath.
"Korr." I reached for him.
He gripped my fingers. "I'm fine. Just mentally exhausting magic. Are you feeling better?"
"Watching you work took my mind off it." My scars had gone back to the painful itching feeling, and while I wasn't tired, I felt emotionally drained. I hated this, where nothing about me was me anymore, and things were done to me and I didn't even get mad. I should be furious at how Soir could make me--and by extension, my consorts--dance to his Song, but not only couldn't I get angry about it, I didn't even actually believe he was doing it!
Ormiss' rattling necklaces and skirts preceded him up the stairs. He pushed the door to Korr's room all the way open.
"You do not believe in knocking, Lord-Regent?" Korr inquired mildly.
Ormiss looked oddly mis-matched, with one half of his body still veined and strained, the other half not. Sweat beaded and slid across his skin, and down his temple along his jaw. Loose strands of braids clung to his neck and shoulders. "When Theia is on the other side of the door, no, I do not."
Korr half-grinned. "I'll remember that."
I blushed.
Ormiss ignored Korr and turned to me. I fended off one of his grasping hands while he fussed. "Did that bird--"
"I'm fine," I said impatiently.
"You do not look fine. You look unwell." He frowned and pulled my dress away from my shoulder scars. "You're still recovering from healing Korr, on top of whatever Soir is able to do to you. And we will figure out what he's doing. And stop him."
He looked at his hand, frowned more deeply, then released me, brow furrowed.
"Ormiss?" I asked.
"Perhaps that Steward was right. I was containing a great deal of magic." Ormiss didn't sound convinced. "My vision has never gotten cloudy before from it, but..."
"Did you over-do, Lord-Regent?" Korr inquired, fondling Ormiss' mis-matched physique with his gaze.
Ormiss sharpened and gave Korr a dismissive look. "Summoned a massive storm to have to contain it. Weather magery is dangerous work."
"Maybe you are just getting old."
I snickered. Ormiss? Getting old? If anyone in this house was "getting old", it was Asund, who was the oldest (sort of) of all of us. Technically, Korr and Ethat (and maybe Itek and Ormiss?) were older in terms of years, but Asund was the oldest-oldest.
Or maybe I was? How the hell did you count years in a dream, though?
"What did you think you saw?" I nudged Ormiss.
"Souls-blood," he said.
What the hell was souls-blood? "Like a bleeding soul?"
Ormiss hesitated. "I've only read obscure descriptions and references. It is, my understand, the distilled essence of what creates magical abilities. Both the innate magic, like Korr's, or the unshaped magic, like weather magery."
I blinked several times while trying to parse what he said. But I did know what one of those words was because I'd helped distill plenty of things in the kitchen. "Distilled? You mean like... boiling something and concentrating it? Like extracting it?"
He seemed deeply troubled. "Yes. It was something sea serpents supposedly discovered in their quest for more magic. They learned how to distill and extract raw magic. Like life's-blood. So they called it soul's-blood."
Korr sucked in through his teeth, and the room instantly got colder. "And you think you saw this on Theia?"
/**********
Peeps:
It is Sunday. It is overcast. IT IS FINALLY FALL. Woot. I, however, am not wearing socks.
Yuck. Socks.
Office Intern is currently mewing at me while circling my chair. She has been really chatty today, and been dragging her toys around. She brought me one of my 3/4 length cardis the other night. She jumps up on my chair, drags my cardi off the chair, and heroically wrangles it down the hallway to the living room. I have multiple cardis, and a few times I have come back from an errand to find all of them in the living room.
Her brother is just garden variety odd. He tries to talk to us. We'll talk to him, he'll chatter back at us, he tries SO hard to communicate. And he flings himself down in tantrums. Like he'll walk into a room, look at us, then make this grunt-meow sound and fling himself over very dramatically. He also knows when 4PM is. EXACTLY. (4PM is treat time)
But Office Intern is... odd. Very. Very. Odd. And we have had multiple odd cats over the years. She is, without a doubt, the oddball record holder.
~Merry
(pussycat protecc pantster)
******/