44. Clementia

clēmentia ~ae, f.

1. mercy

2. mildness

On the third floor of club Atteint, there is a VIP booth.

It’s a glass box in the midst of a drunken crowd, surrounded by massive whitewood branches woven and bent into each other. A nest. The wood blocks the glass walls, but a pair of eyes on a familiar shadowed silhouette follows me from inside, dark and clear and reflective like obsidian.

there you are.

I walk toward it, and all at once the silhouette vanishes. A crack appears in the booth, door-shaped and yawning open. The nobles leaning against the wall simply watch, their plague-doctor masks like beaks, like carrion birds waiting for scraps after the fight is over.

forward.

I walk in, and the door clicks closed behind me. In the darkness, a single blacklight halo glows white-blue. The lights rise—pink illuminating a leather couch and the woman on it. Ink-black hair spills down to her waist, white dress flickering with holographic ruffles. A white veil shades her face, her pink smile barely showing through—she looks the same as she did at the banquet.

“Greetings, Synali von Hauteclare. By His grace, I am Lady Talize san Michel.”

It’s the softest noble voice I’ve heard besides Dravik’s; the others shout and clarify, but she’s barely stronger than a whisper. My eyes dart around—not a single bodyguard. No one and nothing but us—a cell of strangely barren purity in the eye of a storm of avarice.

“Where are my manners?” Talize extends a graceful hand free of any jewelry. “Please, sit.”

Warily, I sit in the armchair in front of her.

“Would you like some tea?”

“No.”

The holly-and-snake sigil of House Michel—the same from the invitation’s wax seal—is embossed on the teapot on the tray beside her. She pours herself a cup with perfect balance, and it’s then I notice the redwood cross around her neck…the exact same as mine.

“What do you want?” I demand.

“I simply wished to meet you before tomorrow, Synali, as I heard you met Olric.”

“Then we’re done here.”

She smiles wider. “If you wish it. Yet you came all this way, and in such a nice outfit—’twould be a waste if you did not stay longer than a few minutes.”

This is a trap. But if I overcome it on my own, then Dravik will have no choice but to respect my capabilities from now on. He’ll have to trust me more.

“You own this waste of space, I assume,” I say.

“I’d hardly call such places ‘wastes.’”

“What would you call them, then?”

“Proving grounds.” Talize’s pink smile purses beneath her veil. “Or rather, proof of God’s love for the lost lambs. Drugs and hedonism and carnal pleasures—they indulge in it all here, and I foster it as the Lord doth foster me in his embrace.”

My eyes flit to the redwood cross on her chest. She cuts me off at the pass.

“We are all born of sin, Synali. Without sin, there cannot be absolution. This is a universal truth God has woven into existence; without cold, there cannot be warmth. Without a weight, there cannot be lightness. Science knows this, but faith knew it first.”

Talize san Michel speaks softer than the rest of them, but she loves the sound of her own voice just the same.

“One must sin to learn the true light of God; to experience the full power of His loving mercy and ecstatic forgiveness, one must first err. This is how we draw closer to Him in our limited lives as sinful beings of the flesh.”

The muffled music outside drowns my snort. “Sounds like an excuse to do terrible things whenever you want.”

A flicker in her gaze. “And is what you are doing not terrible?”

A flicker in mine up to her.

“You wear the Hauteclare name, yet you threatened to kill them at the banquet. Several of them have even died since then, in strange and mysterious accidents. You continue to win, and your family continues to perish.” Her pink smile is a petal curling in ash. “You are sinning awfully, lamb.”

I don’t know the church—Mother did. I don’t know the book—Mother did. But I know people like Talize. Flagellants whipping themselves to feel better. Blood as salve, as if pain is some tourist attraction or some expensive liquor to be drunk and savored instead of an inescapable fact of life for so many. She drinks mine greedily as her eyes rest on Mother’s cross pendant.

“Do you pray, lamb?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“Ah…so you do.”

Talize rises from the couch and approaches my chair. Her perfume is honeysuckle, and my body coils, ready for anything—any stab, any strike, any punch…but she just gently tucks my black hair away from my face.

“I can see it in you; you’re suffering. You are frozen in time—living in the pain—and only God can release you. He forgives, Synali. Everything. All you must do is seek it.”

My face is stone. Her black eyes loom beneath the veil, fingers tracing cool on the raw skin of my mask-punched knuckles.

“You wouldn’t have to kill anymore. You wouldn’t have to suffer. The hate in your heart is not you—it was planted there by Lithroi. It’s not too late to let go of the serpent and embrace Him.”

155 people dead because of him. Seven more dead because of me. The thought of it for a single moment—a life different, a life of peace…having drinks with people my age, answering messages from a boy my age. A man looms on the couch next to Talize suddenly, his eyes silver and his face handsome. “If all your enemies were gone, Synali, what would you do?”

There is no peace for me, Sevrith. I’ve chosen my fate.

The nobles chose her fate, and I will never forgive them for it.

There’s a blur of movement as something small and neon black jumps from beneath Talize’s sleeve and onto my hand with clammy webbed feet. I fling myself out of the chair in a panic, and Talize quickly scoops the frog from the ground and cups it tenderly.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. It seems my friend was more eager to meet you than I anticipated.”

“You—” I snarl. “That thing—”

“‘Nightshade,’” she corrects coolly. “Perhaps the most potent creature I’ve bred in my spare time. I’ve been told a single touch is enough to intoxicate a dozen grown men. I’ve taken the antidote in my tea, but you…well.”

Beneath her halo, her smile is perfectly mollifying. fear. My blood slushes hot, cold, hot again. Something like static clings to my lungs—heavy, crackling, and all at once my breathing and blinking feels so slow. Talize’s voice echoes sideways in my head.

“Are you feeling all right, Synali von Hauteclare? Oh, I do hope you’ll be able to ride tomorrow—otherwise you forfeit our match.”

The trap springs closed.

I feel dry-mouthed, woozy, my skull melting off my neck. My knees buckle as I make for the door; all wood, all the same, the door’s gone—there, a seam—and I pull, pull myself by the railing down the stairs, tumbling, falling, and it’s so funny I fell for it. Laugh. Laughing hysterically—I was ready and waiting and dressed to kill, to fight, but I fell into the trap face-first, distracted by the idea of forgiveness, of a better future. Of a future at all.

The plague doctors watch me, waiting for me to stop moving to descend, waiting for me to fall, but Jeria told me once that falling is only falling if you don’t get back up again. Strobe lights pierce my eyes, and the beat of the music is a drum begging me to move with it, to dance to the sound of its love. I stumble down another staircase and into the sea of faces. Bodies jostle all around me, all of them jewel-eyed and crystal-smiled and haloed, all of them smiling at me and me smiling back and I can feel it.

I’m not alone anymore.

A hundred friends surround me. They move with me and touch me and call out to me; they’re here, right beside me. I’m safe. Warm fingers under my clothes, warm lips on mine, the taste of blood like salt and honey, and in my deepest heart—in the withered, half-beating thing washed up on the shores of nothing—I know I’ll never be alone again. I’ll never again hurt alone in an empty apartment, in an empty bed, in the empty pool of Mother’s blood. Crying and smiling and crying again, hot tears down my face. I reach for everyone with outstretched arms—more, closer, please, together—and then something harsh pulls me back: a hand stronger than me. The wonderful lights and colors blur, fade, and my friends get farther away.

“No! I’m not alone! Let me go!”

I lash out, biting into warmth—hard muscle and the salt-honey taste of blood again and someone’s swear, but the hand refuses to let go. A long hall swims in neon, a red blur sheltering me against the wall. His platinum hair flashes in the strobe lights. I know him. I have to tell him.

“He promised. After it’s over. So it’s pointless.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Lithroi. The rabbit man. He’s going to kill me like I asked.” I laugh. “I want to rest. But sometimes I look at Luna, and the sunrise, and you…and then I don’t.”

His hand cups my cheek. “Look at me, Hauteclare. Deep breaths.”

Breathe in. He breathes in, too, our chests glancing against each other, and lightning runs through me and all of a sudden I want to devour him down to his bones, strip him bare and eat him, crawl into him and live where it’s warm and gentle and alive. I want to be him—better. I want to be him—loved. Suddenly, someone drags me by the wrist away from him, and the cold air of outside nips. Damp cobblestone bites my body as I collapse.

A colder voice echoes. “For God’s sake, Rax, she’s just high—let the guards deal with her.”

A crimson blur towers above. “What happened to your whole ‘honor among riders’ thing, huh?”

A far gold blur snorts. “There is honor among riders, but there is no honor among patricidal murderers.”

“She’s your family, Mir.”

“She’s killing her family, Rax.”

I crave the red one like fire craves wood (he would be different, he would be gentle, he would be good). And even if the gold one hates me, I crave her, too; strong, clear, a sister (someone to train with, someone to fall asleep with). I sit up and reach out for the red one with trembling fingers.

“You’re beautiful.”

Redwood eyes blink. I move closer. There’s the smell of soap-sweat-skin, and I find the weaknesses in his cloth, the muscles of his stomach velvet and my touch lingering.

“I want to stay with you.”

A rumble. “Y-You can’t.”

“Please, just once.”

“Ah, finally!” gold snaps. “That’s hers—get her in and let’s go. We’re late enough as it is.”

I hear the steam-hiss of hovercarriage vents over wet cobblestone. The delicious warmth lifts me and deposits me somewhere cold again, abandoning me. My fingers clutch in his brown silk, but iron vices pry me off, and his murmur burns on my ear, sweet black syrup going down hot.

“I’m sorry.”

I collapse face-first on a cold pillow, pale blue and silver swimming. The jolt of the carriage takes me I don’t care where—to hell, to where sinners go. To someplace dark and empty. To the cold dragon.

alone.

In my swimming vision, Astrix sits in the carriage next to me, smiling down at me with her silver eyes and pitiless, unblinking black pupils as she strokes my hair and speaks words beneath words…

never alone.