“It’s not fair,” Rasia whined as she dropped her chin onto Ysai and Jilah’s dinner table. Jilah, not taking Rasia very seriously, patted Rasia on the back as she held in a laugh. “First, we had to wait until the Naming Ceremony. And then, he was too injured. And now, everyone keeps interrupting us. I’m finally on gonom and we can’t get one moment alone. It’s been forever! What’s the point of having a kulani if we can’t have sex whenever we want? But no, if it’s not Nico interrupting us, then it’s someone else!”
Ysai scoffed. “You might be surprised to find this out Rasia, but adulthood isn’t always fun sexy times. Sometimes your little jih hides in the closet while you’re having sex, only to scare the shit out of you right at the end.”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“I broke my foot!”
She pouted and blinked up at him all innocently. “Come on, I was a child back then. I didn’t know any better.”
He glared at her. “That was only a few blinks ago!”
“Okay. Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. I am truly sorry for being a little shit, and now that I know better, my little shit ways are completely reformed.”
Jilah gave a mock gasp. “Did you hear that? Did the great Rasia Dragonfire actually apologize?”
Ysai grinned wickedly. “You should have heard her earlier when she had Kai’s dick-”
He ducked underneath the sitting mat Rasia threw at him. Jilah shook her head, amused. She began clearing the empty plates from the table and glanced down at the leftover food on Rasia’s plate. She asked more seriously, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Rasia mumbled. She dropped from her chin to her cheek against the table. “Just cramps. Making me feel nauseous.” Ysai motioned and she slid over her plate for him to eat the rest.
“It’s your first deathsblood since . . . the culling,” Jilah said, concerned. “Maybe you should see a healer? Don’t tell them what happened obviously but . . . It’s not usually this bad for you.”
“I’ll be fine,” Rasia huffed. She peeked up at Jilah. “Where’s the alcohol?”
“We’re out right now.”
Rasia looked at both Jilah and Ysai in horror. Alcohol was always on hand, if for nothing more than unexpected guests who might drop by.
Ysai chuckled at her misfortune and explained, “I used all my supply for the deathpour. I was going to pick some up tomorrow.”
“And you really shouldn’t be drinking alcohol,” Jilah said. “It makes you dehydrated and can worsen your cramps.”
“I don’t care. I want to get drunk.” With an idea, Rasia pushed herself up from the table. “I’m going to the Pelvis.”
“By yourself?” Jilah asked in alarm.
She snorted. “I’ll be fine.”
“Absolutely not,” Jilah said. She grabbed Rasia’s shoulders and turned her back around. “Everyone knows your name. The moment you walk into the Pelvis, you’ll be the center of everyone’s attention. You barely have much patience to deal with people on a good day.”
“But I haven’t gone yet,” Rasia complained. Ysai raised a brow, and she admitted, “legally.”
The Pelvis was the party district of the Grankull, where the gambling halls, entertainment houses, and the stables were clustered in one area. It was where all the new faces and anyone without familial obligations went after work to blow off steam. Children were forbidden from entering, although Rasia had snuck in with Ysai last year but had to flee early when one of her cousins recognized her. Yes, she thought. The Pelvis could be just the distraction she needed from the twisting pain occurring right now in her own stupid pelvis.
She looked over her shoulder and pouted at Jilah. “Why don’t you come with me?”
Jilah tilted her head in consideration. While Ysai was more of the homebody, Jilah often went out with her friends. She glanced over at Ysai. “We haven’t had a night out together in a while.”
Rasia smiled. Her work here was done. All she had to do was convince Jilah and Ysai would inevitably follow.
Ysai groaned. “I can’t risk a hangover for work tomorrow.”
“We could leave early,” Jilah suggested, and then her eyes brightened. “And your tah’s not around to criticize every little thing that we do anymore. This will be fun.”
Ysai sighed. “Fine. Let’s go be stupidly irresponsible adults.”
Jilah and Rasia cheered. Then she turned to Rasia with a grin that could rattle most bones. “Let’s get you dressed.”
Jilah wrapped Rasia in a halter made of silk spider gossamer, atop a matching pair of red pants so she didn’t feel self-conscious about her deathsblood all night. Jilah had chunked Rasia’s wrap, and Rasia kept looking down at how her nipples were visible through the thin fabric. It was perhaps the most revealing thing she had ever worn, and she grinned about it gleefully. She wondered what Kai might think of it and remembered sourly that he was stuck at home. Nico decided that he should stay inside and keep a low-profile until the heat from the Naming Ceremony had died down. Even afterward, Rasia doubted he’d be able to come to a place like this without finding some sort of trouble.
Rasia smirked when they made it through the sentry checkpoints and entered under the wide arch of the Elder’s pelvic bone. Different musical styles competed to entice the most customers. The close quarters of people drinking and dancing produced too much heat for it all to be contained within adobe walls. “Stages” were nothing more than columns and open sky. In her thigh-length silk, Jilah sashayed the way to her favorite stage. Her beaded broad collar, a namesake, reflected light as she walked.
The Evory Stage, built atop an evory floor as white as the saltpans, was one of the most infamous stages in the entire Grankull. The entry fee was expensive, the alcohol was expensive, and only the best musicians ever played on its tiles.
Ropes around the stage restricted access. Because of the rainy season, they’d stretched blue silk from column to column. Glittering windchimes danced in the wind, and the dragonglass inset into the evory sparkled. The stage felt like dancing on the night sky.
As they approached, the ticketer immediately lit up at the sight of Rasia’s face. “Rajiani Dragonfire,” the ticketer said with a smile and moved to allow her free access. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Rasia strolled in and then laughed when she turned to find Ysai and Jilah stuck in line to pay. She turned on her heel and informed the ticketer, “they’re with me,” before grabbing them both in each arm and skipping them past the line straight onto the most exclusive stage of the Grankull. That was the sort of power you accumulated when you had a name.
Behind her, the ticketer announced to the next passer-by, “Welcome to the Evory Stage, the favorite stage of Rasia Dragonfire!”
One point in time, she thought this was going to be her life—hunting with the kulls and in the off-season, partying and fucking every day until the sun rose. Up to the Naming Ceremony, she had imagined doing all those things with Kai at her side. Even now, she wanted to be out having fun with him.
“Rasia-kull!”
She turned at the informal shout and grinned when she spotted Azan with all his jihs, sitting at a table that encircled a fire in the middle. She raced over and slammed into Azan’s hug that engulfed her in biceps. She hugged Azan back, so excited she could do that now.
“Get her a drink!” Someone demanded. She wholeheartedly agreed.
Content that Rasia and Ysai were situated, Jilah left them to greet some friends from her old Forging kull. Aden grinned up at Ysai’s approach. “You’re not normally out and about.”
He shuffled his hand atop Rasia’s head and skewed the borrowed carnelian headband. Jilah thought it looked nice with Rasia’s shorter hairstyle. “Someone’s got to keep her out of trouble,” he said.
One of Azan’s jihs leaned in wickedly. “Then you’ve come to the wrong place.”
Azan delivered drinks to the table, and it was the good, strong stuff. Aden lifted his mug solemnly. “All hunters are hunted.”
“All hunters are hunted,” the table echoed, taking a respectful moment to acknowledge Rasia and Ysai’s loss. Every time anyone offered their sympathies, she was reminded that Kiba-ta was gone. She sort of wished people would forget.
She blinked, having zoned out as Azan and his jihs set up a drinking game. Ysai placed a hand on hers. “Are you okay?” he asked concerned. “We can leave if you want.”
“I’m fine,” she said and then swallowed the alcohol all in one go.
Not once that night did she needed to buy her own drink. A crowd had gathered around her, all of them recognizing her from the Naming Ceremony. They asked her about the dragon, and if she would like to dance, and if she wanted sex, and if she was interested in any courtships. She stumbled over her words to explain that she had a kulani, but they looked at her absence of namesakes, and thought she was joking or drunk. She had even worn the necklace Kai had gifted her, but it remained empty of the names he was supposed to have received, and the reminder of that absence only made her angrier. Ysai often stepped in to verify she was off the courting market.
“Want to dance?” Azan offered, saving her from the endlessly multiplying crowd that hemmed her in on all sides. She found it increasingly difficult to breathe.
“Yes,” she said in relief.
Ysai snapped out his hand and dug claws into Azan’s forearm. “She has a kulani, and I expect you to respect that. You do anything untoward; I will rip off your dick to satisfy the blood price.”
“And I thought Rasia-kull was the scary one.”
He smiled. “Have fun.”
Azan pulled her into the crowd of dancers. Couples danced around each other, swiveling and writhing their bodies like a snake slithering through the sand. She twisted her hips to the beat of the drums. The traditional dances performed at ceremonial celebrations were displays of technique and skill. But the informal dance of the pelvis was something more primal and suggestive.
Kai should have been here. She could imagine him here, awkward at first, but more and more bold in his movements with some alcohol in him. The dances often switched roles at the beat of the music, one partner the anchor, and the other rotating around to tease the other with an intoxicating gyration of hips. They say you could tell if someone was good at sex by how well they could dance. In that case, Kai had to be a good dancer, too. Maybe with all that self-consciousness stripped away.
She wished she could dance with Kai sweaty under the stars, she wished she could show him off to the doubters and disbelievers, she wished he could strut anywhere he wanted on the power of his name, and wished they could have the opportunity to patron one of the stables. Most new faces still lived with their families, and the stables provided a place for discreet trysts.
But the Grankull took that away from them. The Grankull took away their Naming night, which should have been filled with sex, drinks, and laughter—but all they got was blood and pain instead. She never got to toast her names with her family. She never got to enjoy the bodika. And even though Rasia would have chosen Kai over anything else that night, it should not have been a choice required of them in the first place. The Grankull had taken so much away from them.
“You don’t seem to be having fun anymore,” Azan said.
She hadn’t noticed when she stopped dancing. She looked around in frustration and suddenly hated that she had decided to come out that night. All she wanted was to have some fun, and she didn’t know why that was suddenly so hard to do.
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Do you want another drink?”
She looked down. The heavy earthenware mug that she held had been emptied. She didn’t remember doing that. “Yeah, sure.”
He touched a hand to her waist and guided her out of the crowd of dancers. His hand was deliciously warm. She glanced at it, and then up at him, and asked, “Do you want to have sex?”
Azan’s normally affable disposition turned rather serious as he glanced down at her necklace. “That’s his namesake, right? Take it off first.”
“No,” she said immediately and clutched at it with her free hand.
“You’re hot, but there are way too many grains of sand to get caught up in a bloodprice war. Also, your jih is terrifying, and your triarch just killed a person. I’m good.”
He patted her shoulder consolingly, and she shuffled forward with an indignant huff, offended he had the nerve to turn her down. She asked, “But if I didn’t have a kulani, you’d fuck me, right?”
“In a heartbeat.”
That made her feel better.
“Why did you do it?” he asked after they made their way to the bar and got the bartender’s attention. “Why did you sign his name?”
“I . . .” She palmed the necklace in her hands. It was warm sometimes. She admitted, “I was afraid. That tah was right. And then, Kai and I had been arguing a lot. I thought it would fix everything. I was scared of losing him,” she said, softly. She wiped at her eyes, and she shrugged. “It fixed nothing at all.”
Rasia hiccupped and hugged the jug of wine she shared with Azan. Or it started off that way, but now she hoarded all the wine for herself. She and Azan lay across one of the hammocks at the side of the stage, in the dark corner for the flames and the drunks. A couple was making out in the hammock on her right, and on her left, some random person had coiled into sleep. The stage attendants came by the check on them from time to time. The dancers blurred and wafted in her vision, sometimes like the crackling flames of a campfire, or a rain shower of stars depending on the tempo. She had no idea where Ysai and Jilah had gone, but since they were both gone together, she could guess at what they were up to.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she bemoaned. “I’m supposed to be living my best life!” Here she was on the sidelines, while everyone out there was having so much fun. It wasn’t fair.
Azan nodded his head, with one leg swinging out of the hammock.
“I’m supposed to be having the time of my life and enjoying myself! I’m telling you, never sign anyone’s else. Don’t do it! This kulani thing is so hard.” She squinted and pointed at Azan. “You fuck everybody.”
“I’ll fuck everybody,” he wholeheartedly promised.
“Don’t be a stupid idiot like me writing someone’s name during the Naming Ceremony. Who does that? Rasia fucking Dragonfire does that, that’s who! Don’t you make my mistakes. Live your life! Enjoy yourself! I’m an old fart like Ysai now, never wanting to go out and have fun anymore.” She beat her forehead against the opening of the wine jug, then laid her cheek atop the jug’s mouth to lean forward in horror. “I’m boring now. Even Nico is having more sex than me! I haven’t had sex in—” She squinted and counted her fingers. She ran out of fingers. “—in forever!!!”
Azan sputtered out a laugh, but when she glared at him, he quickly fixed his expression. His eye twitched as he attempted a nod. “That must be extremely difficult.”
“See! You understand. I knew you’d understand. Ah shit, I’m sorry. You could have been having fun and dancing and sexing people. Now you’re stuck with me.”
“I’m rather enjoying myself.”
She gave a deep sigh and then heaved. She hung her head between her knees and threw up over the hammock. She hated throwing up. It always tasted nasty.
“I think it’s time to take you home to your kulani,” he said.
“Yeah. Prolly,” she said, and then upturned the wine jug. It splashed all over her face. She hadn’t realized how much was left and had accidentally bathed herself in it. Jilah was going to be so pissed about her clothes. She wiped at the shirt and was saddened at the fact she couldn’t clean off the wine. And she was so sticky now.
“Here. Let me help.” Azan chuckled as he helped her to her feet and wrapped an arm around her waist to stabilize her wobbly legs. She frowned and forgot the reason she was so sad, but something must have been funny, so she began laughing too.
“Don’t throw up on me,” he warned, before dipping an arm under her legs to carry her home. They passed other bumbling groups.
He asked softly, “Do you regret it?”
She clutched the namesake dangling from her neck. She whispered her name, and in the dark, it glowed. It pointed headward, in the direction of the guiding star. Filled with the magic her kulani had gifted her. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever owned.
“Never.”