With terrible reluctance, Rue knocked on the door of Lorrilla’s chambers. Like most of his cohort, she lived atop the surface of the Bloody Moon. This was as much a gesture of power and trust in the Bloody Eye — for who would ever attack them — as it was a gesture of acceptance for the transient nature of things — for if their possessions were in the direct line of fire, how much value could anything really hold?
Unren, as always, was the exception. He slept deep in the core of the Bloody Eye, whenever he slept, curled up against the rumbling heart of the cosmic vessel. He said it was about his body path, but he could have said anything. Such was the nature of power.
Rue knocked on the door of bronzed wood. At his touch, scarlet veins flickered and pulsed with skein. The door transmuted the rapping into a musical chime. After a long and awkward moment, the door creaked open.
“Enter,” Lorrilla said in a voice that literally made blood run cold.
Damn Unren and his insistence on stirring up trouble in Rue’s plans! If he had let him break the news himself… but Rue didn’t know if he would be here without that deep earth trickster’s doing. So he shook off the icy embrace of Lorilla’s technique and entered her chambers. The smell of roses assaulted him, floral, elegant, heavy, it swept around him like it always did when he came into her rooms, and it was the only thing that was the same.
For if Lorrilla was the vision of a goddess of love, then she now sat — composed as ever — in the frozen tableau of love scorned.
The bed was torn asunder like a gazelle at the mercy of lions. Feathered guts floated about the vast chamber. Her wardrobe bled silken dresses and shoes and outfits from a hundred worlds. A riot of red and white scattered upon golden floors as the shattered windows blew the scent, the petals, of roses in with the crystalline song of the desert beyond.
Lorilla sat upon her tilted bed. Her hands in her lap. Her face calm. Lips lovely, eyes wide, cheeks set, and she didn’t look at him as he walked over to her, didn’t even acknowledge his presence as he placed himself on his knees.
Damn that troublesome Unren. No matter what, no matter the tone, the mood, the situation, no matter anything, it was always Unren getting in the way like dirt in the gears. The machine kept functioning, but it coughed, it groaned, and the stress showed.
“Lorrilla,” Rue began.
“Don’t,” she didn’t look at him.
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
She raised an eyebrow and looked at him, at his soul, and he wondered again, who would win in a fight between them? But that was always his problem.
“No,” he said, and he stood as the floor rumbled with Unren’s hidden laughter. “No, I’m not sorry, because I knew you would react like this. How sordid for me to be involved with the Gambler after you imposed your will upon the Smith.”
“That is different,” she hissed. “I am a princess of the system. I have the authority, and the smith respected that. You are not involved with the Gambler… You are being punished! Like a common fool!”
Rue smiled.
“You never had much patience for common fools, did you?”
“Do not flirt with me!” she thrust her finger into his chest hard enough to break steel, but Rue did not even rock. “Do not think that you can smile or banter or charm your way into my good graces after the way you have been behaving. Just because your moods change does not mean their effects disappear!”
She heaved for air, her rage overwhelming her, and Rue felt it in his blood. The old stirring, the way his heart beat to the sound of her drum — how many battles had they strode into together with this throbbing symbiosis?
And how many battles did they stride out dripping blood and bent blades and carrying only the weight of souls?
“Countless,” he whispered as he reached for her. “Countless days, countless years, countless times have you made my heart beat like this.”
His hand brushed against her arm, but she stepped away, looked away.
“I told you not to,” she breathed. “I am with Esme now.”
Rue felt laughter bubbling up inside him, but he suppressed it.
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“Nobody is with Esme. She is just a pit in the ground, swallowing any foolish enough to get to close.”
“She is better than you give her credit.”
“And worse than you want to believe. She was my choice for the cohort. I knew her long before you did.”
Lorrilla strode to the shattered doors and stepped beyond. Her bare feet crunched the spoiled shards as she strode amongst the flowers. Amongst all the destruction, they remained intact, and Rue followed. Blood marked the shards of glass where she stepped, for this glass itself was a rare treasure, but the blood flowed and lived in a way so many mortals never did. Underneath Rue’s steps, the glass sharpened, as though his touch were a whetstone, and then they shattered, as though his touch were an anvil, and he followed Lorrilla out into her winding garden of thorns and flowers.
“The Gambler always wants at least three people per team,” Lorrilla said. “I shall join you and Unren.”
“I was going to ask Morn… or Esme.”
“No need, I shall join you.”
They strode along different paths, and though the paths interwove, they were never in the same place at the same time. Endless flowers between them, and beyond, the vast crystal desert with its whistling wind.
Lorrilla stopped to study a flower, its thorny stem wrapping around her caress, and each prick drawing blood to feed the deep blooming color of the petals.
“Tell me, Rue,” she said in a hushed whisper devoured by the wind. “Please, tell me just one thing?”
He gazed at her through the flowers. She had been shorter once, younger, beautiful — but not unearthly, not heavenly — and she had teased him through the flowers. Two young souls dreaming but never knowing the cruel reality of dreams made true.
Though it was no working of her’s — such an old excuse, as though Skein and techniques and Mountains were the only way to affect another — he felt his heart breaking.
“I’ll tell you anything, Lorrilla.”
“Why were you in the stands? Why were you at the Gambler’s game?”
Between every heartbeat, every pulse, there is a pause. Silence, as the heart contemplates, as the blood slows, as everything prepares to pump once more. In the garden under the stars, the universe paused.
Rue had many options — one of his power always did — but he chose the truth. For what other option could wreak as much havoc?
“I was speaking with your sister.”
The silence between beats dragged on.
“Why?”
“She invited me there. Reached out to me and… I thought I should see what she wanted. See what she had to say after all these years.”
The oxygen in the air slowly died. Choking. Blood stilling. Rue found it harder to breathe, harder to stand, even though he didn’t even really need to breathe anymore, didn’t need his legs to stand. Who would win in a fight between him and Lorrilla? Was it a question with an answer?
His palms itched for the first time in years. He wanted to know.
An extension of his Willpower sliced through the effects of Lorrilla’s heartbeat aura. He could breathe, his heart pumped independent of the silence dominating the rose garden. Lorilla glared at him — whether from him cancelling her effect or from his confession he couldn’t be sure.
Probably both, that would be the safe bet.
“What did she say?” Lorrilla choked out the words. “What did my sister have to say to you?”
“She — and the inquisition — will visit our incorporation.”
The ground rumbled as Lorilla’s heart beat once more. She snickered, and laughed, and the roses swayed as the heartbeat in the earth and air grew even more hectic.
“After centuries, she comes for work? No love in her soul after all. Did you think you could do whatever you want forever, Rue? Did you think there would be no repercussions to this failed incorporation? To your pet projects and experiments? Huh?”
He couldn’t face her. Not when she spoke the truth.
“I wanted to be left alone.”
“Then you should have died!”
His emotions bubbled, roiled, blackness reaching up from the depths of his soul, but he sliced through it all and wrapped himself up in the blade. For that is what they made him — that is what he was — and with surety of a blade he looked her in the eyes.
Such soft, beautiful eyes — tears of blood down her cheeks to mar the precious beauty like a pearl, a moon, a goddess carved of downy bone, love and hate in equal measure as they glared at each other across the thorny roses — the air like liquid between them and if only he could swim he would…
He looked away.
“Your glamor,” he whispered. “I hide behind my anger, but must you hide behind your beauty? When was the last time we truly looked at each other?”
“I see you, Rue,” she said imperiously. “I see you and your dark cloud, and you are not so deep as you like to imagine.”
“Then don’t help me.”
She scoffed.
“I will join you at the Gambler’s game — whenever that is — but until then I don’t want to see you. Fix this incorporation. At least act like you care about the people under your command. For the inquisition will not be kind.”
“Why help me?”
“Because I attached my name to yours. Because my sister makes me angry. Because, fool — terrible fool — that you are, I still love you.”
“You love everyone.”
“That isn’t true.”
A wind moaned like a crystal flute as it swept along the path, flicking petals from leaves, bringing the taste of red dust to the lips of lovers past.
“Goodbye, Lorrilla. See you at the game.”
Rue reached for his Skein and prepared to slip away through space, but a rose petal, soft and pink, brushed against his cheek.
“Rue…” she whispered. “Why did you ever choose her over me?”
“I’m not so deep,” he growled, closing his eyes, wrapping himself in the truth's pain. “She made a move while you waited. Let me… let me ask you. Why didn’t we work?”
“You’re too broken to make anything work, but I love that about you, because you’re only meant to break things, that’s why you’ve made it this far, that’s why we're all still alive. And I know… I know that’s my fault, but it isn’t only my fault. We held the blade to your throat, I know we forced you, but after a while… After a while, Rue, you held the blade yourself.”
He nodded and shrugged as though slipping a yoke from his shoulders.
“You always succeed at what you set your heart to, Lorrilla.”
And he vanished, leaving the rose petal to fall, slow and alone, to the twisting path in the garden of thorns.