* [This scene contains content some might find upsetting. Please check the post/chapter titled Episode Five: “Broken Earth” Content Warning List and Pronunciation Guide for a list of content warnings.]
[This scene also has a plot summary at the end for those who need to skip this scene but still want to know the important plot points of it. There is a horizontal line at the bottom of the scene, and the summary is after that. Happy (and safe) reading!]
Sunlight filtered through the multi-colored crystal ceiling of Purity House’s private bath, turning the steam that filled the room and the clear waters it came from into a rainbow kaleidoscope of beautiful Chaos. The crystal of the ceiling had been cut—broken—and then pieced together to recreate Ionus’ Death of the Bear, maybe the most famous painting in all Lushale, depicting Thorne I’s defeat of the Great Monster that had once lived on this very mountain. The one whose skull now adorned Broken Earth’s entrance.
The bath itself spanned nearly the entire room, set into the pearl-white stone of the floor. Along the right hand wall, the stone had been sculpted into the likeness of Heaven’s Fall, the rushing white waters raining over a miniature Broken Earth below. It was the stream from this miniature Heaven’s Fall that cascaded down over the Crown Prince’s naked form.
The room was beautiful, and Belle saw none of it, because if ever she and Richard were in the same room, all she could see was his magic.
Belle was prepared to find his magic as it usually was when he had spent any time away from the sedative effects of her own—a palpable pressure on her eardrums, a taste of gunpowder across her tongue, a burning sensation in her eyes. All those elements of Richard that Belle was so good at dampening having burned back to the surface. So she was surprised this time to find his magic a happy, violent orange. It rolled toward Belle eagerly, blooming through the rainbow steam of the room—though he had yet to turn and face her, he knew she was there. And it gave him pleasure to know she was watching him.
Well, watching his magic, but he didn’t need to know that.
She had worried that Lady Belle might have lost her touch over these past few weeks where the true Belle had been in control, but Lady Belle’s nap had served only to refresh her, and she knew immediately what to do. She’d so carefully chosen this dress, so carefully braided her hair for their reunion, but her instincts gave her a new idea.
Silently, Belle untied her sandals and stepped out of them, before padding forward until her toes curled around the lip of the bath. And then she took one more step.
Belle met the water, fully clothed, with a splash. She sank beneath the warm, multicolored water, and the world went quiet—save the sound of her own heart beating in her ears. She blinked open her eyes to see Richard’s lower half turn and step toward her. His hand dipped into the water and extended toward her, so she took it obligingly and let him guide her up. As her face broke the surface of the water, she put on a loving smile and pressed her free hand to his belly, sliding it up his torso as she straightened. Her hand explored over his chest, his shoulder, and came to rest behind his neck.
Belle knew that Richard was considered handsome. She knew that he had a strong jaw and a stocky body wrapped in muscle. She knew he had full lips, and that most people found his stone-gray eyes striking. She knew his short, bronze hair was thick and shiny, and that he carried himself like the royalty he was, and all of this together was enough to make nearly all the noble women as well as many of the noble men of Lushale swoon. But Belle never saw any of this. It was his magic she saw, and she knew it better than she knew anyone’s, even her own. Because every shift in its hue, the slightest change in direction—each of these were omens. And if she misinterpreted the way his magic prickled her skin or burned her throat, she would miss the omen that spelled her death.
The only times Belle had really seen Richard’s face were the times he’d broken her magic so completely that she couldn’t see magic at all. She was still unsure if it was good or bad that, in her mind, those periods had all become a jumbled blur of horror that had happened to someone else.
So now, as Richard smiled down at her, as he pulled her into him so the sopping fabric of her dress was all that separated them, Belle saw only the hungry flush of his magic, felt it smothering her, worming its way between her lips to crawl down her throat. She smelled its familiar, spoiled scent invading her nostrils, wrapping around her brain. All of this, she allowed.
“Oh,” she whined and made a futile attempt to pull him closer.
“My bride,” he said in a husky tone before mashing his mouth against hers.
Against his lips, Belle continued in her whine, “I missed you, my groom.”
“Is that why you’ve ruined my favorite dress?” But his tone was playful.
The lie came easily, “I’ve been free of your arms for far too long. A second more and I’d have fallen down dead.”
Grinning, he grabbed her behind her thighs and lifted—she wrapped her legs around him immediately. While he strode toward the edge of the bath, he spoke into her ear, “You’ve nearly named the very thought inside my head.” And then he dropped her onto the stone lip of the bath and continued, “Except mine was of your legs.”
Belle didn’t know what had him in such a good mood, but she certainly wasn’t going to challenge it. Good mood or not, Belle knew better than to drop her guard. Anger could overtake Richard as suddenly and completely as if it were a bomb in his gut, no matter his mood the moment before.
At some point over the last five years, it had gotten easy to give Richard what he wanted, physically. She performed without thinking, without feeling, and before long, Richard sat back in a shallow part of the bath, satisfied. Belle straddled his lap, her dress long since shed, tracing the features on a face she didn’t really see.
“Tell me,” Belle said in what she hoped sounded like a contented whisper. “Spin the whole story of the weeks you spent free of my legs, so I can imagine I starred in it beside you.”
He groaned, letting his head drop back over the lip of the bath. “I spent every day doing chores for Ma. Showing my face here, going to meetings there. The only part that wasn’t mind-numbing was when she sent me to sit over the games. I’d much rather have been standing down in the sands myself, but it was better than listening to Lord Nobody bitch about the missing whores in Outer Who-Gives-a-Fuck.”
Belle laughed because she was supposed to, and it made Richard smirk without lifting his head. Perhaps she should drop it, let Richard continue with his complaining and not trouble the waters of his good mood, but if there really were people going missing…
She nudged Richard’s train of speech down that track. “Well, depending on who Lord Nobody is, I might name the reason for his concern that those missing are either in his employ or at his service.”
“Ha!” The sound echoed around the stone room, an assault from all sides. “I hadn’t considered that. He was named for some kind of tree or bush—started with an ‘H’ I think.”
“Hawthorn?” she suggested, but she didn’t know of a Lord Hawthorn.
“No.”
“Uh … Oh! Lord Hickory? Of Brent?”
Richard lifted his head and grabbed her neck, setting adrenaline spiking down her limbs—but she did not flinch, didn’t even blink, and he simply gave her a rough squeeze that was intended as affection. “This is why Ma should let me marry you. Your beautiful head carries all the details mine can’t be bothered with.”
She leaned in to give him a peck on the lips to buy time for the adrenaline to fade from her system. “You’ll convince her.”
“Or just wait for her to die.”
Belle grinned—if only. “So it was Hickory?”
“It was. The self-righteous prick pretended he was actually concerned about the whores, but I’d bet your words far outweigh his. Why would a Lord care about a few stray cunts if he’s not buying or selling them?”
Almost as soon as Belle had the thought to tell Daivad about the missing people in Brent, she dismissed the idea. Not because it was a bad one, but because she was Lady Belle right now, and that was not an idea that Lady Belle had the luxury of entertaining.
“Why did Aran set these tasks on your shoulders, anyway?” she asked.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“She names it Proving Myself.” Richard rolled his eyes. “I have to prove I’m fit to sit the throne one day, that I can keep control of myself when boredom entices me to Chaos. Even without you. But it’s sweet shit. She’s setting me after errands so I’ll be too busy to set after my bastard little brother instead.”
Lady Belle ignored the way her belly flipped.
“I still can’t name why she won’t let you join,” Belle said because she knew it was what he wanted to hear. “You’re the greatest practitioner of combat magic in decades, and you know him.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Decades?”
She smiled and amended, “Centuries. Millenia.”
“That’s better.” Then he huffed and said, “Ma has never made sense to me. No one has, except you. And then, after all the chores I did for her, she just up and leaves for Ixhale without telling me why!”
Belle blinked. “What?” Her brain scrambled to find a reason for this. Aran rarely left Broken Earth, and to suddenly leave her queendom when Daivad had been causing so much trouble—that spelled nothing good. “She’s in Ixhale? Now?”
He grunted. “‘Distracting the High King’ were her only words.”
She tried to make sense of that while Richard entertained himself by complaining on. Ixhale had been on good terms with Lushale for generations. Why would Aran want to distract the High King, and from what? Belle made herself put on a sympathetic face and pretended to be offended on Richard’s behalf by whatever it was he was telling her about, because she was afraid if she didn’t, he’d see the fear that had suddenly filled her.
It must have something to do with the new Elleipsium vein they’d found. Aran had some plan for all those collars she was about to make.
When Richard was all complained out, Belle settled against his chest, his magic covering her as completely as if she’d just slipped below the surface of the water. It choked her, but she pretended she was breathing fine.
“I’m proud of you,” she said. “For staying under control, free of my legs as you were.”
“It was far from easy,” he said. “When Z wanted to keep you away even longer, I nearly blew their skull open.” She could hear the smile creeping into his voice. “But my tone has changed on your presence in Luvatha. Now I get to hear a firsthand account of the whole shitshow there, directly from the lips of the greatest storyteller in Lushale.”
Ah. That named the reason for Richard’s good mood. Of course—if their trip had succeeded and Ubika had lived to track Daivad back to his camp, Richard would have been furious. Ubika and Z getting the glory for taking down the Traitor Prince instead of Richard? But instead, the whole thing had blown up in their faces, Daivad had humiliated the crown once more, and Richard got to point and say, See? If you’d just let me off the leash, that night would have worn a much better ending.
But any story starring Daivad, even one that Richard considered a victory, was dangerous to tell. The queen wasn’t the only one with an unhealthy obsession with the man, nor was she the only one whose mood shifted so quickly at the mere mention of his name.
It hadn’t taken Belle long to discover why Richard hated Daivad so much, even years after he’d abandoned the crown. It was a known secret that Daivad’s adoption had not, in fact, been about showing that Order overcame any Chaos, nor was it the benevolent act of a kind queen taking in an Inhuman orphan to bless him with an Ordered life, both narratives the queen had pushed at one time or another. The reason that Aran had sent her sister, Priestess Auxica Earthbreaker, to all corners of Lushale twenty-some years ago to gather the orphans she deemed most eligible and ship them back to Broken Earth for the queen’s assessment, was to replace Aran’s own son as heir.
Richard not even ten years old, and Aran already knew he could never be King.
It was no wonder that Richard despised the man, the Inhuman, brought in by his own mother to replace him. No wonder that he wanted to be the one to kill Daivad. To prove he was the true heir. The real Earthbreaker.
Belle had thought carefully about how she should recount the events of their time in Luvatha both to Richard and Aran on the ride back to Broken Earth. One wrong word could condemn Z or absolve them. Speaking of the way Jac’s contract had stripped her of her practice could humiliate Jac, or it could give Cuppedia reason to amend her contract to be more lax. And if Belle gave either royal the slightest hint that she had helped Daivad, or Pait, then Belle or Mama B would be killed. If they were lucky.
Belle rested her elbows on Richard’s shoulders, floated her hands behind his head, and began tracing deliberate, swirling runes in the air. She called up weighted magic, let it coat her practiced words, and spoke them directly into Richard’s magic, watched how they settled over him. Sedated him.
“The final day of Thunder Moon was hot, and Luvatha’s air was dry—the high buildings blocked the wind and you could see dust hanging in the air, moving only when a body or a carriage passed through. And there were many bodies, and many carriages…”
Belle told the carefully-worded story, embellishing the mundane details—the weather, the fashion, the moods of Luvatha’s citizens—and skimming over any details about Z’s, Jac’s, or Belle’s actions. She spent a long time describing the riot and emphasizing Kure’s role in it and the Guard’s incompetence in deescalating it. She didn’t mention Pait at all, instead implying that the “big hooded figure” had been drawn by the riot itself, and praising Z for recognizing the figure right away.
All the while she watched Richard’s magic, noted every annoyed hitch and every pleased bloom. Watched when it began to swirl a bit too quickly, or when it sparked her skin with impatience. She had no idea how long they soaked there in the steaming water—she thought only of his magic and how to keep it calm.
But the moment he understood who the “big hooded figure” was, the fuse lit and began to burn down. Suddenly she felt like the steam in the room was overtaking the air, filling her lungs. She was careful never to say Daivad’s name, never to give specifics on the magic he’d practiced there in Luvatha’s streets, never to give any more description than was necessary. Still, the fuse burned shorter and shorter.
Belle told him how Kure had interfered in Z’s attempt to apprehend the hooded figure, how the guards had been useless, and how Z had immediately ordered Belle and Jac out of harm’s way, so from then on she could only tell Richard what she had heard from Z afterwards. With her story done, she could turn her full attention to the runes she was tracing, except—the moment she focused on the runes, her fingers got tangled in her own awareness. While she’d been distracted telling the story, it freed her body to follow the magic of muscle memory, and the moment she’d had the thought to question if these were the right runes, if there might be ones better suited to that short of a fuse, her movements grew clumsy and the runes slipped from her grasp.
Without warning, Richard stood, knocking Belle’s hands away and scattering the runes. She quickly hid her hands under the water and resumed tracing them before his magic could ignite. For a moment, Richard stared at the Bear on the crystal ceiling, the dying light outside making the Great Monster’s black blood sparkle.
Still, that fuse burned lower. She was out of practice.
The prince looked down at Belle. Then grabbed her arm and hauled her up before him.
“You saw him?”
There was no way for her to answer that question that wouldn’t make him explode. The best she could do was manage the size of the blast.
She looked Richard in the eye and showed him no fear.
That first day, in Daivad’s house, he had asked her how it was that she had survived five years at Richard’s side when none of his other brides had managed the same. This was how. No matter what he did, she never showed fear.
“His cloak,” she answered, calm.
“Did he see you?”
“I’d guess his focus was on the bloody, rabid Selachian attacking him, not me. Z ordered the Guard to escort me and Jac out of harm’s way before—”
“Fucking Vigore!” he spat. “That bastardbeast—letting him near my bride!”
Richard grabbed her by the throat. This time it certainly wasn’t affectionate. “He wants everything named Mine! My mother, my throne, my bride!” As he talked, his grip tightened, trapping all of his magic that she had breathed in inside her lungs until they burned. She could feel the blood pooling in her cheeks, the pressure building behind her eyes. “Did he touch you?”
There was no reasoning with Richard in this state, even if she had been able to squeeze a word through her crushed throat. Belle knew that. She’d already said enough that Richard should know the answer to his own question. So she simply stared at him, calm as ever. Even as her lungs fought and her instincts screamed for her to scratch his fucking eyes out, to kick and flail and thrash.
“DID HE TOUCH YOU?” he shouted, spit flying into her face.
Richard knew she couldn’t speak. He didn’t care. If she could have somehow managed a word, the breath she’d used to speak it would finally ignite him.
Familiar black spots appeared in Belle’s vision, and her body begged her to do something. Anything. Begged her not to just take this.
But she did. Because this was better than an explosion.
The world died around her.
The next thing Belle knew was cold tile pressed against the burning skin of her torso, and coughs wracking her body. As soon as she remembered where she was, Belle looked around for him. It might not be over yet. The blast might still be coming.
Richard had climbed out of the bath and now stood over her, watching with his head cocked to one side. Waiting to see what she would do.
The fuse had fizzled out. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t spark again.
Belle got her coughing under control and pulled herself all the way out of the bath as well. When she was sure her wobbling knees would hold her weight, she stood and faced him. She reached up to cup his cheek.
His magic settled back to the pleased state she’d found it in, and he said, “My temper took me again. This is why you can’t leave for so long, my bride. Without you, I become a monster.”
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SUMMARY FOR THOSE WHO NEEDED TO SKIP THE SCENE:
Belle met Richard in the baths, and played the role of loving partner despite her intense anxiety around him. He revealed that Aran had left suddenly for Ixhale, the lands to the northeast, with her only explanation being that she was ‘distracting the High King.’ Belle was very concerned about this.