(This scene contains content that some may find upsetting. For a list of content warnings organized by scene, please check the chapter titled Episode Two: A Good Monster)
“I’ll try to keep it concise,” Nyxabella said with a mischievous smile, still toying with her knives as she wandered circles around Daivad. She took on a performer’s air, like this wasn’t an open room in his house, but a stage.
“Let’s spin back the sky.”
With a flourish, Nyxabella reached up and drove one of her crescent blades into the air directly overhead, and it wedged itself into something that wasn’t there. She threw her weight against the nothing—
And then the sky was spinning overhead. Day and night flashed one after the other, stars streaming, Sun and Moon chasing each other endlessly. The Earth’s shadow cut slivers out of the moon over and over until nothing was left—but then the moon would grow back over another month’s time, only to repeat the cycle again and again. A celestial dance the whole world was in on.
For a moment Daivad thought she’d spun the sky so fast the floor was tipping beneath him, but it was merely a sudden dizziness that stole his own belly from him.
When the sky came to a stop, a fat, red moon stared down at them. Daivad knew it wasn’t really there—above him was a ceiling of woven branches and above that a canopy of leaves. Yet his eyes told him another story.
She told him another story.
“The Full Blood Moon of twenty-five years past,” she said, looking up at it with parted lips and sparkling eyes, awed. “And beneath it…”
Nyxabella swung her arms wide and spun, the point of one blade missing the Wolf charm tied to his bicep by mere inches. Her untamed hair, smeared with dirt and stuck with leaves, fanned out around her. Her toes barely seemed to touch the dew-covered grass beneath them.
Dew-covered grass?
The world rushed at him. A field that smelled of freshly-cut hay and cool, clear autumn. Around them, rows and rows of tents, stages, and stalls, all in varying degrees of construction. Voices popped in next, one by one, then glowstone lanterns of a thousand different colors flickered to life to illuminate two figures here, another three there, each one throwing movement magic with swinging arms and straining backs to erect the next tent, the next stage. Far to Daivad’s left he heard the chittering, clamoring, shrieking of dozens and dozens of beasts, but none of the people around seemed to care.
“The Great Cassiix Circus!” she called grandly, her voice ringing out into the night. “Born before anyone named this land Lushale. This circus was a beast all its own, living and breathing and traveling from sandy shore to rocky peak and everywhere in between in its endless search for family. And anybody along its rambling path that craved a family too got swallowed up and carried along. The circus’ performances were a beautiful mess. Instruments from everywhere, garments found anywhere, people of nowhere.”
Making sure his tone was even and unalarmed, Daivad said, “You name this Concise?”
Nyxabella ignored him.
“Here,” she said, gesturing to the tent of pale blue and deep purple before them. She swept aside the tent’s opening and waved for him to enter, but he didn’t get the chance.
Next thing he knew, that same blue and purple fabric was all around them. They were inside the tent. And an infant was screaming.
Nyxabella was suddenly next to him, pointing. Brightly, she said, “Look, it’s me!”
A tiny, purple, not-at-all-human-looking baby with toothless mouth open wide and eyes scrunched closed was wailing.
“That’s my Mama T,” she pointed, beaming, at the exhausted, sweaty, elated woman who clutched the screaming infant to her chest. The woman had long, curly hair so pale it almost looked white piled on top of her head in a disheveled bun that was barely hanging on.
“And that’s my Mama B!” A muscular brunette woman in a bright yellow button-up, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and tight-fitting, yellow-and-purple-striped pants knelt at her partner’s bedside, beaming with teary eyes.
“That’s Uncle Daph and Titi Aabera.” She gestured to a short, wiry-looking Inhuman with bushy black hair and an even bushier black mustache, and an elderly, hunched person in a thousand layers of cloth. “I don’t remember Titi Aabera; they only saw one more Blood Moon after this one before going home to Mother Dark’s arms.”
All of them looked down at the tiny Nyxabella like she was the most beautiful thing they’d ever seen as opposed to a vaguely reptilian-looking bundle of vocal cords.
“Mama B,” Nyxabella continued, and already he could feel her words painting a new scene, a new world, in careful brushstrokes around them, “was Great Cassiix’s Wordsmith. It’s magic I learned from her that lets me weave stories into the very air, to take you with me into them.”
Light burst down from above, illuminating a figure on stage above them so suddenly it took Daivad’s eyes a moment to adjust. Which made no sense because this light wasn’t real.
The figure was tall and lean, made leaner still by the fitted cut of their loud blue tailcoat and snug white pants, and made much, much taller by their bright, heeled red boots and matching top hat. Mama B. She strode around the circular stage with the assistance of a jeweled red cane, speaking with the same air Nyxabella used now. But for some reason when Mama B spoke, Daivad couldn’t understand the words, despite the fact he knew the language. Around them, the audience watched, enraptured, their eyes glazed and bright, faces awed, each leaning forward in their seats.
“She carried our mess of a culture with her, told our stories, took our guests on journeys from the past, the future, or even from another present… And introduced our acts.”
Suddenly, Daivad could understand Mama B as she called out, “And now, my gentle guests, I direct your eyes to the heavens, to moonlight spun into the shape of woman, to the Great Cassiix Circus’ beloved dancer, our resident Ghost…
“Taissi Lilit.”
The sound of rain on a canopy of leaves filled the space, and the tent’s top began to retract, revealing the night sky above, and the pouring rain that fell from nowhere. The stage floor shimmered, reflecting the stars like the surface of a dark pond, and above it, a long piece of white silk hung in a U shape. Sitting in the silk, her bare toes dangling, was what indeed seemed to be moonlight made woman.
“Mama T,” Nyxabella said, breathless, but it wasn’t the Nyxabella as Daivad knew her. Mama B had come to sit among the audience, holding a child with a mess of blonde curls who couldn’t have been more than three. The child bounced excitedly in her mother’s lap, clapped chubby hands, and her big, green eyes shone with stars as she looked up at her other mother.
He had to say, her cuteness had improved since her reptilian days.
Mama T started to sing—a slow, melancholy melody with words to match—and music from everywhere rose up to meet her song as the silks were lowered slowly toward the surface of the water below. She wore a white dress with silver adornments holding the silk to her skin. When her toe skimmed across the stage, ripples were left in her wake.
Gently touching the toes of one foot down, she spun herself, then leaned to one side, letting her fingers trail a large arc around her in the water. Each movement was slow, simple, and impossible. With only some wet fabric to hold her aloft, she shouldn’t be able to move so smoothly.
She spun and flipped, before finally standing on the surface of the water, a soft smile on her pink lips. With steps that rippled the stars, she circled the silks, ruffled them with her fingers. Her song faded to aching silence, and the moonlight woman went still…
Until the beat kicked up, and so did she. Her movements sped to match the new, joyous beat, and it became less of an artful performance, and more like she was in her bedroom, dancing for no one else. Yet it was no less graceful or skilled.
She grabbed the silks and twirled into them. She moved through them, with them, tied them in knots around her, all with impossible fluidity.
“My Mama T was the greatest dancer Great Cassiix had ever seen, and ever would see,” the adult Nyxabella said beside him as the toddler Nyxabella squirmed down from her mother’s lap and began a dance all her own. The Adult smiled down at the Child, and a tear slipped down her cheek.
“After Mama T passed in my fourteenth year, I promised I’d take that title in her memory, but … I don’t think I ever earned it.”
Mama T twirled to the edge of the stage as Mama B swept the toddler up and passed her off. Mother and child danced among the stars, laughing and spinning.
“They raised me to see the beauty in all magics,” Nyxabella continued as this scene shifted from one to the next, flashes of color and smiles, fangs and sobs, songs and silence. “Movement, language, music, meditation, Order or Chaos, Light or Dark.
“This hatred of Chaos, the fear of it,” she said as yet more faces and bodies and songs swirled around them, “is young, and the Great Cassiix Circus wasn’t. We remembered the time before Chaos was named Chaos, and certainly before it was named Wicked. It’s all magic. And we’re all people.”
Then they were standing in another field, in the day this time, with a summer sun beating down, though they were still surrounded by tents. A group of children of various ages ran by, barefoot, muddy, wild, and laughing. In the middle of them, familiar blonde curls. And after them trotted a gangly creature that looked a lot like her Clarix, but much less scrawny, battered, and pitiful. When one of the children strayed or fell behind, the beast would nip playfully at them until the child squealed and rushed to join their friends, giggling.
“We never really named Lushale’s laws or beliefs our own. We never needed to—the Great Cassiix Circus was here one day and gone the next. So as Order gained power by trampling on Chaos, as Dark was demonized, as day was pitted against night, we changed little. We limited or disguised our Dark magic when going into town, but not much more. The Mothers, both of them, guided our performances, and we only ever wanted to follow along.”
They stood in the middle of a great pit with stands full of people on all sides and monsters rushing past, close enough to whip up Daivad’s hair. Nyxabella, suddenly wearing a dress much like the one Mama T had been wearing but a powdery blue, ran out to put herself before the beasts, and the crowd screamed in fear. But Nyxabella simply caught one and flipped up onto its back. The beast didn’t even break stride. She stood and threw her arms out, and the crowd cheered. And then the tricks started.
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“The Mothers guided our every step. They told us which town we needed and which town needed us. Even if the crown had wanted to punish our Dark practices, our blasphemy, it’d be no small task to find us. How does one track a beast when even the beast can’t name its path?”
She smirked up at him, eyes twinkling. “Ah, but that’s not a question I need to pose you, is it, Daivad?”
When the scene shifted this time, Nyxabella’s smile faded, and for a moment Daivad could see the wooden walls of his house peeking back into reality.
“So when the Mothers named Render the next mark on our map, we obeyed as always. And what we found when we arrived were scores of Royal Guards patrolling the streets. The Crown Prince was in town.”
A long silence followed those words so there was no mistaking the weight of them, the way they dragged behind her wandering steps, rattling over the floor like chains.
“I don’t know why the Mothers led us to Render that night,” Nyxabella spoke just above a whisper. “Mama B taught me to listen to my magic, to trust the Mothers, but … I don’t think I’ll ever understand why they…”
A new scene built itself up around them—or, truly, it was an old one. Once again they were in the largest tent, looking up at the circular stage, dozens and dozens of people packed around them. But this time, suspended in silks above them, it wasn’t Mama T, but Nyxabella. Her silks were a pale, shimmering pink, to match her dress and its gold adornments.
The music that played for her was bright and sweet, and she twisted in the silks with no less fluidity and skill than her mother had, smiling while she sang.
“No one blamed the Chaos practitioners who chose not to perform, that night. Knowing he was there, watching. What tempted him to attended a traveling circus, I’ll never guess. On the night, I thought the Mothers had marked Render on his map, too. That this was why they’d nudged us to Render.”
Nyxabella stilled on Daivad’s left. She stared up at the other Nyxabella, still performing overhead, and a powerful, sickening scent washed off of her, pumped out by a racing heart. He knew it well: shame. The edges of her curved blades pressed into each hip, her hands clenched on the hilts. Her chin puckered again.
“I wanted… I just thought…”
Daivad reached out and tapped her wrist, guiding it, and the knife, away from her body. “Enough of that.”
She looked down, surprised to see the crescent-shaped indentation on her hip. Softly, she said, “Oh.”
When she’d collected herself a bit, she smiled up at him, and a new, warm scent bloomed from her skin. He took a deep, greedy breath before he’d even decided to, and his head spun—No. He forced himself to focus and stepped back, crossing his arms once again.
“Thank you, Daivad,” she said. “But don’t worry. My blades won’t cut me unless I ask them to.”
Without looking at her, he just gave a stiff nod.
It took her a second to re-enter her story. It had faded back to reality, and when she built it back up, it remained hazy, like a dream.
“On my charitable days, I name her Naive.” She pointed up at the vague shape of her past self, twirling above. “On my less-charitable days, Arrogant. She was high off her own sweet shit, smoking on the idea that if the Earthbreakers could just see how beautiful Chaos magic could be, if they could just open eyes and ears, just listen, they would understand. That it’s all magic. That we’re all people.
“I thought … I don’t know, I thought it could be the beginning of a return to balance for Lushale. I thought—,” she scoffed at her past self, eyes wet, “I’d be that beginning. So I … I cut myself open and let Chaos pour out.”
Like in Mama T’s performance, the music changed, though it was distorted, like they were underwater. It became dark and heavy, a pounding swell. The colors, the shape of her above changed. Even muted though the scene was now, it sparked a visceral, exhilarating, horrifying twisting in his gut as the hazy Nyxabella slipped from her silks and smashed to the stage. As she rose up, distorted and wrong. Wicked, guttural laughter bounced around inside his head, and then the wrong figure snapped around to face him directly. She crouched, broken and warped, and rushed straight at his face—
He jerked back, but when he blinked, he was back in his house. She stood with her back to him, looking very not wrong. Still, the shame scent crashed off her.
*** (TW)
“The Crown Prince says my performance that night offended him,” she said. “He says I might as well have spat in his face, cursed the Earthbreaker name. But he didn’t drag me to the castle in Broken Earth and put me before his mother because he hated my performance. It was because he liked it. Too much.”
It was starting to make sense. Who she was to Richard.
“So he took me.” Nyxabella twirled her knives jerkily, and from the way her figure tensed, he got the impression she was trying to build up the next scene, trying to call forth her magic, but couldn’t. “His magic terrified me, but he said he’d put me before the queen, to face her judgment, and I thought maybe she would listen.”
Her shoulders sagged as she gave up, and she turned to catch his eye and give him a pained smile. “I’ll guess you can imagine how that went. Her eyes found no beauty in my magic, only a personal, targeted insult. If … if I’d just shut my mouth and bared my neck to take her axe, everything would have been different. Maybe that’s what the Mothers had intended. I thought it was my magic guiding me to push on, to show her, but maybe it was my own intoxicating arrogance…
“I never thought she’d punish anyone but me.”
Nyxabella wrapped her arms around herself, her blades suddenly sheathed again in tattoo form. “I never thought… I just wanted her to listen. The more I tried, the worse it got, until she promised to round up Great Cassiix and crucify me in front of them. But Richard said he wanted to keep me.” She wrapped herself up so tight her fingers almost met around her back. Without looking up, she said, “You know about his brides.”
Tight, Daivad said, “Yes.”
She turned her back to him and took a deep breath before continuing. “She didn’t want to let me live, to let him keep me. But he swore he’d break me—the Earthbreaker way, right? Break what’s wild so it can be built into Order. So she allowed it—and to ensure I behaved, they took Mama B, too. Locked her up in the dungeons. But even that wasn’t enough to sate Aran’s wrath, so she ki—,” she had to swallow and try the word again. “Killed the rest of them. The people, the beasts… the ba-babies—”
Silence.
Then, a whisper: “I killed all of them.”
“No.”
In a stuttering series of tiny movements, she slowly, slowly turned until her swimming green eyes peeked at him from around a mane of blonde curls.
“Don’t let her off easy,” Daivad said. “She works by putting the weight of her actions on everyone else’s shoulders. Aran did that. Make her carry it.”
He hadn’t meant to say any of that. He closed his mouth and found a spot in the forest beyond to focus on. He realized, suddenly, that it was the same spot she’d pointed to before, and he knew what she had sensed, out in the forest.
He could feel her eyes still on him. “What’s out there? I heard it calling me.”
“It’s just forest,” he lied.
Finally, she turned away again and continued her story. “That was five years ago. I’ve been bound to Richard ever since. And he did break me. Again and again, so completely I lost my magic for a time… And I’m still clumsy with it back in my hands, as you can see. It slips through my fingers as often as not.
“But I’ve survived—so far. As a performer, you learn to play whichever role suits your audience’s desires and expectations, the ones they hide even from themselves. For five years, I’ve played whichever role Richard needed. Serving hand, open ear, punching bag” she gave a little disgusted laugh, “warm hole.”
Daivad’s stomach churned, and rage lit up his skin, made his fists clench.
“I fed his desires and earned some length on my leash. Length enough to get me here.”
Nyxabella took a long, shuddering breath, unwound her arms, and straightened. Daivad watched her smooth shoulders roll, then disappear beneath her curls as she swept her hair to her back. She turned, eyes red but unwavering.
“I’ve become his everything, and he tells me everything. What he doesn’t know, I hear from the nobles who see me as Richard’s helpless little bride, or from my fellow Entertainment, or from the attendants who are even more invisible than I am, within Broken Earth’s walls. All that knowledge in my head, all the whispered words I’ve caught, are yours, if you’ll just listen. And use them.”
Daivad took a long moment to digest all of this, and to shake off the images that had arisen in his mind’s eye even without the help of her magic. There was one thing he didn’t understand. “He took a dozen girls over the years I lived in the castle,” Daivad said. “Not one of them was still breathing six months later. Even the ones who escaped.”
“Who you helped escape,” she corrected under her breath.
He ignored the comment. “How the hell have you lasted five years and earned a lax leash? Even if Richard trusts you, Aran never would.”
“No, but I have my roles I play for her, too. She’d rather chop off her own tits than admit it, but the skill with which I work Richard keeps him … agreeable. And something like under control.”
Daivad said, “She uses you to manipulate him.”
She nodded.
“If you can slip away to Urden,” he asked, “why go back?”
“They still have my Mama B. If I leave, if I step out of line and get caught, they’ll kill her. Then I really will have killed—,” she paused. Gave him a grateful look. “Then my whole family, my whole home, would be dead.”
*** (End of TW)
“Then this,” he gestured between them, “is a big fucking risk.”
“True shit,” she agreed. “But doing nothing’s a bigger risk still. She’s dying. The dungeon cells—”
“Are lined with Elleipsium.”
Nyxabella nodded. “She’s been dying since the day they threw her in there. Five years since she’s really felt magic, and I don’t think she’ll last one more.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “And you think I can help you free her? From the dungeons of Broken Earth?”
The life started to seep back into her. “I can get her out of the dungeons, and with enough of a distraction I could even get her out of the city. Those drainage grates in the city walls still have your magic all over them.”
The smirk she gave him told him he hadn’t succeeded in keeping the surprise off his face.
“But all that’s a problem for another time,” she said. “For now I’d just … like to earn your trust.”
“And Jac?”
“Jac’s story is hers to tell. But I’ll say: I’d die for her. I’d kill for her. And she’d do the same for me. She won’t do anything that would put me in danger, and exposing you would do that.”
“And this ‘elite’ team that’s looking for me?”
“Ah! My biggest selling point, how could I forget?” she said. “They’re still being gathered, but among the named are Z Vigore, who I know you’re well familiar with, an Inhuman hunter who is apparently unparalleled, and…”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “And?”
“He hasn’t accepted yet, but Aran’s not one to take no…”
Adrenaline prickled Daivad’s hands. He.
“Your old pal, the Colonel.” She watched him closely, and Daivad made sure to keep his expression blank. “From what I’ve heard, he’s quite the patriot. A loyal soldier through and through. I can’t imagine he’d turn his queen down. But! With my lips in your ear, I should be able to name you their plans, and warn if they catch your scent.”
The involuntary fight response at the mention of the Colonel was quickly flipped to a very different involuntary response at her new metaphor. How was she always throwing him off his footing?
The Colonel.
Once the Colonel got involved, it was only a matter of time before this camp was found.
He turned his back and tried to think—but all he could think was that she was standing there, looking at him, waiting. Irritation bubbled up in his chest. At her, at himself, at Aran, at the Colonel. All he wanted was to be left fucking alone, how did he keep getting pulled back into this royal shit?
“I wouldn’t ask for an answer right this moment,” Nyxabella said behind him. “And I would like to go check on Clarix, if that’s alright.”