She had left his letter on the mantle. It was charred on the edges; she had tossed it into her fireplace in a fit of cold fury, before fishing it out again when the corners had started to blacken and the thought of burning it, really burning it, had sent her scrambling for a poker.
I set sail at first light—
She had spoken to no one of it. The red-tailed hawk that had swept through her curtains at first dawn would seem, to any curious observer, only one of the dozens of letter-bearing avians that dove in and out of the emissary's window at all hours of the day. And if the young emissary herself had seemed uncharacteristically quiet at breakfast, well—perhaps fatigue had finally caught up with her.
From the day of her appointment, Emissary Aghavni had never missed a moment at Court. Few, in fact, could recall a time when the Hajakhan princess (for it was common knowledge now, though no noble worth their rank had yet dared to broach it in public) wasn’t escorting ambassadors to the king, or penning letters as she breakfasted, or requesting crates upon crates of wax candles to be brought up to her tower—she went through them at alarming speed.
There was nothing she couldn’t do, nothing she couldn’t master. Least of all her own heart.
‘Dearest August,’ she had written back, ink spotting the page in her haste. ‘Upon your return from the seven seas, be sure to bring back a necklace of pearls as big as sparrow’s eggs to present to your future majesty, Queen Sol IV. Failure to do so will result in you being turned coldly away at the palace gates, with no chance at redemption.’
Her grip had shook as she'd reached the end of the parchment, but her calligraphy betrayed nothing. If August had thought his departure would arouse any sliver of devastation in her—the nib of her quill snapped, leaking ink, and Aghavni had cursed as she reached for a new one and moved her blotter over the spreading stain.
‘Charmingly, A.’ Then he had thought wrong. Even if her heart had shattered to pieces, even if she had sent all her chambermaids scrambling out so they would not see the weakness leaking from her furious eyes—
(A letter! That was all he had left her with, before bidding her a sailor’s farewell, forever. Aghavni was not stupid enough to hope that August would one day return. Better that he didn’t. Better that she never saw his face again, so that he would never know how weak she really was beneath her pretty words and bold farewells.)
A Hajakha could betray the whole world, even each other. But never themselves.
----
She departs for Dusk at nightfall, August’s letter cold on the mantle, her hair in pearl-strewn, latticed plaits, and her eyes as green, and as hard, as cut emeralds.
----
“So—do you think this place is as grand as the Scarab?” Aghavni asks O, lips pulling into a wry smile. She bumps her hip lightly against the buckskin’s dusky shoulder and glances over, a little indifferently, at a tray of canapés balanced on a passing waiter’s hip.
She plucks one from its plate—a wine-soaked cherry—and pops it into her mouth. It bursts at once across her tongue, sweet and then bracingly tart, and her dark lashes flutter in a display of mirth.
Look upon the Solterran emissary now, glittering gold beneath the floating lanterns, and nothing could have ever been once undone. Her posture is, as always, refined and disciplined; the line of her jaw and the tilt of her gaze calculated to give an appearance at once alluring and disarmingly innocent. She does not try to appear more than her age; instead, she wears her youth like a crown of holly, a fey creature on the cusp of girlhood and womanhood.
But when she smiles, as she does now at lovely little Apolonia, the sharpness of it whispers: This is a girl forged of ambition. If you are wise, you will watch her carefully for the teeth that do not flash, but hide: deep in the gums, unseelie and savage.
Humming, Aghavni draws close to Apolonia's satin ear and glances discreetly into the crowd. “You know, O, that girl over there has been watching you ever since we entered the room.” And smirking, seized by sudden muse, Aghavni detaches her emerald scarf from her neck and loops it around O’s. “There. Now you look even more lovely. Let’s dance!”
Let’s dance and dance, she thinks, bitterly, as she twirls towards the center of the ballroom. Until we forget everything, even ourselves.
@Apolonia @Anandi | "speaks" | notes: the excitement is real <3
Aghavni looks good. O is waiting just inside the gates, hoof cocked, weight leaned against the wall, and tells her as much when the Emissary comes out of the darkness, Apolonia sort of laughing as she remarks, with a kind of mild, pleased astonishment: “Look who decided to dress up.”
Her tone is rough with amusement. A kind of purring sound, from the back of the throat. It is something she has only just begun to pick up as she grows older and spends more of her time around girls, who do this same thing—purr and snarl and make it look pretty. To her Aghavni is a mentor, a guide to the strange world of femininity.
Around them the world is red and dim. Rising walls are lit with the strange flicker of hungry flames. There is music in the air—a dark and lively slashing of violins on top of pianos on top of groaning-heavy cellos—and the crowds are dense, packed with the perfumed bodies of dancers and drunks with raucous laughs.
This is a place to be wild.
O’s lip curls into an easy smirk. With a narrowed gaze, she notes the pearls in Aghavni’s hair, the hard green of her eyes, the slash of bright fabric looped against her throat; this kind of finery is not uncommon in Solterra, but in the warm, dusky light of the festival it seems especially ethereal. Like reading through the illustrations of a well-loved fairytale. Like looking at a pearl or a shell through the sheen of perfect blue water: a beautiful thing made awfully strange by the way it sits, pretending to be inorganic, under a film of something like magic.
Aghavni’s hip meets her shoulder and startles her from her thoughts. “It’s alright,” O says, amused, and brushes her mouth quick as a lightning bolt against the Emissary’s flank in something like a dare. (Is this not a place for dares?)
She is feeling good. Too good, maybe—arrogant. The world is wide open with people to kiss, partners to dance with, drinks to be drunk and jewelry to be stolen; Apolonia’s heart is alive like a wild thing in her chest, and her blood is racing hot under her skin, and when Aghavni says that girl over there has been watching you, she is not surprised. Does not raise brow.
When she sees her suspicions are right—that the girl Aghavni refers to is none other than Anandi, sleek gray and bright pink against the mysterious darkness of the crowd—she grins, or perhaps it is a smirk, but either way there is no mistaking the intensity, the wolfishness in that flash of bright teeth.
“We’ve met,” O says to her friend, as if it is a proper response (still she is distracted, the glow of her three eyes a dare in the dark, a brow arched at Andi from across the room). A breath escapes her, half-laughing. And then, before she can argue, or think about crossing the dance floor, a surprised ooph escapes her as she is tugged forward by the loop of Aghavni’s scarf tightening behind her neck, and then they are in the thick of it.
A jolt of shock. Her hooves skid over the floor; briefly her ears flicker back in surprise. But there is no time to waste. Quicker than a heartbeat, they are now deep in the swirling, dancing crowds, the smell of incense descending like smog, the sound of music growing louder and louder until it seems to vibrate in her bones.
O’s sharp, severe body is not made for dancing, but that hardly seems to matter now. Slowly, she forces herself to relax. Her heart beats harder, but her muscles start to unwind; she is only following Aghavni’s lead, swaying to the music like a leaf stirs in the breeze, eyes bright with mischief, lip curled in a girl's smile.
Only once does she toss a glance over her shoulder in the direction of the kelpie princess, as if saying come here.
She sees the couple the instant they enter the room. She doesn't care who sees her staring. Apolonia is taller than the last time they met. Sleeker. More dangerous. Less a girl and more a woman, particularly at the side of that infuriatingly perfect specimen. Jealousy hits her so hard it makes her vision swim. It makes her want to vomit. She hates green eyes that aren't her own.
Even more than that, she hates anyone touching what's hers.
Anandi wants to bite something. Someone. She wants blood and bone and gore and life, coming to its quiet end between her teeth.
Girls will be girls. But, that’s not the full of it.
Girls will be monsters. Girls will look you in the eye, sink their teeth into your heart,
smile,
pull.
Apolonia looks over her shoulder and the kelpie’s skin shivers in taut anticipation. Game on.
Anandi steps quickly across the room to a young man who had been giving her the side eye all evening. A tall chestnut with a crooked snip, handsome but not fully aware of it. Leggy, like he hadn’t quite yet grown into his body. Something about him was quite endearing, to be honest… but that's not why she chose him.
She knew boys like him. They were so eager to burn themselves up. It made them easy to use.
As she draws closer she can see his heart beating faster in his neck. It grows hard to resist the urge to lick her lips-- She can almost taste him already. “Dance with me.” She had quite rudely interrupted a strained conversation about the weather in the mornings on the Prastaiga Cliffs. One party is thrilled by the interruption, the other is outraged. As she guides the chestnut to the dance floor, she turns and mouths “sorry!” to his shocked young lady friend. And then she smiles, and presses her slender shoulder into the stallion as though she’s had too much to drink.
Anandi is by no means patient, but she is tactful. She takes her time moving to her blue-eyed destination, chatting and laughing merrily with her partner as they dance across the floor. He is a confident dancer, considerably more skilled than Anandi, and on numerous occasions she gratefully (excessively) leans into him for guidance. His touch lacks the heat of Apolonia’s, and his confidence is not as attractive as Apolonia’s naivete, but Anandi finds herself oddly charmed by the handsome chestnut.
Perhaps she had played pretend so fiercely, it became real.
Regardless, the dance has taken them across the floor and close enough to their destination that as the song ends, Blue and green eyes meet. Anandi’s heart fights its way into her throat.
She swallows. “Apolonia! How lovely to see you.” Her voice is all dusky want and crushed moth wings. She reaches out to brush her muzzle across the girl’s cheek, a quick peck before withdrawing to a more formal distance. “Welcome to Dusk Court.” She turns her gaze to the pretty woman with the scarf. “Who’s your stunning friend?” Of course she already knows the woman’s name: Aghavni Hajakha, Emissary of Solterra, Anandi’s political equal. She blithely plays the fool. Below those long fluttering lashes hides the violent urge to take that green scarf in her teeth, wrap it around its owner’s neck, twist,
smile,
pull.
She’s on edge, blood buzzing, emotion moving like a current in her belly. The whole night had been smiles and pleasantries so far, but none of it meant anything until now. This was different. This game had stakes. “What are you drinking? Austin here will get us some refreshments.” She leans in close to his ear to murmur her request (“dandelion wine, love”) and then playfully bumps her hip against the leggy stallion, at once a dismissal and a beckoning to come back quickly.
You tell me what you know of desire and surrender.
A N A N D I
venus, planet of love
was destroyed by global warming
—
"Only alright?" Aghavni's cheeks dimpled in a fleeting grin, her gaze trailing restlessly over the room's wreathed columns, the moss-and-gossamer-draped settees, the earthen floor covered in a skin of shimmer.
Terrastella's was a beauty as coy as Solterra's was decadent; as demure as it was heavy-lidded, a waking dream for the devout and the dreamless. It enchanted and irked her in equal measure. Why play at subtlety, she wondered, when the goal was precisely the same: to arouse desire, to seduce loyalty, to fan the flames of sympathy. To twist what refused to give.
It did not make you more pious, or more upright, she thought, when you pretended not to see your own shadow. It only made you a hypocrite.
A shiver shot down her spine as O's lips ghosted over her flank, butterfly-soft; by the time she recovered enough to move again, to act (and act authentically) unfazed by so sudden a touch—the moment had ossified into history.
She swallowed thickly, and accidentally glared at an innocent passerby; except that the slick, dark-suited man hadn't been entirely innocent. He had been watching her, just like the others, and she hated it. How scrupulously they fixed their eyes to her, breaths held in collective anticipation. Of this, she knew, all the courts were the same. Vespera's children, Solis's children—anyone with something to lose and much more to gain hungered for the fall of those like her, the ones who did wrong with their mere, privileged existence.
So much more reason to flaunt it.
"We've met." Curious, Aghavni mirrored O’s casual glance across the room. Looked closer at the figure she had seen, just barely, between swirling skirts and their accompanying wine glasses. Hints of sleek grey materialized first; then, an elaborate headpiece—or was it apart of her?—of a bright coral; finally, as she tugged O forwards by her scarf, a blink of brilliant green eyes.
Almost identical to her own.
All of it together, the grey and the coral and the bright, bright green, presented a perfect picture of—
Anandi, she realized, too slow. The foreign-born Emissary of Dusk.
“Apolonia! How lovely to see you.” As if on cue, out of the parting crowd stepped the emissary herself, swirling to a halt in front of them. With her came a cloud of expensive perfume and a man clad all in red; just by the way he bowed (a beat too eager, a heartbeat too long) Aghavni knew it was his first soiree. The emissary called him Austin.
But not before calling Aghavni—
A stunning friend. Nameless and titleless; a pretty face with nothing more to it. What was your name again, love?
Her greeting, practiced and polished, died abruptly on her tongue. So in place of one, she tilted her head and smiled; the pearls woven into her mane clinked against each other like a symphony of bells. They were enchanted to do so; her father had gifted them to her the last time she'd seen him, months ago.
Even stripped of her scarf, every bit of Aghavni dripped of Hajakhan luxury. But, she noticed, so too did Anandi wear the finery of her bloodline. In a subtler way, perhaps—there it was again, that Terrastellan obsession—but undeniably she wore it: in the gleam of her frills, in the unnatural sleekness of her coat, in the octave pitch of her voice.
If the rumors were true, and rarely were they not, Anandi was a princess too. Of some distant undersea kingdom, peculiar in both its elusive obscurity and its kinship to the sea's creatures.
Or, to quit the euphemism: she was a kelpie.
"O, you neglected to tell me you were acquainted with Dusk's very own emissary," Aghavni said, nudging Apolonia's scarf-clad shoulder with her own (now bare) one. After, and only after, did she sink into a flourishing bow.
"Emissary Anandi, I am Aghavni. Forgive me for not introducing myself earlier, on behalf of the Solterran court. Of course you would not recognize me." Her teeth flashed amicably as she rose. "I have only just been appointed as emissary."
But of course you knew that. Shrewdly, brow lifting ever so slightly, she looked from O to Anandi and decided that she wasn't, in fact, mistaken.
The tension between the two was thick enough to cut. Anandi's green eyes glowed in a mirror-replica of Aghavni's own, and only when she was feeling one thing: jealousy.
So she turned her attention to Austin (but not without wondering: gods, what had she done to deserve this, to land herself in a den of A names on top of unwittingly becoming a piece in a game of jealousy that wasn't even her own). "Rosé, please," she said sweetly, demurely.
Subtle-ly.
She was in Terrastella now; it was only polite to take part in the local customs.
Apolonia is not quite afraid, but she is apprehensive. The feeling of it is electric, sitting coiled in the bottom of her stomach like a viper ready to strike, the tension of it pulling at every muscle in her body.
She tells herself: This isn’t paranoia. I am not being paranoid. I am not paranoid. It’s only smart to be suspicious at a time like this. In a place like this, where everything is bright and sharp and hot, hot, hot. When O swallows, she can feel her heart pounding in her throat; the pulse of it throbs hard and fast, like the beating wings of a hummingbird, perhaps scared suddenly into flight. It all feels like a knife’s edge. A tightrope balancing act. She is about to fall over, about to cross the invisible line.
Then she crosses it.
She crosses it with a smile buried into the slope of her own shoulder, head pulled down to her chest to hide the biting edge of it. She crosses it with shining dark eyes, a playful tug at one of the Emissary’s curls: she crosses it and then pulls back. Isn’t that politics? The heat of Aghavni’s skin against her own is like an animal’s. The glow of her green eyes is as bright and savage as the radioactive end of the world. She is beautiful in the way of all things ferocious and ever-hungry, with raging eyes and teeth like pearls: beautiful in the same unsettling way O is, and Anandi, and every other almost-woman on the planet. That’s why she cares for them so much more than stupid boys. They’re dangerous. They’re far more interesting.
In part this is what makes her stomach sink when she turns and finds Anandi accompanied by some milksop suitor, a lanky, awkwardly built chestnut whose proximity to the Dusk Emissary makes O’s teeth itch, mouth swimming with an unpleasant vinegar. All at once her body has gone tense. Her chest tightens, as if struggling for breath. The room is closing in. The crowd is swirling, becoming denser in different pockets. In the ocean of movement, Anandi and her little friend might very well be lost by anyone who isn’t looking. But oh, they are looking. She and Aghavni are always looking. Always planning. Always careful.
O steps back. She shifts her weight a degree, knits her hip against Aghavni’s. Two girls made of sand, dissolving in a court made of water. Now they are a united front, two for one, twins connected literally at the hip—twins in loyalty and royalty, at least, though (thank the gods) not in blood.
The distance is closing, folding in half, over and over again. O blinks, long and slow, feline, her stance tightens in preparation, hooves planting deeper into the ground, coiled like so much wire ready to go live. But she wears a hint of a smile. A mischievous glint flashes in every eye. By the time the crowd parts, she is relaxed again, weight leaned off a back hoof, looking Austin up and down with an unabashedly derisive gaze. Acid sparkles in the blue of her eyes. She only turns away from him when Anandi and Aghavni exchange their stilted political introductions: this O feels an intense need to watch, filled with complete fascination, for she has never understood this kind of half-measured violence and thinks she never will. It’s like watching aliens.
How lovely to see you.
Who’s your stunning friend?
You neglected to tell me you were acquainted with Dusk's very own emissary.
“Neglect implies it was purposeful. I just…” O licks her lips, curls them into a lazy smile. “Forgot.”
She says it not because it’s true, but because she knows, as certainly as she knows the sky is often blue, it will make Andi terribly angry, unforgettably jealous. She says it because she knows it is her job to start trouble. When O meets the Emissary’s gaze, her eyes say as much, swirling dark and tempestuous, the deep-blue and the drawling curve of her mouth saying: I dare you. I absolutely dare you.
Finally O sighs, glances at Austin. “I don’t drink,” she responds indifferently. “Thanks. So—“ with a nod for each of the girls at her side— “It seems you two have a lot in common.”
It isn’t quite sensory overload. But it comes close. The sight of the two girls together, each beautiful in her own way. Apolonia’s skin brought into sharp contrast with the green silk scarf Anandi so dearly wants to tear off. Aghavni’s pearls, creamy white and singing, stolen from the ocean. Worse than that is the scent of them, warm and rich. Solterran, floral and foreign oils, spiced sweat. And Austin at her hip, sweating bullets, reeking of fear and desire.
Her heart is hammering mess, torn between conflicting desires and duties. And before she can untangle the threads of what it is she wants and what it is she needs, the proverbial apple of her eye says “I just--” and in that instant Anandi knows the next word is going to hit like a hammer on the back of the skull. But there’s not enough time to brace for it-- “forgot”-- and it’s like the rug is pulled from beneath her feet.
She
feels
ugly.
It only lasts a second, maybe two. It’s a new feeling. It’s a terrible one. In response to it, Anandi wants to rip someone’s throat out. Paint the town red. But she can’t very well do that-- not here, not now. Anandi also wants to sit down and cry. Floored, not in a good way. But she can’t very well do that either. Not here, not now. Not when there’s still so much dignity left to lose.
So she straightens her spine and she paints on a smile that is not at all tired, or sad, or lonesome. Meeting Apolonia’s monsoon eyes feels like stepping closer to the edge of a cliff. Anandi does so with a proud jut of her chin. “Oh Apolonia. Such a forgetful girl...” Painfully aware of the civilized company they keep, the kelpie bites back some impolite comment about punishment. But she reaches an invisible hand to tug sharp and sudden on a pretty clump of black mane.
Innocent as sin, her attention flutters to the Solterran Emissary with batted lashes. She returns the bow graciously, coral fringe folding to her poll as she lowers and unfurling as she rises. “Forgive me lady Aghavni, I should have recognized you. On behalf of Terrastella, welcome to the midwinter festival.” The girls drift slowly to the side of the dance floor, pushed by the current of swirling bodies.
“It seems you two have a lot in common,” Apolonia says.
“Oh?” Anandi finds herself deeply threatened by the thought of commonalities. “Well, we have similar eyes don’t we. And at least one mutual friend.” The word friend strained and cold-- ice on the lake that threatens to crack beneath the feet. Anandi glances to the friend in question, then back to her political equal. “Are you also a princess of a faraway tribe? Persecuted by distant cousins? Responsible for the survival of your species? Aquatic and carnivorous by nature?” Although the questions are rattled off one after another by some compulsion she cannot control, Anandi at least has enough composure to keep her tone light and airy. Though there is a growing strain to the edge of her smile. Surely some nasty expression is fighting for control of her face.
The kelpie glances quickly around the room, wondering when the hell Austin would be back. If she could not have someone’s blood, she needed that wine.
You tell me what you know of desire and surrender.
A N A N D I
Around them the dancing crowd pressed in and twirled out again after a burst of jovial laughter—but at what?
Mystified but too proud to turn and look, Aghavni plucked a champagne flute off of a passing tray and took small, measured sips. Bubbles fizzed and burst against her throat, pleasantly ticklish. She was too impatient to wait for Austin's return. When he chose to reappear again she would urge him to take her rosé for himself, and in his fumbling gratitude anticipate a dull sort of amusement.
From behind the sweet, rose-tinted glass of her drink Aghavni swept a coy eye over Anandi. The warping of the fluted glass did nothing to the emissary's image except to magnify it: clear satin skin, tasteful ocean finery, the highborn, near predatory way she held herself. She would rather die than admit it—and the Hajakhas were rarely serious except in matters of their own deaths—but Anandi elicited a fascination in her that she repressed easily enough, yet could not quite forget.
O's blithe remark, however, elicited a different sort of fascination that was so light and feathery Aghavni drowned her laugh in champagne. Wryly she looked at Anandi, this time purposeful—her smile was a reflection of O's own: lazy, indolent, forgivable.
“Oh Apolonia. Such a forgetful girl...” Anandi crooned, and Aghavni was almost dazzled by how effortlessly the blow was deflected. If it were her she could not say, with confidence, that she would have done it better. Yet still she was not fooled—there it lurked, the emissary's anger, in the glint of an eye, the tilt of a chin, the imperceptible tug on Apolonia's black locks. If O and I were proud, she thought, then Anandi is our equal in every way.
Perhaps more.
Austin did not return. Maybe he did know a hopeless cause when he saw it, and they had all discredited him like sneering stepsisters, noses turned to the skies.
“It seems you two have a lot in common." (Twin eyes, positions, titles. The way they held themselves—effortless but not at all, like ducks in a pond, their serenity a sham if only you peeked below the surface.) Aghavni regarded O with a curious half-shrug.
But Anandi spoke first. Aghavni's curls brushed her neck as she handed her glass to an idle waiter; we have similar eyes don’t we? Her spine tingled as the violinist launched into a thrilling vibrato; and at least one mutual friend. The ballroom burst into a frantic waltz, hips jostling hips, scarfs loosening around necks, sweat blurring sculpted hairlines.
A shoulder jostled into her. She stiffened and forgave it with a thin smile.
"Are you also a princess of a faraway tribe? Persecuted by distant cousins? Responsible for the survival of your species? Aquatic and carnivorous by nature?”
Suddenly Aghavni was overcome with sparkling amusement. Her teeth glinted like pearls as she reached forwards and ran her muzzle along Anandi's sleek neck. She smells of perfume, she hummed, and salt, and blood.
"I am neither carnivorous nor aquatic," she laughed, as if it were a shame. And then she spun away, far enough away to dance like a heathen (in a crowd of mystics) but not far enough to lose herself. Elegantly she danced, slim-ankled, swan-necked, in step with the raucous crowd. Sweat beaded along her pale, curling hairline. Roses in buttonholes burst into brighter bloom.
"But unfortunately, Emissary, we are more alike than you may think." The sea of glittering faces broke apart as she twirled dizzily through them, back to Anandi, back to O. The music swelled to a stop, and heaving breaths filled the ringing silence like wine in a chalice. She stopped, too, panting.
"The Hajakhas are a dying breed. My cousins—" she paused, smirking deeply, "—despise my father and in turn me. It is alright, I suppose. I am not so fond of them either."
She stepped aside as the fatigued retreated to fill their glasses, and the young snatched partners for another round. "And finally," she said coolly, "in Solterra my species is not so welcomed as yours."
For the first time, and startled by it—with the pain and sound and suddenness of a gunshot—O recognizes why her mother always liked this kind of thing so much.
In rooms like this one, everything dies in slow motion.
She has never cared for politics much. If at all. That was one of a few things she had inherited from her father—a complete lack of patience for social niceties, an honest-to-god, deep-seated hatred of the way girls and politicians treated each other—evil with slight smiles, weak-spined but always cool. That they could have agreed on, if the timing had been a little better. And like him O had always been better suited to the barrel of the gun than the hilt of it; why waste time talking when a blade could say so much so much quicker?
Ah, but now it all makes sense. Suddenly O recognizes the glitter-strewn, body-packed ballroom for what it is: a battlefield, subtler in nature but with all the same effects, sending a chill of excitement up her spine, curling her lip in a kind of protective sneer. Watching Andi and Aghavni interact is like having front-seat tickets to a gladiator fight. They are so well-practiced that for a moment O almost feels inferior. She’s an observer with an itch to enter the ring but not enough experience to warrant it, blinded and dazzled by the way these girls manage to glare and smile at each other at the same time, the flash of their teeth, the hard glint of the eyes.
For this brief heartbeat of a moment—this sentence held on a taut string of silence—she is in love with them both, the evil girls they are.
And she knows Andi feels the same (or something close to it) because, when O lets her sharp tongue slip, she cannot not notice the way the kelpie’s mouth tightens and her eyes break apart like a seashell at the bottom of a bookbag.
O has no idea what she is looking at.
Who is this girl? It certainly isn’t Anandi. Not the one she knows, at least. And not even close to the one she wants. Even the slightest reaction—the way the emissary blinks a few times in a row when the words hit her, like a startled deer—makes O uncomfortable, self-conscious, like she is witnessing something she was never supposed to. Like she is seeing behind the velvet curtains and finding that the stagemaster is a high-functioning alcoholic.
Andi’s eyes are deep and deep and deep, heart-swallowing deep, earth-shattering deep, and all the broken pieces of them are beginning to knit back together, and everything rings with a regretful pain, and O thinks: I am going to die. Her chest aches. Is this horror or sympathy? (It hurts either way.)
O blinks, and—
Knows, suddenly, sharply, and instinctively—knows, with a sinking, body-numbing certainty—that she was in that dark, soft place for much longer than she had intended.
Aghavni is returning to their circle from a dance O cannot remember her beginning; and Andi is standing in the same place, still as a statue, but radiating with a heat and irritation that simply was not there before. The room falls silent as partners break off and the violin trails away. O can hear the ringing in her ears, and that’s almost worse then the crushing loudness; and then Aghavni speaks, smirking breathlessly, and that is even worse still. In Solterra my species is not so welcomed as yours, she says, and despite herself,
Apolonia cringes.
It’s a millisecond, there and gone. But the fact that it even happened—that she thought for a moment, and seriously, about defending Anandi over Aghavni—makes her hate herself. What would her mother say? What, now, of loyalty? O wants to fight someone just to prove she’s still capable of it, not just some love-struck teenager. Makes her want to back away slowly. Makes her want to screw her eyes up and let it all melt away and away and away.
O rolls her lip between her teeth until it splits and aches and her nostrils fill with the hard scent of blood.
She does not know what to say; in fact, she feels incapable of saying anything.
So she mouths to Anandi, silently, with a look half-pleading, I’m sorry. I missed you.
Anandi declines the platter of champagne that sweeps past, feeling deeply thirsty but also very self-aware after learning Apolonia wasn’t drinking. Aghavni swirls and sips with enviable grace, her stunning green eyes magnified by the glass as she slyly glances through it at Anandi. Once emissary to another, each sizing the other up and finding, finding--
finding conclusions they kept close, pieces in an elaborate board game.
It enrages Anandi to think that Apolonia would be playing for the other side, so she very forcefully does not think of it. She settles her attention heavily on the Solterran emissary, eyes lingering on lips as she says “I am neither carnivorous nor aquatic,” and smiling primly. I thought so. Her eyes continue to follow the girl as she whirls on the floor with ease, the whole crowd spinning now lithe as fallen leaves in an eddy of wind.
She thinks to herself “Do not look at Apolonia. Do not look at Apolonia.” Even as the entire left side of her body, angled toward the Solterran beauty, simmers with heat and barely suppressed desire. She leans in ever so slightly. Even after her shame, her jealousy, her wounded pride, she wants Apolonia like the ocean wants the moon.
Self control is immensely easier with Aghavni’s return. At least for a moment. She’s panting-- Anandi can smell her breath, sweet champagne; it makes her want to swim-- the heave of her chest suggestive of all that beautiful blood, surging in and out of the heart, in and out in waves that make Andi weak. She glances away, shoving down the hunger. It was so hard, sometimes, just to be civilized.
"The Hajakhas are a dying breed. My cousins— despise my father and in turn me. It is alright, I suppose. I am not so fond of them either.”
“Oh.” She chews her lip, frowning thoughtfully. If she weren’t so pretty, the gesture might seem childish or crass; instead it’s alluring. Who wouldn’t want to play those lips with their teeth?
“And finally, in Solterra my species is not so welcomed as yours.”
She sighs. "Well..." It is not easy, the transition she is about to make. Or rather, it is not easy to do it well. But Anandi and Aghavni and even Apolonia, they’re the kind of girls to whom things come easily, or at least appear to. The world, at their fingertips, trembles and leans in. They shaped reality by merely existing, moved crowds by sheer force of personality. They would make great enemies of each other, but greater still allies. Andi recognizes it, grudgingly-- it was so hard to deny herself the assertion of dominance her sharklike instincts craved-- and when she finally grins it is without the cruel edge of a jealous lover.
“Well I think some day we could be fine friends.” Well, “friends” was an odd choice of words; she says it with a laughter in her warm green eyes that won’t go unnoticed. Allies would have been better put-- if they had a common enemy, the young women would surely be a force to be reckoned with. “I would like to hear more about your family sometime, and tell you more of mine.” Her smile grows coy, suggestive of more private venues for such a conversation.
Before she can say something else, she’s sharply thrown off by the scent of blood. Apolonia. Green eyes snap to blue and yellow with an expression that isn’t sure what it wants to be-- surprised, concerned, predatory-- and lowers to look at the bloodied lip (a second too long, was that part of Apolonia’s plan?) with a kind of thoughtful relief.
She nods at Apolonia curtly, we’ll talk later, and picks up once again the bemused smile that has painted her lips all evening. Her entire mouth would be sore for days from all this damn smiling.
“I didn’t mean to turn the conversation to such… serious matters. Shall we dance?” The crowd is beginning some group dance she has no idea the steps to, but it is repetitive and seemingly simple. Normally she would not volunteer herself for such an activity, but it is late enough in the night that clearly nobody cares about who else is embarrassing themselves. There are others who clearly have no idea what they’re doing, or else are too drunk to coordinate their hooves.
And if she has the opportunity to brush shoulders and hips with such beautiful company, bouncing from one sweet, infuriating desire to the next... well, that’s hardly an opportunity she could pass up. As torturous as it was, the very edge of self control was her favorite place to be.
