The wedding feast is lavish. We're seated at the head of an ornately carved table, with various lords, ladies, and hangers-on gathered around us. The coterie makes me feel claustrophobic. They're like animals examining me, inhaling my scent, deciding whether or not to induct me into their pack. I forget their names as soon as they're spoken. Wine helps to soothe my nerves and makes the company more bearable. By my second glass, their stupid jokes become mildly amusing.

Sholu charms them, of course, offering stories and witty banter, asking after their families. They orbit him like satellites. I wonder what that makes me. Some small moon pulled along by his indominable gravity, perhaps. I wonder if they sense the blackness of space all around us like I do.

"Eat," Sholu says, his eyes sparkling with mirth. "It's a spread of the finest delicacies money can buy. Mirrenovese dates, Yi'ili caviar, Macchonesi cheese, Qaythian wine."

"Fresh as a blushing virgin, and far more expensive," a nearby lord jokes loudly.

I chew and swallow mechanically. We're in a grand ballroom almost identical to the one used the night of the founder's feast. I wince, pulled back in time by the peculiar alchemy of memory. That night is still so vivid I can almost taste the roast duck and mulled wine. I'm certainly not tasting any of the food in front of me.

"For my bride price," I whisper, my eyes tracing Sholu's jeweled buttons. "I'd like a chest full of rubies."

"What?" he asks between bites.

"Nothing," I say. The room spins. I wish it was just from the wine. Suddenly every drunken man is Haim and every laughing girl, Alya. My hands clench into fists as fireworks burst so deafeningly above me it's a wonder I'm the only one who can hear them. When the band begins to play the haunting notes of Norakelli's azsurette, I start to hyperventilate. I'm dancing again. There's a crack and a sickening moment of silence before Alya screams, her weight falling forward onto me. My hands fumble over her abdomen, trying desperately to staunch the bleeding, but I know she's already gone. They all are.

I stand up abruptly and half-run to the nearest open door, which leads out onto a flowering terrace. The night air helps clear my head. It's hard to feel trapped when you're domed by a million stars, each shedding their fragile light onto the shadowed sands below. The past withdrawals its claws and I can breathe again. I can hear the clinking of glasses and muffled voices at my back, mingling strangely with the music of night insects and the distant roar of the river.

"Are you alright?" Sholu asks, appearing too soon at my elbow.

"Stupid question, Mesviraste," I murmur, keeping my distain quiet enough that only we will hear it.

"Okay," he amends. "Are you about as alright as you were when the music started? Did you drink too much? Was the food too rich?"

"I'm not sick," I say, putting more space between us. "It just- it looks the same, okay?"

His brows knit together in confusion. "The same as what?"

"There are four ballrooms," I clarify, staring out over the blue desert. Some ill-timed bird is calling, though the sun has long since set. "Almost identical to each other. My family died in one of them. I almost did, too. I just, I can't be in that room right now."

He sighs. I wait for him to taunt me, to call me weak. Instead, he says "I had the house the Shotori noraya used as a base burned to near nothing. Everyone thought it was a statement, a sign of victory, I suppose. Kanza Arishai killed Liro and everyone close to him, I come back later and kill Kanza and his ilk and torch the place." His eyes suddenly look very far away, like he's joined the stars in the sky above me. A night breeze rustles his kata, tangling the tails until they're nearly inseparable. "But really, I just couldn't stand to leave the place standing. It followed me everywhere, memories of what went on there. I thought that destroying it would set me free somehow."

"Did it?" I ask in spite of myself.

"No," he replies with a sad smile. "I still find myself walking the halls sometimes, in my dreams. Sleeping in my old room. Sitting round a table, dividing coin. Drinking myself silly at a table with Liro and his kin." He fingers a locket hanging around his neck that must have been tucked under his collar previously. "We could try again, though," he says. "how about this. We board up this room when the night is over. Hell, we board up all four of the grand ballrooms that look like it and just build new ones. Off the east wing, perhaps. The parties might be a bit cramped for a time, but our esteemed guests can shoulder that inconvenience."

"Don't bother. It wouldn't change anything," I say, holding onto the railing so tightly my hands blanch white. "Don't you get it? I see them everywhere. Everything reminds me of how life used to be. You could build a thousand ballrooms and none of that would alter. You can't rewrite history."

"But the present is still ours," he counters.

"No," I say simply, meeting his steely eyes and gesturing behind me. "It's yours. The palace, Arzsa, Shikkah. Me," I grimace and look away. "None of it is mine anymore."

"It can be," he offers. "We're riverbound, O'otani. What's mine is yours, by right."

"By right," I sneer, turning toward him with brimstone in my eyes. "By right Shira is deme and you're on your back in the whorehouse where your mother whelped you! Don't talk to me of right, Sholu Verlaina. I can't bear it."

"Right is a funny word, isn't it?" he asks pedantically. "I knew someone once whose favorite expression was 'there is what is right, and what is left.'" he smiles, but there's sadness hiding in his eyes. "Being right is easy, self-evident, even, but what do you do when you're what's left?" He stares down at me with in inscrutable expression. "When you're standing in the ashes of what used to be, grasping for solidity, how do you bear it?"

"Oh, joy," I laugh bleakly. "A lecture on morality and the nature of truth from the devil himself." His words, though, hit too close to home. How can he understand that about me, when I barely understand it myself?

"It just, it looks the same," he says, leaning forward over the balcony railing. The delicate petals of a besthane bush brush against his hands as the night wind rustles them. "Okay?"

"The same as what?" I ask, realizing as I do that we've just repeated our earlier conversation verbatim, albeit reversed.

"Your story and mine," he whispers, watching me with a challenge in his eyes.

I meet it. "I knew you were a twisted son of a bitch," I spit, "but even I can't imagine what turns of logic led you to that conclusion. The same, Sholu? Did you watch your entire family get shot in front of you? Were you locked in a room for a month by your worst enemy, and then taken out and paraded around like some- some exotic pet? Tell me, my lord, were you?" I laugh darkly, not waiting for his response before continuing. "No, you weren't, and our situations are nothing alike. I didn't kill your family."

"No, you didn't," he admits. "But your family did."

I stand in stunned silence for a moment before spluttering "that's completely absurd."

"Do you really not know?" He asks, stepping closer. I hold my ground, refusing to step back and let him know how far off balance he's thrown me.

"There's nothing to know!" I protest. "They didn't do it. Of course they didn't. It's ridiculous."

"They did," he counters boldly, stepping closer still. There are storms in his eyes and his smile has become a snarl. "The Shotori noraya was my family, O'otani, in every way but blood. I watched Kanza Arizsai cut them down late one night with a confidence born from the blessing of the dizsa."

"Somitu wouldn't-"

"Wouldn't what?" He asks mockingly. "Wouldn't pay Liro's own nephew to slit his throat in his sleep?" He pauses. "Kanza was a coward and a fool. He never would have acted without the explicit backing of your family. He didn't have the balls."

"Why would Somitu give a damn about-"

"The leader of the biggest gang in Shikkah, who was swimming in coin during the droughts that left her treasury empty? The man people whispered could be king if he'd only reach out and pluck the crown from her brow? Why, yes, I can't imagine her taking an interest in him," he says mockingly. "Whispers become shouts when people are hungry and desperate. They were looking for something, someone, to believe in. She was right to fear a revolution." He sighs, running his fingers through his hair as some of the tension leaves his face. "I know it was political, not personal. Power is a war. Hell, I'd have done the same. I have done the same," he amends. "The difference is, I actually give a shit about the people of Shikkah. I avoided a civil war," he adds darkly. "She started one."

"So what, then?" I challenge, my voice rising. "So what if she took advantage of an opportunity to eliminate an unknown variable? If Liro's kin were willing to turn on him like mad dogs for a few coppers, why shouldn't she help them destroy themselves? Do you think I'm going to drop to my knees weeping for the dead criminals you call family, Sholu? Because I promise you, I'm not."

"The norayasti had children, too. Babies, O'otani," his voice is quiet, yet heavy with rage. "And drunken uncles, and treacherous, backstabbing siblings, and shining girls with golden hair. Sound familiar?"

"It sounds like you trying to justify your own evil through specious arguments!" I throw back. "You're saying the situations are the same, but I don't believe you!"

"It doesn't matter what you believe, it's still true!" he snarls. "Do you know who else they shot that night, O'otani? Do you? Most people don't. It happened long before my name carried currency, and I never talk about it, so people forget. But I never do, not for one goddamned day." There's something wild in his eyes. "Her name was Lizsa Korahaim," he says, clutching the locket hanging around his neck like it's his still-beating heart. "She was my wife. She was four months pregnant with what should have been my first born child. So, you're right," he sneers, "what happened to me isn't the same as what happened to you. It's worse." With that he turns on his heels and stalks inside.

The darkness around me no longer feels liberating. The sky is full of jagged edges, and the starlight is crawling its way to earth through a blanket of oblivion. Where I'm standing no longer feels safer than the confined space of the ballroom. I wait a moment for the color in my face to fade, then head slowly back inside.

I find Sholu talking with a couple I don't know. His face is a mask of mirth, eyes sparkling as he laughs and claps the man on the back. The strong currents of his emotions don't touch his hard, bright, glittering exterior; like the iridescent shell of a beetle. A dance is about to start and he holds his hand out to me, a summons. I take it; not doing so would draw too much attention. At least the tempo is livelier than Norakelli.

Now that I'm closer to him, I can see embers of the former fire banked in his eyes. "We are what is left," he says softly as the music starts, lifting my chin with his finger so I'm forced to meet his gaze. "You asked me once why I chose you. Why I cared," he drops his hand and pulls me into position, a strong frame as the violins pick up their pace. All the light in the room seems to be focused on him, like he's a void drawing it towards himself to mitigate a fundamental emptiness. "Because you're like me, O'otani, and this way, neither of us have to spend the rest of our lives with a loneliness none can touch eating a hole in our center. We don't have to lie to each other. Don't you see how easy it could be?"

"No," I reply coldly. "I don't. And just because we're what's left doesn't make it right for us to be together, Sholu. It just doesn't work that way."

"Why not?" He asks, spinning me out and then back to him. He holds me close a second longer than he needs to. "Why shouldn't we get a second chance? Why shouldn't we be happy, too?"

"Because we're damned," I whisper softly. "That's all."

"That's nothing," he counters. "Damned is just a word, O'otani. We use it when people dare to break away from the established roads and cut a new path for themselves through the undergrowth. A path we later pave and use, swearing we always intended it to be there. Damned only lasts as long as you let it."

"You really believe that, don't you?" I ask. "I think damned lasts as long as the goddess herself, Sholu, and she's infinite."

"We could be, too."

"Let me ask you one thing," I say sweetly, turning in time with the music. "What did you do to the people who shot your wife? Did you absolve them, wed them, share their bed? Did you tie your fortune to theirs? Or did you take them apart piece by piece like broken-down machines?" He looks away and I know I've made my point. "That's what I thought," I conclude as the music stops and our hands drop. 

____

So, this is probably the most information I've shared about Sholu and his backstory in one chapter. Hopefully, you get a better idea of where he's coming from with his insanity. Friendly warning that the next chapter will feature some sexual content, so skip ahead if that bothers you. It's more weird than sexy, really, which is my style summarized in one sentence. Thanks again for reading!