WARNING: This chapter contains references to sexual abuse. Nothing is detailed or graphic, but it is there. 

- S

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"Enough preamble. Make this simple, alright? I'm hungry. Actually, why don't you call some of your underlings to bring us food?"

"They're not underlings, O'otani, and there's food waiting for us on the fifth floor balcony."

I look at him for a long moment, wondering if he knows where Shira was standing that night. If he does, he doesn't show it.

"Come on, then," he says.

"You're only wearing pants and I'm in a silk nightdress, Sholu. We can't just walk down the hall like this."

"Of course we can," he laughs. "We're the demedizsa. I don't intend to have anyone but us dictate how we behave in our palace. Anyways, I had them clear out of the far end of the west wing so we could have some privacy."

I pull on a ridiculous light green silk robe that dusts the floor as I walk. One of my esteemed ladies in waiting must have left it. It seems like Tovila's taste, or lack thereof. Sholu remains shirtless, just slipping on a pair of sandals before closing the door behind us.

"You look fucking ridiculous."

"I'm not the one in that ruffled monstrosity. Anyways, it's not like anyone got naked last night. It seems fitting that at least one of us is half dressed during the first day of our bezsai-aralya." The week after a wedding is literally called 'the sweetest nights.' If we had any real affection for each other, it would be romantic. As it is, I'm caught between feeling glad we're away from the prying eyes of the vasayaste and uneasy that Sholu and I will be spending so much time together.
We walk slowly through the silent halls. I let him lead, watching the corded muscle of his back as he walks. Each time he takes a step, his skin shifts and his myriad scars become more visible. Some are very old, faded to a only a thin white line. Others are thicker, the skin never having returned to normal after healing. The newest wounds are still shades of red and purple. I trace their destructive path with my eyes, trying to count how many times he's been hurt, and by what.

We walk up the stairs and out onto the balcony. I inhale the clean air, trying to clear my head of his miasma. Small white birds perched on the high-backed wooden chairs eye the covered food hungrily. Sholu shoos them away and sits down. As I do the same, he reveals a basket of bread, jams, and thick pastries. There's foreign fruit and I wonder how he had it imported without it rotting.

"So," I say as I take a bite out of a scone. He reaches forward and brushes his thumb across my chin. I rear back.

"You had crumbs," he explains.

"So," I continue a little louder. "Tell me a story, because that's all this will ever be. Your knowledge is, what, fourth hand? Still, perhaps it will be entertaining drivel."

"Where do I begin?" he sighs, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. "With Lusca, I suppose. Lizsa's mother wasn't norayasti, O'otani. She wasn't there of her own volition, at least not at first. She was running."

"From what?"

"From whom," he corrects. "From Deme Sorzsa Amarin."

"Explain."

"Lusca was from a respectable family. Not wealthy, but they did well for themselves. She and Amsol grew up together. Amsol's first husband, the man Sorzsa killed? That was Isham Lukai, Lusca's older brother. They grew even closer after losing him, and Lusca went to the palace with Amsol as her lady. She lived there for a decade, and Amsol told her everything."

"Why was she running, Sholu?"

"Because the night that Amsol died, she tried to take Somitu from the palace. Amsol's last wish was that her daughter grow up as far from her own father as possible, and so Lusca bundled the girl up and made for the harbor. Amsol had had a plan in place for years. She contacted the noraya because they know how to smuggle things, and people, out of Shikkah."

"Why did Amsol want her daughter to go abroad? It makes no sense. She was favored by her father from a young age. Everyone saw it. Arjuuna tried to have her killed five years later because he feared that she'd be given his title and inheritance instead. She had power, money, security, so why leave?"

"Because Amsol saw that Sorzsa favored his daughter and she was afraid he'd do to her what he did to his own sister Mirana. To this day, I wonder if your grandfather really died of natural causes, or if Mirana slipped him something. She tried to get Lusca and Somitu out of the city, and they almost made it. But he found them. So Lusca ran. The Noraya took her in and she stayed, married one of Liro's cousins, and started a family. She never forgot Amsol, though.

"You're saying that her own father- that's sick, even for you, Mesviraste. Maybe that sort of thing happens among the noraya thugs you called family, but not among the highborn sons and daughters of the dimaraste."

"That's what everyone says," he sighs. "Impossible. Incorrigible. That sort of thing never happens here. But you know what?" He leans forward like he's going to take my hand, but he's just reaching for another pastry. "Everything happens everywhere. No one group is exempt. Evil doesn't knock at a door and bow low when it's opened by a king. It's the most powerful who do the worst damage, O'otani, simply because they can. And the noraya? Maybe the others were different, but if Liro knew a Shotori man had touched a child, he'd have cut his heart out and fed it to his mangy dogs. We were brutal, yes, and criminal in the eyes of the law. But we weren't that kind of predatory."

"Well, there you have it," I say between bites. "A sordid and definitively dramatic rendition of what you claim to be truth, but I know is just another smoke show. The word of one of Amsol's ladies two decades after the fact isn't exactly reliable testimony."

"No," he agrees. "But your mother's was."

My head snaps up. "What did you just say?"

"Didn't you ever wonder how Somitu came to power? She's gone for years, comes home clutching a foreign bastard to her chest, and they choose to put a crown on her son's brow over their own legitimate heir, over you?"

"My mother was not well liked. Somitu was the golden child. She always knew how to twist things her way, and she was persuasive as hell."

"It went against a thousand years of tradition to pass you over, O'otani. Ask yourself what leverage she could have had, what she possibly could have known that would scare the aunts and uncles into rewriting history with Shira in the lead and you, the supporting part? You say she knew how to twist things, well, I think she just told them she'd untwist them. Lay out each strand of the story so all of Shikkah new your family's shame. Knew what they hid."

"It's impossible, and even if it wasn't, none of them could've known. They wouldn't have-"

"What, shielded him? Closed rank to protect their image? You already know he was a man who got a woman into his bed by slitting her husband's throat and pointing the same knife at her family. Is it really that much of a stretch to think him capable of deeper depravity, or your family of louder silence?"

"It's impossible," I repeat, but I'm not sure anymore.

"Your mother confirmed my suspicions," he says. "She said it was blackmail. She wanted me to understand that Somitu and Shira weren't given power, they took it. Apparently the heavy consciences of several of the great aunts and uncles helped tip the scales in the returned prodigal daughter's favor. Kyoro was bitter as hell and she wanted Somitu gone. She took the first chance she got to try and turn those same scales back in your favor. Instead, she helped turn them in mine."

"She didn't know."

"No, she didn't know what I had planned. She was going to kill me when it was over to tie up loose ends. I didn't turn on her, O'otani. She turned on me, just like she turned on her own sister. I felt sorry for Amsol and Somitu, but she just blamed them. She said that the only difference between her and Somitu was that Somitu lacked the grace and loyalty to stay quiet."

"She would have told me," I say softly. "If that had happened to her, she would have told me."

"Amarins don't tell. They bite their tongue until it bleeds to maintain a comfortable silence. They play god, and they'll pay nearly any price to keep the mortals around them from seeing their own sins." He holds the basket of sweets out to me, motioning for me to take another, but our conversation has turned my stomach. When I don't take any, he puts the basket down and continues.

"Didn't you ever wonder why she was so hostile to your father?"

"He died before I was four years old. I don't remember him. I know they didn't get along."

"But she waited until she had a daughter to leave her husband's house. Like Lusca, she took a child away because she was frightened history would repeat itself. No wonder she was so angry that Somitu got to lead while she was left with all of the damage of the abuse and none of the mitigating factors

"No," I protest, but as soon as I do an image flashes before my eyes. A memory I'd almost forgotten. I'm all of seven years old and my uncle Nather is in my room. I'm sitting on his lap while he tells me stories. My mother walks in, looking for me, and she freezes for a moment. Her eyes widen and she rushes over, gathering me in her arms and pulling me away from him. She says something sharp to him, I don't hear what. I'm too young to wonder why.

"Oh my god," I breathe, dropping the flaky pastry my nervous fingers are unrolling. Sholu picks it up and takes a bite, seeming nonplussed at my moment of revelation. "They couldn't have known. They would have protected them if they had known..."

He snorts. "Like they protected Amsol."

"She wasn't an Amarin."

"No, she wasn't," he says, his eyes flashing silver. "She was just a merchant's daughter. So she didn't matter, right? She wasn't worth fighting for."

"I never said that."

"Do you even know how they treated her? Half of them thought she'd used her fair face to manipulate Sorzsa into marrying her. They said that she refused to be his mistress and insisted he abandon his second wife, so they called her a whore behind her back. Your family did not protect little girls. It did not protect Shikkah. It protected itself, and it protected the way things have always been. That's all." He takes another bite, dripping jam onto his naked chest. "But you know what? The way things have always been is absolute shit."

"Stop," I say, quieter than I mean to.

"Why should I stop telling the truth?"
"Please," I whisper, closing my eyes so I don't have to look into his. "Please just stop. I can't do this right now, Sholu." When I open my eyes, his have softened considerably. He reaches across the table impulsively and takes my hand. I'm surprised that I let him.

"I'm sorry," he says, and he sounds sincere. "I wasn't trying to hurt you. I promise I won't hurt you, okay? And I don't just mean right now. I won't force you. I won't hit you. I won't be the man you expect me to be, and I'll pray that in time you'll see who I really am."

"You won't hurt me," I whisper, chuckling softly. "Don't you mean that you won't hurt me any more than you already have?"

"That's right," he replies without a hint of irony. "What's done is done, but we don't have to be undone by it."

"How convenient for you. A perfect way to escape consequences, isn't it?"

"Don't you get it?" he asks, exasperated. "I am the consequences. If your family hadn't fucked up this badly, if Somitu hadn't supported Kanza, if Kyoro hadn't come to me and asked me to slit her sister's throat, if she hadn't planned to do the same to me, none of this would have happened."

"Then we're both consequences," I say, seeing more of the truth than I ever wanted to. "I built my entire identity around someone else because I thought that there was something broken inside of me. They passed me over, Sholu. They changed centuries of direct inheritance to put an illegitimate child before me. When I was a girl, I used to look in the mirror and try to see whatever it was they saw in me that unfit me to rule. And all this time, all this fucking time, it was never about me. Never about Shira. It was about a man we never met. I was just collateral damage."

"We aren't the beasts, O'otani," he tells me seriously. "We're their heirs. We inherit their unfinished business, their wars, their secrets, even their scars. We move across a chess board they set long before we were even born. The past catches up to them and finds them gone, or changed, so it takes us instead; we are their blood, after all. We're handed our script and expected to take it willingly. Well, I didn't like mine, and I don't think you liked yours either."

"I loved my family," I say. "I loved Shira."

"Loved," he murmurs. "You realize this is the first time you've used the past tense?"

"It was a slip of the tongue," I tell "This doesn't change anything, alright? Maybe you did complicate things a little, but you didn't complicate the fundamental truths. I love my family, I love Shira, and I hate you. I hate both of us."

"I know," he replies. "But I love you, O'otani."

"You don't- you don't get to say that to me," I sputter, realizing with a flash of horror that my hand is still resting casually in his. I jerk it away like I've been burned, eyes wild, ears ringing with words that would be funny if they weren't so cruel.

"You don't get to call this love," I spit, hot rage flooding me. "You want me to think it's a virtue, that you became fixated on me? That you have some fantasy in your head so out of sync with reality that it's laughable? You say you died that night with Lizsa and your body just didn't know it yet. Well, I die every day I live this lie by your side."

"You feel so much," he says. "All of the time. I see it in your eyes, each wave of emotion cresting and crashing down. Sometimes you seem to drown beneath them and I think it's a weakness. At others, they bolster you and you rise on the swell. I envy you, sometimes," he says quietly, staring into my eyes with an unfamiliar honesty. "I used to feel that way. A chaotic symphony inside of me, all love and war and motion. It got me into trouble, but hell, I was so fucking alive. And then somewhere along the line I forgot how to feel anything at all." He pauses, then adds quieter "until I met you."

"I suppose you'll say the passion you felt for me set your broken heart beating again?"

He actually laughs. "You think I'm speaking of love, you mad little thing? No, that came much later. I'm talking about anger. Rage. To have a slip of a girl walk into my territory and upbraid me like no one had in a decade because I dared to insult her beloved prince? I wanted to tear you apart with my bare hands. I hated you as you paced around that tent like a cat in a cage, yowling about treason and the grasping hands of little lords. When your mother rebuked you and you turned to stone instead, I hated your silence," he says, still taking intermittent bites of the fucking pastry. "But I loved that hate. I loved that you made me feel something so strongly. The world of the vasayaste is tepid compared to the noraya; there's less soul, and the blood is so much thinner. I know it sounds strange, but that rush of anger was intoxicating. It felt like coming home."

"Only you would claim that you fell in love with me because you hated me."

"That's not why," he corrects. "That's just why I wanted to see you again. Why I went home that night and thought of you. And as I thought of you," he tells me "so much came rushing back. Memories I'd tucked away like old coats for a different season and forgotten about. Flashes of light and color so brilliant I could paint them. I'd walked among phantoms for a decade, O'otani, but that night they all came back to life. I felt so close to them all, like I could reach out and touch them if I chose. And I realized that I'd recognized you that day in the red tent."

"We had never met before."

"Not literally," he explains. "You were aggressive. Sharp. Dogmatic. All the vasayaste were kissing my ring and you literally spat at me. That arrogant fire... you reminded me of the norayasti I knew. It made you familiar before we ever spoke. And I thought to myself, what must it be like for a girl like that to grow up swaddled in silk and Amarin gold?" He chuckles. "And then I didn't feel angry at you anymore. I felt... almost grateful."

"You have strange appetites if a woman spitting at you pleases you."

"It pleased me to find a challenge, and to find something familiar in a daughter of the dimaraste."

"Why?"

"Because you were impossible," he tells me. "Your mother sat there with her neatly folded hands, soft voice, and perfect manners. Every smile was an equivocation, every glance perfectly calculated. She kept her emotions far from her face and she spoke in half-truths, but you? Your every thought and feeling cast shadows in your eyes. You told me exactly what you thought of me. Hell, the second time we met, you pulled a knife on me. In no world should an Amarin have that spirit inside of them. You were a changeling, I thought. A baby taken in the night that never forgot her beginnings."

"I am an Amarin to my core," I mutter. "Whatever your strange identification makes you believe."

"No, you aren't," he laughs. "You just told me you spent your girlhood looking in the mirror, trying to find the part of yourself they thought was foreign. That wasn't just because they passed you over for Izsai, was it?" His eyes almost seem to glow as his speech quickens. "You tried so fucking hard to be, but you were never one of them. They knew it, you knew it."

"Shut your goddess-damned mouth!" I growl, standing up abruptly and overturning a carafe of tea precariously perched on the table. "I am an Amarin. I've always been an Amarin, and even if there are no Amarins left, I will always be an Amarin. So what if I didn't fold my hands and keep my eyes on the ground? That doesn't mean I'm not dimarastisi. It's in my blood, Sholu; it's down to my marrow." My voice rises in volume as the tea soaks through the tablecloth and drips onto my slippered feet. "You insulted my Izsai. I was enraged. So, what, you're going to tell me that just because I forgot myself in one moment of passion I'm a changeling? I'm foreign?"

"No," he says smoothly. "Not because of one moment's passion. Because when you drew that knife on me and looked into my eyes, I knew to my own marrow that you weren't bluffing. You really could kill me. Sink that knife into my gut and twist, then watch the light fade from my eyes without crying or screaming or retching. I saw that you had set your violence to work in service of your family, but it was a thin bridle, just waiting to be broken. You were already so close to falling from that cloud-lined palace. I wanted to catch you. Hell, I wanted to push you. I wanted to see what your face looked like when you hit the ground."

"You're a fucking psychopath," I say through gritted teeth. "And you're wrong. About everything."

"No, I'm not," he says. "I'm absolutely right about this. You were born an Amarin, but you were your own person from the first breath you took. You were drawn to emotions and experiences they couldn't conceive of. You reached your fists into the darkness, grabbing for it, telling yourself you wanted to cut it out when what you really wanted was to understand it."

"You're wrong!" I shout, throwing my hands down on the table and leaning over so we're face to face, eye to eye. I'm breathing fast, panting, practically. "I am O'otani Koritzu Amarin, Izsaiki of Arzsa, bloodbound of Amshira, blessed of Aramizsa and beloved of Zsavina. I am the blood of Kyoro Iraat Amarin, daughter of the deme, later sister to the dizsa of Shikkah!"

"You know that saying it louder doesn't make it any more true, don't you?" His bemused expression and mocking tone throw me over the edge. "How fucking dare you tell me you love me," I spit, colliding with him with enough force to knock his chair backwards and throw both of us to the ground. I hit him hard, my left fist connecting with his eye socket. He makes a sound that I think is a moan of pain, but I realize as he stares up at me with an eye already swelling shut that he's laughing.

"I love you," he says again, and he kisses me. His mouth tastes like blood. Like the iron of a sword. His words cut just as deeply, but at this moment his tongue is otherwise occupied.

I wrap my arms around his throat, seeing myself reflected in the shine of his pupils. "Is this what you want, you sick fuck?" I shout. "Is this what you think love is, choking each other over tea and sweets?"

"Well, you are straddling me," he muses, one hand rising to grip the curve of my waist, the other my hip as he quickly and easily rolls on top of me, removing my hands from his neck and holding them over my head while I continue to curse and gnash my teeth at him. "Or, you were straddling me," he amends. "We're half naked. It's the morning of our bezsai-aralya and there's blood on the ground. You tell me."

"I'll tell you to go to hell, you stupid, stupid, stupid son of a bitch!" I yowl, arching up in an attempt to pull away from his iron grip. All I succeed in doing is pushing my body into his. His heat suffuses my already flushed skin, adding to the fire burning so brightly inside of me. "I'll tell you that this isn't love. I'll tell you that you dishonor us both when you use that word, that you dishonor your Lizsa who maybe actually gave a shit whether you lived or died!"
"I told you I died, damn it!" He shouts back. "Didn't I? I told you that I died that night with her." Well, you're the closest thing I've ever seen to resurrection. Don't tell me I have no honor. Don't tell me I don't know what love is. Love is madness and bruises and pain and pleasure so bright it blinds you. If not love, what should I call it when I look at your face and see a future I'd long since given up on? What does it mean when being around you sets my blood aflame with rage, with passion, with life? Do you know how long it's been since I felt anything at all?"

"Do you know how long it's been since I felt happy? Safe? Like a girl instead of a ghost?" I ask in a broken voice that rises to a shout before my words run out. "Do you think I wanted this? I live by fire and ice. Everything is so fucking cold all of the time, and then you come near me and I'm burning with a rage that I can't contain. My anger seems to belong to someone far older than I'll ever be." By now I'm screaming up at him, spittle flying in his face. "If you love me, Sholu, you love a waning moon. You love the echo of an unfinished sentence. You love, what was it you called me? Oh, yes: nothing at all. Because of you, I am nothing at all, and I will never forgive you for that!"

"Because of me, you are the highest ranking woman in Shikkah!" He snaps. "Do you even hear yourself? Do you ever stop in the middle of your rampant self-pity and gawk at your own blindness, because let me tell you, darling, I do," he says with his signature sneer. It's a wonder that one look can be so infuriating. I wonder if he practiced it in front of the glass as a boy to find the perfect ratio of condescension to brazen arrogance, or if he was born with it already tattooed permanently onto his face. "To have so much at your fingertips, so much you could have if you'd only reach out and grasp it and pull it towards you, and yet to see such a barren waste of a world- it's incredibly self-indulgent."

"Me? Self-indulgent?" I ask, taken aback by his seemingly bottomless gall. "This from the lips of the man who staged a whole hanging for the theatrical satisfaction of cutting me free from the noose? The man who imports goddess knows how much foreign food and clothes and liquors? The man who gives speeches because he's aroused by the sound of his own voice?"
"Aroused, now, am I?"

"You don't get to call me self-indulgent. You don't get to tell me you love me. You don't- Sholu, I won't stand for it. Any of it!"

"No," he says. "You'll just fall for it all over again. The same old trap, even now."

"I do not fall for traps," I say in a voice as caustic as acid. "And I don't fall in love with poison. That is what you are to me, husband. A toxin to be leeched from the blood lest you spoil it with your black heart!" I look down pointedly, my lips twisting into a spiteful smile. "I bet your member is every bit as shrunken and shrivelled as your stunted soul. I bet both are invisible to the naked eye-"

"You deflect with vitriol and insults," he tells me. "And you talk over me, louder and louder, because you're afraid of the truth in what I have to say."

"Bullshit."

"Okay, then," he challenges, raising his sharp eyebrows and grinning an infuriating grin. "Stop your baying and listen to me. You aren't nothing at all- you're so wrong about that, O'otani. You're everything, all fire and light and brash music sewed up into a sinewy body. If you think you're nothing at all, it's not because of me. It's because your family could not stomach all of what you were and you unmade yourself trying to become who they wanted you to be. You neutered yourself adhering to their limpid expectations. They rejected you. They failed to protect your mother and aunts. And still, you rejected yourself and embraced them!" he stops, drawing in a deep breath before continuing. "And now they're trying to swallow you from beyond the grave. Your guilt eats you alive, and that is what turns you into nothing at all. You would rather be a sinner than let go of your holy saints, so you obliterate yourself through elaborate, pointless penance. Self-hatred. Resistance. Apocalyptic auguries. I told you I died that night," he continues, softer. "And I know you did, too. But instead of letting yourself be reborn, instead of living again, you cling to the past because you don't know who you are without them. Because you cannot conceive of happiness without them, and you have some fantasy that you'd rather die than exert the energy required to heal. The truth is we're standing at the helm of a great ship, cutting like an arrow through uncharted waters, barreling towards a better future we ourselves get to define, and still you act like the only power you have is to drown."

"No," I quip. "The only power I have is to take you down to the bottom of the ocean with me. We both go, Sholu, and neither of us come back."

"You could come back, if you chose," he sighs. "If you looked in the mirror and saw something in yourself worth saving, something of that little maid you went so far for, perhaps. I try to force it on you, to restore your title to you, to hand you back the power they stole from you, to push you to break out of this cage they constructed for you. I lay bare their sins so you understand that you didn't destroy them, they were already destroyed. So you realize they aren't worth drowning for. But at the end of the day, nothing I say or do matters as long as you refuse to make that choice. To live."

"The way you twist things," I mutter. "This spider's web you weave with your words- it's incredible, Sholu. And the most incredible thing is you actually believe it, don't you?"

"I believe you," he says, "are everything. I believe that you took a knife from your boot, slit a man's throat, and bashed another man's head in against the marble floor with a fury that eclipsed your fear of death. You say you wish you had died that night, but you fought to survive it. And now you've been washed up on the shore of some foreign world, some place where the dimaraste are not god, and you try to float out again into the deep water because you don't know how to change. It's not that hard, Kyonaiki. All you have to do is live."

"Not that hard?" I ask with a hollow laugh. "For all your psychoanalysis, Mesviraste, you've missed the central pillar. It wouldn't be so hard to live if a different man was sitting across from me right now. Someone with honest eyes and a kind smile, like Kaza O'utena. He has soft hands, husband, have you noticed? Or perhaps someone harder, a fighter, like me. Manit Revanas moves like a dancer with a knife in his hand. It's a brutal kind of grace, but it's one I recognize."

"Are you really trying to make me jealous?" He asks incredulously.

"No," I reply, meeting his gaze and holding it for a second too long. "I'm just trying to hurt you, Sholu. That's what makes me happy these days."

"And you call me the sadist," he mutters darkly.

_____

SO this is a lot of information thrown at you and also a real change in tone from Shira and Irei making out in Irei's office. I'm not entirely happy with how the chapter turned out, but I'm not rewriting it again. Hopefully, it made sense (somewhat).