Sasha was surprised by his own relief when Lark appeared on his doorstep later that night. As well as wine, Lark came bearing a basket filled with figs, berries, nuts, hardtack.
No meat, not even dairy. A sweet gesture. Sasha switched helmets without them having to speak about it. They shared the wine and the basket in blankets on the room’s balcony.
They didn’t sit back-to-back. Instead, they sat cross-legged, knee-to-knee, because Sasha was fairly confident that Lark wouldn’t peek without permission. Huge step.
The balcony was where they fell asleep, staring up at the star-less sky. As they drifted, Lark pointed out missing constellations. It was almost impressive how he got them all wrong.
༻❁༺
The next morning, when they woke with the sun, they laid there chatting rather than get up immediately. At one point, Sasha brought up Nathair. Lark shut him down.
“So, he got a good feel,” Lark dismissed, sounding bitter. “Am I supposed to be upset? Should I weep? He’s done far worse to others. I mean—he maims people, Sasha. Servants.”
“How do we stop him?” Sasha asked.
“Short of chopping him into lumber? We don’t.”
“I hate that.”
“As do I.”
Sasha rolled his head to look at Lark. Visor down, of course.
Lark’s hair always ended up a bird’s nest by morning. No matter how much he slept, there were always rings under his eyes—evidence of all his tossing and turning.
The final day. The day of the party…party. However it turned out with Maeve, Sasha had to leave tomorrow. Sculpin’s defenses were only so strong; they counted on him.
He realized he didn’t like the idea of greeting the day without Lark’s messy hair and dark circles. This was an unprecedented revelation. He had known Lark for just seven days.
In contrast, he’d known Una, Maga, Kerem, and Kostas much longer. While he couldn’t imagine life without them, the thought of being without them didn’t sting.
Lark smirked upon noticing he was being ogled. “Y’know, it’s spookier when the person staring at you has no eyes.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be—I don’t mind when it’s you. What color are they, anyway? I’m thinking…blue? Unconventional blue. Maybe a teensy trace of caramel.”
Unconventional white. Maybe a teensy trace of black blood in the sclera.
It was as good an excuse as any to get moving. Sasha did so abruptly, creaking to his feet and padding into the room without a word. Lark dragged himself up and shambled after.
“Where are you off to all of a sudden?” he asked, hands on his hips. “And why do I get the sense you’re about to say something I won’t like?”
“I leave tomorrow,” Sasha replied. “I have to find out who’s hurting Maeve before then.”
“You—you said tomorrow? But…Hel likes you. You can stay as long as you—”
“I can’t stay.”
Lark stopped responding. Sasha turned his back to switch helmets and lace his top armor, trying not to think about how every sound felt magnified in the now quiet room.
When he was ready, he walked Lark out. He didn’t want help today, but he still caught Lark’s sleeve in the doorway last minute. This was a good time to say something, right?
Lark was starting to look annoyed, tethered by his sleeve. Sasha gathered his resolve, determined to voice the jumbled thoughts bouncing around in his mind.
“I wasn’t sure about you,” he began. A rough start. “You’re impulsive…talk a lot. Being around you made my head hurt.”
Lark gestured fruitlessly when he stalled. “Is there a but?”
“But—”
“Oh, thank fuck.”
“Now, I…” Why was it so hard? The thoughts became rocks in Sasha’s mouth. He spit them out all at once. “I find myself in a position where I don’t want to…not be around you. For any length of time.”
He expected Lark to either poke fun at him for saying something so sappy or reply with something of equal sap. What he didn’t expect was for Lark to clam up and turn a feverish shade of scarlet.
Sasha had never seen Lark blush like that before; he quietly added it to the growing list of things he liked, right up there with messy hair, hot baths, and soup.
“That’s not something people say to friends, Sasha,” Lark managed to squeak out.
“I’m saying it,” Sasha upheld. Really sealing the deal, huh?
Lark’s reaction softened. “I’ve…enjoyed our time together, too.”
Silence followed, but not the awkward kind. It was the easy kind that happened between two people who, despite their many differences, had managed to form a connection.
“I have to stay here a while,” Lark eventually said. “Court contracts and all that; I owe her three seasons out of every year. Come next spring, though…”
His voice, inexplicably thick—like there was a bubble in his throat—hitched on the word ‘next.’ Perhaps because it sounded so awfully unfeasible.
“Come next spring,” he tried again, “if Maul hasn’t imploded and you find yourself setting off on any new adventures…”
Sasha put him out of his misery. “I’ll keep you in mind.”
“Yeah. Er, do that.”
That time, the ensuing silence was awkward. Neither of them seemed to know where to go from there. After a minute, Lark cleared his throat, curtsied, cursed himself for curtsying.
With a muttered goodbye, he beelined down the hall and rounded the left corner. He then looped backwards, still muttering, and rounded the right corner.
‘Keep you in mind?’ Sasha thought as he shut the door (while he was still inside the room). He jerked it back open, stormed out into the hall, shut it again.
He had fully intended to ask Lark to leave with him, court contracts be damned. So, ‘I’ll keep you in mind?’ Why?
༻❁༺
That day, Sasha went about hunting Maeve down. The room Isabelle had brought her to two nights prior was empty. The door was ajar, the bed made, furnishings undisturbed.
He followed her scent to the northern tower—to the stronghold’s healer, Aghna, an addlepated old woman. Aghna claimed the ‘lilac less’ checked in for a nosebleed the night of the pre-pre-party, drank some potion, and checked out the following morning.
Aghna also mistook Sasha for someone else, repeatedly referring to him as ‘dog’ or ‘mutt,’ so not the most reliable witness. He continued along Maeve’s trail, which brought him to the entrance of the western tower.
The western tower was ‘under construction.’ He tried to enter, but the guards stopped him, claiming it wasn’t safe. Rather than press the matter, he set up shop across the courtyard and watched the tower all morning and afternoon.
Nobody came or went. The guards didn’t budge. If the tower was under construction, wouldn’t there be people transporting materials in and out? Hammers clanging? Scaffolding creaking?
Not a peep. He waited as long as he could, but the guards relieved themselves around the corner and otherwise didn’t take breaks. By evening, Sasha felt compelled to get ready for the party.
He had to go to the party. Lark was going. What if Nathair came back?
Maybe it was a flimsy excuse. Sasha didn’t care. He returned to his quarters to find someone had yet again let themselves in and left him a gift. He certainly wouldn’t miss the lack of privacy.
This time, the gift was an outfit: black leather tunic, black leather trousers (sounded tight), and black leather gloves. He slipped the outfit on over his wraps. To his surprise, it fit like a glove, albeit one that had shrunk a little in the rain.
He did don some metal, namely his pauldrons, gorget, and greaves. He also found a leather belt in the armoire and clasped the pouch with his nightshade potions to it. It made him feel better to have them on hand.
But he had to wear the awful stag helmet, didn’t he? He didn’t like the way it looked at him with its vacant holes for eyes. They reminded him of when he first woke up, an empty shell.
He was a good sport. He put the stag on, taking time to adjust to the way the world looked through it. Less visibility than he was used to. The snout was narrow, the hole there the size of a coin. Less ventilation.
One night. He could manage for one night. For Lark.
༻❁༺
The ballroom was already a scrambled mess by the time Sasha got there. Even more dimly lit, more jam-packed, louder. There seemed to be twice the people and half the organization.
Twice the guards as well. They were stationed at every pillar. As usual, Hellebore and her crew had yet to arrive. Tamsin was there early, trying to maintain order.
What struck Sasha as most peculiar was how the nobles were dressed and behaving. Each wore a mask designed after an array of prey and predator animals. Those in prey masks were careful to avoid those dressed as predators.
The predators all had rope tails in their hands. Apparently, from some murmurs Sasha caught, the two teams were opposing. The goal was for a predator to pin the tail on their prey without the prey noticing.
Then the game was over? The real party commenced? He didn’t know, and it was promptly dashed from his mind when he caught sight of Lark.
Like the rest of the staff, Lark had no mask, but there were gold feathers in his hair, emerald kohl around his eyes. Bird-like. His pointed shoes were adorned with gold bells.
Speaking of bells, for the first time since Sasha had known him, he was wearing a jester’s cap.
The cap was atrocious. It jingled as he pulled dyed balloons (we don’t need to talk about what the balloons were made of; these were the dark ages) from his sleeve, blew them up, and fashioned them into animals.
He really did everything but tell jokes. Remarkable.
He looked nice, though, like a morning sunbeam back when they were soft, golden, and radiant. It made Sasha want to close his eyes, touch Lark’s cheek, and remember what smog-less mornings felt like.
That’s not something people say to friends, Sasha.
His brow furrowed. Did that mean he was being too much? Should he be less?
“Sasha?” Lark halted mid-way through crafting a balloon bunny. He stuck the unfinished bunny under his cap, was across the ballroom in record time. “Bloody hell. This is what you’ve been hiding under the armor and rags?”
“Lark,” Sasha said stiffly. The fuss was drawing some attention.
Lark ran a hand along Sasha’s chest, admiring the leather. Although Sasha knew Lark was just naturally handsy, a tactile gesticulator, he was wary of how it might look to an outsider.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were under more scrutiny than usual, fish in a glass bowl. Probably had something to do with the fact that he couldn’t see faces, gauge expressions.
Also, the doubled guard. Also, Tamsin watching them like a hawk.
“Hel pulled out all the stops,” Lark said, nodding in approval. “Good. My Sasha deserves to be pampered.”
“No ‘pretty princess?’” Sasha asked.
“Right—sorry. The prettiest, of course. I’m just…trying to comprehend your shoulder-to-waist ratio. What is that? Three-to-one?”
“I’ve never been measured.”
“Well, I could measure…” Lark’s eyes, innocent in their drifting, drifted lower; he clapped a hand over them, the bump in his throat bobbing furiously. “No. No, no. No.”
Sasha frowned. “What is it?”
“Not a big—big—no big—gods. Nothing. Nothing at all. I, uh, think I’m gonna go…back to my station now. Over there.”
“Do you want me to come?”
“No!” There was the blush again. Such a nice color. “I mean—no. Don’t c…follow. Stay. Or go. I don’t…I go now. Balloons to blow. Bye, good—goodbye.”
Sasha watched Lark trip over himself to flee for the second time that day. Once alone, Sasha checked his trousers. The buttons were all done up, the rest of his disguise impenetrable. What was the problem?
“Poor buck.” That voice. Sasha pivoted on his heel, found himself face-to-face with a silver fox. “Looks like you’ve been caught by the hunting party, friend.”
Nathair’s sparkling grey eyes brought his fox mask to uncanny life. Otherwise, he was dressed in layered robes, silver and grey, and holding a glass of champagne in his uninjured hand.
Suspiciously relaxed posture. And ‘friend?’
“Nathair,” Sasha managed. He needed to stop greeting people like that.
It would be nice if they stopped approaching him. He was stuck in the middle of the ballroom, which was getting more crowded, more frenzied, by the minute.
Without a word, Nathair reached out with his splinted arm. Sasha flinched, then watched it snake around his waist and yank something from the back of his belt with a soft rip.
Nathair dangled the object between them. “See? Game over.”
Three ropes, two brown and one white, had been braided to resemble the tail of a stag. They had been stuck to Sasha’s belt. No idea how or when that happened.
So accustomed to wearing his hair in a braid, he hadn’t thought twice about the feeling of one more swishing around his backside.
What did it mean that the game was over? What happened next?
Nathair handed the tail over. Dumbstruck, Sasha took it back. The exchange felt so civil, yet they had nearly killed each other in that same spot less than twenty-four hours ago.
“How are you finding the party?” Nathair asked, which was the last straw. “The hunters look so ferocious in their masks. Grr.”
“Are you concussed?” Sasha blurted.
“What a bizarre question.”
“I laid you flat.”
Nathair offered a polite smile. A set of silver teeth had replaced the ones Sasha knocked out. “No hard feelings.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Sasha pressed, because yes hard feelings. Hard feelings for forever. To the grave. Beyond. “What happened after you left last night?”
“The gentle lady with the black eye—”
“You’re talking about Tamsin?” ‘Gentle?’
“Tamsin, yes. Thomasina. She arranged the most enchanting respite for me in the western tower.” As Nathair spoke, some of that amber sap-blood trickled from his nose. “I feel reborn.”
“You’re bleeding,” Sasha pointed out.
“Oh, dear.” The same handkerchief from last night came up to dab the blood. “That won’t do. Please excuse me.”
As if the duel never happened, Nathair casually hobbled off. Sasha shook his head, now certain that whatever was going on in the western tower was absolutely fucked.
If the guard in the ballroom was doubled, the area around the tower was less guarded. He could sneak in. He might even find Maeve there.
Was it brainwashing? Was mind control a thing? Every time he thought he understood the world, it threw him a curveball.
With Nathair no longer a threat, Sasha turned to leave and knocked straight into a server. Every glass of champagne sitting atop her tray slid off and shattered in a big, messy, fizzy pile.
Nobody batted an eye. The festivities were reaching some sort of peak; the crowd had thickened suddenly, lots of excited shrieking. Starting to get claustrophobic.
Sasha apologized and got to his knees to help scoop and dump the glass atop the servant’s tray. She apologized in turn, over and over, thanking him profusely.
He wasn’t human, but—like most humans—he was a creature of habit. He hadn’t questioned the braid, nor did he think twice about scooping up glass. His hands were made of steel.
Well, usually. Now, however, they were made of leather: soft, delicate, lambskin leather.
He didn’t notice a shard of glass had needled through the glove until it pricked his palm. He hissed, hand snapping off the ground. The servant apologized again and moved to help.
He backed off, clenching that fist around the stupid deer tail. The more material between his blood and the air, the better.
And he didn’t have to look to know he was bleeding. Not a lot, but a drop was all it took.
Sizzle. Sizzle. Time to go.
A surge of bodies tossed him forward, threatening to trample him if he didn’t follow. People were jostling for position, clamoring over each other to reach the gold dais at the front of the ballroom.
Sasha tried to break out, but he could only use one hand to push through the burgeoning crowd. The exit slipped farther and farther away. He peered ahead to see what the commotion was about.
Hellebore had arrived. She stepped up on the dais alone in the embellished mask of a lion, her curls the mane. Her dress was ankle-length, burnished gold, puffed everywhere but the waist. From afar, it looked like she was wearing a giant satin bow.
That was what everyone was spilling over each other to see? The crowd didn’t stop pushing, bodies pressing tightly against his from every angle. He was lucky he stood higher than them (discounting the odd elf), otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to breathe.
“My hunters have caught their quarry!” Hellebore announced. The ‘predator’ members of the crowd cheered raucously. The ‘prey’ booed. “The hunt has concluded!”
The pressure was building in Sasha’s palm, burning. He needed to—
“Bring forth the stag.”
Suddenly, there were hands on his waist, shoulders, and back, shoving him forward. He held his clenched fist above their heads, forced to prioritize not infecting them over escaping.
They chewed him up and spat him out in front of the dais. He stumbled a step, fumbling to abandon the tail and quickly stash his seething, red-hot fist in his armpit. Sizzle. Ouch. Sizzle. Ouch.
“Sacrificial stag—how fitting,” Hellebore lilted, beaming down at him. She too wore her mask with unsettling realism. “Your tail is smoking.”
“I have to go,” Sasha ground out, sliding his boot over it. He looked to the exit, so far away.
“You cannot go. You are the quarry. How are we to revel in our victory if you do not don the quarry’s garland, stand before us, and let us heckle you?”
Hellebore gestured to Isabelle, who scurried up to Sasha and handed him a flower crown: daisies, marigolds, and goldenrod for purity, palash flowers for blood.
“You will now take off your helmet,” Hellebore said, “and don the garland.”
Fear gripped Sasha’s heart, making it beat faster. His palm and the skin under his arm burned. The stench was becoming apparent. “I can’t do that,” he said.
“I’m not asking. I am ordering you to remove the helmet.”
Just then, the crowd parted to make way for Lark. He flounced bravely up to the dais and bowed so low that his pointed nose touched his pointed toes.
“Oh, Highest of Highnesses,” he simpered. “You’ll ruin all of our appetites. May I instead offer the quarry sitting under my cap?”
He tipped the cap off his head to reveal a fluffy white bunny nestled in his hair. It bore a striking resemblance to the balloon one he’d stuffed up there.
“Whoops!” he exclaimed, feigning embarrassment. “That won’t do.”
The audience oohed when he put the cap back on and removed it to reveal the same bunny, though a tiny flower crown was now hanging on one of its ears. How?
He eased the bunny off his head, kissed it between the ears, and offered it up to Hellebore. “Here,” he said. “More palatable than whatever’s under the ruffian’s helmet, I’m sure.”
Hellebore only had eyes for Sasha. She nodded to two guards, who stalked over to Lark and hooked their arms in his. His cap, the bunny, and its tiny crown landed on the floor.
“See how my bird chirps for you, ‘Sasha?’” Hellebore quipped.
The bunny hopped around the tight circle formed by the crowd, then came to a stop before Sasha’s sabaton. A tentative sniff, a tender lick.
It froze mid-lick, whiskers twitching, when the guards jammed their knees into the backs of Lark’s and forced him down. He panicked, tried to get back up. They overwhelmed him.
Hellebore clicked her tongue. “Treacherous bird. I always thought he chirped too much.”
Sasha’s heart was now hammering. He realized that, over the past three days, he had been slowly stripped of all the things that kept them safe. That drop of his blood was getting stronger with each leather fiber it devoured.
Degree by degree, as the situation sunk in, his body temperature began to climb.
Not here, he thought. He released a poorly ventilated breath that didn’t help much, then motioned toward Lark. “Let him go. He did nothing wrong.”
“Will you do as I say?” Hellebore asked.
“I can’t.”
Still not breaking eye contact with Sasha, she gave the order. “Cut off his tongue.”
Lark’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“He’s just a fool.” Hellebore’s lips twisted wickedly. “I can hire another to speak for him. If I cut off that one’s ears, would it still be a double act?”
The crowd tittered. From somewhere in the middle, Tamsin could be heard bellowing at her men to stop. The men around her held her back. A fight broke out, clashing weapons.
Lark scrabbled away but was pinned like a butterfly by four brutal arms. His flailing legs were wrangled into submission. A third guard emerged from the crowd wielding a dinner knife.
“N-no—no! You—” Lark’s voice cracked, breaking the floodgate. “C…c…c-can’t—”
The crowd erupted into full-blown laughter as he thrashed and begged. Tamsin was no longer shouting. Weapons were no longer clashing. Perhaps she lost the fight.
This was it, Sasha realized. This was Hellebore’s cruelty, unmasked.
He and Lark were at its mercy.
With a shaking hand, Sasha tugged off his helmet and let it drop to his feet. The laughter, Lark’s sobbing, and the mayhem abruptly ceased. All went quiet.
Sasha’s haunting white eyes glared up at Hellebore in part because he hated her in that moment, in part because he couldn’t bear to look elsewhere.
He couldn’t bear to look at Lark, whose sharp inhale hurt more than any wound.
People were starting to whisper. A few shrieked. A few fainted. Still, Sasha could not look.
“Abomination,” Hellebore snarled. Once more, she looked to the guards. “It is as I feared. Take it into custody and bring me my tongue.”
Sasha’s eyes went wide. “You said—”
“I said nothing,” she snapped. “You assumed. You always were impudent. From mutt to mutant, it’s good to see the spots don’t change.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“You should have stayed dead, Sea Wolf.” She walked to the edge of the dais, a fiercely glowing beacon. “Death is a mercy compared to what I have in store for you. You will beg for it.”
Lark broke free and kicked one of the guards holding him in the groin. A choking cry then tore from his lips when an elbow bore down on his neck.
Merciless gold fingers pressed his cheeks, slipped in his mouth, wrenched his jaw open. The dinner knife gleamed dully in the candlelight.
Just a dinner knife. How much sawing would it take to sever a tongue with something like that?
The thought kicked Sasha into gear. He charged the knife-wielding guard into a pillar with force enough to crack it. The ballroom rumbled. The crowd gasped and shared a step back.
The other two guards released Lark and attacked. Sasha clobbered one over the head with his uninjured fist; dazed, the guard tottered by Lark, who stuck a foot out to trip him.
It was all happening so fast. Sasha spun to throw the third guard off his back, spun again to knock down a fourth. A fifth came out of nowhere as the rest regrouped.
So much steel. Narrow miss after narrow miss. Sasha was fighting one-handed, had no time to think, vision tunneling. The fifth guard barreled towards him.
Sasha caught him by the throat, and—
Sasha stopped.
The wrong hand. He had grabbed with the wrong hand.
In horror, he watched the fabric bunched around the guard’s neck start to melt in his grasp. The smell of burning cloth, and subsequently burning flesh, hit like a brick to the face.
Sasha staggered back. The guard fell screaming, pawing at his throat as his flesh dissolved.
The crowd screamed with him. A tidal wave, their bodies heaved against each other as they struggled to put space between themselves and the black blood splattering the floor, the smoldering tail. More guards surfaced, weapons at the ready.
Sasha’s vision tunneled again. He tried to remain afloat, to focus on anything other than the guard—man—human he had just effectively killed. Hellebore was a nauseatingly bright blur atop the dais, barking orders to subdue him.
He looked to the crowd, but they were all wrong. They weren’t screaming anymore. The tidal wave grew taller, taller. The animal masks were shifting, changing, elongating, just as the raiders’ faces had.
A sea of hyena faces, hyena grins. It would swallow him whole.
Finally, imploringly, he looked to Lark. Sitting up on the ground, legs bouncing eagerly, Lark’s cheeks were split like the beak of a bird with how wide his own lips had stretched.
“Sa-a-sha,” he taunted. “Sasha, don’t cry. It’s just a paper c-c-c—”
He cut himself off with a derisive cackle, nothing like last night’s laughter. The impediment that usually seized him now sounded forced, fake. It had never happened between words like that.
Liar, the voice hissed. Liar.
Sasha’s knees wobbled. His eyes slipped shut. He only blacked out for a second; short enough that it felt like blinking. The next time his eyes opened, he was on top of Lark.
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