Free Dark Lord's Wedding by A.E. Marling Page A

jaw and skull.
    Time washed forward and back around Hiresha. Later the next night, after she had let them wake, once Hiresha had slipped out of this world and back through her own dreams, Jerani spoke to her.
    “Celaise told me they were like real teeth again,” he said. “Thank you.”
    “Do see that she uses the teeth to chew something more solid than fear. Eating is a poor hobby but a good habit.” Hiresha turned to speak to Celaise, who was flicking her hem of stardust for the fennec to play with. “Your body must be strong and healthy when I reshape your bones.”
    Celaise stared.
    “Not to worry,” Hiresha said. “I won’t do it while you’re awake. Now, do you have a message for me?”
    “What? Oh, yes. The lord father will meet with you on Mindruin Peak.”
    “Here’s my counterproposal: No. Cursed mountaintops aren’t required for planning weddings. We’ll meet here,” she said. “I will also have need of a Feaster skilled at crafting faces. Perhaps you know of one.”
    “The Mimic, maybe.”
    “Send him to me. Or her.”
    “I’ll tell the lord father.” Celaise looked up from the fennec’s digging, toward the entrance of the banyan fortress. She rested three fingers against her chin, and she spread her other hand over the constellations that made up her dress. The nerves in her mouth had been deadened to pain; it couldn’t be her teeth that were troubling her.
    Hiresha asked, “There’s another Feaster outside, is there?”
    “One of my sisters. She wants to meet you.”
    “I haven’t enough hours in the day to meet every stray Feaster. Will this be a common occurrence?”
    “No.”
    “This then is a Feaster of uncommon import?” Potentially the same one who had destroyed a household not too long ago, not too far away.
    “She’s the Bleeding Maiden.” Celaise said the name as if it should signify something to Hiresha.
    Perhaps it did. People without anything better to do traded stories around campfires, gruesome tales about the exploits of Feasters. Hiresha hadn’t succeeded in ignoring them all. She had glimpsed the Bleeding Maiden before in Oasis City. This Feaster and Hiresha couldn’t have much to discuss, excepting perhaps an intimate knowledge of internal anatomy.
    The fennec was scraping at the clay soil. He hadn’t made much progress on this burrow. The fox looked up at Hiresha and yowled, his black whiskers bobbing.
    “The ground here is most uncooperative, isn’t it?” Hiresha took the fennec along to ensure her time with the Feaster wouldn’t be utterly wasted.
    The Bleeding Maiden resembled little more than a waif, stumbling closer over the rubble. A lost thing, she was, slight and fragile as a sphene jewel.
    She caught sight of Hiresha. Her eyes lit with lash-fluttering hope. She reached out with a hand covered in red spots. “Can you help me? My back pains me so.”
    The waif limped closer, clutching her side. Moonlight pierced the canopy to fall on her face. She glowed with fever sweat, and the same lesions covered her exquisite features. Those spots would open soon in pus.
    She had the pox. She was a plague bearer carrying death for her lord. In one facet he had blighted the Oasis Empire. In this one he had doomed the Dominion of the Sun. Hiresha clutched the fennec against her chest as the future devastated her.
    “Can you help me?” The waif reached out again. Thirty-five spots covered her hand.
    Before there had been only twenty-seven. Her infirmity was an illusion.
    Screams had been scrabbling up Hiresha’s throat. She stifled them to speak in a level voice. “You are a dangerous one.”
    The Bleeding Maiden curtsied.
    Somehow, the Bleeding Maiden had known. It was as if she had stolen thoughts out of Hiresha’s sunset facet. She had rummaged Hiresha’s mind for her deepest fears.
    “No, I don’t think I can help you,” Hiresha said. “The illusion you’re wearing is in extremely poor taste.”
    “Then maybe I can help you.” Her lesions