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

fluttered off her skin and were gone. “With a warning.”
    Hiresha rubbed the fennec’s fuzzy chest with two fingers. The fox sang a whirling trill of notes. He had not been frightened by the Feaster. He had more composure in his black-tipped tail than most men in their ungainly bodies.
    “Two are hunting you,” the Bleeding Maiden said.
    The Empire might’ve sent more than one assassin. They would both be highly trained spellswords.
    “I’ll bring them to you,” the Feaster said. “We can listen to them scream and be friends.”
    “Do you mean that the assassins will become friends by screaming together, or that you and I would bond over the experience? Either case sounds unappealing.”
    “Then, you want to enjoy their deaths alone?”
    “Do I look like a woman of frivolity?” Hiresha asked the fennec.
    The Bleeding Maiden managed to scowl and smile at the same time. She may very well dislike being less alluring than a fox. What was certain was that she had a greater understanding of fears than other desires. She peered around her then came uncomfortably close. “I’m afraid the lord father may be tricking you.”
    “In which particular?”
    “To us, black wine is power,” the Bleeding Maiden said. “To others, it seduces the mind.”
    “I’m fairly certain it does for Feasters as well.” Hiresha walked around the banyan fortress. The Bleeding Maiden had to follow.
    A misshapen shadow leaned against the banyans. It was Celaise, listening. Excellent. She would do well to hear this.
    The Bleeding Maiden clasped her hands over her bandaged chest. Blood had soaked through the linens in a rosette pattern. “When one of us touches you, your heart beats faster. You flush. You swoon with chills, but that’s not love. It’s black wine.”
    That did confirm Hiresha’s suspicions. She had always speculated about Tethiel. Back when she had met him in a gazebo on a rainy night, again beneath a tomb tower of brass, and a third time high in the blustery Skiarri Mountains, her moments with Tethiel had been bright points in her sleepy life. His magic had made it so. To think a mere man could so awaken her with a rush of feelings would be most illogical.
    “I’m so sorry,” the Bleeding Maiden said. “Did you think you loved him?”
    This Feaster was a subtle louse. “Whatever made you think, vapid girl, that I believe in love?”
    “But, you are engaged?”
    “Love is an invention of singers and storytellers to captivate the masses. A cultural construct, at best. No, Tethiel and I have something greater than love.”
    “He threatened you?”
    “We have an understanding,” Hiresha said.
    “What is it?”
    “None of your affair.” Hiresha and he were a pair of anomalies without any need to explain themselves to each other.
    “As cold as you are, he loves you.” The Bleeding Maiden pressed her chest, ostensibly trying to stem the redness spreading from her bandages. “I only wish I knew why.”
    “Tethiel does seem to have an inexplicable interest.” He had followed Hiresha onto the Dream Storm Sea in a rowboat. He never could’ve known she would gain all the powers of a dreamer.
    “He’s a great man.” The bloodstain spread over the illusionist’s dress in petal patterns, at an equal rate in all directions, in defiance of the laws of gravity. Her gaze darted up to Hiresha. “He could be the greatest, if he isn’t led astray.”
    “Did you hear that, fennec? I am accused of corrupting a lord of nightmares.” Hiresha’s jewels throbbed in time to her laughter. “I must have done something right with my life after all.”
    “He’s being lured from his calling,” the Bleeding Maiden said.
    “Which is?”
    “To make the world kneel.”
    “Far better to fly above the world and invite it to follow.” Hiresha gave the fennec a warning squeeze then swung him into the air. His new jeweled necklace pulsed, Lightening him so he could swim toward the sky. The fox’s tail swished back and forth