Aureate Fates

18

NICE COATS AND BLEEDING THROATS

                                      —REESE—

The inside of the palace damn near killed him. Painted marble floors gleamed in the afternoon sun. The windows that lined the stone walls were massive and of a stained glass pattern. The palace staff snuck glances at each of them. Bowing and gawking.

Praise Galvinus, some said.

Blood-churner, others whispered.

Their children will be beautiful, Reese heard with horror.

He looked to Marisol, who had her arm looped through Erik's. A strange sight, that was. Reese tried to remember that this was how it was going to be from now on. Mari and a man with a ludicrous kill count. He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. 

Drew, who walked beside the other side of Erik murmured something to his older brother. Erik only looked down at Drew and scoffed. "Don't start," he heard Erik's icy voice.

Drew's features appeared wounded, and he turned away from his brother with a small, "Fine."

Reese might have said something if not for Thema's sudden motion beside him. She knelt down, with that peculiar grace she possessed, to retrieve something from the ground.

"Thema," Reese whispered, urgently. "Get up." Some of the palace guards had stopped to observe her.

"Just a moment," she answered, gathering more pearls from the ground. Pearls. He hadn't noticed them before. They looked to be blue glass, and Thema seemed to be engrossed in retrieving them.

Reese pulled the girl back to the group, where Ferland was talking to Marisol and Erik. Thema extended a pearl to Reese. "Keep it in your pocket."

He felt the weight of the pearl in his hand, and enjoyed its coolness. "What are they?"

"Seeds," Thema shrugged, "disguised as pearls."

"And why, my dear Thema, do I require seeds?" Reese asked, in confusion. He had enough of strange, seemingly beautiful objects for one day, like the miser ring Drew had won from him. Reese promised himself that the ring was the only thing Drew Orvar would ever win from him again.

"They're rare, and I've never seen any in Ziralem," she said, pondering. Ziralem, where she spent her life chained to a bed. "They grant wishes once planted."

"Does anything grow from them?" he asked.

"Dreams."

Ferland halted, and his guards along with him. They arrived before a set of massive double doors, engraved with etchings that were foreign to Reese. His magic riled to the surface, suddenly eager to see behind the door.

"Delphinia awaits," Ferland said, in that voice of a militia commander. Reese figured that he wore his scars proudly, for they were testaments of his experience in battle. They marked him as a man strong enough to endure wounds and live.

When the double doors swung open, Delphinia sat on a large cushioned seat, sealing an envelope. That envelope vanished once she found Reese's eyes on it. "Ah, you've found me," she began, seemingly pleased. "We must talk."

Marisol glanced at Reese, in the way that she had done many times before. In the ring, at the hut. It was her way of asking if he was with her, ready to fight beside her. Reese sent her a wink.

The girl worried too much for her own good.

"Then let us chat," Erik said, flatly, releasing Marisol's arm.