Hide Your Fires

Chapter Twenty: Effervescence

            I do not revel in torture. Not when it's committed by one Fetterling child against another, even if said child still bleeds red as human anger. While I may turn blind eyes on those whom the Shining One's light does not shine, this girl has stepped out of the shadows, even if she drags her own behind her.

Six eyes find no trace of the creature. No trace of Pyrrhus. But that shall be remedied soon.

"She's not moving."

Either way, our resolution approaches.

"I think we've slain her."

"Nay."

"Ilyas, she stirs not. I think we've slain her."

"And I think she's playing dead so you'll drop the barrier."

An agonizing quarter-degree passes. Jessamine worries her lip. The boy toes the dirt. Eventually, she can take it no longer. "No, I think we'd best not. Lene, what do you... Lene?" Two painted suns flare, then blink out as she launches something between a groan and a shriek at Kyadel.

Jessamine Solos-Solaire rakes her nails across the barrier. Veiny fissures sprout from their tracks. Smoke alone escapes.

"Go," she sighs, and the boy sheds his mortal skin in favour of Koray's ermine. He scampers away while Jessamine approaches the would-be runaway. She prods at her with the side of her foot, whispers to her in rusty Smythian, "Please do not be dead. We did not mean it."

No response. Jessamine crouches down, pressing the girl's feebly moving chest. "I'm not like him. I'm no siblicide." It's a phrase that becomes a chant as she pumps. Pumps. Pumps. She does it incorrectly, of course, for she has never had need of such expertise. There is but one death in Kyadel. "I'm no siblicide. I'm no siblicide. I'm not like him. I'm not-"

Perchance some Nectar remains on her lips. Perhaps it is the residual stardust flowing through Jessamine's veins, or maybe it's the simple sweetness of Jessamine's kiss that returns my prey to life. Eyes flutter open: the dark sides of twin moons.

She is quick but my child is quicker.

Flintlock replaces Fetter.

Jessamine holds the muzzle to the girl's skull, keeps it there as she confiscates her bag of painful tricks. She leaves the runaway with only a whimper but tries to steal that as well. Rings snag hair as she coos, "Hush now, this is but a sibling squabble. The first of many."

The runaway squirms.

Jessamine tightens her grip. "We are not like Pyrrhus," she says with shadows in her tone, "but evidently, you are. Work out your knots and pray that Servile doesn't treat you as such."

.

         My penitent daughter finds my wayward son. Finds him among mortals with their feet planted so firmly in the dirt that they cannot Ascend, though they do bask in echoes of my master's light. Pyrrhus Alexander should know better: he who had the chance to be better, to mend his faults with gold. Now, he is doomed to perish as all Pyrrhonian hostages do: wretched. And earthbound.

Though the mortals do not recognize him as such.

Lene Ekling sees the reverence lighting their eyes, the terror that ferries blood from their cheeks as they kneel before the first pair of Fetters they glimpse, a symbol of divinity more potent than any quaint sceptre or childish diadem.

She sees them prostrate themselves, begging for any and all transgressions. They offer him service. They offer him animals, sustenance, shelter, money- anything they can give.