A Court of Gold and Shadows

Something good and right and real: Chapter 2

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Chapter 2: time can't stop me quite like you did

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It was a rest day when she finally pulled out research she hadn't touched in decades.

Though right now, she had a reason to do it. A very good reason if she was completely honest.

Azriel was her reason.

He showed up on her doorstep, bruised and scratched to hell and there was nothing that she could do against it.

Patch him up and put him on her couch and ply him with food after an hour, and then some more food until most of it had healed and he had gone home. Even when she hadn't wanted him to.

But she hadn't been able to protect him.

And that stung

Mostly because it had been well known that Oriana had excelled at using her skills for protection.

That had been what she had concentrated on.

They made art, not war.

But Oriana...Oriana made protection.

Oriana fitted every child in her family with a personal enchanted bracelet. She had always just used them to alert the parents if the kid managed to get themselves into a bad situation.

But the start of it was there.

And then there was...her own necklace.

She touched the thumb thick gold metal necklace around her throat.

Her wedding necklace. It had been soldered around her throat when she had been 18 and she had never taken it off. Traditionally a female would wear it for the mourning period after her husband's death and then take it off. She hadn't.

She was still mourning.

At least as far as her people were concerned.

A very visible sign to everybody that Oriana wasn't available for anything other than friendship. Not even companionship. No sex without string attached.

And after Wynstan had died...Oriana had made that visible reminder of her marriage into something else entirely.

Wynstan would have hated it. She was certain about that. But she was also furious with him. And it was...fitting. In a way nobody but her would realise.

That necklace was fitted with her own enchantment.

It would keep any male from touching her in any way that she didn't want. It would keep her safe. And it would violently dispel anybody that disagreed with that.

She had only ever done that once. And she knew that it had been fucking suicidial to do it like she had done, etching in the runes, while it was around her neck. It could have blown up. She could have died.

She hadn't cared. Not one bit.

Now with a few decades of distance she knew how fundemantelly stupid it had been what she had done. It went against everything she had ever been taught.

And it was also the one and only time that Oriana had created something that she had willently imbued with the power to kill another person.

It wasn't...It wasn't what she should have done.

And still she had.

She had done that and she hadn't apologised or felt bad about it.

And now....