Nada's Escape

83- Replica.

Picturing Josef under an upended bowl of fruit punch has me laughing merrily with Darcell until a hand drops onto my shoulder from behind.

"Excuse me," Finley asks politely and I realise another song has ended. He's been stalking the edges of the dance floor for some time now and I've succeeded in ignoring him until now. "May I speak with you?"

Darcell's brows rise, questioning, but he backs up a step, giving me what feels like miles of space. I turn halfway to Finley and that feeling of space crushes between us into a claustrophobic knot.

"Why, what is it?" I ask, but what I mean is: is it important?

"I just think we should talk." Finley responds, eyes dark, kaleidoscopic pools.

Yes. Yes we should. Still, Finley's appearance is like a drop of ink on rice paper, an indelible mark on the light, happy moments of the last dozen songs. Plus, I'd rather procrastinate the conversation that's brewing, the ultimate, unnecessary complication to this night.

I nod once, withholding a sigh.

Darcell gives me a sympathetic wink, "I'll catch you later."

We wind our way off the dance floor and Finley holds out my drink. It's grown warm but I'm parched so I drain it. Wait, how did he end up with my drink? I thought I'd left it... But the stage edge where I'd left my glass is empty.

"Amy said you were leaving," Finley says mildly. Is that an accusation?

"And Josef forbade me," I defend myself. "I was trying to find one of the girls so they could pass the message on but-"

"Oh? Macie's in the courtyard."

"Sweet, I'll go let her know." I can see the protest forming on Finley's lips but I'm slipping away already. It's darker in the courtyard, the air seeming to swirl with shadows and sparkles. I skirt the edge of the building and find Mace talking with Beatrice, who once again wears the giant purple skirt.

"Hey," I mouth to Macie and she greets me with a nod. I notice for the first time a feyfly replica amongst Beatrice's layers of necklaces. Seeing one this close, it almost looks real, the gold glimmering with more light than the darkness should offer. The intricacy of every vein seems infinite, fractal. The closer I look the more detail I see, each tiny jewel perfectly placed.

I realise she's watching me silently and try to cover my distraction, "It's pretty." I meet her gaze to complete the compliment and my smile freezes in place at the meanness in her eyes. Before it had been veiled, now it warms my blood with the expectation of a fight.

Her gaze slides past me, and it seems like she's forgotten me for the moment. Then she opens those dark lips.

"Finley. Your pet's off its leash," she says jokingly as Finley joins us. Anger enters my bloodstream from my gritted teeth and I feel it poison my blood all the way down to my aching feet.

"Ha, ha," Finley says sarcastically, "I think we're go-"

"I'm sorry, what?" I feel a mulish expression mar my face, but I don't care. Her eyes come back to me, flashing amusement and distaste at once.

"That's what this is, isn't it?" Beatrice reaches for me, flicking the pearls at my throat. "A collar?" My hackles rise at her nearness.

"Nada..." Finley's hand is butterfly light on my arm as I wrench it from him, stepping up into her threatening aura. Macie has already faded away at the first sniff of conflict.

Beatrice surely isn't old enough to be Huntsmen born, but she smells worse than any of them. "Traitor," I hiss.

Beatrice throws her head back laughing, mahogany hair gushing around her like a waterfall, "And what does that make you, little one?" She's only a couple of centimetres taller. I tilt my head back further as if to draw attention to that.

She drops suddenly into a fighting crouch and I flinch. She laughs again, showing perfect white teeth. Finley's arm snakes around my waist tugging, hard to throw off but easy to resist, with my knees sinking into a crouch of my own.

"I think that's self-evident." I bluster, following the urging of my blood. A twitch at the bottom of my peripheral vision distracts me.

"Leave it!" A tinny feyfly voice calls out. First Finley and now the feyflies are getting involved? I can fight my own battles. A distinct jangling forces me to look down at Beatrice's replica necklace, which has come alive and is struggling to escape its golden chains.

Beatrice's fingers scrabble with the feyfly for a moment before she squeezes its head and it stills, one wing curled strangely back across itself. It didn't come alive... I realise, my abdomen hollowing out in shock. It had been playing dead. Beatrice has chained a living feyfly about her neck.

At my horrified expression Beatrice shrugs and says, "Well I can't kill it, else it would decay like any other creature."

I didn't know that rage could feel like any colour other than red but mine turns violet, an all-consuming mist that obscures my vision for a moment. When it clears Finley's back blocks my view. I shove against it, unfeeling.

Through the mist I spy Beatrice skulking along the wall. I want to rage after her but my limbs are shaking with the strength of feeling flooding through me. My heart is pounding too loud. So I sway, balling my fists at my sides.

Finley gently directs me out of the light towards the row of dark fenestrations that mark the walkway to the training room. I stumble, willing the violet rage to calm with deep, racing breaths.

"She's gone," Finley says softly, comfortingly, distracting me from my internal battle. Like I didn't have eyes.

"Shut the hell up!" I bark. I need silence.

Finley waits wordless beside me as other colours of rage flow through me. Yellow horror stains the bruise, then honed blue fury and then melancholy white, draining the edges of the rage until my breaths are long and hopeless.

"Why would anyone do such a thing?" I implore of Finley. Wear a living creature around as jewellery? He looks straight past me, eyes broiling with colour and emotion.

"Greed."

His words do nothing to dispel my growing sense of foreboding. It's a horrible thing, but I shouldn't have been surprised. This is the Huntsmen I'm dealing with; orchestrators of kidnapping and death.

And yet my response, the horrible colours of rage I'd experienced, had been heightened. Stronger than it should have been. Perhaps after being surrounded by the Huntsmen's spoils, enduring Finley's kiss and being ordered about and threatened, first by Josef and now Beatrice, I have simply reached the final straw of my patience for this so-called party. The Huntsmen are consistently more than I can bear.

The Huntsman before me swallows visibly, shaking off an invisible cloak. "So I said we should talk but..."

"But if it's about us, there are better times." I fill in his gaps, gathering myself to procrastinate further. Perhaps I'll have to plunge myself back into the Huntsmen horde in order to escape it.

"There are always going to be better times, though." For a moment his face is angled just right so his eyes catch the light one of the lamps, making it difficult not to look into them.

"That's life." I cut in sharply. "And you're too important right now to let stupid words or actions get in the way." Finley nods sagely, looking away into the party. You're right, his expression says, even if he doesn't want it to be true.

Author's Note: I thought you might like this snippet into Finley's world.

Whilst Nada's captured by rage, Finley is threatening Beatrice.

"Get out of here now, or I'll report you for adultery. You know with who and you know I don't care." He spares a glance for the feyfly, the one that his mother had let him feed when he was a child, the one he'd dreamt could talk and then had somehow forgotten that it was true. The one he'd still fed, quietly, absent-mindedly since she died. Until one day it had been gone. How did anyone think it had grown so large?