by Lisa Daniels
Another lurch from Perran caused Luan to grip his neck tightly, and the flickering, multicolored hues of the winter ball’s entrance plucked her attention. There were two separate lines, one for the regulars, and a VIP line for people like Perran, Vash, and Natalie. They strode up to the VIP line casually, Perran swaggering as if he belonged there, and the guards only gave them the barest of glances before admitting them through.
“What do you know—you were right. We can get in without an invitation after all,” Luan said, surprised at how easy it was. They didn’t even think about searching her or Kerrick. Could be some serious security breaching going on there, if they put so much blind trust in the dragons and the guests they brought. Kerrick’s hand lightly brushed her neck, apparently getting rid of a stray, trapped piece of hair there, and she held her breath. A combination of stifled breath and response to touch made her dizzy, alarmingly so.
Stupid rippling feelings arcing through her body.
Clearly, she didn’t do enough to keep her own desires under wraps, if she was acting like this from the contact with someone she barely knew or liked.
No. She wasn’t interested in Kerrick at all. Not interested in checking out what lay underneath all those clothes, how rough his beard might feel against her cheeks, if his lips would be soft or hard or pliable.
She blinked out of her brain when Kerrick’s smile became wide and lazy, as if he knew exactly what was going on there inside her head.
Inside the building, the dragons were asked to change back to their human forms. Kerrick and Luan crawled off Perran, checking out the bustling, shimmering ballroom, dome-shaped with an expensive, glittering crystal chandelier dangling from the center, where a mural of clouds was depicted, illuminated by orblights. The main color theme focused on red and gold, and people wore expensive, dazzling outfits, some which likely had cost thousands upon thousands of circs. Waiters with food platters wandered around, and Luan grabbed a small selection of pick-speared meat and cheese, chewing on them with relish.
Vash and Natalie seemed right at home in this atmosphere, with their glimmering dresses—Vash’s red with a large frame below her waist, Natalie’s black, more form-fitting like Luan’s—certainly more comfortable than Perran, whose eyes darted around for danger at every opportunity, and Luan, who didn’t want to take off her coat at all, despite the heat giving her a headache.
“Off this comes,” Kerrick said blithely, above the mandolins playing in the background and the soft murmur of conversation. He tugged at Luan’s coat, and she reluctantly parted with it, revealing the blue and silver ruffle dress at last. The robes had reached down to her legs, and she realized with a start that Kerrick hadn’t actually seen her expose her tattoos before.
He sucked in his breath, eyes traveling along her arms, and she imagined little whorls of flame left upon her skin from his searing gaze. He paced around her, seeing her large back tattoos in the flimsy, stringed dress back, and down her legs, where the spirals and swirls complemented her black, low heels. Even with bloomers under the dress, she felt very exposed with the fact that it ended just above her knees.
“I had no idea what you were hiding underneath all that,” Kerrick said softly, even as Perran shot an unimpressed glare Kerrick’s way.
“A body,” Luan said dismissively. “That just happens to have ink on it.”
Kerrick let out a soft laugh and ran a hand across his silver-gray mask. “Color me impressed. A talented, smart air witch with a smoking body. And tattoos that I’m more used to seeing on men...” He kept a careful distance from her, and to her slight dismay, and perhaps slight satisfaction, she saw she was getting cursory stares from the other men and women in the vicinity.
There seemed to be shifty characters in the crowd, people who didn’t quite look like they belonged. Too watchful, too tense, as if expecting disaster to strike at any moment. To Luan’s mind, she considered that an excellent time for the Conclave of Zamorka to strike would be right at the heart of the winter ball, with so many wealthy socialites clustered in one spot. If they could drop off a Creeping Rot bomb…
“Dance with me?” Kerrick held out a hand to her, as the mandolin players changed their tune to something slow, almost mournful. Luan’s first impulse was to snap no, but she swallowed it, instead allowing herself to be gathered into his arms. Her breath hitched in her throat when he held her at a respectful arm’s length distance, their hands resting on each other’s shoulders, and simply swaying from side to side like the other couples. It didn’t really feel like dancing. Luan expected dancing to be livelier and more energetic, not this slow boat rocking, the careful distance between them, and enough space to be able to look down at each other’s feet safely. From Kerrick’s vantage point, though, he likely caught a hint of her cleavage, and again, she was reminded how exposed she felt in this dress.
She couldn’t wait to squeeze back into her normal clothes and take to the air again, or creep through dangerous buildings to locate a new criminal and haul them in. Watch them pay for the crimes they never should have committed in the first place.
The longer they swayed together, without words, letting the soft notes of music weave an aria about their souls, the more her eyes took opportunities to flick over Kerrick’s form. He had a strange, cinnamon-like aroma to him, and was absently chewing on something that smelled like mint bark. His suit was rough and scratchy beneath her hands, and their height difference gave a small ache to her own muscles after a minute frozen in the same position. Something about his features aesthetically pleased her, but she couldn’t help but feel like she was dancing with an unknown, a person constructed entirely by tabloids and royalty.
Perhaps he was thinking something similar in that he didn’t know her, for he licked his lips, arresting her eyes to the movement, before saying, “Question. Why the tattoos? What do they mean to you?”
She flicked him a thin smile. “I wear my heart in ink. Because I’m not great at expressing otherwise.”
“I see,” he breathed, brown eyes wide in interest. “And what does your heart say?”
Luan debated only for a few seconds. Giving something away to him would mean he owned a tiny piece of her—but at the same time, it was already written upon her flesh for someone to figure out, if they stared for long enough. “I show patterns of fire and wind. The fire is for the justice I feel when I hunt down criminals. For the conviction I’m in the right job, that no matter what someone says, I know I wouldn’t be anywhere else. The winds are my magic, and they fan the flames. All the emotion there that I can’t express… I show it instead.” Her heart beat a little faster, knowing how intimate it sounded. But she’d long since stopped being embarrassed about her tattoos, because people always asked, and it became easier with each iteration to express.
But now she felt a strange concern with just how Kerrick might take the information.
“That’s… amazing,” he said, apparently at a loss for any other words. “Like, truly. You actually have a deep meaning to all this. You didn’t just walk into a tattoo parlor and decide that you were going to let yourself be stabbed with tiny needles.”
“Most people get tattoos for a reason,” Luan said, smiling in spite of herself. “Sometimes it’s the name of someone they love, a date that’s important to them, a quote that helped them. Other times its symbolic. Something important in their life.”
“Right.” He nodded, appearing to think deeply on the matter. A long, sad note resonated in the background, and some couples swayed so close to one another that their bodies were pressed in. Luan wondered for a brief moment what it might feel like to be pressed into Kerrick; if he would be warm, supple, or hard and uncomfortable.
She inhaled sharply through her nose. Focus on the job, Luan. The job. Kerrick continued to give her a curious smile, before he said, “Anything you’d like to know about me?”
“Uh…” She thought about all the newspaper clippings portraying the prince in a bad light. Showing him as someone lackin
g responsibility and disrespecting the throne. Someone who some people thought was better off missing. “Are you anything like what they show in the news? It paints you as… a ruffian, honestly.”
Kerrick snorted, and his fingers tightened on her jacket. “They take most of it completely out of context. I won’t deny that sometimes I do like to let loose… but I’m well aware of the smear campaign the journalists employ. I’ve simply been a very easy target for them over the years.”
“So what are you like?” Luan tried to reconcile the two separate images of the prince in her mind. The prince with multiple women draped over his arms, splashing frivolous amounts of money on them. And the prince who acted charming and sincere with her, flirting but not grabbing. Though maybe he didn’t grab simply because he knew he’d be losing a hand if he tried.
“Good question.” Kerrick’s mouth pursed, losing some of the warmth. “Honestly, I don’t know. I know what a lot of people think of me… but I don’t think I’m the person they believe. Just… well, it’s hard to persuade people when they already have a certain opinion of you.”
The music ended, and a loud clinking noise caused the ballroom to fall silent. Luan broke away from the prince’s attention and arms, and focused on top of the spiraling staircase, where several armored guards had made their appearance.
“Father,” Kerrick whispered, his hand clinging to Luan tightly, as if she were a lifeline. His fingers dug in, and Luan highly suspected there’d be bruises on her arm later. She let him hold on, though.
The king seemed emaciated, somehow. His eyes had a strange, feverish glint in the light, and his face twitched from side to side, as if expecting something to dart out of the shadows. Two people followed him, both fully encased in armor, so they had no way of telling who lurked within. For all they knew, the Zamorkans were concealed beneath all that. The king might be captive in plain sight, or he might be a willing participant in all this.
“You want to approach?” Luan whispered, even as the king launched into some welcoming speech, his arms open, his thick white robes spilling behind like miniature wings.
Kerrick took a few deep breaths, before he nodded. “I’ll do it. Stay with me?” His voice came out as a plea, and Luan gave him the most sympathetic look she could muster. Not that she was much of a sympathy girl.
“I will.” She let herself move with his steps, threading through the crowd. At the base of the steps, the security witches preventing entrance to the king barred their way. Both were air witches, and both hated Luan.
“Run along, psycho,” one of them hissed to her. Sharon. Storms, Luan hated Sharon.
“Can’t,” Luan hissed back. “I have someone important here about to reveal themselves.”
Taking it as his cue, Kerrick took off his mask and stared down at Sharon, whose face went slack with surprise. The other witch, Rhona, wasn’t much better. “Ladies,” Kerrick said, his voice taking on an authoritarian air—the kind that expected people to obey him at a moment’s notice. “I have returned from imprisonment. And I’d really like to speak to my father.”
Other people, noticing the prince, started pointing and whispering, along with punctuated gasps, and the king faltered in his speech, finally paying attention. The king’s face froze in complete surprise.
“Hello, Father,” Kerrick said, puffing himself up. He let go of Luan’s hand, but she remained close, ready to dig into her magic. Ready to protect.
Chapter Four – Kerrick
Fear sliced up his insides, making it hard to function. The man that was his father had a cold, pallid look about him. Like he’d been spending far too long on the gut rot in Undercity, or the drug dens, puffing smoke until his brains dribbled out. Certainly, his father now gave him an uncomprehending stare.
And in that stare, Kerrick had all the answers he’d been dreading.
His father had locked him up. It was him all along.
“You’re… you,” King Rezar stuttered, his eyes protuberant. One hand twitched uselessly, and his gaze swept to one of his armored guards.
“Prince Kerrick is safe!” Perran yelled above the whispering. “He was imprisoned for months, but now returns to us!”
Someone started clapping, perhaps Vash or Natalie, and about half the ballroom joined in. Again, Kerrick’s father looked frantic, wild.
“I… yes. Welcome back… son.”
“Very welcome, isn’t it?” Kerrick said, as the ballroom fell into silence. He took one step towards his father, and Luan slid in close behind. He sensed the tension in the woman and chanced a side glance to see her eyes fixed on the guards. Yes… she suspected the same as him. “You must have been so worried about me when I vanished. You must have been looking for me everywhere. Putting so much resources into finding me. And you know… I wasn’t that far from the palace. Not far at all.”
His father’s face paled further. “Of—of course I was looking for you, son.”
“Imagine if I vanished again, Father. Now that everyone here knows I’m safe. Imagine how people might react.”
One of the guards started forward, but froze, as if running into an invisible wall. Behind him, Luan wore a wolfish grin.
“What…” his father licked what seemed like parched lips, “what are you hinting at, son?”
“Oh, nothing. Going to hug me, Father? Because you missed me?” Kerrick stretched out his arms. The king trembled more violently.
“I, that is… public display…”
“I’ve been missing for months,” Kerrick bit out, and this seemed to prompt Rezar into placing his arms around Kerrick. He smelled like he hadn’t washed for a week, and the king’s muscles quivered in emotion, though Kerrick wasn’t sure which kind. Fear? Anger? Relief?
Again, the ballroom erupted into clapping, this time a little more passionate. Kerrick couldn’t help but notice both guards flopping, before moving up the stairs as if held up by strings. Luan walked sedately behind the guards.
“Just going to have a little chat with them,” she said cheerfully.
“What are you doing?” the king hissed, his arms still wrapped around Kerrick.
“Just making sure you’re not the corrupt old corpse I think you are,” Kerrick whispered into his father’s ear, though his heart pounded fast from his own daring. He wasn’t so used to defying his father directly. More used to indirect annoyances.
“You’ll pay for this, boy…” the king snarled, before withdrawing from his son and plastering on a huge grin. Kerrick watched as he attempted to pick up the threads of his abandoned speech. Kerrick waved to the crowd as he hastily followed after Luan, and Perran tagged along close by, flashing his police badge at those who tried to stop him. The staircase led to a series of grand, opulent rooms lined by a red carpet, and in the second room, after barging past a few bewildered servants, Kerrick caught Luan neatly divesting the guards of their helmets, revealing tufts of blond and red hair.
“Ugh. These guys are like roaches. Everywhere,” Luan said.
“Did you kill them?”
“No. I cut off their air supply and pinned them still with my magic until they fell unconscious. Then brought them here. I don’t think they’re alone, though. I feel like someone is searching for them now. They’re taking shallow breaths, they’ve approached the king…”
“Wait, you can sense this?”
“Yep.”
“Incredible,” Kerrick said, seriously impressed. Luan’s confident expression faltered for a moment, before she smiled.
“Isn’t it?”
Kerrick watched her examine the two guards, trying to find something incriminating on their persons. “You’d think they would just dye their hair and save all the trouble of being recognized on sight.”
“You’d think,” Luan agreed, whistling to herself. “But you know about the carpet matching the drapes? I’m not sure they’ll go far enough for that.”
“Wow. You look to see if they match down below?”
“Sometimes.” Luan tugged ou
t a small leather purse from the red-haired woman. Opening it, she scowled. “Nothing. Just basic change. Well, we’re still going to arrest them.”
“On what charge?” Perran had materialized in the room and now watched over the scene with a frown on his haggard face. “We have nothing on these two but a suspicion. And we are supposed to be forging better relations with the Zamorkans at the moment. We arrest them and they protest their innocence, our entire task force will be eliminated before you know it.”
“How safe exactly do you think you’ll be, going back to the palace?” Luan asked cautiously, sitting next to the prince as he scowled at nothing. Perran was still rubbing his face, hardly able to believe the mess they’d all ended up in.
“Well, I don’t think I’d be killed…” Kerrick said dubiously, not exactly inspired with confidence. “But he’d probably lock me up and then coerce me to write letters to prove that I’m still alive and well.”
“You’re not going back there. Now we know he’s involved,” Perran snapped. “At this point, you’re our best counter to the corruption on the throne.”
“Come again?” Kerrick said, blinking rapidly. Images wreathed through his head, all of them unpleasant. He thought he knew what Perran was implying, but it was one of the last things he wanted to do.
“If needed, we must have a legal challenger for the throne, if the previous one is compromised in any way.”
At this statement, Kerrick’s heart dropped somewhere into his feet, and a sense of resignation stole over him.
“What does that mean?” Luan asked, probably picking up on Kerrick’s deflated attitude.
“It means,” Perran said softly, as if knowing the prince didn’t want to hear this, “that Kerrick will have to challenge his father to a Kingmatch.”
This couldn’t be the solution. Everything in Kerrick’s soul screamed against it, and he glared at Perran, clenching his hands into fists. “There has to be another way. Get those Zamorkans off my father, somehow. Gather a crowd of supporters and storm the palace. Kidnap my father or something. Not… that.”