Amber & Dusk

by Lyra Selene

  “But you wagered it would take only ten minutes. I think I win by default.”

  “If you insist.” She reached into a delicate little purse to hand her companion something that glinted in the light. “But I’ll have it back before the last hour of Nocturne.”

  “Care to wager on it?” Sunder shot back.

  “Pardon me!” My voice was loud and raw. The two courtiers turned to me with looks that implied they’d forgotten I was even there. I twisted my fingers in my skirts so they wouldn’t see me shake. “What just happened? Did you wager on how long it would take—how long—”

  I choked, fury burning the words to ash even as I tried to force them from my throat.

  “How long it would take me to seduce you?” Sunder cocked his head to one side and smiled like a serpent. “Why, does that bother you?”

  Rage paralyzed every muscle in my body.

  “Well, you did better than anyone dreamed.” He lifted a sun-gilded eyebrow as he reached into a pocket and drew out a slim sheaf of parchment. He didn’t even glance at the papers, just tossed them to the ground at my feet. “Apparently the Dusklands aren’t populated solely by whores and thieves.”

  He turned on his heel and offered his elbow to the lady.

  Every inch of my body trembled. I stared down at the sheaf of paper, catching a glimpse of sums inked on parchment. Carelessly scrawled signatures.

  Promissory notes. Money. The sponsorship I was promised.

  Tossed at my feet like so many scraps.

  A sudden vivid memory seared my mind’s eye—Sister Cathe’s drawn white face, her trembling fingers as she’d unlocked the door to my room. She, of all of them, had been most frightened of me, of what I could do. Maybe she’d meant to set my dinner on the ground, but instead she’d flung the plate into the room, scattering morsels of food before slamming the door behind her.

  I could still feel the dirt clinging to my scrabbling fingers, taste the dust coating my tongue. My vision flashed white.

  Lullaby’s warning sprinted like a mantra through my head. Don’t insult anyone. Don’t insult anyone.

  Don’t.

  “Sunder,” I called out, my traitor voice funneling all my furious thoughts into calmly uttered words. I couldn’t think of anything beyond the blood pounding in my head, beyond the enormous sum of money thrown to me like leftovers to a begging dog. I couldn’t remember why I wasn’t supposed to insult anyone.

  I just wanted to hurt him. Like he’d tried to hurt me.

  Sunder paused, glancing over his brocaded shoulder. His lady followed suit, and I found myself admiring her smooth skin, her frosty hair, the jewel-bedizened choker collaring her white throat. She was perfect, and so different from me, with my faded dark hair, my travel-rough skin, my ungraceful manners.

  “Are your lady’s tastes so singular, then?” I asked, sweetly—and even as the words formed, I knew it was weak, I knew it was dull, I knew it wouldn’t sting. “Or did you have to wager on her virtue too?”

  His eyes widened, and I glimpsed a sudden, searing bleakness: a futile gasp of poisoned air, the cold moment before a last hope is dashed. For an aching moment, it was like staring into the violet-dark clouds above Dominion, dangerous and breathtaking and wild with impossible things.

  I braced myself for pain.

  But in another instant they were just eyes, and Sunder was just himself, arrogant and aloof and cold. He stared at me for one last moment, then stalked from the pergola with his lady, his boots loud as thunderclaps on the glassy floor.

  I stood immobilized for what felt like an eternity before I found the will to crouch and retrieve the promissory notes. I felt particles of dirt stick to my numb fingers even though the marble floor was pristine. I thumbed through the sheaf, and even with my poor knowledge of numbers and finance, I knew the sum was enormous.

  More money than an ambric mine could expect to earn in ten tides. More money than a Dusklander family would see in twenty lifetimes.

  I took two shuddering breaths, then fled. I ran back through the porticos and vaulted halls, fighting the icicles stabbing at my eyes. No one stopped me, and the only sound to splinter the chirping of distant birds was the faint tap of my slippers on the pristine floors.

  I made it nearly all the way back to Lys Wing before I collapsed between two carven pillars, shivering and shaking. Tears streamed down my cheeks, my eyes stinging as carefully applied kohl dissolved into salty mud.

  I cried so hard I thought either the stays of my corsets must break, or my chest would explode. And when at last the tears subsided, the realization dawned.

  I was rich. For the next three spans, at least, I was fabulously, ridiculously, unimaginably wealthy.

  When I finally made it back to my rooms in Lys Wing, Lullaby was waiting for me.

  She wore a silver-blue gown, and matching metallic fingernails drummed a staccato on the arm of one of the many blossom-encrusted chairs thronging my chambers. An elaborate meal was laid out on the low table in my parlor; I smelled fresh bread, and dumplings, and more spices than my nostrils were used to.

  Even caged in its prison of boning and silk, my stomach gave a yearning moan.

  “You’re an hour late,” Lullaby snapped, water-blue eyes swirling. “Didn’t you hear the bells for Compline? Or did you simply not care if I was kept waiting?”

  “To set the record straight,” I mumbled, folding onto a divan and giving my tearstained cheeks one last swipe, “I do know how to tell time. Despite what anyone says to the contrary.”

  “Pardon?” She leaned forward, her delicate brows coming together. “Who have you been speaking with? I thought I told you to keep a low profile.”

  “I tried,” I said. “But Dowser thinks I’m a disappointment and a failure, and Sunder thinks I’m a mewling lowlife fit only to be tormented.”

  “Sunder?” Lullaby jerked out of her chair, and the delicate color of her skin drained to ash. “You saw Sunder? When? Why?”

  “He summoned me,” I reminded her. “He wanted to see me before he released the funds he promised me.”

  Lullaby relaxed a hair. “And?”

  I jerked the cursed sheaf of parchment out of my pocket and flung it onto the table, where the pages lay wilting between charred greens and saffron rice. Lullaby hesitated for barely a second before grabbing them up, eagerly rifling through the pages. Her skin regained its color, then brightened with tinges of sapphire on her high cheekbones.

  “Scion help us,” she murmured. “I never dreamed it would be so much.”

  “Worth the price, I hope,” I grumbled.

  Lullaby’s head snapped up.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Mirage.” Her lovely eyes narrowed. “What did you do? Is there something I ought to know about?”

  “More like what did he do,” I said. Lullaby’s gaze drilled holes in my forehead, and finally I sighed, fighting the urge to rip the pins out of my hair and tear the stays from my corset. “He slandered my birth, my intelligence, and my looks, then made a poor attempt at seducing me.”

  Lullaby’s lips tightened.

  “But that turned out to be nothing more than a sick wager between him and that icy witch he hangs around with, so he gave me the money and I left.”

  “And that was all that happened?” My mentor’s dristic-flaked fingernails crushed the parchment. “You didn’t say or do anything to punish him? For insulting you? For scheming to get you into his bed?”

  I snorted. “I doubt there would have been any beds involved.”

  “Mirage.”

  I blew out the air from my nostrils and jutted my chin forward, feeling like Luca’s favorite brindled mule.

  “I barely said anything at all. I only insinuated that his lover might not warm his bed by choice.”

  “Lover? What lover?”

  “The girl. The frosty one. They’re always together—I assumed—”

  Lullaby jolted, then went still. “Mirage, no
.”

  “What?” I rolled my eyes. “It’s hardly even an insult, they’re actually—”

  “She’s his sister.”

  Shock sent a bolt of lightning up my spine, and I sat up so straight my corset ground against my ribs.

  “His sister?”

  “Worse.” Lullaby’s face was so pale I thought she might faint. “His twin. And they are most certainly not lovers.”

  “Oh.” I cast my mind back over the events of the past two days, every second shifting in hue and shade until everything was awfully, blindingly clear. “Oh, no.”

  “Scion help us both.” The multicolored light from the flower-stained windows turned the walls an ugly shade of mauve. “Oh, they will have their revenge for that slight.”

  “Who are they?” I had to ask. “You called him the empress’s dog. He deals pain with a glance. He wagers on seduction with his twin sister. They’re unimaginably rich. What am I missing here?”

  “Who are they?” Lullaby’s harsh laugh sent chills skittering down the back of my arms. “Only you would dare to ask that. Only you would dare not know.”

  I waited.

  “Most of Dexter refers to them as the Suicide Twins,” she said, finally, a suggestion of fear in her lovely voice.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’d need a death wish to be on intimate terms with them.” She took a breath. “Sunder and Bane. Pain and poison. They were born Aubrey and Oleander de Vere, and they’re the last living heirs to the estate and great fortune of the Marquisate of Belsyre.”

  She looked at me, as if these names meant something significant. I had to shake my head. She sighed, deeply.

  “Belsyre is the largest producer of dristic and kembric ore in the empire. Vast mines in the Meteor Mountains pump out nearly half the imperial supply of precious minerals. It’s the wealthiest region in the land, and before the Conquest, the de Veres were dauphins in their own right.”

  I frowned, thinking of the gorgeous blond twins, tossing away fortunes to foundlings and wagering on intrigue. “If they have all that wealth and power, why are they here?”

  “Is that a joke?” Lullaby stared at me like I’d sprouted extra eyes. “Their personal wealth rivals that of Severine herself. Their private militia is legendary in size and prowess. They control hugely valuable resources. Why would the empress want them anywhere but here?”

  “Where she can keep an eye on them?”

  “Where—” Lullaby’s mouth twisted, and she dropped her voice, as though worried someone might be listening. “Where she can control them. Where she can use their power. Like she uses all of us.”

  “Uses you?” A memory nudged its way to the front of my mind—a handsome young man in a ridiculous hat, his smile fading when I asked why he and the other courtiers took it in shifts to dance attendance on the empress. To better fulfill our great ruler’s demands on us. “What does she use you for?”

  Lullaby’s face shuttered like one of Dowser’s darkened windows, and then she was prattling about place settings and cutlery and types of crystal and table manners, and I didn’t have time to think about anything but keeping my back straight and my elbows in and my mouth shut.

  But later, when the bells struck for second Nocturne and I was finally released from my aching tower of hair and my mask of cosmetics and my cage of a corset, I couldn’t think of anything but the chilly slash of a gaze hard with dristic and infinite with green. And the sharp, clean scent of genévrier and pain.

  The next week acquired something of a routine, and I was grateful for it.

  I spent Matins with a grumpy Lullaby, rehearsing curtsies and niceties and flicks of the wrist, which seemed to be a language unto themselves. Comportment and address and carriage and diction. I tried on new clothing—Matin gowns and leisure gowns and Compline gowns and ball gowns. Underclothes and outerwear and shoes and accessories. Sunder’s money had paid for a luxurious wardrobe that I—insulted but slightly relieved—was forbidden from having anything to do with selecting.

  And there were my sessions with Dowser. Hours spent in that darkened study, breathing in the heavy scents of tabak smoke and kachua while he made me sit and focus, silent and unmoving, until I felt like one of the corridor statues forced to hold guttering torches from now until eternity. Hours dragging illusions from my uncooperative hands: a potted plant dissolved into flickers of ropy greenery; a glass paperweight snatched at the light before fading into shadow; a horn comb was a wisp of fog evanescing like a ghost at dusk.

  I wasn’t getting better.

  Only once, after I managed to conjure the suggestion of an imaginary flutterwing, body like a diamond and wings like lace, did Dowser deem my work halfway satisfactory.

  “Where do your illusions come from?” he demanded, frustrated. “What binds them to your mind, your body? Magic requires control, Mirage. Magic requires rules.”

  Rules. There had only ever been one rule with the Sisters—hide my legacy at all costs. Don’t imagine, don’t hope, never dream. And I’d tried. For so long, I’d tried to bind my power with the sinew of my will and suppress it beneath the weight of my fear. But control had always meant oppression. I didn’t want rules; I wanted freedom.

  I clenched my buzzing hands. Dowser was trying to help me hone my gift, and I’d sworn to do whatever he said. If he required control, then I’d learn control. I didn’t know what the rules of my legacy were, but I’d find a way to learn them.

  After my lessons I returned to my chambers in Lys for more hours with an increasingly nettled Lullaby, learning the differences between suppers, dinners, teas, and banquets. Socials, fêtes, soirées, and galas. The steps to dances long forgotten and yet to become popular. Card games. Gambling. Polite banter. Singing.

  And although Lullaby swore the Suicide Twins would have their revenge for the slight I unwittingly—but not involuntarily—delivered, I saw nothing more of either Sunder or his icy sister.

  But sometimes, when I woke at third Nocturne in a sweat and the edges of my shutters bled crimson, I knew all my nightmares were about pain and poison.

  I burst into Lullaby’s rooms without knocking, eagerness winning out over manners. After a whole week of practice, I’d finally mastered a complicated dance step, and I couldn’t wait to show Lullaby. I hoped the progress would soothe her frazzled nerves—she’d developed purple bags beneath her eyes, and her once-manicured nails were bitten nearly to the quick.

  I skidded to a halt in the foyer. Lullaby’s sleek dark head was bent close to a cap of bronze curls under a rakish hat.

  She was with someone.

  Embarrassment heated my face, and I lifted my skirts to back out of the door. It was too late. Two faces stared up at me with matching expressions of guilty astonishment. And I recognized the second face—it was Reaper. Thibo. The gorgeous gallant who showed me the way to Dowser’s. I glimpsed a flicker of parchment disappearing into his velveteen pocket, but I glanced away before they could catch me staring.

  Even with my inferior manners and inelegant graces, I knew I’d interrupted something I shouldn’t have.

  “Oh, Lullaby,” I mumbled. “I’m so sorry to barge in. I didn’t know you had company, and—”

  “Mirage?” Thibo’s beautiful smile showed off every one of his perfectly white teeth. “Is that really you? I’d begun to think I dreamed you up in a fever, so deeply did you dazzle me with your beauty.”

  I knew it was worthless flattery, but his sugary words heated my cheeks. I ducked my head, embarrassed, but Thibo had already crossed the room on lavender-clad legs to bow over my hand. The feathers on his hat—silver today, edged in tiny black pearls—nearly brushed the ground.

  “Thibo, stop,” snapped Lullaby, from across the room. Annoyance darkened her turquoise eyes. “The last thing I need is for all that fawning to go to her head.”

  “Oh?” Thibo straightened with a flourish and a wink. “And what could possibly be the problem with her head?”

  “The problem,” sigh
ed Lullaby, “is that no one else at court is going to treat her like that. I don’t want her getting the wrong impression.”

  “Lullaby, it’s fine,” I cut in. “I’m not an idiot. I know it’s just flattery—I know it’s not true.”

  Thibo slapped a jeweled hand to his heart. “You wound me, fair lady! I would never say anything that wasn’t true.”

  Both Lullaby and I fixed him with pointed glances.

  “Fine,” he pouted. “Perhaps I will leave the business of illusions to our famous fantast. Since mine seem so transparent as to be thought lies.”

  He sketched a bow before heading for the door.

  “Thibo, wait!” In spite of the contrived compliments, I enjoyed his company, and after a week of no one but Lullaby and Dowser, I was antsy for fresh companionship. I wanted to hear about Coeur d’Or, about the parties and balls and courtiers. I was also desperately curious. Their whispered voices. The shred of paper shoved hastily into a pocket. “Won’t you stay?”

  He cocked his head, bronze curls swaying.

  “Lullaby says your politesse is unparalleled,” I lied. “We’re practicing tea service and polite inquiry. Perhaps you’ll lend some insight?”

  He raised skeptical eyebrows at Lullaby, who stuck out a tiny pink tongue.

  “Such beauty can brook no argument,” Thibo said. “And by beauty, I mean you, not that fish-colored water sprite who delights in my pain and drinks all my wine.”

  “Fish-colored?” Lullaby’s eyes narrowed into slits. “I’ll have you know, songs have been written about the rare color of my exquisite skin.”

  “Now she’s writing songs about the color of her own skin?” Thibo’s wide eyes feigned shock. “The vanity!”

  “I did not say—”

  The pair devolved into comfortable squabbling, sniping at each other’s insecurities with a skill that spoke of long familiarity. I rose and crossed to the bar, pretending not to listen as I poured a few generous glasses of ice wine. I might have invited Thibo to stay on a whim, but now that he was here I realized I was desperate for friends. Lullaby had been more than patient with me, but we hadn’t exactly crossed the boundary into friendship. I didn’t blame her. I was more an assignment than a companion, and my progress—or lack thereof—fell on her shoulders as well as mine. And she had more to lose.