Date Knight

by Bridget Essex

  “There is nothing to forgive,” Calla murmurs to Virago, though the slim smile is gone from her face. For a long moment, she says nothing more, and Virago and I turn, looking out at the dance floor. Virago's jaw is working, and I can tell she's holding something back, holding words in, but there's no time for her to utter them.

  Calla rises easily, pushing off from the bar stool and straightening the bottom half of her dress with long fingers before she sighs and lifts her chin. “Is there a washroom?” she asks me then, and I nod.

  I start to tell her how to get to it, but the problem is that Queenie's restroom is located near the kitchen, and there are a lot of different turns to get there. She'll probably end up in the kitchen, because I'm terrible at giving directions. “I can...I can just show you,” I tell her with a little shrug, and I glance at Virago, who apparently had something to say to the queen...but no longer does. She nods, taking a step back.

  “I'll be here,” she murmurs to me, and then the crowd swallows her up.

  As Calla and I make our way along the hallway, the din of the music, the laughter, and the shouting from back at the bar starts to fade. It's replaced, instead, with muted conversations and the din of pots and pans banging in the kitchen ahead. Halfway down the hallway, we join a line, because of course there's a line stretching around the corner for access to the toilets. But I've seen the line longer than this; it should move fairly quickly.

  We stand in silence together. Two ladies in front of us are making bets that their friend will break up with someone named Ashley. A few people behind us, a woman is arguing loudly with someone on her cellphone about lawn maintenance. I lean against the wall and stand up on my toes to take the pressures off the balls of my feet. I'm too old to wear heels to bars.

  I'm not expecting what Calla tells me then.

  “You move beautifully together, you know,” says Calla solemnly, glancing at me as she leans on the wall, her arms folded in front of her, her shoulders curving forward. “You and Virago,” she supplies, her head to the side.

  I blush a little, tucking another curl behind my ear as I bite my lip. I can't keep from smiling.

  “Virago is a prize,” says Calla, and she sounds like she means it as she gazes forward, lifting her chin. “She is loyal and good and kind,” Calla tells me, “though she can be stubborn. And, perhaps, too protective,” she says, her mouth rounding up at the corners into a soft smile. “But she is a good match for you, Holly. I am glad that you found one another.”

  “Thank you, Your Ma—um, Calla. Thank you,” I tell her.

  There are several people making out in the line, including the people directly ahead of us, and I'm suddenly self-conscious as I think about my theory that Calla's sadness is caused by a woman.

  “They look happy,” says Calla wistfully, gazing at the nearest couple. I'm fairly certain that these two aren't headed to the bathroom because they need a potty break.

  Calla's eyes fill with tears as she watches them making out. She's biting her lip when she finally turns away, tears streaking down her cheeks in silent succession.

  I have a pack of tissues in my purse, and I offer these to her automatically.

  “Oh, Holly, you are quite good,” she tells me with a sniff, immediately trying to put on a brave face and completely denying that she was crying at all with her actions. “You're always at the ready with a...what did you call these?” she asks, unfolding the packet and taking a tissue to her eyes, dabbing along the edges and shaking her head. She's obviously trying to keep from crying further, and I bite my lip. It seems that Calla isn't fond of being overly emotional in public. I want to respect that, so I try to distract her.

  But, God, she's in so much pain. It's hard to watch, to witness someone's heart aching like this.

  “They're tissues,” I tell her quietly, clearing my throat. “So, tissue is a fun word, huh? Tissue. Tis-sue,” I repeat, realizing that I'm getting funny looks from the women on the other side of us. “Anyway, unicorns, really?” I say, raising my brows. Whatever. I've heard weirder conversations in the bathroom line.

  “Yes, there are unicorns on Agrotera,” says Calla, smiling a watery smile. “I think you'll like seeing them.”

  Blessedly, it's our turn in line then, and the both of us use the extremely filthy restroom (Welcome to Earth, Queen Calla! I think to myself miserably as I toilet-paper my seat. You're never going to want to come back again!), but Calla is apparently a true class act, because she doesn't seem to notice or pass judgment on the state of the facilities...or the fact that two women are clearly bow-chicka-wow-wow-ing in the handicap stall, as evidenced by their spectacularly overexaggerated moans.

  I know that, in a lot of bars, having sex in the restrooms is not encouraged, but...they're pretty flexible about that sort of thing here. After all, Queenie's has been around for a very long time, and they turn a blind eye to hanky-panky—which is probably why even more lesbians frequent this bar than any other in the city.

  As I'm washing my hands, waiting for Calla to exit her stall, a cheer goes up from the waiting women in line when the door to the handicap stall opens.

  I turn around as I grab a paper towel from the dispenser, and then I'm staring with my mouth open.

  Striding out of that handicap stall comes Kell with yet another woman. This is not the woman she was making out with right before we entered the restroom, but, in fact, a different one. I mean, seriously, how does she do it? And how in the world did she get a woman in that stall so quickly? Or, you know, go through the line to the restroom that quickly? Kell swaggers out of the stall, grinning widely at the cheers, and holds up the woman's hand as if they've both just won an Olympic gold medal or something. And then she smirks as she walks past me, tossing her hair over her shoulder and pinning me to the spot with a satisfied blue gaze.

  I shrug and give her a thumbs-up sign, which I realize Kell probably has no context for. Calla comes out of her stall in enough time to see Kell and the other woman exit the restroom, Kell's arm draped around the woman's shoulders loosely, their head angled close.

  Calla chuckles as she washes her hands. “That's our Kell,” she says, taking the paper towel I hand to her.

  “Is she always like this?” I ask, with a bewildered smile. “Because...wow. I mean, she certainly has a lot of, um...” I turn my hand in the air with a grin. “Stamina.”

  Calla smirks, shaking her head. “Kell has not yet found the right woman to settle down with. I used to think that she wouldn't find the one, that this is the way she wants to live her life,” says Calla, gesturing at the line of women angling back toward the bar. I'm fairly certain that she's gesturing to the many, many couples making out. “But then Kell told me something a few moons back, and now I think...Kell is ready. Ready for someone new, someone she can give her heart to.” Calla sighs a little, her head to the side. “Do you think me a romantic?”

  “Hey, I'm one, too,” I tell her with a soft smile. We're entering the bar proper, and the music and voices are deafening.

  For a moment, back in the quieter hallway and in the restroom, Calla seemed calmer, happier, more talkative. But when we step down onto the dance floor, her queenly mask slides right back into place, and she's suddenly aloof, her chin tilted upward, her regal bearing evident.

  “Calla,” I call to her, reaching out to touch her arm. I shout, over the din, “Do you want to go?” I ask her. “Is this place making you unhappy?” I gesture around at the bar.

  Calla looks at me in surprise. “Why would you think it makes me unhappy?” she asks then, the words coming out a little stiff as she tries to look nonchalant, but something flitted across her face, an expression of sadness so deep, so painful, that it twisted my stomach and my heart.

  Calla clears her throat, shakes her head a little, taking a deep breath and settling her shoulders back, like a diplomat about to attack a problem. “It is...it is good to see women in love. Good to see that love still exists...” But then her face flickers again, and s
he says softly, sadly, “It exists for other women.” She trails off, and then Calla folds her arms around her middle carefully, like she's cold. “But it will never exist for me,” she whispers.

  I had to strain to hear her final words over the din, and now I'm opening my mouth, about to ask her what she means, when Virago spots us from across the room. She's leaning against the wall beside Alinor, the both of them nursing beers, but when she sees me, she pushes off from the wall and strides purposefully through the crowd. Surprisingly, the dancers clear a path for her with no comment, moving around her as if she has a presence that fills up a room.

  And she does. Virago's bright blue gaze pins me to the spot when she catches my eye, and together, Calla and I wait for her to reach us.

  When Virago is close enough, she puts a hand on the curve of my waist, drawing me closer to her so that she can murmur in my ear. “I think that maybe we should go,” she says, her mouth to the side as she leans close to me. “The knights are always...quite a handful whenever we have leave, but you're right, my love. If they are mischievous on this world, it makes things even more...complicated,” she says tactfully.

  She has to shout these last few words to be heard over Kell's whoops as she crawls up onto the bar right in front of us, very, very drunk. She rotates her hand in the air as she wiggles her hips, and then she's dragging another woman up beside her onto the bar. The woman is probably even more drunk than Kell, and they're both standing on the bar, dancing together. As Kell draws the woman toward her, they begin to make out rather enthusiastically, the heel of Kell's boot shattering a shot glass that someone left on the bar top.

  This woman, I would like to point out, is not the woman Kell was with in the restroom.

  “Alinor already did that,” says Virago, inclining her head toward Kell's antics, “while you and Calla were in the restroom,” she tells me, folding her arms in front of her with her head tilted to the side. The long-suffering expression she's wearing tells me that both Alinor and Kell have performed such antics many, many times...just on another world..

  “Uh, yeah, we can totally get going,” I murmur quickly. “I'll go find Magel. Um, honey,” I tell Virago, flashing her a grin, “why don't you coax Kell down from there?”

  “Sure,” says Virago with a sigh and a smile.

  “And I spot Alinor—” I cut myself off, and then I'm angling across the dance floor, keeping Alinor firmly in my sights to avoid losing her in the crowd.

  It doesn't look like Alinor is going anywhere soon, though, because she's gyrating against a woman who looks even drunker than she is. It's not even that late! How are there so many drunk people already in this club? Alinor's eyes are half-closed, and she has her arms around the woman's neck, drawing the two of them tightly together. Alinor has been dancing with this woman all night, and I'm a little sad that I have to separate them. I mean, what if Alinor was really hitting it off with her?

  But we have to go.

  I'm busy trying to make my way through the inebriated dancers, aiming for Alinor...

  But then the dancing just stops around me. Because the music, the constant, pulsing, pounding music...stops, too.

  The band was right in the middle of a fast-paced cover of “Come to My Window,” the lead singer leaning into the microphone stand as if it were a lover, growling the words in her super-sexy voice. The cover had the whole bar roaring with applause, and everyone was dancing close and tight. I mean, isn't that song everyone's romantic anthem? But the band is now still, silence descending over the bar like a deafening bomb. I glance up to the stage in shock.

  The lead singer is standing up there now, gripping the mic stand as she stares over the crowd...and toward the entrance of the club. Her eyes are wide, her mouth open—like she just saw a ghost.

  I turn, along with everyone else around me.

  There's a woman standing at the top of the stairs, poised at the entrance, and every single person in the club is staring at her.

  “Oh, shit,” I mutter, my heart beating a million miles a minute, my mouth suddenly dry, a lump in my throat.

  Standing on those steps, impossibly, is another knight.

  But saying that she's “another knight” makes it seem as if she's like the knights I've already met, and I've got to confess, yeah, that's not the case at all.

  True, the woman at the top of the stairs is wearing armor, like the other knights were when they first came over from Agrotera. But this knight's armor?

  It's jet black.

  And it has spikes on it.

  She honestly looks as if she just arrived from the site of a brutal medieval battle, because her sword is out and held at attention, gripped in a black-leather gloved hand. Every knight's sword is different, I know, and is an expression of that knight's personality—or so Virago has told me. This woman's sword is massive, long and wicked-looking, with a serrated edge and a brightly gleaming blade. The pommel is covered in black gems that flash in the low light of the club, and the pommel itself is huge, heavy-looking. You could probably kill someone if you hit them with it.

  So the armor and the sword set her apart from her fellow knights. But there's more to it than that.

  She's tall, taller than Virago (again, I'm assuming they just grow giant women in Agrotera), but her presence is bigger than her physical height. She seems to fill the whole room, just by stepping into it. She has long black hair that falls in luscious waves down her back, spilling over her shoulders and down her front. Her high cheekbones and long, aristocratic nose give her an air of nobility.

  But her eyes... I can't tell what color they are from across the room—but I don't need to. They're electric, and they're dancing with an ill-boding light.

  Energy seems to pulse around her as she descends the steps with the grace of a jaguar. I've seen big cats move in zoos, stalking the perimeters of their enclosures as if they're constantly looking for a means of escape, but I've never seen a human being move like them...until now. She moves into the bar, one step at a time, the world seeming to shimmer and shift around her, as if she's a spark prepared to set off a tremendous blaze.

  This new woman, this new knight, descends into the startlingly silent room. The air seems to waver around her; I feel like I'm staring at her through the glass of a fish bowl, and things are starting to look a little out of proportion. I'm reminded of the House of Mirrors I walked through at a carnival when I was a kid. I rub at my eyes, and then Virago is there beside me, and she's gripping my arm with strong fingers, her jaw clenched as she watches the knight approach.

  The woman in black armor prowls into the very center of the room, dancers falling all over themselves in order to get away from her. The entire dance floor seems to be empty now, and the knight stands in the very center of it.

  She stands, and she stares at Virago.

  Actually, “staring” isn't the right word for what she's doing.

  Because if this woman's eyes were actual weapons, Virago would be dead right now.

  “What have you done?” the woman murmurs. It's so quiet in the club that you could hear a pin drop, but even if it weren't so quiet, even if the music were playing and everyone was dancing and laughing and yelling, you would have been able to make out this woman's words. They carry across the space with the cutting edge of an ax: sharp, shining...and deadly.

  I shiver, standing next to Virago, and I'm ashamed to say that, in that moment, I want to step behind her so that this woman is not directly in front of me. But I don't. I find some scraps of courage from somewhere deep inside myself, and I hold my ground.

  But just barely.

  Beside me, I can feel the heat of anger rising off of my knight. Virago's leaning forward, her entire body tense, her bright blue eyes flashing with their own icy fire.

  And in that space, Virago whispers one word, like a warning. Like a curse.

  “Charaxus,” she hisses.

  I stare at the woman with her terrifying sword, with her spiky, black armor that would probably wo
und anyone who dared to bump to against it. I stare at her as I finally understand who she is. Charaxus—the vice queen. Queen Calla's vice queen, and—apparently—second in line to the throne of Arktos.

  This new knight, Charaxus, holds the sword above the ground like it weighs nothing, even though, from the length of the blade and heft of the pommel, I know that's absolutely not the case. Charaxus' nostrils flare as she lifts her chin, as she pins Virago with her gaze.

  This close to her, I can tell that Charaxus' eyes are just as bright and blue as Virago's. But there is so much to Virago's eyes besides the color, because her gaze is always full of kindness, even when she's angry, even when she's about to take on a monster. There is strength and courage to her eyes, but you can tell that she has such a big heart, just from her gaze, just from the softness at the edges of her eyes whenever she looks at me, love evident in a simple glance.

  In this moment, I can't tell if Charaxus has a big heart, or if she's ever had a kind thought in her life.

  Because, in this moment, all I see is the pure fury burning through her, sparking in her gaze, a rampant fire of ice (a maelstrom of dueling, potent energies) that could consume the world and destroy all of it.

  Charaxus lifts her sword easily from where the tip was resting on the floor. She lifts it without even flexing her arm, and then she raises it level with her heart. And she points the enormous, wickedly flashing blade at Virago.

  “Where,” Charaxus growls the word, and the very floor beneath us seems to quake from the strength of that single syllable, “is Queen Calla?” she snarls. The lights overhead flash off of the sword blade, making it appear even deadlier, and my heart is pounding in my throat as I stare at that sword, at this cold, rage-filled woman who crossed over from another world to be here, now, her black armor glittering in a silenced bar, a deadly weapon aimed at my girlfriend's throat.