The sea-foam blue Dragon looked on in disgust. “You can’t possibly—”
“Fetch them for her,” Cvareh ordered. There was no space for questioning between the sharp clip of his words.
Cain’s nostrils tensed, arching upward in disgust and anger, but he left as commanded. Arianna got a wicked sense of pleasure from his discomfort. The night was shaping up in unpredictable ways. Her plans were changing before her eyes, a new set unfurling like a scroll of truth that had been kept from her until just that moment. Patience was paying off.
“What can I do to help?” Cvareh asked.
“Nothing.”
“But—”
“I said nothing.” She glared at him, wondering what about a singular word could possibly be confusing.
The Dragon blinked back at her. He didn’t understand. He wouldn’t understand the source of the rekindled flame of her rage. If anything, his confusion assured her enough to keep him alive, to prevent her slamming him against the nearest wall and skinning him over and over and over until he told her what she wanted to know.
“I know what you are about to do, and you cannot possibly intend to do it alone.”
“I do intend, and I will.” Arianna was spared further exhausting affirmation by Cain’s return. At least someone among them was competent enough to do as she asked and then leave her be. The other Dragon departed with a pointed glare, the supplies deposited haphazardly on the opposite edge of the bed as though he could not be coaxed into entering her room more than necessary under the present circumstances.
Arianna began setting up the supplies on the table. Her hands moved with the certainty of practice. She had done this before with Eva. She had doneworsebefore. It was not a delight, but it was not something that was cause for fear.It was science, as Eva would say. And science existed beyond right, wrong, and fear.
“Let me help.”
“Do you really want to be involved with this?” Her violet eyes met his gold ones as Arianna attempted to burrow under his resolve. It was a plant with shallow roots, easily felled when the earth around it was overturned. She could feel his magic waver before his stare did. “I didn’t think so.”
Cvareh opened his mouth to speak, but Arianna wouldn’t let him.
“I commanded you to harvest one of your own. I am going to cut off my hands, and stitch these on, and use them forevermore as though I was born with them.” Arianna tilted her head to the side. “The blood of your kin is already on your palms. Do you want to take that further?”
He was completely disarmed, and that told her everything. Arianna didn’t know the depth of the truth yet, but she would find out in time. She would find who the original owner of the hands had been; she’d just confirmed the man she had known simply as “Rafansi” during the last rebellion was someone of House Xin.
“I have been here for weeks, and you could not be bothered with me,” she reminded him. The pain was real and bright and angry like a fresh wound. It hurt more than she thought it would, and that only flared her temper further.
“I have acted in no way that was not on your behalf, or in your best interest,” he insisted. “But I have had other things to attend to. I couldn’t let myself be distracted, and when I am near you… There were matters of my House.”
“I understand,” she said quietly, letting the clasps of the box falling open ring louder than any single word. “Because you are Cvareh Xin’Ryu Soh, peeled from the blue of the sky itself. I am Arianna the Rivet, steam given the shape of a woman. And our priorities only overlap as much as it behooves your sister to seek my help.”
He had the sense not to try to object. Though his face was tormented by enough conflict to make her very briefly question what, exactly, was going through his head.
Arianna put the hesitation aside with a smile, an expression somewhere between an exhausted triumph and a bitter sneer. “So, pretend this is nothing more than what it is: you earning my trust. And get out.”
His claws shot from his fingers and an equal measure of hurt and anger was fresh on his magic. It dotted his pores like a midday sweat. She wanted him to fight, she realized. Arianna wanted him to tell her she was wrong and insist that there was some purity beyond simply overlapping desires that strung them together.
Instead Cvareh retreated. He left with wide, hasty steps.
She paid him no further mind. The truth of her words had made them pointed, not the bitterness that had been building in her chest at the weeks of being saddled with Cain. She was here for a purpose, a shifting, changing, elusive purpose, but a purpose all the same.
Arianna walked over to the door, dragging the spare chair behind her. She sat heavily in it, placing some of her makeshift tools in her lap. Running her fingers over the lock like a lover, she made quick work of the panel. She was Arianna, and she would be kept nowhere she didn’t wish to be. She’d do nothing she didn’t wish to do. She’d let the Dragons think otherwise for weeks, but now it was time to remind them that she was a force of her own.
Within a few minutes, and a few precise movements, she’d dismantled the lock into the engaged position. Arianna stood and swung the chair around, wedging it under the door handle for good measure. She didn’t think anyone would have even the slightest bit of interest in coming to her side, especially not after she warned off the one Dragon who could—for some inexplicable reason—have half a mind to do so.
But she could take no chances.
She was about to be in the most vulnerable state imaginable. She was about to spill her secrets upon the table with every drop of blood. And she would risk no witnesses.
Like a ritual, Arianna drew the curtains over the windows, candlelight the room’s only glow. It was more than enough light for her Dragon eyes to see with precision. She sat heavily at the table, her reflection a flickering visage in the polished mirrors. Purple eyes stared back at her from every angle.
Arianna remembered when her eyes had been black. She remembered when they had been violently gouged out. She remembered losing all sight, and the moment of stomach-churning terror when she thought she might never see again. She remembered coming to peace with the notion that the face of the woman she loved could well be the last thing she ever saw.
