They already faked a memorial for Singix and sent a fake body back to the Ceres Remnants. And bythey, Amaranth means herself and her handmaidens and Beremé, who Amaranth is not happy to be indebted to. Because Garnet is no help; Garnet is being a huge stubborn ass and barely agreed to hide the fact that Lyric isgoneand use the mask of Lyric’s face Iriset left behind to keep everyone in line. Amaranth is sure the only reason Garnet even agreed is because if Lyric is declared missing, then the power will all fall into Amaranth’s and Beremé’s hands, and he’s clinging to what he callsthe final shred of Amaranth’s cheap loyaltybecause she wants Lyric to remain the Vertex Seal, even if it’s a fake Lyric.
The princes need an explanation, and the non-mirané of the city demand it. Amaranth thinks of Sharp-Shin again—
—and sits up in one graceful motion. “Anis!”
“Your Glory?” Anis throws aside the screen immediately, but halts just as fast to see her Mistress leaning precariously off the altar, nakedbut for the robe clinging to her shoulders, an intense hot look in her big mirané-brown eyes.
“The small king of Sharp-Shin is scheduled today, right? This morning? Fioren said she bullied him into putting her on my schedule since she can’t get through Garnet to Lyric?” Amaranth grins, knowing she looks maniacal. “Bring her here. Now. I’ll see her.”
Anis pauses, chin tucked in a disapproving pout.
“Anis! I need this. Send her in the moment you find her.”
With a sigh of her own, Anis goes.
Amaranth leans across the altar, arching her back and thinking of the small king of Sharp-Shin. Ah, Silence, Amaranth had such a crush when they were children. Sidoné had been long and gangly then, narrow-eyed and suspicious, but with this barking laugh Amaranth yearned to invoke. She’d grown up so well. Warm mirané-brown coloring, but with the broad features of the Bow, her lips are so full, her eyes narrow and sharp, just like the precinct she rules now. That long neck! The way she moves, trained since birth to defend, to elude danger. That’s one of the reasons she was Amaranth’s first body-twin, only torn away when they were thirteen, nearly a quad of years ago, because her family was assassinated. The laws had been changed just months before, to allow second-generation children to inherit if they were born mirané. That had been Amaranth’s first taste of hating progress, hating justice, because it took something away from her that she wanted.
She loves Anis, of course. Anis who had come to her then also at thirteen, awkward and uncertain, but with just enough confidence to be who she wanted to be, in a new place, with new power, and the ambition to win the future Moon-Eater’s Mistress to her side and become untouchable. Amaranth has sometimes wondered what would be different with Sidoné still at her side, but it was impossible to think anyone but Anis would have been a better ally in apostasywhen Singix Es Sun dropped dead and Anis hissed to Amaranth,Iriset can do it.
Amaranth moans on purpose. A low, breathy sound, making it echo in her skull. She opens her mouth and breathes the sound of longing up to the broken dome. Her elbows bow out like butterfly wings as her fingers tangle in her own hair, and she lets one knee bend and fall aside, opening her up to the air. She sighs like a song. In and out, not the measured patterns her brother likes, not the purposeful design of her sister-in-vows. Just Amaranth’s own.
It isn’t long at all before the screen jerks open and demanding footsteps slap the tiled floor. They stop very abruptly and Amaranth grins, lolling her head to pin her gaze on the stunned beauty of Sidoné Rask, the small king of Sharp-Shin.
Sidoné’s wide eyes blink once, and then she spins around. “Your Glory!” she snaps in desperate reprimand.
“Sidoné,” she moans again, drawing out the final sound as she sits up. For Sidoné’s sake, Amaranth pulls her robe slightly together at her belly. It covers one breast, half of the other, and the long opening from navel to ankle slides open and shut over her groin and thighs as she steps closer.
“Your Glory,” Sidoné says as if she’s in pain, face turned away.
“Welcome to my morning ministrations.”
Sidoné snaps a hand up to her own face, shielding her eyes from Amaranth.
It makes the Moon-Eater’s Mistress laugh low and long. “Ah, Sidoné, you know, everyone knows, what I do for the Moon-Eater every day. What I do for the empire.”
“Knowing and—and being confronted by it are different.” It sounds like the small king is speaking through clenched teeth. Delightful.
Amaranth does not move closer. But she makes her voice soft.“You want to see Lyric. You want details and an explanation for your coalition.”
“Yes.”
“It’s impressive that a mirané small king would be chosen to lead a non-mirané coalition,” Amaranth says lightly, as if she’s just now considering it.
“My grandmother was a Bow queen. My mother was born on the border. I am barely mirané.” This Sidoné says harshly to the floor. Her shield hand has lowered, and her three-quarter silhouette is easy to read. A pinch of brow, a tension in the corner of her mouth. And Amaranth can almost see the pulse beating in her lovely throat.
“There is only mirané or non-mirané, and you were blessed by Aharté,” Amaranth says. “Don’t you want to be blessed by the Moon-Eater, too?”
Sidoné scoffs. Scoffs! At Amaranth. Her Glory is taken aback!
But the scorching look Sidoné shoots her makes up for it. “What a line, Your Glory,” Sidoné says. It would be cold, if it wasn’t so dripping with something Amaranth cannot quite parse. Longing? Humor? Disdain? She should be able to tell.
“It’s a line, but I mean it,” Amaranth says, lilting her voice up to tease.
“Tell me plainly what you mean, or I’ll take my leave and my chances with the Vertex Seal’s body-twin.”
Amaranth sighs, lowers her shoulders as if in defeat. “I am sad today, Sidoné. Sad, and lonely, and it does not allow me to do my duty for the Moon-Eater.”
Sidoné frowns. She crosses her arms, and even under the armor-scaled sleeves of her jacket, her muscles clench gorgeously. Amaranth probably weighs twice Sidoné, but the small kingcouldpin her to the altar and do whatever she wanted. If only she would. “What does that have to do with me?” Sidoné demands.
