Page 112 of Honey Cut
Behind the chairs, hanging below the oak leaves and berries, is a wide and gauzy veil. A small fan, out of sight, makes the veil flutter at eerie intervals, matched by the snap and flicker of the torches.
And for a moment, I’m forcefully reminded of my dream the night of the wedding. Walking with Tristan to a clearing in the woods, coming to Mark standing there in the dark like he was born to stand under the stars.
It had been so vivid, down to the smell of moss and the distant sea, to the way that Tristan had been the same but slightly different—half frantic and devoted and ready to run.
I could almost wish that I lived inside that dream instead of here and now. I think I was meant for a bloodier time. Maybe it would have been easier to be me then.
After a second’s hesitation, I pull the honeysuckle knife from the sheath at my waist and lay it on the altar next to the candle and berries. The rubies in the handle wink; the gold honeysuckle petals inlaid into the handle glint. It looks correct next to the other things on the altar, like it’s ready to work.
I take my throne and sit, arranging the dress—a thing made of embroidered gold cloth and filmy, translucent layers that exposes the outside curves of my breasts and the sides of my thighs from knee to naked hip. The nasty bruise I got running from Drobny’s men in Belgrade is more than visible, it’s framed by the fabric. Displayed.
My hair is in two thick braids hanging down my chest, I’m wearing sandals that tie up to my knees, and I have my gold collar around my neck. When I picked the outfit, I had sex in mind. It would be easy for Mark to slide his fingers into the bodice and touch my nipples, easy for him to pull the dress aside and have me mount him on his throne. Braids he could wrap around his palm, my backside and inner thighs easily available for his hand or riding crop or paddle.
But now, with everything that’s happened since Belgrade, I just feel cheap. A whore on a throne with a prop crown on her head.
How many of the guests who come in tonight will know that Mark had to pick my underwear off the ground in the garden last night? How quickly could the people who saw it have spread the tale?
Pretty quickly, I have to imagine. Lyonesse might as well be a church for how fast gossip spreads. And for its owner, the Dominant of Dominants, to have been humiliated in such a way… I close my eyes. Polyamory is nothing to be forgiven here; it’s as normal as monogamy at Lyonesse. Cuckolding, too, is a popular kink. But lying and cheating are different things from polyamory and kink, and no one who was there last night could have mistaken which they’d witnessed.
And I just want toscreamat them all. At Tristan and Mark and the Scales and my uncle and God. Everyone expects so much of me, the impossible, and I’ve been so alone for so long, and how many more secrets must I be asked to carry, how many more sacrifices will I be asked to make?—
I hear a noise and open my eyes to see Mark coming in the room, followed by Tristan. Mark is arresting in his costume, a scarlet tunic layered over dark breeches, tall boots, a gold torc around his neck and a slender circlet of antler bone set into his hair. I didn’t order it for him, but somehow he’s also found a fur to wear over his shoulders. And I know it’s fake, I know the whole costume is fake, but God help me, he looks so real wearing it and walking toward me right now. Like my dream come to life.
I swallow as he approaches, and then I stand, uncomfortable sitting. I haven’t seen him since the garden last night, he never came back to the apartment, and today it had been Sedge who came to get his things so he could get ready. I assume because Mark didn’t want to see me.
And who can blame him?
My husband stops just in front of me and then casts his eyes around the room.
“This is nice,” he comments. “Very immersive.”
“Mark,” I start, not sure what I can possibly say right here, right now, to make things better.I love you, and I’m supposed to kill you, so I turned to your bodyguard for comfort?
I’m so lonely, and everything hurts, and I know you have every right to hate me, but will you just hold me for a minute?
But it doesn’t matter. Dinah comes in right after Tristan, already talking, her phone chiming in her hand.
“—they’ll start making their way down the halls in about five minutes, everyone’s been braceleted to make sure they are limited to two drinks while they’re going through the playrooms, digital waivers are required for trick-or-treating, and we’ve got the meeting rooms open and stocked with beds, blankets, lube, and water for fucking and aftercare. Andrea and I will be in the hall, and Goran and the security team are on alert. Is there anything else you need before you’re open for business?”
She’s dressed like an undead groom tonight, with a bow tie and a top hat and a trickle of painted blood coming from the corner of her mouth. She’s also wearing a latex corset and thigh-high boots, and the boutonniere fastened to her corset is made of condom packets instead of flowers.
Mark takes a seat on the throne like he does it every day. “You’re a credit, as always, Dinah. I’m not worried about anything.”
Dinah looks at me, Mark, and then Tristan, who has come to stand behind Mark’s throne. “I am,” she sighs, and then she leaves.
Tristan is also in a costume, one I’d had sent to him almost as a joke because I couldn’t imagine him bending the rules of bodyguard etiquette enough to actually wear it. But no, he’s matching Mark and me tonight in a tunic and breeches and a dark cloak. Unlike Mark and me, he has no torc or crown, but the fake sword belted to his narrow waist and the ring he wears on his first finger still give him a princely air.
And again, I have the strange feeling like my dream has become real, that Mark is going to turn to me and speak of pirates and Ireland, that Tristan is going to step away and I’ll see the notch missing out of the top part of his sword as he goes.
Maybe it’ll be easier to talk like this, if we are pretending to be something other than ourselves, but again, I’m stymied by someone coming through the door.
This time, it’s Lady Anguish and her husband, Merlin, dressed like?—
Well, like us, actually.
Anguish is wearing a white gown, sleeveless and fastened with brooches at her shoulders, her hair down and strung with delicate chains of silver and gold. She has a silver crescent moon—resting on its back like a bowl—painted onto her forehead, just above the place where her eyebrows meet. Merlin is in black—black robes, black cloak, all of it trimmed in silver—with a crown of oak leaves in his silvering hair.
Their clothes look so much better than a costume, like they too have stepped out of my dream, and I think about how Lady Anguishwasin my dream, standing in the forest and waiting to marry Mark and me in the way Mark wanted. Under the stars, inside the stones.
