Page 61 of Bitter Burn
“I’m surprised it’s taking this long, honestly,” Hugo is saying to Mark, presumably resuming whatever conversation they were having before Kayden and I arrived. Hugo sits on one side of the table, his arm slung across the back of Isabella’s chair, and then Mark and Isolde sit on the other side, not touching. Kayden sits at the head of the table, and I sit across from him, between Isabella and Mark.
Isolde’s eyes flick over to me, a bare instant of connection and yet an ocean of feeling anyway. It’s been like this all day, solace and suffering all in one, the reminder that in her elegant, deadly body still beats a heart that misses mine, and yet there is no world where our hearts can beat together. Especially tonight, especially at the club, because I’m exceedingly and painfully aware that the few people who are here are watching our table with great interest. Watching to see how Mark deals with his wife’s ex-lover under his roof once again.
Mark, for his part, is the picture of a powerful man unbothered by suspicion or betrayal. He leans back a little in his chair, long legs sprawled, a large hand curled around a clear drink that I now know is probably nonalcoholic. He’s still in his black suit from the funeral, the tie knotted but the jacket unbuttoned. Isolde has changed out of her dark blue dress into a pair of winter-white trousers and a soft sweater in a mint color that pulls the green from her eyes. Her hair is down around her shoulders, the loose waves gleaming like silk. She’s wearing a set of pearls I’ve never seen before.
“The Holy Father’s death was quite unexpected,” says Mark, reminding me of the topic at hand. “It could be that my dear wife’s uncle didn’t shore up enough votes ahead of time.”
“You really think that Mortimer Cashel is angling for the job?” asks Hugo, doubt etched in every syllable. I remember how siloed Mark has kept his confidences; Hugo knows that Mortimer is Isolde’s uncle but not about Ys. Not about the very likely hand Mortimer had in the pope’s death. “I’ve heard he was charming, but he’s been buried in the Curia his whole career. Hardly a man of the people.”
“Working in the Curia is precisely why he has a chance at the job,” says Isolde. Her voice is as polite and crisp as always, but there’s a bit of fry around the edges of her words, a whiff of exhaustion or strain. “And I think he’s been trying to court votes for some time, but as Mark said, it’s possible he didn’t get enough before the conclave began. Or perhaps he did, but there were rumors about some anonymous accusation right before the conclave started. Something to discredit him.”
“Well, it’s working,” observes Hugo. “Two weeks of black smoke…very melodramatic.”
“This is the puppy your stepmother found?” Isabella asks me, clearly uninterested in papal politics. She bends down to stroke the creature’s velvet ears, and the dog begins wriggling toward her. Isabella and I both laugh at that, and then I look up to see Mark and Isolde both staring at us.
“Melody—my twin sister,” Mark adds for Isabella’s edification, “felt that she was a rather lachrymose dog and so has been calling her Crybaby. Unfortunately, and this is often the effect of my sister, her opinion has shaped reality, and now the dog responds only to that name.”
“That is unfortunate,” agrees Hugo gravely. “A dog should have a romantic name—a name befitting its noble bearing and innate ability to love.”
“A French name, I suppose?” asks Mark after taking a drink.
“Naturellement. How about Petitcrieu?”
“Poor Petitcrieu,” Isabella purrs at the puppy, who immediately gets to her feet and then props her forepaws on Isabella’s knee, trying to get closer to the source of sympathy and ear scratches. “Oh, she likes it!”
“What sort of things do you have planned for New Year’s Eve?” asks Kayden, oblivious to the nominative destiny of the dog. “I’ve never been at Lyonesse for New Year’s, but I’ve heard legends.”
Mark considers his drink. “With things being as they are at present, I think a more restrained evening would be in order, and I have my head of security doing a favor for me in Manhattan anyway?—”
“I’m trying to convince Mark to host a trial by iron,” Isolde cuts in. She looks so composed and elegant right now, with one leg crossed and her hands laced over her knee—just a wife discussing party plans with her husband, just a blond container of affluence and enviable manners. But the way the other men at the table react…she might as well have suggested we kick off the new year with a spot of necromancy.
“A trial by iron?” Kayden asks, worry carving his high forehead into segments. “Truly?”
Mark’s reply is clipped. “It won’t happen.”
Isolde tucks her hair behind her ear. “I think we should consider it. What better way to assure the club of my loyalty while also giving them a spectacle worth talking about?”
“I’m sorry,” Hugo interjects, “am I understanding that you would do the trial by iron?”
Isabella and I look at each other, and I realize she’s just as lost as I am.
“Could someone explain the trial by iron to me?” I ask. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it before.”
“You wouldn’t have.” Mark takes another drink and then looks down at his glass with a wounded expression, betrayed by his drink’s refusal to be anything other than gin-flavored water.
“It’s no longer done,” Hugo explains, looking at me and Isabella. “The club that Mark ran out of business when he came to DC—it was one of their specialties. When Mark started Lyonesse, he refused to continue the practice, along with several unsavory others: unregulated edge play, same-day background checks for visitors, that sort of thing.”
Kayden is appraising Isolde anew, his forehead still creased with worry but a subtle glint of curiosity in his eyes too. “The trial by iron is a public scene designed to test a person’s limits. As far as I know, it was always a submissive, and the trial was tailored to them. The idea is that you take a hard limit or a deeply felt fear, and then you build an entire scene around exploiting it. So if a hard limit is something like being gagged, then you can assume the trial will feature all sorts of gags, the worst ones their scene partner can find. If you’re afraid of fire, then there would be fire play. If you’re claustrophobic, perhaps a vacuum bed. That sort of thing.”
“And I’m afraid this is underselling it,” Hugo says. “Because it’s one thing to talk about someone else’s limits or fears, ones you might not share and not understand the psychological torture involved. The trial I saw was for a male submissive who was terrified of medical procedures. They brought in a real examination table, a real nurse to hook him up to an IV, strapped him down and told him they were going to crack his chest open then and there. His dominant fucked him while he was sobbing through a panic attack.”
“Jesus,” Isabella whispers, and I have to agree.
“It’s barbaric,” states Mark. “Even if we overlooked the violation of boundaries and the deliberate perversion of consent—there’s no elegance to it. No beauty, and no gratification beyond a crude kind of bloodlust. And bloodlust wasn’t always a metaphor either.”
“I’d still have a safeword,” Isolde points out. Calmly. Like they’re discussing a new shade of paint for their bathroom.
Mark waves an impatient hand, the black and silver of my ring catching the oblique light of the speakeasy. “The point of the trial is to test a submissive’s ‘devotion.’ The pressure for the submissive not to use their safeword is immense, and I just want to reiterate here, that pressure would absolutely discredit and destabilize the foundation of Lyonesse. It may be a home for sinners, but I won’t have consent burned on the altar for the sake of a good show. If I break my own rules, even once, lawlessness will start filling the club like smoke, impossible to get rid of once it’s there. It’s not about the safeword, Isolde.”
