Page 69 of The Mercy Makers
“I must, Uncle.” Iriset reaches for Erxan’s hand with both of her own though she’s never seen Singix initiate physical contact with any man.
“Ah, child, you are too good. It is what your demon of beauty would do.” He squeezes her hands and instead brings her to his own rooms, where there is food and drink aplenty. They share a bowl of tea and a cold fruit soup and a fish roasted in yellow leaves. All of it light and delicate, perfect for someone about to head into a day of taxing ritual.
There is a knock on the ambassador’s door, and Sidoné’s voice calls through that they’re ready for Singix.
She reaches for Erxan’s hands again, almost giddy with nerves at seeing her father like this, and relieved the ambassador has not called her out. Touching his fingers, she bows her face and says, “I will meet you again as a wife, and forever grateful.” It’s easy for her to feel a soft affection for him, her first true friend in the palace, who liked her—Iriset—who spoke with her smartly of art and philosophy, as if her thoughts mattered. Who reminded her of her father. And she’s lying to him, so awfully.
Erxan says, in Ceres, “All virtues build your crown.”
Iriset glances up at him with a sad smile, only to find Erxan frowning deeply at her hands.
A cold shudder of ecstatic force washes down her sternum, hitting her navel like a diamond. “Erxan?” she whispers.
His frown deepens, twisting the tips of the ghost writing on his forehead. “Princess, your great-grandmother’s…” His eyes widen.
Staring at her left hand, she can’t possibly discern what’s wrong. But it has to be something with the silvery ghost-writing sigils. “I…” she begins, then swallows on a dry tongue.
“This isn’t… you…” Erxan’s hands tighten miserably around hers and he looks up, lost and afraid, but there is a spark of ecstatic that rushes from him to her like a blaze of wildfire.
Anger.
“No,” she says quickly, grasping him back, leaning up on her knees. “Erxan, you don’t understand—”
His mouth opens and he sucks in a breath for a cry. Iriset dives forward, pushing her hands at his mouth, shaking her head. “No,” she says, in a burst of force. “Quiet!”
They fall back together. She lands half on top of him, clutching his mouth, desperate. What is she going to do? “Erxan, you have to understand,” she hisses. “Please! Don’t make me—”
He bucks wildly, shaking her off, and rolls, yells inarticulately.
Iriset reaches out, pushes her palms to the layers of cloth over his chest. Shoves hard ecstatic force and a tear of rising—like suddenly loosening a knot, familiar and easy—and Erxan’s face bursts pink, his jaw seizes.
She feels it as his inner design spikes in a hard, frozen moment, and his heart stops.
He collapses back to the floor with a thud. Iriset grabs at him, choking out a cry of very real distress.
“Princess? Ambassador?” someone calls from outside, muffled by the door. “Is everything all right?”
She stares at Erxan’s curled lips, his bloodshot eyes.
She killed him.
Iriset’s throat aches as if she’s thrown up. Her inner design bursts and roils, and she presses her fists together against her belly. She must control it, or her design fluctuations will disrupt the work she’s done, expose her, ruin everything—
“Princess?”
She breathes. Tries to align herself. To push away every thought and fleeting emotion about what just happened.
Ecstatic, her dominant force. Popping, spiky, effervescent.
Flow, Singix’s dominant force. Give and take, breathing.
Falling, Amaranth’s. Her father’s. Gravity, attraction.
Rising… Lyric’s. Heat, yearning.
Ecstatic, flow, falling, rising. A rhythm and a current.
Erxan is still dead, but Iriset feels calmer—distanced. Dissociation is sometimes a gift. Iriset calls, “Help me.”
