Page 103 of The Shape of Monsters
“We can warn them.”
Lyric nods. The water laps at his chest, at his underarms, and he arches his neck down until his nose touches the surface, too. He told Iriset he didn’t deserve to live here, to stay here and make mirané babies, be at peace. He told her he needs to go home and fix what’s broken, but Lyric understands now what he didn’t before: that there is a fundamental flaw in the Holy Design itself. If it were wholly good, it wouldn’t—couldn’t—kill a child like Setka, or anyone innocent. Lyric knew it the moment he met her: Setka’s makers were at fault, were apostate, but not Setka. She was herself and living, and by being alive she had to be part of Aharté’s design.
He was half wrong. Making her part of Aharté’s design killed her.
It’s ironic that Lyric himself is dying for being removed from the Holy Design, because the miran are made for it, of it. Perfect, exceptnothing is perfect. The flaw in the Holy Design is a flaw in him. A flaw in all miran, in the way the mirané princes govern, in the Vertex Seal and the entire empire.
Lyric sees it from all the way back here, he hears what Iriset tried to tell him, that the Holy Design is a prison not just for the Moon-Eater but for everyone within it.
Later, Lyric lies loose and listless on the swaying bed. Maimeri curls against him, ahz head pillowed on Lyric’s belly, an arm curled around his hips. The griffons are singing terrible, high-pitched songs of mourning, unlike anything Lyric has heard before.
“Lyric,” Maimeri whispers.
“Little Rabbit.”
“I like how it feels.”
The words are hushed, a shameful confession.
Lyric brings a hand down to Maimeri’s loose hair, tracing his fingers along the underlying streaks of dark red hidden among the mirané-black strands. The bedroom is dim but for moonlight.
“The balance,” Maimeri continues. Ahz arm tightens around Lyric’s hip. Ahz fingers dig into the meat of his lower back. “The way the valley is changed.”
Biting back what could only be a keen of pain, Lyric closes his eyes and stills his hand in Maimeri’s hair. He feels it, too: the peace and Silence, the soft resonance of belonging. Because his body is made for this. His body, despite the cancer and scars, revels in even this rustic Holy Design. “It’s proof, isn’t it?” he murmurs.
“Proof of what?”
“The thing we were made to be is no more natural than Holy Design.”
Lyric can feel Maimeri’s frown against his skin. “That isn’t important. We are, we exist, just like Setka was, Setka existed. I think you are letting your pain twist your words. What is natural? My mother isn’t human, but he’s natural. The flowers we had in the crater city don’t grow here on the mountain because the rain is different, not because there’s something unnatural with them.”
“Most of the flowers in the Moon-Eater’s fortress only grow there because of design,” Lyric argues faintly.
Maimeri snorts and pokes Lyric’s ribs. Then az rubs the spot. “So? The flowers are still there.”
JUST A DESIGNER MINDING ANS OWN BUSINESS
Raia mér Omorose delivers the speech exactly as written. An recites lines in the cadence an practiced again and again with the angry, reluctant Garnet méra Bež, with the intense, passionate Amaranth mé Esmail Her Glory, and with the quiet, incisive Hehet méra Davith. To get the emphases correct, to pause when the Vertex Seal would pause. When to blink, when to glance up or aside, how to stand, how to shift ans weight, how to sit firmly in the center of the throne without leaning back but without seeming to perch.Belong in the throne, Her Glory had said.Breathe if you need to gather yourself back into him, Garnet advised.
And Hehet asked, “Do you know what makes Lyric méra Esmail a good Vertex Seal?”
Raia shook ans head without bothering to consider an answer. An wouldn’t get it right, especially not from a powerful mirané prince’s point of view.
Hehet sighed and leaned closer. “He isn’t.”
That startled Raia badly enough ans normally graceful fingers ripped through the parchment with all ans speech notes.
Hehet laughed, but didn’t sound amused. Raia didn’t find it funny, either.
Two quads ago, Raia was just a designer minding ans own business, still torn up about the sudden death of ans friend, making a valiant attempt to bury anself in the work of recalibrating the security nodes in the wake of the Silk rebellion’s huge, terrifying, (beautiful) spider graffiti that slashed and tangled its way across half the palace complex. An noted an alert amid the mess, where none of the spider echoes should have been, and investigating it according to ans vocation led one thing after another to an witnessing the disappearance of the numen who was supposed to be chained behind the Seal throne, the Vertex Seal, and ans actually-not-so-suddenly-dead friend.
While the Moon-Eater’s Mistress, her body-twin, and Garnet had argued, and a handful of Seal guards secured the perimeter, Raia walked forward through the rain of falling tiles. An crouched, stunned, and put a hand flat to the altar. It was cracked, just a hairline, from one corner to the center. The forces wiggled under ans palm, and an saw the fading remnants of a sixteen-point array. It itched somehow, in ans awareness.
“Quiet!” Amaranth Her Glory yelled, and everyone obeyed. Well, an had been quiet already, and merely froze.
“None of this leaves this room. We will tell the princes and the city that the aftershocks here in the temple were caused by the spider disruption,” Amaranth said firmly. “If I hear the slightest hint that Iriset mé Isidor is alive, or the numen is free, or that Lyric was evenhere, then I’ll make sure all of you Seal guards are unraveled.”
Raia glanced at the guards, who uniformly looked at the floor, except for one, who looked at Garnet. The body-twin’s jaw clenchedvisibly, but he nodded once. Then to Amaranth he said, “But Lyric was here, Amaranth. And he isgone.”
