Page 123 of The Shape of Monsters
Iriset slows down, taking Lyric in: He looks good, better than when he left. His hair is shaggy, but thick and wavy around his face. He looks too skinny, but he stands strong. She starts picking up her pace again, needing to be near enough to see if the freckles came back or not—she guesses not, but still, there’s hope.
He turns to her and sees her. Ah, red moon, that eye! Her eye, warm and sunny in his mirané face. Iriset laughs, and bites her lip because lately she is much more of a crier than she ever has been before, and she doesn’t want to cry on him. It’s only been a season and a half.
But Lyric comes to meet her, and Iriset flings herself into his arms with all her strength. Lyric catches her, braces against the impact with a softoof. Iriset wraps her arms around his head, too tight, one hand digging into his thatch of hair, the other strangling him probably. Her nose behind his ear, ah, he smells so different. Smoke and dirt and sweat, no trace of bergamot or sage, and Iriset feels like it’s been years, not quads. Years and years. She squeezes with all her might. Her whole body shudders, and it’s possible this is the first time she truly hasn’t been afraid of being stabbed in the neck since it happened. Iriset didn’t even realize she needed him so much after dying (again). No wonder she’s been dreaming herself into Singix.
Lyric holds her around her ribs, lifting her off her feet. “I’ve got you,” he says, slightly surprised but so soothing.
“Lyric,” she murmurs. She can’t help it, she wraps her legs around one of his, too, not quite shameless enough to wrap them around his waist in front of all these people.
He laughs tenderly and hugs her, doesn’t try to put her down.
A griffon screams again and she startles. She looks up, saying, “Where did you find them?”
Lyric half turns, but Iriset sees a mirané masculine-forward person standing uncomfortably next to the wagon, one hand inside the mouth of one of the young griffons—just sitting there, resting ahz long mirané-brown fingers against the beast’s tongue while its jaw hangs open and its teeth gleam and it stares at Iriset with round golden-red eyes. The miran is staring at her, too.
Her fingers jerk hard into Lyric’s shoulder and scalp as she notices the miran’s familiar face. Az is young, her age maybe, thin bone structure and long straight black hair with mirané-brown highlights that catch the sun like blood. Iriset blinks away the visceral memory of blood choking her, sticking her hair to her neck, and then she recognizes ahz. “Hehet?” she says, soft and incredulous.
“I thought so, too,” Lyric says. He loosens his hold and Iriset reluctantly stands on her own feet. He tugs her closer to the miran who looks like az could be Hehet méra Davith’s kid. In mirané Lyric says, “Iriset, this is Maimeri, the Moon-Eater’s child. Maimeri, this is Iriset mé Isidor.”
“Little Rabbit,” Iriset says, unsure what to feel.
“Iriset,” Maimeri says back, basically glaring at her grip on Lyric. Clearly the little bunny knows what to feel.
Her own sharp humor breaks herself out of her helpless state, and she releases Lyric. She looks around to take in the whole situation. “Well, you’re back with what you went for,” she says to Lyric. “And just in time, too.”
They release the griffons as Irsu River arrives with the head-of-household attendant, and there’s a bit of chaos as everything is settled. Irisettrails alongside Lyric at first, while they go to the quarters he used previously and are still available to him—the rock garden will suit the griffons, Maimeri says, and seems to get vocal acknowledgment from the queen that she’ll stay in the garden or yard so long as she and her kits are brought some fresh meat. The queen doesn’t speak, exactly, but she makes a few clicking sounds and gestures almost like a regal nod. Iriset doesn’t remember the griffons of her time being so communicative. (Maybe people stopped talking to them first.)
She stops herself as Lyric goes to drop his few things in his room and ask for a bath. Maimeri walks directly into the same room as if it’s going to be where az stays, too. Iriset is cranky about that and wants to take a bath with Lyric just to prove something. But she catches bemusement on Lyric’s face and stops herself. She says she’ll see them at the dinner River is arranging to welcome Lyric and the Moon-Eater’s long-lost child back to the crater city.
Feeling disconcerted, Iriset returns to her own guest room and settles herself with breathing exercises. Or tries to. She can’t stop fidgeting, frowning, wondering what Lyric is doing. She needs to check his eye. She needs to check his eye and—she doesn’t know. It’s been quads and Iriset feels deeply affected and changed by what the Moon-Eater and numen have done to her, by her own discoveries, nearly as much as she changed while she was married to him. She does magic now. She would have died, should have, and it happened so suddenly Iriset never saw it coming.
With a little huff of frustration, Iriset undoes her knots, tears a comb through her hair, and reknots it. Then she slams out of her room and heads for the small king’s suite at the heart of the fortress.
The informal dining room already smells of spices and fresh bread, and River reclines on ans preferred divan in elegant blue robes. Lyric stands beside the small king, as if he just arrived, hair wet and in very loose layered robes and skirt of starkly contrasting black and lightpink. Maimeri is clean, too, in tighter trousers and a long shirt, quietly studying Roc Aliel, seated opposite the young miran across the short table.
They turn to her when she enters. Lyric’s expression lightens subtly, and River says, “Eliri has been sent for, but waiting is unnecessary. Sit, please.”
The seats are stiff floor cushions with low, curved backs either for leaning against or for propping an elbow on. Iriset has not quite grown used to this style, even in the quads she’s lived here, and plops down gracelessly. Lyric’s mouth twitches in an almost-smile, and as he sits beside her he says, “Lyric is surprised to find Iriset here, not with Eliri in the Moon-Eater’s fortress.”
She wants to ask how quickly he’d have come to find her, had she not been here, but she doesn’t want to know, either. She flicks a glance at Maimeri, who looks so disconcertingly like Hehet méra Davith, who led the faction of mirané princes opposing Beremé mé Adora. Besides coloring, Maimeri does not look like the Moon-Eater in any form Iriset has seen, but that must not be too surprising. What does surprise Iriset is that Maimeri’s hand strayed from ahz space and into Lyric’s, touching the edge of Lyric’s plain black outer robe where it folds against the rug.
“It was no longer conducive to my work to remain with the Moon-Eater,” Iriset says lightly, mostly in Old Sarenpet.
River begins pouring wine for everyone, and even Lyric accepts a small cup. River says, “Though unfortunate that Iriset Sunderer must learn the true nature of the old fairy, it served this small king well, and Rivermouth is honored to have such a guest.”
Roc lifts his wine and says, “To saving lives!” and knocks back the drink.
Iriset grimaces delicately and drinks. It is River’s favored pale wine, grassy and sweet.
“Saving lives?” Lyric asks tentatively.
“The Moon-Eater’s true nature?” Maimeri asks at the same time.
“It wasn’t Maimeri’s mother,” Iriset says. “It was Never who upset me.”
Lyric touches her hand and Iriset shakes her head. She’ll tell him more later. Maybe.
“Never is the other one like Mother,” Maimeri says.
