A Dark and Deadly Beauty

The Singe of Death

Colm couldn’t recall the last time he had belladonna wine. Before his curse, certainly. Maybe when he had been working as foreman at the pear orchard at the edge of the Capitol…

The orchard owner was a rich man, selling the fruit in the summer and cider in the winter. He never skimped when it came to hosting celebrations for his workers. The grounds were turned into a dance floor,folk pulled out fiddles and drums and flutes.The growers were always treated to fatty joints of roast meat, piles of cakes, and heady, intoxicating wine that left them all giddy and high.

They were all given the day after off.

And here he was again, swirling a cup of dark purple liquid.

But it was a very different place, and a very different party. There were no home-spun gowns or jaunty dances. No one ate dripping lamb shanks with fingers or licked icing from the tops of spiced buns.

The palace party was all silks and harps and fine foods so delicate they crumbled in his fingers. It was pleasant, and a nice change of pace from the work of daily life. So, Colm took a small, tentative sip of the belladonna wine, and sighed as the mild euphoria washed over him.

The rest of the crowd was already well into their own intoxicants. Henbane-laced caramels, buttery rolls made of ergot rye, skewers of hallucinogenic mushrooms, roasted deliciously with whole cloves of garlic.

The children had been sent to bed. The elderly and pregnant had migrated home. The moon was full and icy in the sky.

It was time for the folk of the Realm to come alive.

Colm surveyed the courtyard from his spot by the musicians, searching in his haze for familiar faces to gravitate towards. His sister had slipped away with that valet, munching apples and slipping into the shadows. Lord Florin was at his dinner table, laughing like a mad-man at a bawdy joke whispered in his ear by a pretty little fairy maiden- a server from the kitchen who had caught the lord’s eye. The King and Queen lazily two-stepped on the dance floor, Tanya’s chin resting on the salt-and-pepper nest of hair at the top of Algar’s head. Princess Allegra was draped across her husband’s lap, sleepily tracing circles on his back while he pressed kisses into her temple. The Dark Prince and Emilia, flush-cheeked and glassy-eyed,were walking around the party, their arms entwined around each other’s waists as they sipped from twin chalices and chatted with acquaintances- two parts of one whole.

Then, he spotted Jacinde.

She was in the arms of some fairy courtier, a mild expression that didn’t quite reach her eyes plastered on her face. The young man’s mouth was moving, yapping endlessly in Jacinde’s ear while she blandly nodded along. Anyone with eyes could see through the polite mask she wore.

As one song ended and another began, Colm slid onto the dance floor, avoiding jutting elbows and crushing heels, until he was at Jacinde’s side.

The man she was dancing with was still talking.

“Young fay these days just don’t understand the value of a hard day’s work,” he droned. The dance was done, but still he clung to Jacinde’s hip, as if he refused to release his captive audience for the next song. “Every mason that’s come to my estate to give me an estimate for adding on a steam room all say it will take at least two weeks. Two weeks! Can you believe the audacity? I never thought I would see the day when men refused to put their back into their jobs anymore. When my father had the solarium added…”

“Lady Jacinde,” Colm interrupted, moving his body close to her and turning his back to the chatty noble. “Pardon the interruption, but you’re the only healer I’ve found that isn’t already intoxicated. I’ve got a terrible pain in my ear and was hoping you could examine it.”

“And who are you?” The little lordling stared down his equine nose at him. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Sterne,” Jacinde said, a hint of irritation in her honey-toned voice. “This is Colm Durand. Lady Electra’s brother.”

Sterne took in Colm’s sharp, hooked nose, his obsidian hair and eyes so dark they looked like pools of liquid pitch. His eyes fluttered over the scarred skin on Colm’s hands, the pockmarking on his throat. Realization sunk in of exactly who the man before him was, and he could simply try to swallow away the ashen taste in his mouth.

“Ah, of course…” was all he managed to say.

At least this man had the good grace not to say it, that he recognized Colm from the Rite of Contest. When Thierrus accused Emilia of lying about her powers, as she knelt in a bloom of her husband's blood. Where Colm revealed his mutilated body to the court to prove her words were true. Curse-healed and reborn, a testament to Emilia’s gift.

“Let me have a look.” Jacinde tutted. “Let’s get off of the dance floor.”

She put a concerned hand on his forearm and guided him away, the perfect picture of a devoted nurse.

Behind them, the little lordling called out “When you finish, my Lady, come join me again. I’ll wait for you.”

Jacinde flashed him a doting smile and walked, quickly, away.

The banquet table was nearly deserted, so they found a quiet nook beside it.

“Which ear has the pain? Is it dull, or sharp? Is it itching?”

Colm took another minute sip of his wine and muttered “The only pain in my ear was that pompous prick’s endless yammering.”

Jacinde blinked, and then snorted. She quickly covered her mouth with a lace-gloved hand. To Colm, the unladylike chortle sounded precious on her lips.

But, just as soon as the sparkle of amusement crossed her face, it vanished, leaving behind a flawless mask of courtly grace. And behind it, her golden cat eyes regarded the world around her with mute, weary awareness.

Colm tried not to let worry show in his face. Tried to keep his mouth from setting in a grim line and stop his eyebrows from knitting together.

“Your eyes look tired, Jacinde.”

She tilted her head to one side, her doll-like mouth pulling into a pucker. “Well, what a compliment. I’m surprised you don’t have all the maidens trying to claw their way onto your arm.”

“No!” He nearly choked. That had come out all wrong. “I’m saying… I’m your friend. I know you were exhausted earlier when I came by. You don’t have to keep up appearances for my sake. For the past six months, you’ve been run ragged trying to tend the cursed that show up at the gates and still run the children’s clinic and manage the Healing Guild alongside your father. You’re only one person, Jacinde. No one would fault you for needing to rest, least of all me.”

A slow, sweet smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. For a second, a fleeting second, she looked like some part of the sunshine the usually poured from her had returned. Like she was touched by his meaning, however poorly spoken into words. When she said nothing, he continued.

“Do you want to leave? I can send you home in the carriage and have it come fetch the rest of us later.”

“Perhaps, in a while. Now that I’m in the quiet, out of the crowd and the heat, I’m feeling replenished. Maybe I should have some wine myself. Try to relax and just enjoy breathing fresh air under the night sky.”

“By all means,” Colm said, offering her his cup. “Share mine. I don’t mind a few sips to feel loose, but if I drink this whole chalice I may end up face down and naked under a table before the dawn rises.”

“Well, we can’t have that.” She took the cup from his hand, her delicate fingertips brushing his. Even after she drew her hand away and put her mouth to the lip of the chalice, he relished the whisper of softness where she had touched him.

Jacinde smacked her lips, a mindless habit that Colm noticed anytime she sipped a beverage while they worked. Just small and delicate little pops as if to savor the liquid in her mouth.

“I haven’t seen you dance.”

“Oh…ah, no,” he sheepishly looked down at her, feeling a burning flush of embarrassment creeping up his neck. “The dances here are different then back home. I don’t know any of them. If it isn’t a jig, I’m a pretty useless dance partner.”

From the corner of his eye he saw a shimmer of ruby satin. His sister had made her way back to the courtyard from whatever private alcove she had vanished to, her hand firmly held by the pink-cheeked valet beside her.

“I’m sure I could persuade the musicians to play a jig in a while,” Jacinde’s breathy speech was a sure sign the wine had taken hold of her. “Maybe then you’ll finally be able to dance. Maybe even with me.”

His chest felt like it was being squeezed, a vice of hope around his heart. It crushed his lungs and smothered his brain.

“Yeah. I’d love-“

His words were cut off by the sound crackling.

The air around them tensed, as if waiting for rain to fall.

Then the table beside them burst into flames, a towering fireball of searing heat. It was close, so close. The intensity of the inferno singed the very breath in Colm’s lungs.

The world turned into a cacophony of shrieks. The darkness of the Yule night was burned away by red,unholy light.

There was no time to think. No time to run.

Colm simply pushed Jacinde to the ground, and covered her with his body.

Cradled in his arms, she whimpered. But not screamed, not moaned. The flames hadn’t touched her, he realized, and breathed out a silent prayer of thanks.

The fire found him, though.

While Jacinde was shielded, the snaking tendrils of flame caught the fabric of Colm’s tunic. Moments later his entire back was lit.

The heat bit and blistered, blackened and broiled.

Colm’s skin, so blessedly healed and painstakingly tended, was a writhing sheet of charred flesh. The pain was enough to bring a warrior to their knees. But Colm had lived in agony, for decades in a body that betrayed him every moment of the day.

So even as he was burning alive, he screamed only once. A primal, guttural scream as he picked up his smoldering body and shoved Jacinde out from underneath him. Away from the fire, and the blaze that was consuming him.

Jacinde scrambled to her hands and knees. She tried to crawl to him, but he simply lay down on the ground and mouthed the words “go…go…go…”

For years, he wondered about death. Teetering on the edge of taking his own life to end his suffering.

And now he was going to die. Like the ancient fay upon a grand pyre. And even as the fire spread to his hair and arms and legs, he wasn’t afraid.

Death would come to claim him. And he would greet it like a friend.

Except instead of death, he felt pressure and wetness and relief. Water, someone had doused him with water. And the heat of the fireball wasn’t pulsing against him.

A pair of polished boots appears in front of him. Barely able to look, he turned his eyes upward and saw his sister’s valet, the bull horned man with eyes of aquamarine. In his hand he had a swirling orb of clear water.

A water fairy.

“Stay still. You’re badly burned,” the water fairy warned. “The air elementals have the fireball contained. Your sister is hunting who did this. It will be alright. Just…lie still.”

True to his word, a flash of ruby and a glimmer of amethyst streaked by. Electra, combing the crowd of the culprit.

Colm saw his sister‘s feet still, her shoulders tense as her eyes locked on a sallow-skinned face in the crush of the crowd.

“You!” He heard his sister shriek.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Her footfall was a sprint as she charged the man.

Her stiletto dagger shone in the light, a sliver of death in her hand. Colm didn’t know who this man was, but Electra did. And she was moving towards him with rage written in her body

But, the man was moving too. Slowly he wove his way through the crowd, to a wrinkled, dark-skinned fairy woman with spindly legs of shiny keratin.

He clasped her shoulder.

And then he smirked,as around them a thrumming aura of lavender light bloomed. In a blink, the space where they stood was empty, only air and the scent of smoke remaining.

Electra…

She was silent. Then she wasn’t, as a roar of molten fury tore from her chest.

Colm was stunned.

Not just from the pain in his back, the damage to his flesh. Not from the look of terror in Jacinde’s eyes or the trembling fear from the courtiers.

No, he was stunned because the woman, wrinkled and ordinary, just performed an act of magic that hadn’t been seen in two centuries.

Rare, extinct.

A portal-maker.