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Chapter Sixteen: Fire and Pain
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2021-08-19 21:21:21Ilyria looked around. The place was simultaneously confusing and familiar. She looked down at her feet. They sank into the soft mulch of her father’s garden, the one he kept around the back of the kitchen right next to the wall that separated them from the city. She felt a soft touch on the back of her hand as Astrapi leaned in to kiss her. Before he pulled away, he whispered “Don’t trust what you see, trust only what you feel,” then he spread his wings, and was away, over the kitchen wall. As she watched him, the kitchen wall before her shivered and faded, and she thought she saw beyond it to a hill on which colourful tents had been pitched with lights strung along the edges. A rich, fragrant smell drifted toward her from the hill—a familiar, intoxicating smell like a miasma. Chariko! Then Astrapi and the tents were gone and there was only the kitchen wall and the garden. Her father’s garden.
He loved to work there, turning the soil, pulling out the invasive weeds,
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Ilyria froze. It could not be. Surely this was not her mother? The exquisite Daria Agrio? Ruin of souls. Torment of men and women. The old woman reached out a hand for the wall to steady herself. She looked up and Daria saw her eyes were pale and glassy. She seemed drugged, ill, dying even. She did not see Ilyria, or anything at all. Yet the lines of Daria’s beautiful face were still there, stark beneath the withered flesh but still recognizable. What had Dirk done to her mother? Say something, she told herself. This is your mother. But the nausea had returned, and she found herself unable to hold onto her thoughts. Something about a mother. Whose mother? My mother, this is my mother. Ilyria clutched the map to her chest as if it might still hold some of the protective magic from her father’s chambers. And maybe it did, because her head cleared a little. Her mother opened her mouth and Ilyria saw that all her pretty white teeth were gone, leaving only
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Ilyria woke to the smell of warm bread and blossoming plants, and another damp salty smell she could not recognize. She sighed and turned over. Her eyes flickered half-open as she felt Suluu’s warm body lying on his back next to her. Her hand lazily traced the contours of his smooth chest, delighting in the way his skin puckered beneath her fingers. He turned to look at her, his lips parted in a smile and his eyes hooded with his desire. “Hello,” he murmured, pulling her toward him, “You’re awake.” “I am,” she said, tracing her fingers over his lips. Then her stomach rumbled noisily, “and I am so, so, so, so hungry!” She sat up trying to recall when last she had eaten and suddenly a rush of images flooded over her. She sank her face into her hands. Astrapi, impaled. The Princess and Zlo’s blood dripping from the spines of The Shackled One. Madame Skia’s wounded body lying shrouded by the shimmering moon dust. The monster’s final moments. She looked up
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The monster reached out a nightmarish tendril, twisted and hard and riddled with fungus. The tendril scratched Ilyria under the chin as an overly familiar uncle might and she gagged on the smell of rotten animal flesh. “You don’t look like him at all,” said The Shackled One, “Lucky for you. We hated him for what he did to us.” “Us? There is more than one of you?” “Us,” said The Shackled One, and dark spikes shot out from its body, impaling the Princess and Zlo. A spike missed the Mogul only because Loulou had pushed him out of the way. They stood open-mouthed with dread and fear as the Princess and Zlo twisted and writhed on the spikes, howling in agony, their blood dripping to the ground beneath them. Thassa ran to the frozen pair and pulled them away. Think, Ilyria, what does it want? came Madame Skia’s question. Ilyria tried not to hear the howls of the Princess and her son. She looked around for Madame Skia the darkness was so com
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Astrapi fell, Bonbon fell. Sidian, Flame and Loulou, they all fell. But it was not with the bone-rending shatter that Ilyria, Miasma and Thassa anticipated. Thassa, with his arms outstretched was surprised to find them filled with soft, warm, living, breathing Bonbon. Ilyria cried out as Astrapi landed with the thud and slap of flesh hitting floor. Likewise, the other companions, released from their marble prisons, fell to the rumbling, caving floor with cries of surprise and pain. Except for Bonbon whose tears were of joy to be in her lover’s arms. Ilyria had no time to feel bad about her inaction for the white roof and shattered walls of the reception chamber fell away as easily as if the marble had no more substance than eggshell. The smell of the garden filled the space but instead of the intoxicating perfume of earlier, it smelled as over-sweet and rotten, like over-ripe fruit. She held her hand up to her nose. The marble floor beneath their feet dissolved into the dark
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A woman at the back of the procession gave a long guttural howl. Every hair on Ilyria’s body stood on end. “Use the glamour,” said Miasma, “Help me, use the glamour.” “And do what?" said Ilyria, "Where do we even go?” Aerie? No then they would be too far away. They had to be in the Palace. Palace? What part of the Palace? The Princess’s chambers? The Princess’s garden? She felt for the token in her pocket already knowing it wasn’t there and that she wouldn’t use it even if she had it. The Princess, she decided, could not be trusted. Vatra? Yakip?No. They had to be here. “Make a run for it,” said Thassa, readying himself as if to do just that. The procession moved with purpose now, bearing down on them. Their fac
