Page 113 of The Duke and the Disciple

“Yes,” Aesylt said briskly.

“I suppose—yes,” Rahn said, watching her.

“Splendid. Just splendid.” Proctor turned toward a table, wiggling his fingers, and pivoted back to show he was holding three strings, each a different color. Green, yellow, and red. “There are three rules at Revelry. Have fun, mind your tongue when you leave, and respect the colors when you’re here. You will each choose a color to wear tonight on your wrists. The color will signal to all others here what you have come in search of. It will inform the nature of your visit and your enjoyment thereof. It does not, however, supersede consent, and you may change your color and your mind at any time. Just be aware, however, that should you choose to wear a red string tonight, checking for consent is not a requirement of the partners who may proposition you. If you change your mind, you must remove your bracelet to signal your consent has been withdrawn. Simply sayingnois often part of the game for our red bracelets and would not be enough to show you were no longer interested.”

Rahn frowned, sighing deeply. “Right. So. The colors. They mean?—”

“I shall explain them now.” Proctor flicked the green string. “Green is the color of searching. Most who come to Revelry for their first time choose it because they don’t know what to expect once they step foot inside our menagerie of pleasure.” He laughed to himself. “Green is the color of watchers. Curiosity. As a green bracelet, you may partake in any of the main room festivities—food, drink, conversation. And you may wander to the edges of that room for something a little more colorful. However, you arenotto leave the main room, what we often call the green room, unless you switch your bracelet to yellow or red, as the side rooms are for the seeking revelers.”

Pieter leaned in. “Green is no fun. No one really means to choose it.”

Green it is,Rahn thought.

Proctor rolled his eyes. “Do not listen to our good lord here.Choiceis the only thing that brings us here, no?” He flicked the yellow string. “Yellow is the color of interest. Wearing yellow tells others you are open for most activities, but they must still obtain consent before engaging. There are no limits to what you can take part in if you wear yellow, or to what rooms you may enter, and you may set your own boundaries prior to any encounter. Yellow is the most common color of our revelers, for there is no risk and infinite reward.”

“Yellow allows for multiple partners?” Aesylt asked, her first words of the evening.

“Of course, dear.”

“Hmm.” Her hand slipped from Rahn’s.

“I assume we don’t even need to ask about red then,” Rahn said with a nervous chuckle.

“I want to know about red,” Aesylt stated.

“Red,” Proctor said, grinning, “is for the adventurous. Red is everything yellow is, but more. Wearing red signals to others you want to be taken—liberally. Takeneverywhere. Taken without being asked! You may be walking down the hall, and a man comes up behind you, bends you over a chair, and does as he pleases. Red tells him you’re open to it. Nay,invitingit. Red says, ignore what I say and do as you please.” He eyed the string with a strange look. “Unless you remove the bracelet, that is. That tells your partners to cease immediately. And should they decide they’re disinclined to do so, we have guards stationed all throughout the abbey to monitor compliance. Also, as Lord Dereham has likely already explained to you, you will enter Revelry without your clothing but with a silk robe you can choose to wear, or not. When you’re wearing the robe, it’s quite a simple thing to hide your wrist, and if your string is not visible, others are forbidden from bothering you. Many use this tactic for temporary breaks in their evening interludes.” He sighed, smiling. “So you see, it really is quite safe.”

Rahn’s internal gale was building to a squall.Lord Derehamhad explained none of it.

Pieter held out his wrist. “You know my preference, Proctor.”

Pleased, Proctor reached for a red string from the table and secured it around his wrist. “I predict another satisfying evening for you, my lord. Some of your favorites are already inside.”

“Music to my ears.” Pieter adjusted the string on his wrist and turned toward Rahn and Aesylt. “And the two of you?”

“Green,” Rahn said at the same time Aesylt said, “Red.”

Rahn turned all the way to face her. “No.” He looked back at Proctor, then Pieter. “No, she’s not wearing red. That’s ludicrous. She’d never done anything like this before. Surely there are rules around a person’s first time.”

“No such rules, actually,” Proctor said amiably.

“It’s not your choice,Gerald,” Aesylt said and held out her wrist.

Pieter lifted his brows. “She’s right, Gerald. Only she can decide the experience ahead of her. Are you sure green is your choice? You won’t be able to follow her when she ventures beyond the main room... and let’s be blunt, she wouldn’t be wearing red if she was only interested in the main room, would she?”

“Ella,” Rahn pleaded, but Aesylt stared determinedly ahead as Proctor tied the string. “Fine, yellow then. Gods.”

“Gods?” Proctor scrunched his face. “What are you, a Ravenwood, Gerald? We’ve had one or two here before, pretending to be one of us.”

“He’s just an odd man who says odd things,” Pieter explained, with a light look of warning. “Yellow then?”

Rahn internalized his building anxiety and nodded. He barely stood still as Proctor tied the string. It was loose enough to be removed quickly but secure enough for the type of activities occurring right that moment inside the doors. He swallowed with a sweeping look up the stone wall, at the cloudy windows that revealed nothing from the outside. But there were enough whoops and cries and moans to show there was no shortage of pleasures for the eager and willing.

He was neither.

Aesylt was, inexplicably, both.

Worst of all, the whole thing, the road they’d taken to get there—all of it—was on him. He’d told Aesylt that she held all the power, but that hadn’t always been true.Hewas the one in a position of authority. There was an expression he’d learned from the dowager Queen Godivah, perhaps the only piece of actual wisdom the insufferable woman had ever doled out:When you resolve to take something out of a box, be sure you know how it got there in the first place, or you’ll never know precisely how to get it back in.

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