Page 78 of Rhapsody of Ruin
Nyssa didn’t argue. She knows the way arguments often meanconvince me to be who you need me to be.She also knows I don’t ask for that kind of kindness.
But the question hung in the air anyway, curious as a child:Why not.
Because I could still feel the shape of Rhydor’s mouth against mine, and the weight of his hand at the base of my skull, and the heat of his body teaching me what prayer meant without bothering with god. Because I could still feel the harder thing too, the cold grip, the kiss that was hunger and not tenderness, the way he had taken what my twilight gave him and left me standing like a woman who had volunteered to be turned to ash and then discovered she had expected to be thanked. Because if Nyssa went to him now, with truth soft and bleeding, he would turn the world into a room on fire to protect me, and our enemies would learn how to build houses out of ash faster than he could make roofs. Because some loves are better when they’re made to wait for a while, lest their heat become an excuse for men to call war devotion.
I could not say any of that to Nyssa without making her part of a harm she didn’t name herself to be in. I am cruel often and try not to be that kind.
“I can carry the weight,” I said instead.
Nyssa tipped the pouch and let a thin line of chalk dust trickle along the door’s frame. It glowed faintly as it settled, a brief blue before the powder learned to bury its light like anything devout. “You shouldn’t have to,” she said. “But I know you will.”
We didn’t speak while she drew the symbols. She knew the shape of the ones I needed and the ones I didn’t have the right to ask for. Tidy runes, stubborn curves. She pressed thumb toforefinger twice when she reached the lintel and whispered a name for the strength that lives under cupboards and in corners, the kind women call on when the house pretends it can’t learn.
When she was done, the room felt different. Not safer, Shadowspire doesn’t allow that, but tuned, like a string set in the right key.
“Let me see your hands,” she said.
I held them out. There was ink under one thumbnail. A crescent of my own nail had cut my palm where I’d made a fist too hard to hold myself steady. Nyssa dabbed rosewater on the crescent, then crushed mint leaves between her fingers and rubbed the oil into my skin until it remembered it belonged to me and not to the hour.
She looked down at the mask on the table, then back at me. “You don’t have to wear it to convince them.”
“I know.” And I did. In the council chamber, I had worn it because the ritual demands a certain number of lies on the stage to feel honest. In here, the only ritual required was the one I set for myself.
Nyssa poured the second cup. “You look,” she said, not filling the sentence, letting me choose the word.
“Tired,” I offered.
“That’s not the one,” she said. “But we can borrow it for now. Drink the rest. You’ll need your throat.”
I drank. The steam lifted against my mouth and blurred the window a little. Beyond it, the Shroud trembled again, the faintest seam flashing so quickly you could call it a trick of light if you needed to sleep later. It had less patience for lies than law does. It will punish us both for that soon enough.
“I stood at the balustrade with him after,” I said, surprising myself with my own need to confess something that wasn’t aboutqueens or children. “He said he would stand anyway. And hate me for it.”
Nyssa’s mouth made a small shape, pain maybe, or pity, or an acceptance so fierce it looks like a blade. “He will keep both words.”
“I know.”
I also knew the way his heat had carried itself down the corridor without bothering with bodies. The way my body had answered it without asking my permission. That memory lived in my skin like a candle you tell yourself you forgot to snuff and then lie about until the room is warm enough to stop needing your mouth to keep it honest.
“I can still feel him,” I said, and the sentence was made of shame and love in equal measure.
“Good,” Nyssa said, cheerfully ruthless. “Live people should know what living feels like before they are asked to dress as martyrs.”
I laughed then, a sound that belonged to a breath we hadn’t shared for too long.
“Help me choose,” I said, and crossed to the wardrobe.
The dresses hung in a gradient of lies: peony and pearl for gentle cruelty; iron-gray and storm-blue for days when the law wanted to look in a mirror and pretend it knew a goddess; black for the funerals we throw for boys who were never permitted to name themselves men. I set the jewels aside first. The weight of gold at my throat would feel like asking to be forgiven for wearing the metal of a crown to a killing. The moons I always wore, the delicate chain of crescents Vaeloria had tolerated because it made me look like a story she thought she owned, glinted where I set them on the low chest. I pressed a thumb to the cool face of one crescent until my nail squeaked.
A simple gown, then. Not penance, I do not confess to them, but clarity. I drew out a dress the color of the inside of a storm: plain wool, cut clean, the sleeves narrow at the wrist, the skirt heavy enough to teach me where my feet were. It had no place to hide anything under it and no reason to pretend it needed to.
Nyssa tugged a seam straight without comment, then held out a cloak, the soft charcoal one with the deep hood that fell around my face like a night that had made peace with its own dark.
“Your hair,” she said.
I stood while she undid the crown I had wound onto myself at dawn. The pins slid out, a slow rain of small sounds on wood, and my hair fell heavy around my shoulders, warm as a memory I shouldn’t be carrying into the next hour.
“The rulebook says I should suggest a braid tight enough to teach modesty,” she said. “The rulebook has never been kissed.”
