...when her husband had betrayed her. Stupid animal. He'd sided with the Sidereals.
Taking Chances perched among the statues of the temple to Mela. That still made her laugh. The Immaculate Philosophy was such a pathetic front, though she would admit to a grudging respect. The Sidereal had learned their lesson well from the example of Ya'moire. Build your own religion, convince them that your way was the only true way, and you had an army of fanatics who would never falter.
Below her, in the crossway, the Golden Dragon walked. Behind him walked several Sidereal, the stinks of their astrology thick upon them. Taking Chances found it a little harder than usual to concentrate on them. They'd done something to themselves, she thought. Something that made them forgettable. She knew all mention of their existence had been disappearing from Creation for a century now but this was the first time she'd seen the effect so pronounced.
Interesting. If she could master that trick, there would be no end to the revenge she could exact.
So her husband was still with the Sidereals. Taking Chances could have forgiven almost anything of the Gold Dragon but that. Her Lunar mate and husband of 2000 years had, in the end, supported those who had put her entire Exaltation to death. Even her Circle.
Hierarch Ya'moire, killed when the Joybringers had put the Deliberative to death. Of course they'd killed her first. The Head of the Deliberative was too strong to dare risk her escape. Seville, she'd heard he died somewhere out in the West, and even the Faerie hadn't been able to help him. Given how he moped over Ya'moire, it was probably just as well. He hadn't been worthy of his Exaltation.
Kyvath...they were still telling the stories of how his own army committed suicide to show their abhorrence of his perceived sins. Because of their example, the fool had actually been dumb enough to get rid of Gold Revelation, the artifact that made him invincible. He'd let himself die. He had never been the true warrior his predecessor, Ensorcelled Beauty of Death's Deliverer, had been.
And of course, there was Nocturne Iridescence, the unquestionably greatest Sorcerer of the First Age and the inventor of Necromancy. Her body had been found, the evidence had pointed to her husband, Padrick Ganan, but Taking Chances didn't believe it. Nothing could kill that woman. Nothing. She'd bet against herself if they ever came to blows.
Either way, the Golden Dragon had been complicit. Taking Chances almost killed him in Yu-Shan 90 years ago but he'd walked too far into the Forbidden Manse of Ivy and her Charms had warned her that she wouldn't get out if she didn't leave right then. For a century, she'd waited for a chance to get him back. Waited for a word, a sign, a breath that would tell her that her husband had left Heaven to come back after her. Maybe he'd bring his Sidereal friends. That was fine, she was aching to pay them back too.
She had thought putting every living descendent of theirs to death would have been enough bait to draw him. No dice. Then she'd killed all his friends and family. She'd smeared his reputation until the Shogunate cursed the name of the Golden Dragon and reviled him even more thoroughly than the other cowardly Lunar who'd fled. Still nothing.
"I know you're here, Chance." The deep rumble of the Golden Dragon was music to her ears, a long-missed caress. She'd had Dragon-Blooded lovers aplenty in the last century, even a husband or two, but there was nothing like your own Lunar. That's why he had to die first. The sooner and more certain he was dead, the sooner he could be reborn into a new man, one she would be able to bend and twist from the beginning.
That's what you had to do to animals. Train them, discipline them, punish them, until they never defied you again. Oh, she would too. Maybe she'd pull the wings off the Star-Children until then, to kill the time. Might be fun.
"How did you find me so easily?" she asked. "I changed my scent, you know." There was a thousand tricks she could have pulled, voice misdirection, evasion and escape. But she was getting bored. She was the Inspector of the Night, the greatest Night Caste who'd ever lived. And she was tired of running when all she wanted to do was see how much blood she could rip from her husband's body.
"You changed your scent...but not the one that binds you to one who couldn't have known better," her Lunar said, sighing heavily. The golden scales rippled across his body as his muscular arms tensed involuntarily. Taking Chances looked past him, looked past the half dozen Sidereal with him, and saw Navia. Her own daughter!
"I should have known," Taking Chances laughed with malefic bitterness. She fell from the statutes to land in front of the man she'd borne dozens of children to. "All the Charms of the Night Caste but no one ever thought to find a way to fool a Lunar's Blood-Kin Sense. No one ever thought they'd need to."
"Not even you," he said, grief carved across his face. "I loved you, wife. But you're a murderer. How many people still fear your name? How many mortals have you killed? How many Sidereal? ...how many Lunar?"
"Millions," she grinned. "Over a thousand officials, if you want to know. 4 Sidereal, though I'm hoping to improve that tonight, maybe an even 10? And 4 Lunar. Your whole Pack."
"Mother, don't!" The young teenaged girl looked frightened out of her wits. She should be. Taking Chances saw and grimaced at the field of stars in her only surviving child's eyes. They were green. Navia had been born with blue, like her Dragon-blooded father.
"Scratch that, lover," she said to the Golden Dragon but still looking at Navia. "Better make that 11 Sidereal. Right under my own nose, huh?"
"I'm going to kill every last one of you...and then I think I'm going after Jupiter." Taking Chances laughed. "Even the Incarna aren't invulnerable. Heh, we should know, we killed their creators. And I think it's time the Gods learned who the real powers in Creation are and that they should keep their damned hands off my children."
"Chance..." her husband whispered, in a voice that begged her to stop. Perhaps a tiny corner of her wanted to yield to that voice, a corner that remembered what it had been like to love. But a river of passion, of altruism and hope, could never quench the ocean of hate inside her.
Faster than anything in Creation could move, Taking Chances caught her husband by the throat. Her fingers exerted all the strength she had and his windpipe collapsed, blood spilled through ruptured flesh, and she squeezed until his head came off.
"I love you, my Dragon," she whispered to the horrified head she cradled in her head. "Sleep well. Because when you wake, you'll be mine all over again..."
"Void curse you!" Dissent screamed and he realized he was still standing over the weeping form of his Lunar mate. He had a wife now, where once he'd been a woman with a husband, but the similarity was too disturbingly similar for him to brush it off. The memory...Pasiap, what had he done?
Pasiap? the Whispers snarled in his mind. There is no Pasiap. Only the Void!
Dissent's eyes cleared and he looked down at his defeated wife. His mouth tasted of ash and he reveled in the sensation, at a new and unique source of pain. Every wound, every injury was one more chance to transcend what he'd been.
"Get up," he said without emotion.
"I didn't remember," she sobbed beneath the hood of the robe, concealed from his sight. "I didn't remember until I saw you. Luna...why? I'm supposed to love you. I've hated the last 40 years in Heaven and all that kept me going was the hope that I would find my Solar someday. You...you're supposed to be my dream come true. Why?" The raw agony of her words brought a smile to his face.
"Because life is meaningless when everything dies," Dissent said grimly. "What's your name?"
"Heart-Wrought Silver," she said, her voice choked up.
"Stand up, Heart-Wrought Silver."
Slowly, she placed her hands on her knees, straightened, and stood with obvious effort. The hood of her robe angled up and the veiled face tilted toward him, the green silk sticking wetly to the face beneath.
Dissent reached up and pulled off her veil. An inhumanly beautiful face was revealed, with skin of purest silver, hair finer than the chains of Luna that had vanished back up her sleeves, lips darker and deeper than heart's blood. Dissent, who had never truly lusted for a woman, lusted for this one. On her cheek was an inky-black mark, shaped like a woman's kiss of lipstick.
The Abyssal sighed at the Lunar...and then his hands slammed around her neck again. She tried to cry out but could only choke futilely at the inexorable pressure. Dissent lifted her off the ground and marveled at how hard it was going to be to break her neck.
"I'm not doing this because Taking Chances killed you this way," Dissent whispered in her ear. "I'm doing this...as a favor to you. I'm sorry I treated you so badly before, my Dragon. Now, go to sleep. The next time I find you...I really am going to break you until there is nothing in your eyes but the Void. Until Creation burns out and we burn out with it."
Dissent growled with pleasure as he felt her spine creak. Then she let go of his hands and touched his arms.
Where her fingers touched, an icy ache ran up his forearms. Dissent gasped as the foreign Essence invaded him, shooting through every nerve fiber to reach his heart, his brain, his every vital function. In the mind of the Abyssal who had once had the name of Mnemon Matthias, the truth emerged like soulsteel from the forge. Dissent, slave of He Who Holds in Thrall, was enslaved by her Charm.
Heart-Wrought Silver willed his arms to let her go and so he did. Her will drove him to pick her up in his arms and cradle her to his chest.
"I have plans for her. Secure this place. I will return." The words were not ones he meant to speak but he spoke them anyway. He realized that the battle was over, that the Lion's forces had won. Yet he'd lost. The Lieutenant saluted him crisply and went about ordering on the poisoning of the oasis.
Dissent walked out of Isis Minor, out into the desert, and deep into the sandy wilderness. As he walked, he quietly informed the Whispers of what had been done to him and where he could be found. It was not a certain method but it was the only option he had.
"I'm sorry, husband," Heart-Wrought Silver said in his arms. "I'm sorry Heaven was right. Everything I learned in the Forbidden Manse of Ivy was true after all. Your kind really are monsters."
He could only look at her because she let him. Then he stopped behind a sand dune and put her down, kneeling next to her.
"You are going to die out here, husband," she said. The beauty of her face cut him to the bone when she looked at him. Her Anima shone fully! How could she still be disguised? That couldn't really be her natural face, could it? "I can't allow something like you to hurt more people. I remember what you did in the First Age. You'd do worse this time if you could, wouldn't you? You wouldn't even deny it if I let you."
She shook her head, her eyes brimming with tears. Then she leaned into him and kissed him gently. The bruises at her throat were already fading, he noticed, right before she pushed him back in the sand.
Moonsilver chains spilled across her fingers. Like a snake, it slid off her hand, touched his neck and coiled about it. Her fingers clenched and the chain clenched with it, abruptly cutting off his air.
Dissent gagged, helpless under her Charm. Tears fell on his face from the Lunar above him. Improbably, they itched.
"I'm sorry, Chance," she said, swallowing hard to get the words out. She bared her teeth at him in a grimace of predatory fury and the chains tightened even more. "I know what it's like to suffer with no one to save you. I promise, it will be as quick as I can make it."
Her perfect cheeks flushed and streams of water trickled from her eyes despite her glare. The chain around his neck laxed...then fell away entirely. Dissent gasped for breath, glad that her Charm gave him that much freedom.
Heart-Wrought Silver bowed her head, concealing her face beneath her hood, and sobbed for several long minutes. When she looked up, her eyes were hard again. The colors were strangely reversed, he realized, so that her eyes looked like a lake of black with chips of ice floating in the still water.
"I can't...I can't kill you. I won't kill you, Chance, for two reasons. I'm no murderer and I won't have my husband be the first man I kill." She bent and snatched her veil from his hand. He'd forgotten he was holding it.
"Secondly...there may be a slim ray of hope for you. You were someone glorious once, Chance. For the sake of your soul, for the sake of us, I will give you a chance just as slender as that hope. I'm leaving you here, to meet your Destiny beneath the Sun you defied. Seek Him in prayer, my husband, I give you that much. If He can find it in Him to forgive you...then maybe I can too."
She gave him a tiny smile, a tremulous thing full of wonder. It was the most innocent thing Dissent had ever seen, a smile that spoke of a depthless faith that good would win out. It was unexpectedly painful, for hope had abandoned him years ago. To see it now, directed his way...it hurt.
With that last smile, she turned and walked off into the desert.
Dissent lay in the sun and realized he still couldn't move. Her last thought to him had been to remain perfectly still...and he couldn't overcome the order. He couldn't break free!
So much for her faith and hope!
The Abyssal screamed at the chains in his mind and bent all his considerable willpower toward breaking free of it. The harder he pressed, the more he felt the bars of the cage she'd imprisoned him in, but they wouldn't give. He'd never met a Charm like this. Without understanding it, he couldn't hope to overcome her strange power.
Break free, Dissent. the Whispers demanded. Remember what you are.
I am the Fulcrum Hammer. Dissent's mind hardened into diamond with the effort. I can't die.
Sudden revelation swept through him. He really couldn't die! The Maidens themselves had consented to his Prophecy when they'd brought about this Pivot Child he would someday fight. In order for the Pivot Child Prophecy to be valid, he had to survive to oppose her, didn't he?
Even Creation's Destiny couldn't allow him to die.
So he wouldn't.
With renewed vigor, Dissent bore himself against the Lunar's Charm, pushing inch by inch until it suddenly broke. Sitting up, he gasped for breath and rubbed his scalp against the crushing headache that descended on him.
He slammed his fist into the sand and stood. Even with Charms, he couldn't see her now. It had taken too long to overcome hers. Perhaps he could track her but she was beyond the scope of his orders...and he had a job to do.
Either way, he was still standing. Dissent wouldn't insult himself by saying he still lived. But breathed, yes, moved, yes. Hated, oh yes.
This would not be the last time his wife saw him. And now he had a taste of her Charm. The Essence was flavored with Star-magic. the Whispers told him and he listened. Now that you've broken it, she'll never chain you again. Dissent grinned, looking forward to the next time. His hands ached to hold her neck once more.
Dissent patted his robes back into place, carefully tying the braids in the fourfold manner one did for the honored dead. He walked from that place and looked out over the sea of dunes. Far to the east, Isis Minor was beginning to burn.
It was time to get back. The First and Forsaken Lion wanted a meeting with that Faerie Noble, after all. One of Dissent's rank was called for in the least, when the Fair Folk Cataphract in question could help negotiate their interest in aiding a Faerie invasion of Creation.
One way or another, they would tear this world apart. Dissent began to run toward Isis Minor. If he was lucky, there might even be a few prisoners left to kill.
