"He's going to mispronounce my name."
Amelia sighed. Behind her, her friends were adjusting their dress clothes and chatting. They stood behind the grand foyer in a cramped alcove, where their apprehensions might spill out along with them. Only Zelgadis paced back and forth like a caged animal, assuming the worst before the night had even begun.
The duke had ordered a splendid ball to welcome his visitors—perhaps to distract them from the chaos spreading across Yalain, to project strength and influence, or just to butter them all up before getting down to business—and Amelia insisted on formal introductions for all her friends. She wanted everyone in Yalain to see that Seyruun didn't judge based on appearances. And neither do I, anymore. Zelgadis had refused, but when he found out Pokota was willing he'd lost his nerve.
"We gave him instructions," Amelia said, although he had a point. The herald had already stammered through several names of Yalain's own dignitaries. "It's six words. 'Sir Zelgadis Greywords, the princess's escort.' I'm sure it'll be fine."
"He's going to get it wrong," Zelgadis accused.
Rather than indulge this paranoia, she tried to deflect. "It's not such a big deal. I tripped down the stairs at my fifteenth birthday celebration."
"That was your eighteenth birthday."
"It was both," she said, feeling her cheeks go pink. And my twelfth, and my sixteenth, and at the commissioning of the Gracia Eternal, and… She felt relieved when a servant came to signal her entrance. "It's easy. Watch me!"
From the dim hall she stepped into the lustrous great hall, designed for her to gape at its extravagance. But Amelia would not gape at the gilded architraves or the plush purple drapes pushing back nature's savage cold. She did not quaver at the sight of hundreds of people, many scowling straight at her. She was a princess, and this was her job.
"Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun," the herald announced as she passed him and held her chin high. She paused at the center of the majestic bifurcated stairs, letting the crowd take her in like an object for auction. Their attention, curiosity, and scorn blazed hotter than the hearth-fires. But no glare would shake her, her posture proclaimed. She stood with the strength and pride of all Seyruun framing her shoulders.
"...crown princess of Seyruun."
The instant passed and she proceeded down the stairs. She could see the representatives from Seyruun at a distant banquet table, and she smiled in their direction before turning back.
"Sir Zelgadis Greywords…"
The herald had done a perfect job with his name and seemed quite proud. For his part, Zelgadis didn't move, and Amelia remembered not everyone had grown up in the public eye. She knew how difficult this had to be; he shrank from anyone's gaze on his face, his body. To be on display here, in a place full of strangers and cruelty, had to be harder still.
But Zelgadis was a man of odd surprises. I can't go to Seyruun, he'd told her years ago, then proceeded to come back so many times he'd gotten her father's attention. I don't take orders from anyone, he'd said, then became a knight. For someone who said so much about what he would and wouldn't do, the real world always proved him wrong. As soon as he'd insisted he would not have a formal introduction it was all but settled that he would. Amelia didn't quite understand it, yet somehow Gourry did. "He has the easiest behavior pattern to predict," he'd said once. Predict how?
At last Zelgadis took to the stairs, walking as though he'd just learned how. There was a collective gasp, interrupted by a single obnoxious cheer. Amelia guessed Lina had gotten into the wine ahead of schedule.
Amelia willed him to see her and somehow it worked. His angry look told her he hated this, hated everything, wanted to kill everyone and hide in a corner in a hole under a rock. Ignore it, she thought at him, trying to make her gaze firm yet kind, like she could steady him with it. Ignore everyone else and look at me. You're doing great!
"...the princess's consort."
A murmur went up around the room before Amelia could confirm what she'd heard. Several people in official-looking outfits jumped up from their chairs. Zelgadis's eyes twitched, and his simmering anger turned to alarm.
What do I do? his wide eyes asked.
Keep walking, Amelia thought. She looked behind her and saw the whole delegation of Seyruun on their feet, talking excitedly. By the time Zelgadis reached her side his alarm had become full-blown consternation.
"Amelia," and he spoke with the distress of someone recognizing a problem they weren't equipped to solve, "did you hear—"
"It'll be fine, Zelgadis-san!" she said, not quite believing herself. "Once everyone is done we'll have the herald issue a correction. I'm sure it'll be easy."
But it was not easy because these things never were. The rest of the introductions were as smooth as a sandpaper massage. Pokota's debut caused several people to scream, and someone had hurled an orange at him that he'd hurled right back. The herald had assumed "Lina Inverse, beautiful sorcery genius" must have meant someone other than the spirited redhead that had walked out, which led to a brief but rousing fight. All in all, it was such a total catastrophe that afterwards Amelia wondered whether anyone would remember the escort-consort mixup.
Seyruun's foreign minister answered that question, approaching before she could turn around. "Why, Princess Amelia!" he exclaimed. He had curled both sides of his long mustache, which hung along the sides of his face like decorative ribbons. "I ought to be livid, but at least you've spared me from sitting beside Yalain's dreadful chief of protocol. He left to rearrange the bedrooms. Still, how will I justify such a stunt on the record?"
"It wasn't a stunt!" Amelia said. "It was a mistake. He was supposed to say escort, not consort."
The foreign minister pursed his lips. "Really," he said, with such withering incredulity that Amelia felt her blush in the very peak of her nose. Zelgadis looked like he was on the verge of saying something and repeatedly deciding against it.
"Yes, really! C-come on, Zelgadis-san, let's settle this!" Amelia took him by the hand and marched him to the miserable herald. Under her orders, the herald made another announcement, but it was to no avail. The party had begun in earnest and no one could hear him over a bombardment of popping champagne corks and tinny balalaikas.
They were left alone to stare out over the great hall in confusion. Amelia noticed a number of men placing pikes over the windows. At first she assumed they were servants securing the drapes, but they had no uniforms, only matching red armbands. But there were many other men present in uniforms… military uniforms, it looks like…
"Well," Amelia said, more uneasy than ever, "we can tell everyone it was a mistake."
Zelgadis recovered himself at last. "Right. No one would believe it anyway."
She looked up at him and saw he was pinching the bridge of his nose, just as he did when Lina's antics got them kicked out of a restaurant. This is another petty embarrassment to you. "Of course. It's…silly, isn't it?"
Amelia didn't understand why she said that. It felt like handing him a hooked needle.
"It is."
"Hmph!" Anxious, frustrated, and now feeling that needle throb in her side, Amelia was determined to salvage the evening as best she could. As she gathered her embellished skirts and headed down the stairs, navigating packs of gossips and grand dames, she wondered if the duke might owe her a favor: all of Yalain's most elite society was talking about something besides the terrible state of the country. Do they plan to use us as a common enemy?
"Pardon me, Your Royal Highness."
A masked man in a golden wool jacket and matching breeches bent down before her. The mask, the flamboyant suit, the hair tied back with a bow was all so foreign that Amelia didn't recognize him at first. She placed his voice after he spoke again (and then she noticed the man's hair was an inimitable shade of violet).
"May I have the honor of a dance?" he asked, taking her hands and lifting her so that her toes just brushed the floor.
"I…" Amelia had no capacity for an encounter with Xellos right then, which she supposed was why he had come. "I'm feeling a little dizzy," she admitted. There was no point in hiding vulnerability from someone who could always sense it. "Some other time, Xellos-san?"
"Oh? I thought this was rather a joyous occasion." And she could feel him flit through her mind, not devouring and prolonging her pains like last time but probing them: browsing her most intimate, innermost thoughts and saying hmm, what have we here?
Amelia imagined slamming the lid of a hinged box on his delicate gloved fingertips. Go.
Xellos stopped, charmed by this show of resistance. He took a special delight in humans who knew what he was yet defied him anyway. But before he could let go of her hands, someone else took them in a familiar unyielding grip.
"I'm cutting in," Zelgadis said coldly.
The three of them stood with their hands joined in a bizarre, tense tableau, Amelia still precariously on her toes as Zelgadis glared Elmekia Lances straight at a perplexed Xellos. Out of the corner of her eye Amelia saw a few people staring and more red armbands in the distance. She also saw Lord Ortolan, locked in a heated conversation with two other older men, all covered in polished medals. They moved their hands and waved their canes in ways that implied swift, harsh motion.
A motion I won't see coming?...What's going to happen next?
"As you wish," Xellos said, taking Zelgadis's hands and pulling him into an intimate reel. Amelia watched them dance off together, the one enjoying his graceful yet unbreakable hold on the other. He walked into that one, she decided.
"Amelia-san!"
Filia rushed to her, Sylphiel in tow. Even in their haste they were as stately as ancient goddesses (they had approached the ball with the seriousness of politicians preparing for war), and they moved with divine detachment: neither noticed how everyone else responded to their striking beauty.
"Amelia-san! Xellos is…" started Filia, with a different sort of striking in mind. She reached a hand under her dress, oblivious to the nearby men who choked and gasped at her long, pale legs. "I saw his disgusting hands on you! Are you all right? I've got my mace—"
"I'm fine, Filia-san," Amelia said. When she recalled No one would believe it anyway she felt a curdling in her stomach. "I'm sure Zelgadis-san can handle himself."
Filia's relationship with Xellos was hard to parse. They were happiest when despising each other, but they also had a rapport that only centuries-old creatures could share. Moreover, Xellos had a professional interest in the unhatched Valgaav, and they seemed to agree that it would not be entirely beneficial for Valgaav if the other was dead. The closest analogy Amelia had was Dils' ambassador to Seyruun, a loathsome man who was nevertheless clever and helpful when their interests aligned, and her worst enemy when they didn't.
"If he lays a finger on you again…" Filia hissed, pointing towards Xellos as he put Zelgadis through his paces like a dressage horse, "I will flatten him." She left to stalk them from the sidelines.
"Oh, but is it official, Amelia-san?!" Sylphiel swooned in place so that her gown rippled around her in swishy waves. White magic was wishful thinking: Sylphiel worshipped first and foremost at the altar of romance. "I heard the herald! How did it happen? When did Zelgadis-san tell you he's on the register?! Or did you tell him, and did he ask you on the spot?"
Zelgadis-san is on the register?!
Zelgadis-san is on the register…
Each of Sylphiel's dreamy questions landed with the impact of meteorites, but Amelia was too skilled a diplomat to let her surprise show. "Ah, well, that was a misunderstanding," she said. "The herald meant to say escort."
"B-but…" Sylphiel's face fell, breaking countless elaborate rocky fantasies with it. "You mean you're not…you didn't—"
"It's okay, Sylphiel-san. I already knew he was on the list." Did I? Yes, she did, way deep down. Her father had always done everything he could to ease the impracticalities of royal life. He would never approve a list without people that she actually liked. Who would be a more obvious choice than her knight, her hero, her best friend in all the world?
Nobody would believe it anyway, Zelgadis had said, and she felt jabbed a second time. Would he have said that if he knew? Amelia knew she couldn't tell him. He would resent it, just as he resented any external attempt to influence his decisions. If he ever chose to ask, she could let him know.
Zelgadis's dress boots clicked with increasing speed against the parquet wood floor. He wanted to stop, tried to disengage, but Xellos maintained his deceptively powerful clutches, somehow damp through his gloves. Worst of all, Xellos distorted himself in imperceptible ways that forced Zelgadis to keep moving in time with the music. After years of ignoring him, here they were, dancing. Zelgadis would have preferred Phibrizzo's golden marbles.
"You," he snarled.
"Hmm," Xellos said, sounding preoccupied. Even now, locked together with their faces inches apart, even with Zelgadis struggling and helpless in his grip, Xellos showed him no real attention or interest.
"Answer me—"
"My agreement is with Lina-san, not you."
"We've got the same questions," Zelgadis lied. He and Lina had talked about what they wanted to ask Xellos, but hadn't settled on their priorities or an order. If he asked the wrong things and wasted their opportunity, Lina might murder him. Xellos was silent, perhaps also considering this possibility. He must have concluded it would be worth it. He did not breathe, Zelgadis noticed, or he chose not to, underscoring this was a literal dance with death.
Zelgadis thought carefully. Xellos did not lie but flourished in semantic ambiguity, so it was best to keep him to yes or no questions. The dance tune, already quickening in tempo, became faster and faster until it accelerated to a frenzy. A couple of men on the sidelines sang along with lyrics about a little apple. "Did you know destroying the Shrine of Restoration would bring in mazoku from another plane?"
"I find the obsession with 'balance' between light and darkness very shortsighted," he said. Zelgadis took that as a no.
"Are you supporting anyone here besides Kaunan?" Zelgadis demanded, gripping Xellos's fingers as forcefully as he could. With his super strength any human hands would have been smashed into a bony, bloody pulp.
"That I cannot disclose."
Damn! "One more question—"
But the song ended with a prolonged roll of the strings and a hearty stomp. Xellos let go at once, dropping Zelgadis to the ground. When he looked up again his partner had disappeared. He was surrounded by gawking onlookers and the shriveling heat of their scorn. Zelgadis rose and left, eager to be as far away as possible from his latest humiliation.
All those damned judging faces, that poisonous disgust. How does Amelia do it? She wasn't ugly or deformed, which helped, but the audience had been prepared to hate her all the same. Yet she'd walked out there and let their disdain roll off her back. He hadn't known how much courage and resilience that required until it was his turn.
Every stare in his direction pierced him, and Zelgadis kept his head down. He drew into himself so completely that he didn't see anything more than a few inches away, including the tremendous cotton blouse that bumped up right under his nose.
"Wha…?"
Eogre's hefty hands clapped his shoulders. Hans and Franz stood beside him with overflowing tankards of frothy beer. They looked tired and uncomfortable in their formalwear, a dead giveaway that they weren't real diplomats. Spies couldn't afford nice clothes. "Hey, congratulations, kid. We were all betting on you, but I figured it was gonna be two or three more years."
"Looks like Marjan won," Hans said. "She had four hundred gold pieces on next spring. Meanwhile the rest of us barely won enough money to buy a loaf of bread."
Zelgadis was too agitated to make any sense of their ribbing. He glared, waiting for them to continue. Hans sighed.
"I guess now we can tell you about the pool."
And they told him. Zelgadis didn't comprehend the first time, nor the second, but by the third iteration he had at last begun to grasp the truth: Xellos had dropped him so hard he'd sustained a debilitating head injury.
"That's impossible," he declared, because it was. This was not happening. In reality he must have been back on the dance floor, bleeding out while the crowds mocked him, and these had to be the last feverish flickers of his dying brain.
"Says the guy at two to nine odds."
"That's…" Zelgadis shook his head several times, expecting to wake up or die. "So that list I found…those are all suitors?"
"They're people who could be, if they wanted to," Franz said for the fourth time. "They have the express approval of Phil and parliament, that's all. It's a process. As far as we know Amelia hasn't seen it yet. Christopher's register had two hundred and thirty-nine women on it before he picked somebody."
"But I—I can't be. I'm…I'm one. Third. Human," Zelgadis said, biting off each word. He rolled up his sleeves to show off the blue-gray basalt pieces jutting out of his skin in case his face wasn't evidence enough. Two women at a nearby table fainted. "I'm a chimera."
Hans shrugged. "You're really surprised you got parliament's approval? Hell, the last duchess of Bezeld turned undead in the full moon. Besides, you really think there's not some troll or beastman within a couple generations of Phil? The hair on his back alone…"
"I've killed people."
"See, you fit in already!"
"It's nice when in-laws understand family dynamics," Eogre said.
Franz snorted. "I can't believe you thought we were cursing you! What'd you think we were gonna do, turn you into some sulky, uptight dumbass? 'Cause somebody beat us to that a long time ago."
The light from the shimmering chandeliers was brighter than sunlight and growing brighter. Around them, the room faded into contrasting white shadows, a lot of shining blurs and short sweeps of red moving around at the edges. As Zelgadis sagged to his knees, Hans offered him some beer.
"Hey, I thought you were her consort, right? What are you going on about?"
Hans's beer was thin and bitter, but Zelgadis was so close to passing out that he gulped it down, even as he recalled that most people didn't experience tastes while asleep. Becoming a chimera hadn't affected the feeling in his mouth; if anything, it had become more sensitive to tastes and textures. Right now the bitterness refreshed him. It gave him the energy to concentrate, see, think. And the first thing he thought was—
"Did you say Marjan bet on…?" The others nodded. "But she called me a scoundrel and a rake. To my face."
Eogre guffawed, a deep, phlegmy rattle. "Ha! Sounds like she was hoping you would be."
Beneath the glowing light Zelgadis tried to reorient himself, establish his footing in this strange reality where nobody thought his traumas were all that unique or important. Maybe they weren't. Maybe they weren't that relevant to who he'd become.
His deepest pride was knowing that, unlike Rezo, he wouldn't sacrifice anything for his cure; he'd eked out a life where a cure was just one of many things he cared about. Adventuring with Lina, serving at Amelia's side, and saving the universe from dark lords didn't require being human, so why should anything else? Why shouldn't he be whatever he desired? Who was stopping him, besides himself?
He was an insignificant speck in a capricious world that found him uninteresting. He could either fight back and struggle for control he didn't have, or accept it like everyone else had. Yes, he was a speck, and all the world was Xellos.
"Right," he said, in no real response to anything in particular, and went in search of Lina and the others. Zelgadis wanted to know whether their supernatural dream-selves would feel as alien as everything else.
They were easy enough to find, as he only had to look for the many horrified yet compelled spectators watching Lina do her best work. All his friends sat around the lavish banquet table except for Amelia, who stood between Lina and Gourry. Everyone else helped themselves to piles of dumplings, salted meats, and fish pies.
"This place is so dumb," complained Pokota, sitting on the table beside a basket of rye bread. "They're okay with fish-people, but they think we're weird?"
"If biases were rational, humans wouldn't have them," Jillas harrumphed, with little apparent affection, and Zelgadis wondered what Jillas considered himself. "At least bombs don't discriminate." Pokota lifted his goblet and they shared a toast.
Zelgadis moved past them and past where Filia and Sylphiel were chatting about visiting a religious library. At the head of the table Amelia stood between Lina and Gourry, wringing her hands. In this dream she wore the same pale blue gown she'd been wearing earlier that night, its wide skirts covered in embellished pink and white roses. That had been a new one. How had he committed it to memory so quickly? He'd marveled at its exquisite details, the plunging back held together by four jeweled strands; the way the flowers ran along the bodice like what in the name of the dragon gods is wrong with you?
"No, Gourry-san," Amelia was saying. "A consort is…well, it's an ambiguous word, but it's usually a spouse or fiance. It means any companion that's…you know, any royal's non-royal partner. The prince of Ralteague has a new consort every other winter."
"Okay," Gourry said, more polite than understanding. The long wrinkle in his brow was as close as he got to overt skepticism. "So they said consort when they should have said escort, which is… also the partner of a royal, except platonic?"
"Gourry-san!" she protested, but seemed to have no other defense ready. She glanced up and saw Zelgadis. Her features scrunched and he sensed a pout coming on, the same sort of pout that he sometimes dispelled with a flick to her forehead. He'd been doing that for years before the Thing ever existed.
And yes, maybe it had been a Thing so many years ago, but he knew it wasn't anymore. Now he could call it what it was if only to himself. Fine, I know what you are, he thought, and the instant he articulated it in his own mind was the same instant when it stopped howling. It died, shriveled, and dissipated into a quiet warmth that stirred his insides.
"Yeah, you know how platonic they are," Lina cackled. She sported a flashy set of dangling emerald earrings. "Remember when Zel carried her bracelet around everywhere? Super platonic."
"Or when he cried all those platonic tears about how pretty she was in battle," Pokota added.
"Oh, I have one!" Filia buttered her bread with a malicious flick of her wrists, and Zelgadis remembered she was much more dangerous than she appeared. "That love you pledged to activate the vessels from Baritone and Alto was platonic too, I assume."
"Well, I c-can't say anything," said Sylphiel, too tenderhearted to participate in a group drubbing. She looked at Zelgadis and held up her hand in solidarity. Rezo Club, she mouthed.
Lina, on the other hand, had no problem getting into the spirit of things. "Or what about that time Abel caught you guys and you blamed it on Gduza and Duguld?"
Zelgadis and Amelia exchanged mystified looks, then said in unison:
"What?!"
"What? We never saw anything. You guys were on the floor talking about how you just came back from the astral plane." Lina leaned over to Pokota, who muttered "astral plane" and formed air quotes with his ear-hands. "Gotta say, I was surprised. Zel's such a prude, you know? When we were in Artemay Tower he risked death rather than touch a butt."
"What? I'd risk death to touch a butt," Pokota said. "Unless it was yours, that is."
She dunked him upside-down into a gravy boat. "Leave my butt out of this!"
It was all too absurd to be a dream, Zelgadis realized. He would never have wanted such ridiculous people to be the ones who knew and loved him best. But they did, and they didn't need him to be human either. Yes, this was the real world, if he would stop running from it. A world where the most powerful human alive was yelling about her rear end, where chaos incarnate had a bland smile and clammy hands. A world where knights could…
Beside him Amelia blushed with exasperation. She hadn't seen the list, Franz had said. Of course she wouldn't have, she hated that kind of thing. Zelgadis didn't want to remind her that her future was dictated by committee. If she ever were curious she'd find out for herself. Unlike some people he knew, Amelia had always been confident in her own heart.
How unjust! How uncharitable to think that she and Zelgadis-san hadn't been serious about their bodyguard responsibilities! "Lina-san!" Amelia cried. "I can't believe you would say such a thing! And you of all people have no place to talk about anyone's feelings!"
"She's right," said Pokota, still squashed in Lina's furious grip. Lina gave him a vindictive squeeze and he spat gravy over the table.
"She is," Zelgadis agreed, with a scoff for good measure. "How asinine. Let's go, Amelia."
"Right! I was leaving anyway," Amelia huffed as she marched away, letting him tag along as her moody shadow. She took off beyond the great hall and into the castle halls, careful to look composed rather than annoyed.
"Were you really planning to leave?" he asked as they turned down a winding staircase.
"Yes. Did you see the people in there blocking off the windows?"
"And you don't think it's because of the cold."
"I don't." In her experience, blocking off windows always foreshadowed hot, metallic blood that seeped into her dreams for days afterwards. Among her friends she was the undisputed expert on coups and assassins. "And if there are wicked plans, I won't make them easy!"
"You think the duke would allow that in his own castle?"
"I don't think the duke holds real power here."
They came out from the stairs into a crypt lit with paltry torches. Zelgadis stepped forward, the tips of his ears twitching, and now it was Amelia's turn to follow. The grimy, web-cloaked ceilings leered down at them: this was no place for respectable sorts.
As Amelia splashed through a puddle of something moldy he held out one hand to the side, warning her to get ready. They turned a corner into a wall of glossy blue ice with three armored men trapped within it. Amelia rushed to the wall, so thick it blocked off an entire passageway. The stricken men stood with their arms outstretched, captured forever in the instant before the attack.
Zelgadis didn't share Amelia's concern for the victims. "Was this a Ly Briem? Or a Vice Freeze?" he said, peering at the frozen splashes that formed on either side of the stone columns. "Such an overwhelming spell, but with almost no control."
"Or it wasn't a spell…" Amelia mused.
A curt shove to the top of her head pushed her downward as a metal-tipped arrow whizzed past. The arrow shattered the ice, splintering the spot where it struck and spreading outwards into long, ominous fractures.
"Bomb Di Wind!" Zelgadis aimed his spell in the opposite direction, unleashing focused air with the force of a missile. Amelia cast Lighting and let the light hover in one hand while she clenched a fist with the other.
"Halt!" she shouted in her best impression of her father. "You're in the presence of the crown princess of Seyruun! Surrender now or face the full extent of punishment under all applicable laws!"
A barrage of arrows demonstrated how much the aggressors cared about international sovereignty. Zelgadis knocked the arrows aside with a Windy Shield. Amelia's sizzling Flare Bit set balls of scarlet flames ping-ponging across the crypts. They split off in separate directions as footsteps scattered, echoed, and receded around them. By the time Amelia had jumped into a Raywing (gowns weren't made for foot chases) their assailants were long gone. Zelgadis's growl meant he'd had no luck either.
"They ran like cockroaches," he spat. His knuckles still had the faint aura of an impulsive Bram Blazer. "And to try that here…they've got someone powerful protecting them."
"Not all that powerful," Amelia said, turning back to the ice as it began to break apart. The bodies of the men encased within snapped into bloodless, blackened pieces that thudded onto the ground.
"Let's go, Zelgadis-san. We have reports to file."
To Amelia's relief, no one in the great hall had been harmed; if there had been evil plans, they'd been postponed. She informed the foreign minister, who demanded an immediate engagement with his counterpart in Yalain. A starving and exhausted Amelia sat through emergency meetings while everyone else enjoyed a lovely ball. Zelgadis stayed at her side, taciturn and cross as ever. She knew he disliked having to play by the rules of formal engagements, especially when things got violent. But this was real diplomacy, and real diplomacy had procedures around assassination attempts.
The leaders agreed to meet the following morning. Amelia departed for bed feeling the night had been unfair somehow, even beyond the brush with death. She decided Yalain really was a fairytale, but it was one of the creepy kinds about betrayal and spurned gods.
It was just after midnight when Amelia and Zelgadis, silent and smelling of mildew, left for their suite in the north tower. At least he would be there with her. Maybe they could sleep in shifts so she wouldn't spend all night ready to jump out at intruders. As they approached their room Amelia scanned their surroundings, trying to identify means of egress or potential hidden passages.
" 'Consort'…it's an ambiguous word."
Amelia glanced up. Zelgadis stood facing the door with his hand on the latch.
"And no one from the continent knows we're in Yalain."
"Yes," she said, unsure where this might be going. His back was to her, and for some reason she didn't dare come closer.
He sighed his usual defeated sigh, as he always did when things became too ridiculous, but there was something not quite right about it. At first Amelia couldn't tell what. Then she noticed his shoulders were still lifted almost to his ears in a defensive V, as if he was bracing for a blow.
"I suppose while we're here…if you don't…"
Zelgadis sounded tired, indifferent; his stance could have cut glass.
Amelia felt a heat on her face so intense she thought her skin was burning. She inhaled and found the air had become stiflingly hot. "I don't…" She moved her lips, but the all-important word didn't follow her. When she tried again it came out somewhere between a peep and a whisper.
"...I don't mind…"
The door opened and slammed shut with a panicked bang, leaving Amelia alone in the corridor. A full minute passed before she realized that in his haste he'd locked her out of their room.