Mal de Mer

by Lullabyes

A high-seas honeymoon. Two adversaries, bound by matrimony. A future full of peril and possibility. And a word that neither enjoys adding to their lexicon: Compromise. War was simpler business... Part of the 'Forward But Never Forget/XOXO' AU. Can be read as a standalone series. SilcoxMel

6. Sea-Monster

Touch if you will my stomach
Feel how it trembles inside

~ "When Doves Cry" - Prince

---

She falls.

The waves, rocking in slow seismic combers, seem so soft. But her body hits them like a fist through glass. The impact shatters the air from Mel's lungs. Her scream is a muffled burst of bubbles.

Pitch blackness engulfs every sense.

Mel thrashes, blinded. A tide of gooseflesh rolls up her body. The chill is bone-deep. It is not a cold of the ocean, but the deep space between galaxies. The abyssal darkness where no light can penetrate.

Where she, the fallen sun, is drowning.

Mel screams again. But her mouth is filled with saltwater. There is no sound. Only an edgeless terror. It transforms her body into a riptide of its own undoing. She struggles, arms and legs windmilling. Her hair, her crowning glory, is an anvil dragging her down. Her gown is a leaden shroud. Her boots encumber her ankles. Every ounce of her bodyweight, doubled, tripled, quadrupled, sucks her into the depths.

Panic sets in. Her girlhood lessons are scrubbed from memory. She is a strong swimmer. But the last time she'd set foot in the sea, a pair of powerful arms had cradled her. Her father had taught her how to float, and tread water, and kick until she'd smoothly breached the surface.

My little minnow, he'd praised her. Just hold on, and keep your chin up.

I'll make sure you're safe.

But Aziz is gone. Mel has no anchor. The blackness is all around her. There is no horizon. No sense of up, or down. Only the sea, an ice-studded maw that has her in its teeth, and won't let go.

It will eat her alive.

Mother.

The thought-fragment passes through her.

Where are you, Mother?

Ambessa's apparition is gone. The woman was never there. Same way the little girl had never been real. Because the Void can't give. It can only reveal.

And it has.

All Mel's crystallizing fears of staying trapped in her mother's shadow. Of becoming her. Of her mother's will, and ambition, and appetites, being imprinted on her future. The fear that her daughter—her sweetest treasure—will have a mother who is cold, and unloving, and unyielding. That her daughter will either break under the weight, or break away.

All this, and more, Mel understands. And the shock of it, a thousand times worse than any physical hurt, rips her in two. She pictures hairline cracks spreading, spider-legged, across the shell of her bones. The agony, the emptiness, is absolute. The muscles in her arms and legs seize with cramps. The oxygen begins seeping from her lungs. Every particle of her flesh: crying out, with no one listening.

Silco.

It was all for him. Because she'd wanted him to have everything. A better world, a lasting peace, a child's smile.

Everything she'd wanted—and dreaded—for herself.

Silco, Mel thinks. Silco.

Then her mind empties itself. The entire focus of her being is locked between the reverberating bellows of her lungs, inside the buoy of her chest, which cannot stay afloat in the icewater she inhabits. Inevitability sinks in, and she is sinking with it.

"Remember," Ambessa taunts her from the beyond. "When you are drowning, and he leaves you, gasping, to die. Remember that I did not wish it to end like this."

Mel's eyelids flutter shut.

"It won't."

It's her last thought: slow, faint, fading. Then there is nothing left. No light. No life.

She'd thought she knew what despair was. What grief was. What a monster was.

She'd been wrong.

Disconnected images pop and burst. Sunlight, falling in neat barns through the wooden slats of a stable, upon a tiny tabby kitten caught in a trap of rope. A funeral pyre, a pirate ship, a red banner billowing in the wind. Ambessa's scimitar arcing toward a girl's pale throat. A necklace fallen in a puddle of blood, and a drop of red paint fallen on a tear-dotted canvas. A young man, floating in ethereal blue, his smile shy but his stare tangling boldly with hers. A spare silhouette making its slow approach in an ash-choked harbor. A pair of mismatched eyes, alive with enigmatic flame, calling to hers.

And a little girl, half him and half her: laughing, spinning, singing.

Mel pictures the girl growing up to be a woman, with a will of her own. A spine stronger than Mel's. A mind sharper than Silco's. A life, and a fate, and a future all her own.

One that Mel will never meet.

Mine.

It is a disembodied throb: far-off, but familiar.

Mine.

The darkness, an icy vise, grips her. And yet, with all the force left in her, Mel wrenches her eyes open. Then she sees it.

A red glow.

It hovers at the edge of the dark: a fathomless negative. She knows it, and does not know it. She is terrified, and exultant. She is a thousand disjointed impulses, and a single irreducible drive.

Mine.

With a heave, Mel twists toward the glow. The current, a relentless drag, tries to wrest her back. But she fights, the dregs of her strength arrowing into a blind focus. The glow calls to her, a primordial siren's song. A beacon summoning her to shore.

Mine, Mel thinks, a final, delirious, defiant push.

The red glow resolves into an eye. It cuts the dark in half, disorientingly bright. The sight of it fills Mel with a narcotizing heat—a slow-acting nectar that pours its sweetness into every numb synapse.

A shadow passes over her.

The body uncoils with the sleek grace of a shark. For a moment, Mel has a deranged sense of something twice its size: stunningly long, hard-muscled and torsional, with a head like a spear and a mouth ringed in double rows of serrated teeth. A monster who'd once lurked, in primordial solitude, at the bottom of the sea. The one who'd risen, and split her city in two, and dragged her heart back out of its grave.

The monster who, in a heartbeat, morphs into a man.

His arms encircle her waist. His legs kick between her thighs. Then, with a long, powerful sweep of his spine, he is propelling her toward the surface.

Mel's head crests into the cold night. Droplets scatter. The stars dance on their strings. A moon, a luminous hook, greets her with a grin. Then her mouth parts and the air is pouring into her body. Mel chokes, and gasps, and chokes. Her lungs are full of fire. The pressure—the heat—it's too much. It hurts.

Everything hurts.

And it's glorious.

Somewhere there is a sobbing—gut-shredding, and utterly without shame. It takes a minute for Mel to understand it is her own. She's being held fast, and she's never letting go. Her arms are a deathlock, and her legs are a tourniquet. He is the only thing keeping her afloat. Him and the blessed air—buoying her every breath.

"Easy," Silco rasps. "I've got you."

His arms are hooked tightly beneath her armpits. His feet, kicking in circles, keep her steady. He is a creature who belongs here, and she does not.

And still, he holds her fast.

"I've got you," he repeats. "Hold on."

Mel does. It is all she can do: cling to him and sob. The solidity of him, a shock in such a narrow world, anchors her. His heartbeat thuds into her spine. He is breathing as rapidly as her. But his strokes are steady and rhythmic. Threading one of Mel's arms around his shoulders, he begins to tow her toward the pier.

In the fog, a golden nimbus glows. Torches, Mel realizes. A crowd of silhouettes are huddled at the pier's edge. Shouts are carried on the wind. They are the same men and women she'd crossed the ocean with. The ones she'd invited, as a matter of political expediency. The ones whose presence she'd merely tolerated.

Now they are a chorus. Kindred spirits, calling her home.

"There!" Lady Dennings cries. "I see her! I see them both!"

"Courage!" Hector calls. "Keep at it!"

"They're heading to the jetty!" Cevila shouts. "Bring the men down! Get blankets! Quick, now, quick!"

Silco paddles into the shallows. Mel is dragged across the algaed tumble of stones below the pier. She is aware of the grit beneath her palms. The wet slap of her gown, a transparent curtain pasted to her body. The taste of seawater, still souring her mouth. Then she is no longer breathing, but retching. Salt and bile overflows. Her head is bent between her knees. The deep guttural heaving rolls its way through her.

It is not a pretty picture. But her belly, a wrung-out rag, can do nothing but empty itself.

Silco kneels beside her. "That's it. Let it out."

She does. Her breaths come in huge gulps. The spasms, rising and falling, are excruciating. She has never felt so thoroughly wretched. Or so fully herself. By degrees, the nausea recedes. In its wake, feverish tremors take hold. Her entire body is shaking, the aftermath of a nightmare that she will remember—and feel—for the end of her days.

Silco's arm encircles her. "Breathe, Mel. Breathe."

"I—" Mel trembles violently. "Can't—"

"You can. Breathe with me." His palm coaxes warmth between her ribs. "Slow. In. Out. That's it. Keep going."

Mel focuses on his voice. The water's chill is immobilizing. But, bit by bit, her extremities stir. Skin thaws. Heat seeps in. She can hear the throb of her heartbeat, and his too, too. Her body is still locked inside his. He is holding her, cradling her, same way he'd done in the hourglass.

But where that embrace had chafed of exposure, this is sublime surrender.

Absolute trust.

"Keep breathing," Silco says. "I'm going to chafe your arms and legs. It will help."

He begins, starting with her wrists. The friction, harsh and repetitive, sends the pain racing through each tendon. Mel relishes the sensation. She is coming back into her flesh. Coming back to him. The cramped stiffness in her limbs persists. Teeth gritted, she struggles to draw her arms against her body; to kick her legs, one by one, in slow, stiff strokes.

Silco's breaths, a rhythmic counterpoint, anchor hers. Then his mouth is a warm seal against her nape. The syllables spill against her skin:

"Fucking hell."

"Silco—"

"Fuck your boots, and your baubles, and your bloody gowns." All at once, his embrace is fierce. "I'll burn 'em, you hear me? All of 'em."

He is, Mel realizes, trembling.

She tries to turn toward him. But her joints are rusted hinges. The armature of his own body is the only thing keeping her steady. If not for the hard span of his torso, the pressure of his thighs bracketing hers, Mel would collapse. But his rage, the pure unmitigated force of it, is a live wire. It sizzles through her nerves. It sets her heart thumping faster.

"Did I not say," he growls, "to stay close?"

"I tried." The words come on a quaver. "She—she was there. She was charging at you. I had to—to do something."

"She?"

"Mother." The sob nearly splits her ribcage. "I saw her, Silco. She was in the water. She was coming for you. She would've killed you."

His embrace tightens. "Ambessa was not there. I saw no one but you."

"But I saw—"

"What the Void made you see. I told you. It can be persuasive."

"It was so real." A hitch of hysteria. "She was so real."

"That is the nature of the beast. Its lure is strong. Once it gets its claws in, you must fight." His exhale shudders against her nape. A palm flattens against her belly. "Do you understand, Mel? Some forces cannot be bargained with. You cannot change their will. You cannot reason with them. All you can do is fight. Even when you know you can't win. Even when all you have left is a shred of hope. Even then, you keep fighting. Or else everything you've lived for—everything you've—"

The tirade chokes itself off. His heartbeat, against her spine, reverberates rapidly. Mel is struck by a sense of an old wound splitting open. One that is his, and now hers. A thread woven bloodily between their hearts.

Her lips are numb, but Mel forces them to move.

"Yes," she says. "I understand."

"Good." The embrace turns crushing. "Because you don't get to do that again. Do you understand? You don't get to leave me. Not like that."

"Silco—"

"Not ever. I will not have it."

"I—"

"When I saw you fall—" The palm on her belly becomes a fist. "Kindred's teeth, Mel. I thought I'd lost you."

Lost, Mel thinks.

As if she belonged to him, and not a thousand others.

As if—

The chill has fled her body. With effort, Mel turns. Silco's arms are a vise; they barely loosen to allow the movement. His face is right alongside hers. His hair, slicked back, gleams obsidian in the moonlight. All his make-up has washed off. His scarred visage, naked, is a terrible thing.

"Silco," she breathes. "It's all right."

"Only because I know the currents." His jaw swerves side-to-side. "Only because I could reach you."

"I'm not gone. I'm here."

"Yes, you are. And once we're at the villa, the medicks will see that you stay put. I'll be damned sure they check every inch."

"I'm not in danger."

"Do. Not. Argue." A single droplet, caught in the divot between his scarred brow, is a perfect sphere. Then it drops, and rolls, and cuts the sharp blade of his cheekbone. "I've seen plenty of drownings, and more than a few close calls. Sometimes the lungs are compromised. Or the brain. Dry drowning's a killer as sure as the wet. I'll take no chances."

"Silco." Mel lifts a quivering hand. The wet stubble on his cheekbone scrapes her fingertips. "I'm fine."

"Thirty seconds, Mel. If I hadn't found you—"

"But you did." She swallows. "You saved me."

His mouth reshapes into a twisted line. The hand on her belly is still an unyielding fist. But the barest seismic tremor passes through the bones. It is, Mel thinks, the closest he'll allow himself to come to raw fear.

For her.

"Why?" she breathes.

"What?"

"Why did you save me?"

"Don't be an idiot."

"Answer me."

Steam plumes from the crown of his skull and the pale tips of his shoulders. The moonlight falling in matchstick rays from the pier's planks turns his skin into alabaster. His legs, stretched out beside hers, end in a pair of pallid feet, tipped with toes as long and articulated as flippers.

He is, in that moment, the most beautiful creature she's ever seen.

A sea-monster called to her shore.

"Because," he says, and she hears, beneath the words, a terrible echo of anguish, "you're my wife."

"Silco—"

"Because—" The bad eye catches fire. "You are mine."

And Mel, for all her words, can think of no answer. Her fingers, trembling, span his face. She'd never considered what he might look like stripped of his terrifying facade. Never considered that the emotion beneath, in its raw savagery, would be her undoing.

And then he is folding her into his arms, and the hot press of his mouth, into her sopping hair, her salt-streaked temples, her frozen lips, is coaxing life into her bones. Above them, the darkness is suddenly slatted with quivering streaks of golden torches. The boards reverberate with footsteps. The crewmen and their guests are hurrying across, a diorama of sounds and shapes. The echoes of Cevila's nasal whipcrack; Lady Dennings' plaintive cries; Hector's wheezing huffs. A cacophonous choir, coming closer and closer.

Here, all is quiet.

Only Silco's kisses, and the hypnotic pulse of the sea.

"Mine," he breathes. "Mine."

A single syllable; a hundred iterations. Mel, shivering, shuts her eyes. In the frigid night, she is encompassed in a sphere of warmth. In the dark, she is bathed in light. In the vastness, she is held.

She'd thought she knew what a wound was. What loss was. What a monster was.

She still has much to learn.

---

A honeymoon, they say, seldom sets the tenor for matrimony.

Rather, that tenor is set by the bride: by her concessions to keep the match on a steady keel. Or the tenor is set by the groom: his readiness to keep the bargain, and play the part. And in time, they say, the imperiled tides deepen into the rhythm of togetherness. No squalls or sinking ships: only two souls, sailing arm-in-arm on a shared sea of eternity.

Each, in turn, a harbor to the other.

In time, they say.

Silco, for all his morbid poetic inclinations, is a man of practicalities. He sets no store by sanctimonious vows. The contract he'd signed, binding them in matrimony: a legal fiction. The oath he'd made, at their wedding altar: a matter of form. The photos he'd posed for, placidly pleasant: a gesture of goodwill.

And the honeymoon, Mel knows, was a chance to test the waters. To learn, in full, the measure of her loyalty.

Instead, she's learned the measure of his.

After her near-drowning, she'd been thoroughly checked over by the medicks. The villa was converted into an impromptu triage station, every square inch packed with nurses. There, under the flickering candelabras and Silco's watchful eye, Mel had suffered through a series of examinations. Her vitals, her reflexes, her memory: all tested for damage. Her head, her lungs, her belly: all probed and prodded for irregularities.

She was pronounced fit, albeit shaken. The instructions were for her to stay in bed for the entirety of the next day. Take things slow, and rest up, and eat whatever was served her, no matter how bland.

A bride, Mel thought, bedridden once again.

And a husband, who, apart from imparting terse orders to his crew and making periodic rounds among the guests, was in no mood to indulge any demands save his own. These included, in short order: the stripping of her sodden gown, the bathing of her goosefleshed body, the toweling of her soaked hair, and the immediate return to bed.

He'd not touched her for the remainder of the night. Simply sat vigil, his long body stretched out in a chair beside the bed.

In the morning, she'd found him in the same spot. Still awake. Still watching. His good eye, a slit of bloodshot green, had tracked every movement, from the drowsiest stirring to the tiniest yawn. It was plain he hadn't slept a wink. It was also plain that the vigilance, a high-strung anxiety that ran counter to the very core of him, had not subsided.

It would not, Mel knew, until she'd demonstrated, irrefutably, that she was back on solid ground.

In a way, it was the height of delicious irony. He, the architect of his own fate, bound by his wife's decree. She could not resist the temptation to play within these newfound waters.

The morning passed in a series of carefully executed maneuvers. With a languorous sigh, Mel had stretched, catlike, and let the sheets slide from her body. When Silco brought up the breakfast tray, she'd taken her sweet time: spooning honey between her lips, sampling the pears in small bites, and licking her fingers, one by one. In the bath, she'd deliberately left the door ajar: treating him to a tantalizing peepshow of glistening skin and palms roving slowly over her breasts, her belly, down between her thighs.

By the time she'd told him, sweetly, to towel her dry, he was a man in a deathgrip.

"Hurry," she'd called, tipping her chin back against the tub's lip. "Else I'll catch my death."

It was the coup de grace.

Her towel had hit the tiles in a white puddle. Seizing her wrists, he'd hauled her, dripping wet, from the tub, and back into bed.

And, growling, descended.

A bedridden bride, as it transpired, is not wholly an idle one. They'd spent the remainder of the day locked in the bedroom. But it was a far cry from their usual fare. The ferocity was there; the feral, near-mindless intensity. But underneath ran a rare vein of tenderness.

Last night, she'd learnt the measure of his loyalty. That morning, he'd taught her the measure of more.

Like how his kisses, the longer the day stretched, lost their roughness and melted into a cool libation: pouring themselves over her skin, her lips, her hair. How his hands, the deeper the dusk blossomed, lingered over the imprints they'd left on her nakedness: soothing welts, savoring bites. How his voice, the hour creeping late, dipped into a gravelly rasp: imparting private, profane little praises into her ear, as their bodies subsided into a sweat-sheened frieze across the bedsheets.

How, most telling of all, the fuller her surrender waxed, the deeper his desire flowed.

It's the final measure that holds Mel in thrall.

This, she thinks, is how it begins.

Since then, they've passed a week in the villa, with its cliffside perch and sun-soaked beaches. Their wing is the most secluded. Its decor is the traditional Ionian style: rich earth tones of rust and umber, offset by the cool blues of the sea through the wide slatted doors, which frame the private courtyard garden, brimful with violets.

The floors, of marble and granite, are streaked with the golden veins. The walls, too, are gold-flecked: a warm, burnished amber, that in dawn's slanting rays, casts a glow like fire. The lamps and fixtures are wrought from a metal like gold, but softer, with the mellow patina of age. The furnishings themselves, of teak and wrought brass, are simple: a canopied bedstead with voile drapes, a long low table, a dresser with a tall ornate mirror, and an antique armoire for their clothes.

An archway, at the courtyard's far end, opens onto a private bathing suite: a deep blue pool, fed from an underground spring, set with stone benches carved into the contours of shells, and mosaic tiles depicting sirens from ancient lore. The ceiling, high and vaulted, is crowned by a stained-glass skylight: admitting the afternoon sun in a multicolored aurora. Beyond the garden's walls, the faint blue smear of the sea glitters, with a private berth where their yawl bobs, anchored in the shallows.

Since they've arrived, a routine of decadent idleness has crept in. Day by day, their public selves—their most polished selves—are carved off. Only the private ones remain: the quieter, subtler terrain upon which marriage truly resides.

And within it, blossoming, the fragile buds of trust.

Transitioning from day to night, they wake to the golden cadence of the late-afternoon waves. A brunch of local-baked bread, smoked salmon, and ripe tropical fruits, is fetched up by the staff. They sup together beneath a trellis of flowering plumeria, to the low buzz of the cicadas and the soft lapping of the surf: Mel, in a pale handwoven tunic, Silco, in a loose linen day-suit.

After, they stroll along the secluded shore: Mel, her bare feet dusted with sand; Silco, his jacket slung over his shoulders, a cigarette dangling between his lips. The tides dictate their meander: one moment ambling side-by-side, their hands loosely clasped. The next, he's slipped from her grasp, to dip his toes into the water, followed by the rest of him.

Each time, she waits, perched on a half-buried boulder, until the waves bring him back.

Sometimes he returns with a gift—a prickly-spined urchin; a spiraling conch shell; a vivid cobalt crab. Other times, he'll surface empty-handed, and drag her, shrieking, into the shallows: the spray of the seasalt in her hair, the span of his hands at her waist and the taste of his mouth on hers.

She's not afraid of the tide taking her.

He's capable of holding her afloat.

Afterward, their clothes are left to the dry sand. Beneath the spreading branches of the palm trees, she'll lays out a blanket: her favorite patchwork quilt, bought from the bazaars of Kalamanda. Together, they sprawl across the soft cottony swathes, and trade bites from a wicker basket stuffed with local delicacies: crisp salted flatbread, a round clay jar of spiced honey, and a selection of dried fruits and cured meats, wrapped in wax paper.

They speak less, on these lazy days. Less of politics, less of policy. Instead, their talk is like the tide: an ebb and flow that laps at the edges of honesty, without breaking into full disclosure. She asks him, delicately, about his days as a smuggler in the Black Lanes. He asks her, wryly, about the foibles of the Noxian nobility.

Their questions are posed as harmless banter. But the answers, she knows, are a test.

What will you think, they each wonder, when you hear my truth?

Will you recoil? Will you judge?

Or will you understand?

They are still learning the shape of each other's pasts. Still trying to fit it, piece-by-piece, into the gaps of their present. It is an imperfect fit, the shards not quite aligned. But the gaps are narrowing. Each day, something slots into place.

Something real.

Something theirs.

He's already discovered that, beneath her cool mask of civility, she can be petulant, peevish, and a little spiteful. She's already discovered, beneath his cold veneer of calculation, he can be moody, petty, and a lot vindictive. Sometimes, the provocation is intentional: a game to spice the siesta. Other times, it is inadvertent: a careless comment or an offhand remark that strikes a nerve.

His moods, she's learning, are like the tides too: prone to bouts of turbulence that can crest, abruptly, into a tempest. He's not a man accustomed to yielding the upper hand. Nor is he one to willingly cede ground. Their talks, whenever they turn to the future—the Iron Pearl and Piltover's potential encroachment, their shared plans for a stable, sustainable peace—always devolve into a sparring match, with rising stakes. Her proposals will be met with a litany of rebuttals; his demands, with her own list of caveats.

Stalemate invariably ends in standstill. Or a cold shoulder.

Sometimes, Mel suspects, if not for his wedding band, he'd deal with her the same way he deals with every perceived threat: with a knife to the jugular. Sometimes, Mel suspects, if not for the ring on her finger, she'd have done the same to him. She may be the peacemaker to his firebrand, but that does not mean she'll play the doormat. So they argue, and she'll have him remember, again and again, why her family name is an invocation. And why, despite his best efforts to maintain stubborn self-sovereignty, he needs her, just as much as she needs him.

And while the marriage is, in many ways, a transaction, it is also their truest chance at securing a lasting future.

When the winds turn foulest, and his eyes blacken with stormclouds, she's learnt her best recourse is to retreat.

So she'll withdraw to their rooms, and draw herself a bath, and sink, sighing, into the warm water. From the window, she'll watch him do the same. The sea, for him, is a tonic. He'll wander the shoreline, or smoke, or swim, or sit on the rocks, staring at the horizon. She knows he's seeing the black shores of Zaun: its towers of iron rising from the waves. And beneath, the barge-clogged harbors, the bustling docks, and the spirit of cutthroat enterprise.

His city: a jewel in the darkness.

"Is there any part of you," she dares to ask once, "that doesn't miss home?"

His reply is dry. "Only my liver."

She leaves him to his reveries. His grudges, long-nurtured, run deeper than blood. It will take time, she knows, before he can truly see her as more than an interloper; a Topside parasite grown glossy on his city's lifeblood.

It will take time, before he trusts her in full.

But time, they have.

When he returns, the change is palpable. His bad eye will no longer be a dead star fixed on a black horizon. Instead, it will be a nebula: the core around which his desire burns. He'll slip into the tub with her, his lean arms slicing through the water. His embrace, a touch possessive, will draw her in. His eyes, a touch predatory, will pin her in place. His kiss, a touch starved, will devour her whole.

And Mel, her arms threading his neck, will think, again:

This is how it begins.

In the hour before sunset, they'll retreat to her favorite spot: a purling grotto, a few meters from the villa, sheltered beneath a rocky outcropping. She'll sit on a sun-warmed rock, and let the sea froth around her ankles: white-tipped, like her fingernails. With her sketchpad and a length of charcoal, she'll capture the scenery: the water, the sunlight, the shifting shadows.

And, always, the man at her side.

He is proving a fascinating subject. On his silhouette, the interplay of light and shadow is a study of contradictions. In the dying sunlight, his left profile, cracked from jaw to eye, is a ruin: the fractal of scars radiating from his deadened eye. On his right profile, the features hold a weathered elegance: his skin the grain of a well-aged paper, folded then unfolded, many times.

The sum total is—not handsome. Arresting. A face that's a challenge to capture. To hold in balance, with its polarities forever at odds.

Mel's first few sketches—done furtively while he is preoccupied—are impressionistic: a bare outline emerging from slashes of graphite. The second batch is a little bolder: his long articulate hands, the graceful spareness of his limbs, the piercing shrewdness of his eyes.

By the third batch, he is wise to her game.

Trailing a finger down the page, he remarks, "Still planning to put me in a gilded cage, Mel?"

She retorts, "Stop moving."

He lets off a sibilant scoff. But he lets her finish.

Now, she draws him often: lazing on the chair as he reads his daily correspondence, the papers fanned across his knee. Or taking a drag on a cigarette, his good eye half-lidded and his lips parted on a furling noose of smoke. She's even sketched him drowsing, once: his body draped loosely on the warm rocks, one arm dangling, the sea lapping at his bare feet.

A merman washed ashore: caught between magic and myth.

She keeps these drawings to herself. She will not share his most secret self with the world.

Not yet.

By six, the evening sun, glinting off the waves, is a molten-red corona. Backlit by its glow, the villa is a long shadow stretching along the cliff's edge. Inside, they return to shower. Sometimes separately: Silco, a quick, brusque, functional scrub; Mel, a slow, lingering, luxurious soak. Other times together, Silco's hands smoothing away the day's grit, Mel's own lathering him with a spiced soap of cardamom and citrus. And always, they end with their bodies tangled: wet skins and sliding mouths and hot water pelting everywhere as their sighs echo off the tiles.

He has, she's discovered, a penchant for making love in the water. First, she'd suspected it was a matter of economy. Hair and skin cleaned; the evidence of his climax easily washed away.

After the fifth time, it dawns on her that it's elemental.

At his crux, he's a creature of the deep. The water, dark and endless, is his realm. And she, Andromeda on the rocks, is his captive. Bound, not by chains, but by her own need to know more.

She learns that he likes her best on the pool's edge, poised to slip in. Something about her wearing nothing but steam, her lashes beaded and her hair dripping, puts him in a dark-eyed reverie. He'll drag her close, her thighs fanning over his shoulders, and set his mouth upon her. His tongue will be the tide; her sobs, the waves. She'll cling to his hair, and rock herself against his mouth, and let him drink his fill. Then he'll rise from the steaming water, droplets pouring down the whippish paleness of his body, and lift her onto the ledge: a smooth slab of marble, polished with age. Their bodies, half-submerged, will find their own rhythm. The water frothing, their cries resounding, and the skylight bathing them in prismatic light.

He's never a particularly vocal lover. A gasp, from him, is the equivalent of a bellow from another. But his silence, at these moments, is at its apex: a force, unstoppable, that can only break.

And when he breaks, there is no violence. Only a low, throbbing groan, and a shudder of warmth that fills her completely. His face, afterwards, waxing soft, sweet, almost seraphic.

A boy's face, at the mercy of the high seas.

And Mel, cradling him into the crook of her shoulder, his wet hair splayed against her neck, will wonder: Will you take me with you, when you go?

Or am I already too far gone?

By eight, they dress for dinner. No retinue of attendants. Just two pairs of hands, slipping buttons through slots and fastening clasps on collars, with a mutuality as seamless as any act of lovemaking. He'll adjust the knot of his cravat, and she'll smooth the cuffs of his shirtsleeves. He'll fasten her necklace about her throat, and she'll tuck a flower into her chignon.

Together, they'll descend to the dining hall, and greet their guests.

The table, a massive slab of blackwood, is laid out in the manner of a grand banquet: the plates flashing sparks, the goblets glittering like gems. The chandelier, a constellation of cut glass, scatters rainbows around the room: a wonderland of embroidered tapestries, glazed ceramics and glass cabinets.

It is, Mel thinks, a little absurd.

But then, so is their company. Cevila, her furs and jewels a riotous clash of deep pockets and deeper heartache. Hector, all bluster and blueberry stains on his cravat, boasting of his latest hunting trophy: a wyvern slain in the jungles. Lady Dennings, with her rouged cheeks and her peacock fan a-flutter over the hickeys on her neck. And a motley assortment of expatriates who've settled along the coast: merchants, aristocrats, and the nouveau riche. Their visits are a matter of diplomatic protocol. Their names and titles are a blur. What matters is that they've come from far and wide to pay court to Piltover and Zaun's union.

The tiny village, Mel suspects, has never seen such a collection of pettiness and pomposity.

But one thing's changed: their attitude towards Silco.

At the beginning of the voyage, her guests nourished themselves on their own hostility and fear. Now, the former is gone, though the latter remains. At the banquet, Mel can sense their eyes following him. Their ears, too. When he speaks, they listen. His rasping cadences have always provoked attention. He has a talent for uttering, in idle tones, the most indecent truths, and giving them the savor of poetry. It used to infuriate Mel: the way he'd lay even ordinary syllables salaciously bare.

Now, she savors them.

Each word, like a needle, pops the bubble of their guests' pretensions. And their desires, bottled up, begin to seep. They know, now, what Zaun represents: a trading mecca, its routes stretching to regions previously untapped. They want the riches it promises: the spices of Ixtal, the precious woods of Kumangira, the fine cloths of Kalamanda. All of it, available at a fraction of the cost, in THE Iron Pearl: a marketplace where merchants, unregulated by the ribbons of red tape that bind Topside, can set their terms.

Mel can practically see the coins spinning clockwise in their greedy eyes.

Over a fortnight, she watches the balance of power shift: from a cluster of privileged fusspots to a single, inscrutable silhouette. It is not simply the proof of what Silco possesses. It's the lengths he'll go—the depths he'll dive—to safeguard it. Their stares begin to linger on Silco's clothes rather than the raw-boned physique they enfold: the fine-grained leather of his boots, the gleam of gold on his wrist-chrono, the cut of gems on his tie-pin. Their ears are now perked, not for the quality of his vowels, a soft-spun hybrid of Fissureside drawl and Topside crispness, but the value of his words: where to invest, who to trust, how to turn a profit.

And their highborn hauteur, for the first time, is replaced by a naked needfulness.

Last week, Lord Dennings would've turned his nose up at the idea of sitting at Silco's elbow. This week, he proffers his lighter for Silco's after-dinner cigar. And Silco, a wry quirk in his eyebrow, accepts it. Last week, Cevila would have snubbed the idea of sharing the same dessert platter with Silco. This week, she leans coquettishly over his shoulder to refill his glass as she quizzes him on the folk dances of the Fissures. And Silco, the brazen devil, offers to teach her the Sumpside Waltz. Last week, Hector would have spat in the direction of Silco's eye. This week, he slings an arm around his shoulders and challenges him to a game of Piltovan chess. And Silco, his smile thin as an icepick, obliges.

Last week, they'd loathed him.

Now, they covet him.

Greed, Ambessa always said, always brings the haughtiest to heel.

And here they are: the haughtiest. At the heels of a man who's built his empire, brick by bloody brick, from the ashes.

All of them, under the same roof, by Mel's design.

She will not downplay her own dues. Silco may be the catalyst behind the guests' changed attitudes. But she is the lynchpin. She's the one who lured them here with her gilt-edged invitations. She's the one who spun their fears into gold, and fed them, drip by drip, until their desire was the only thing that shone. Now she is the one who deftly bends their pride—and their knees.

With a smile.

This, Mel knows, is where her power rests. In the spaces between. Where a gentle word means more than a gun to the temple. Where a touch is more deadly than a trigger.

Each evening, she imagines Ambessa perched on a dunce's stool, and smiles all the more. The old war-hound would not approve. Power, she'd taught her daughter, should be wielded like a saber. Not folded like a silk scarf around a lover's neck, and teasingly tugged. It should be sharp and swift in its execution. It should make the world bleed in the aftermath.

But the world, Mel has learned, doesn't need to bleed.

It just needs a little pressure.

Every evening, she and Silco preside over the table. With the lamplight falling on the spread of traditional cuisine—fresh-caught fish grilled to smoky perfection, braised octopus simmered in garlic butter, and a medley of roasted vegetables over a bed of spiced rice—they'll draw the conversation round.

First, the appetizer: a bland fare of the village's quaint customs and cuisine. Then, a touch of salacious gossip sprinkled in: who in the cloistered expat clique is sleeping with whom, and whose fortunes are crumbling, and who has fallen from grace. And, inevitably, the small morsels of minutes consumed, conversation will turn to the meal du jour: tariffs, trade and tax brackets.

They'll calibrate their double-act: Mel, with a demure tip of the chin, a sip of wine, and a flirting remark. Silco, with a thin smile, a slice of his knife, and a measured reply. Together, voices weaving and interweaving, they will snare the guests in.

Then, the real feast begins.

It is, Mel thinks, delicious.

Before, she'd never liked to admit how in-sync she and Silco were in these moments. How natural it felt when they'd work a room together: each knowing when to speak, what to say, and how to riff off each other's cleverness. How right it felt, when their eyes would meet across a crowded ballroom, and the notched edge of his mouth would quirk, and the corners of her own would curl, as if they'd shared a private joke that was theirs alone.

As their bodies could read everything hidden between their lines.

For years, she'd denied the little signs. They'd been a threat to her sense of safety. As, indeed, was Silco. How could she, the paragon of Progress, have anything in common with the scourge of Zaun's streets?

Their attraction was an anomaly. Its admission was to give lie to the pedestal she'd built for herself. A pedestal made of buried evidence and burned bridges. A pedestal she'd needed, so the stain of the Medardas' sins wouldn't seep into her soul.

Until he'd knocked her down.

Again, again, and again.

He'd refused to accept her lopsided terms of fair play. He'd refused to give her the space to hide. He'd refused to let her deny him, or herself, or the blood between them.

And, in the end, he'd refused to let her go.

When the dust settled, the pieces had fit: all the broken shards that were hers and the warped edges that were his. She, a native of the light, had found a sanctuary in his darkness. And he, a creature of the shadows, had found a safe harbor in her glow.

Now, she feels it again.

Under the chandelier's twinkling pendants, they take turns weaving the web. She, a glossy shuttle, tugs the thread with a casual observation: the flavor of the oysters, the quality of the fish, the freshness of the vegetables. He, the subtle needle, winds it tighter: the dish's equivalent in Piltover, similar ingredients in Zaun, the cultural differences in presentation. And, inevitably, the knot will be drawn: the possibility of cultural exchange, of commerce, of coins.

From time to time, Mel will feel Silco's touch on her. Each is like a second language; she's learning to read the subtle cues. A thumb caressing the inside of her wrist: Wrap it up, the subject's trite. A brush against her nape: The target's on the brink, strike. A squeeze at the waist: My turn to drive the nail home.

And when the guests, their glasses refilled and their heads spinning, are distracted, his lips will touch her bare shoulder. Not a token but a tribute:

You're a marvel.

By the week's end, the tapestry is spun: the guests caught on the dazzling threads. From the Dennings, it's five years of donations for Zaun's new waterworks in exchange for tariff-free imports on of Ionian jade critical to their House's latest trade expedition. From Hector, it's a ten percent share of Zaun's latest chem-tech—poised to revolutionize the medical industry and reverse his grandson's debilitating illness—for a ceremonial seat on the board of directors. From Cevila, it's an alliance against the Noxian trade coalition that's been threatening the autonomy of the Iron Pearl, in exchange for an exclusive deal to purchase a unique steel alloy crucial to the Ferros armory.

And so it goes. The deals piling up; the contracts multiplying. On the surface, it is quid pro quo. But, between them, she and Silco have mapped out the design their tapestry will take.

By the time the honeymoon is over, each guest will be tied to Zaun, whether they will it or not, in a system of debts that cannot be repaid, the reneging of which would cost more than their pride. In time, those debts will grow into obligations, and those obligations into dependencies: a tangle so tightly-woven that every man and woman at the table will owe their futures to Piltover's prosperity and Zaun's goodwill.

By dessert, they've sealed the deals with handshakes. By the digestif, the contracts are drawn up. By the waltz, the signatures are dry.

Finally the guests, their minds spinning from the wine and winnings, retire for the night.

Mel bids each of them adieu in the parlor, clasping their hands warmly between hers. Each one believes himself the custodian of her smile, as he believes himself the beneficiary of Zaun and Piltover's bounty. Each one thanks her, with the assurance that two cities' alliance is, indeed, worth its weight in gold.

None of them realize they've pledged allegiance, in exchange for future profits, to a blazing new star. One that, by the turn of the tides, will burn old prejudices into a fine black cinder.

Progress, in the ascendant.

Afterward, she and Silco retreat to their wing. The late nights are given over to the demands of their cities: memos and missives, delivered by the staff. Sometimes, they'll sit on opposite ends of the bed, a pile of papers strewn between them. She'll draft the proposals for the Council; he'll sign edicts for his Cabinet. They'll work until the ink is dry, and the last of the candles are melted.

Then, at midnight, they'll rise from bed: a battlefield of briefings and blueprints.

They'll change out of their eveningwear. She, shedding her elaborate sequined gowns for a more gossamer skin: cotton shift dresses that cling to her curves, or silk sarongs, tied with a loose knot, that billow around her thighs. Her makeup, likewise, will be minimal: a sweep of kohl, a dash of lipstain. Her hair, a loose waterfall of curls, tumbling around her waist. The rest of her: bare, sleek, and utterly unbound.

He, of course, is a different matter. Even in summertime, his wardrobe is a somber affair: charcoals, blacks, and grays. Sometimes a dark green, or a rich red. But the fabric is always finely tailored. His cufflinks are always gold, and his cravat is always white.

Here, Mel coaxes him to loosen the sartorial strictures: trading his Devil's duds for elegant tunics from the local tailors. And though he wears them with ill humor, the effect, she thinks, is worth the fight.

The blouses, a touch baggy on his frame, reveal glimpses of his skin: the pale curve of his throat, the hollow between his collarbones, the raised blue veins at his wrists. And the linen drawstring pants, cinched at the waist, reveal a lot more: the jutting V of hipbones, the clean lines of his thighs, and the surprisingly tight-packed muscle that girds his calves.

It is, she thinks, a swimmer's physique. The result of a life lived in the deep.

And yet, between them, there is no sign of the polish they've cultivated, like snakes, to charm the fools who've come to court. No sign, even, of the power that binds them: entire cities, theirs to command. Here, there is no Zaun or Piltover.

Here, they are simply themselves.

Silco will offer his arm, and she'll take it. Together, through a series of winding corridors and hidden nooks, they'll slip out of the villa, and down the hillside. Past the sea-swept rocks, past the alabaster beaches, past the mossy grottos. The ground beneath their sandaled feet will change from grainy sands to cobbled stones. On all sides, rustic little huts will begin to crop up: stained-glass lanterns hanging above the doorways, and candlelight winking in the windows, and golden ornaments clinking at the eaves. The air, further down the slope, will ripen with the aroma of woodsmoke and spice. The sounds, too, will grow richer: the soft lilt of plucked strings and drifting laughter.

In the heart of the village, there will be an open-air festival. Taverns, still bustling at this late hour. The bazaar, like a carnival in motion. The locals, in their loose-fitting garments, knocking together foaming tankards beneath the swaying branches of an ancient oak tree festooned with fairy lights. A bonfire, roaring in the center, where children laugh and play at knucklebones, and old men, their faces creased by seafaring, pass around clay pipes filled with sweet-smelling smoke.

Mel, her fingers twined in Silco's, will stare: entranced.

She'd first discovered this pocket of bliss years ago. After her exile, she'd leased the villa for a month. The island's southernmost tip had belonged to the Medardas for generations. In its heyday, a century ago, it was a veritable mansion: with a private dock, a sprawling compound, and a staff of attendants.

Now, it was a modest affair: a single three-storey building, with its private wing and a handful of rooms for guests. Still, it was the nicest dwelling in the village. And Mel, her inheritance cut off, could no longer afford the lavish lodgings in the bigger cities.

The villa was her only refuge.

So, here she'd stayed, holed up inside, with only the waves for company and the silence as her confidante.

She had nowhere else to go. Nothing to call her own. Just a letter from her mother, bidding her to depart—because if she remained as she was, then the Medarda blood would run thin, and their house crumble in the tide to come.

Let it come, Mel thought bitterly.

Let the tide wash them all away.

Let it sweep the whole world clean.

At least then, there'd be nothing left but the waters. Nothing left of her bloodstained lineage—or her loss.

She'd stayed inside. The curtains drawn, the doors locked, the food delivered to her rooms by staff. She'd lived like a shadow, haunting the villa's empty spaces: the pool, the library, the gardens. Sometimes she'd painted: watercolors, of the sea and the cliffs. But her strokes were too rough, and her palette was too dark, and her sketches always ended up in the fireplace. She'd written, too: poetry, of her isolation and loneliness. But the ink was too runny, and her thoughts too much for the parchment to contain. The poems, too, ended up in the fire.

She'd taken to reading, to fill the hours. And as her books piled higher, the villa's housekeeper would look at her, pityingly. Her handmaids would tiptoe around her, as if she were a ghost.

Nobody dared breach the topic of what came next.

Then the old gardener, who'd tended to the roses outside her window, had told her of the village. How there was dancing, and drink, and laughter. How the people making the merriest were the same as her: refugees and exiles, each seeking a fresh start.

Taking a chance, Mel had slipped out by nightfall, in borrowed robes and a veil across her face. She'd walked the cobblestones alone, a specter in the starlight. She'd sat on a low stone wall, a spectator at the fringes. And, night after night, she'd watched the revelry. Watched, until her eyes ached and the music filled her up and she could breathe again.

And one night, she'd stopped watching, and dared to set foot into the circle. A fisherman, weathered as a walnut and beaming bright as the sunset, had taken her by the hand, and whirled her into the dance. She'd laughed, and her veil had fallen, and she was no longer an exile, or a shadow, or a specter.

The tide had shifted.

Afterward, she'd sat under the oak tree, with the villagers. An old woman had taught her the Ionian words for grilled fish and honeysuckle. A little girl had offered to braid a garland of wildflowers into her hair. A pair of boys, not yet old enough for enlistment, had shyly fixed the broken strap of her sandal.

When they'd asked her name, she'd replied, "Mel."

They'd laughed, and said it didn't sound like a name. She'd smiled, and told them it was Targonian for Honey. They'd given her a name of their own: Melike, or Queen.

Because the queen is the hive's heart, and without her, there is no home.

Mel, flattered, had called them a pair of sweet-talkers. They'd guffawed, chests puffed out, and scampered away. And the rest of the night was filled with the sweet strains of the lute, her hurts doused beneath a flood of mulled wine, and her heart, for the first time since the exile, at peace.

After that night, she'd stopped shutting herself in the villa. She'd opened the windows wide, and let the light pour in. She'd begun to walk the village's winding streets, her sketchpad in hand. And the villagers, glimpsing her, had greeted her with warm smiles, and invited her into their homes.

In her loneliness, she'd lapped up their generosity like water. And, in return, she'd shown the locals a few things, too. She'd tutored the children in their letters, and advised the elders on their taxes, and helped the seamstresses choose the best fabric for the season's festival. And, most important, she'd opened her pocketbook: funding the reconstruction of the marketplace's crumbling archways, the repair of its dilapidated wells, and the refurbishing of the main thoroughfare.

All this, she'd done, not out of charity, but debt.

Two decades ago, her mother's army had swept like a tempest through this village. The soldiers, fresh from their victories on the battlefield, had looted the bazaar and burned the taverns. They'd slaughtered the livestock, and torched the homes, and pillaged the fields. Then, having left nothing but corpses, they'd retreated.

The village, for weeks, had smoldered.

And yet, it had survived.

So, too, would she.

Investing in the village was her way of doing over her family's sins. Of atoning, not with blood, but gold. She'd set out to prove that the Medardas' coffers could bear more than poisoned fruit. That their wealth could be nurtured into a shining harvest.

And, if the seeds were planted, they could sprout into flowers of redemption.

She'd spent an entire summer in the village. In time, the locals had taken to calling her Melike. It was an auspicious name. Gold, to them, was the color of prosperity. More than that: the symbol of renewal. And Mel, with her fondness for pretty gold embroidery and her eyes touched with fine golden dust, was, to them, no less than her namesake.

Now, here she is again. But with one exception:

There is a shadow at her side.

She'd never expected that her traveling companion would be Silco. That they'd share so much, in so little time. Or that she'd want so much more.

She'd certainly never expected that he'd perch, crosslegged, by the oak tree with the old men. Or that he'd take a practiced drag on a clay pipe, letting the smoke drift in concentric circles: small, smaller, smallest. Or that he'd tolerate their jokes about his left eye—"What'd you do, boy, to earn the devil's mark?" with a gravelly tenor that yet belied a hidden humor: "Killed his Hound."

At this, the villagers burst into laughter. The children, wary but curious, inch closer.

And Silco, his teeth very sharp in the firelight, smiles: "Would you like to know how?"

By the hour's end, he's won their respect. The littlest girl, thumb wedged between her lips, has nestled herself into his lap. The oldest woman, a widow with a wicked sense of humor, has wrapped a blood-red shawl about his shoulders like a mantle. And the most cantankerous of the men, a toothless old sailor, has clapped him on the shoulder and pronounced him an unmitigated scoundrel.

Meanwhile, the young men, with fire in their eyes, and ambition in their bellies, are circling in. They've heard rumors that this is, in fact, Eye of Zaun. A man who's made a city out of a cesspit, and a nation out of a nightmare. A man who they, themselves, secretly aspire to be: a force of change,

Mel expects Silco to launch into the spiel he is so adept at spinning: of freedom, of fate and self-determination. Of his city, a place where they can rise, and where their dreams are their own, and the means to fulfill them within reach.

Instead, he offers them a somber slice of wisdom:

"Revolution," he says, "is like love. There's no half-measures. You have to want it. All of it. And if you can't have all of it, you can't have any of it."

He's speaking of Zaun. Of its founding principles. But he's also, Mel thinks, speaking of himself.

And, in a strange way, of her.

"We all have to choose," he tells them, "whether life's worth living when a boot's on our neck. Or, if we'd rather live, free. Because that's the hardest choice, isn't it? Knowing that no one's going to give you what you want. You have to choose to take it, and hold it, and never let it go."

"What if you can't do it on your own?" a youth asks. He's all elbows and knees, with the woebegone air of someone picked on since the cradle. "What if it's not in you?"

"It's always in you. If you can dream it, you can do it. No one, and nothing, can take it away. But, oh, they will try. They will try whatever it takes. You'll have to fight, tooth and nail, for every little thing. And you'll need to keep fighting, and never let up. Because once you stop, that's it. They've won."

"So how can you do it?" the boy persists. "How can you live free?"

Silco looks him dead in the eye.

"You make it," he says, "out of whatever's at hand. Your fists, and your teeth, and your spine. You learn that boot on your neck can be used for leverage. With the right angle, and a sudden shock, you can upset the balance. And the boot will be the thing to fall. Not you. And the moment you stand up, and spit in the owner's face, he'll be the one cowering. Because that's their worst nightmare, isn't it? The truth that they're afraid to face. That we're stronger than them. And that's why they want us down."

Mel, from her vantage point, watches the impact of his words. Each syllable is a sea change. And the silence, a shift in tides. The youth's shoulders square. A ripple goes through the rest. Their faces, a range of ages and shapes, harden into a common mold. They are not yet men, but they have a commonality. A solidarity.

One that Silco had stoked the moment he'd sat by the tree.

"Don't mistake me," he says. "The moment you stand tall, it's no smooth road. It's war. You'll have to fight for every step, and lose a hundred more, before the scales are balanced. And, sometimes, you'll stumble. Sometimes, you'll fall. Because even the strongest do. But when it happens, it's not the end. You have a choice: to lie there and rot, or to get back up and fight again."

"Did you?" the gangly youth asks. "Did you ever fall"

Silco's scarred lip ticks. "More times than I can count."

"And when we get up," a waiflike girl, with a toddler on her hip, says. "What then?"

"Then you keep moving. Keep the momentum, or it all goes to hell. Keep moving forward. Keep taking what they tell you is out of reach. Keep fighting, and never give up, because if you do, it's all for nothing. The sacrifices, the losses, the heartbreak. And that's the greatest insult, isn't it? That all those fallen died for nothing. And that's not a death. That's a void."

He stops for a heartbeat. In the silence, the flames crackle a little brighter. His bad eye, an ember in the shadows, glows a little redder.

"But," he says, "the greatest sin of all, is the one we commit to ourselves. The way we change our nature, to become what they fear. The way we make ourselves monsters, to win their game. To make their blood our blood. And our pain, their pain. The way we, in the end, are the ones who turn against ourselves, and become the thing we swore to destroy."

"But shouldn't we?" says another boy, with a livid scar on his cheek. "Shouldn't we repay them, in their coin? Their cruelty for our own? Their injustice, for our revenge?"

Silco's expression, Mel notes, has lapsed into enigma. As if, in the youth, he is seeing a shade of his own past: a road traveled backwards.

"Once," he says, "I wanted nothing more. To be their mirror. To mete out their brutality in full. Because brutality was what it took to change the world. Or at least, my corner of it." In his lap, the little girl nestles closer. His hand, absently, smooths her hair. "Revenge is a bitter dish. If you're starved enough, it tastes like a feast. Except, in the aftermath, there's nothing. No satisfaction. Just an empty stomach. And a hunger, gnawing, to fill it again. Soon, you'll wake up and realize that there's no more meat on the bone. Your only choice is to devour yourself—or your children. The first is agonizing. The second, impossible."

"And you?" the youth asks. "What did you choose?"

Silco's eyes flit, briefly, to Mel. There's the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth.

Softly, he says, "I chose neither. Because, in the end, neither one was a choice. Not unless I wanted to undo what I'd won. I chose to walk a different path. Because that was the only one that could be walked. Else I'd be trading one boot for the other."

A full-lipped girl, eyeing Mel shrewdly, says, "Is that why you two wedded? To turn the world upside down?"

Mel, her reflexes honed by years of diplomacy, does not startle. A glib rejoinder springs to her lips.

But Silco is shaking his head.

"The world," he says, "was already upside-down. It has been, for a long time. Marriage was not our way of righting the wrong. It was a way of keeping the balance. So that, no matter how the pendulum swings, the center stays put."

"Because love changes everything, eh?" the girl says, tipping a sly wink.

The crowd laughs raucously.

Mel doesn't blush. But her mind runs last week's activities back through the perspective of the locals who know every nook and cranny of the island, and might've had a vantage into hers and Silco's private lodgings. Not all the wickedness was confined to the bedroom.

Silco's own smile is a devious twist. He's always liked his girls a little irreverent.

"Love," he says, "is the least of it."

"What d'you mean?" the girl asks.

"Love is a small thing. In the moment, it can seem the most all-encompassing. But love, by itself, can't build a city. It can't win a war. It can't even save a life." He stops, briefly. His stare darkens: a memory blotted with blood. "It's easy to be in love. Marriage is hard. It's the work, between one and the other, that makes the difference."

"Work?" the girl repeats, skeptically. "You talk like it's a trade."

"Ask your father," Silco rejoins with a twinkle in his bad eye. "He'll say the same. But mind, don't ask in your mother's earshot. Else all trade will dry out."

That wins a chorus of guffaws. The girl reddens, but holds his stare.

"So it's the work, not the love, that keeps the hearth lit," she reasons.

Mel lays a hand on Silco's shoulder.

"It takes a lit hearth," she says gently, "to make a home. And that's what our cities are. Our homes. Love isn't enough to undo past hurts, or wash clean old sins. Marriage can't bridge the divide between right and wrong, or us and them. But a home can. If you build a hearth, and fill it with good deeds, and share its warmth equally. Then, the cold won't have the last word."

"Cold," Silco echoes, wryly, "or war."

The girl, eyes passing between them, doesn't miss a beat.

"And what," she teases, "is the key to keeping the fire lit?"

In Silco's lap, the little girl stirs, and pipes up.

"My Ma says the trick's in the pudding!"

The words, uttered with such gap-toothed sincerity, dissolve the mood into laughter. The girl's mother scoops the child into her arms. Silco, with a tip of his chin, unfolds to his feet. Mel rises too. The hour is waxing late. The music is lapsing; the lamps are being doused. Soon, there will be nothing left but embers.

But around Mel and Silco, the knot of young folk has not loosened. In their eyes, Mel sees a gleam kindled. Something a little fiery, a little defiant. With his words, Silco has sparked a tiny flame. One that, in time, might grow. Might spread.

Might, when Ambessa's army marches their way again, meet her force with a conflagration.

"I want," the youth, with the livid scar, says, "to visit Zaun."

"For the clubs?" Silco asks.

"No," the boy says, and looks Silco dead in the eye. "For the lessons."

Silco's jaw changes shape. In his eyes, Mel sees the flicker of calculation: can the boy be of use? He's a simple seafarer. A child of the sun and waves. But strong, too. There's a flintiness in his stare, a steel in his spine. And he's asking, not for power or coin, but for the means to make his own.

Silco, Mel sees, is already taking his measure.

He says, "Nothing's free in Zaun. If you want a lesson, you'll have to earn it. If you're serious about the voyage, you'd best be prepared to part ways with your sunny shores for a long while."

The boy's dark eyes are steady. "I'm willing."

"Are you, now?" Silco drawls. "Tell me. Have you ever used a blade?"

"Only for gutting goats."

"Can you shoot straight?"

"I've never held a gun."

"Have you ever broken a man's bones?"

"My Pa's, for beating my Ma." The boy touches the scar on his cheek, and smiles a little. "I've learned my first lesson. From him, and from his fists. The world's a big, hard place. But the big, and the hard, can be made soft."

Silco's teeth gleam daggerlike between his lips. "That they can."

"I'm ready for the next lesson. My folks are gone. He ran off, when he couldn't get his way. My Ma passed last year, of childbed fever. The baby didn't survive. There's nothing here for me. Just fish guts and memories." He swallows. "I want to build something better. I want a future. For me, and for my village. We've all heard the stories, down the docks. Piltover's the golden city. But Zaun's the dark frontier, rising." He lifts his chin. "I'm ready to rise too."

The corner of Silco's mouth ticks. He's weighed the boy, and not found him wanting. Yes: he has promise. Yes: he can be honed as an asset. Yes: he can serve to further Zaun's interests.

Yes: the answer is yes.

"If you're ready," Silco says, "then wait a month. Settle your affairs. When you're done, go to the fogged ports of Weh'le. At the guardhouse, give them the password: Ylena's Lucky Rabbit. Tell them you've come at the behest of the Eye of Zaun. They'll know what it means. Then, it's a long journey. The seas are rough, and the waters run black. But once you're in my city, there's no turning back."

The boy pales a little, but stands firm. "I'm not afraid of a few black seas."

"Only boots on your neck, hm?" Silco appraises him slowly. "What's your name?"

"Lorin." His voice wavers, just a little. "What do I call you? Mister Eye?"

A smile spreads, slow and dark, across Silco's face. In its delineations, Mel can trace the monster stirring. But also the man, who'd won a nation, against the odds. The same man who, with a word, has just earned himself a new recruit.

"Lorin," he says pleasantly. "But the time we're finished, you'll have called me every name under the sun. But you'll have learned every lesson, and made it yours."

Lorin stares. He's like a tugboat caught in a riptide. The momentum is pulling him under. Silco's offer, once made, cannot be rescinded. For a heartbeat, the boy's eyes go glassy. A hint of panic: the old fear of the ocean depths. Then it's gone. The riptide's grip is firm.

Wherever Silco goes, the boy will follow.

"A month," he says, with a nod. "A month, and I'll be in Zaun."

"So you will. And your first year will be the hardest of your life. You'll sink, or swim. But if you survive it, you'll have learned more than you could've imagined." A shadow crosses Silco's face. "When you return to your village, it won't be empty-handed. You'll have coin, and knowledge, and a trade. And the means, should you choose, to fight for your people."

"I will." His eyes glitter in the dying embers. "I will fight."

Mel, listening, feels a chill. Her mother's blood is running cold in her veins. The Medarda's legacy of conquest has eroded another inch. By this time, a decade from now, perhaps the village will have swollen to something beyond a hideaway for the bored elite—or terrain ripe for a razing.

This, Mel thinks, is how it begins.

When she and Silco return to the villa, it is a shadowed hulk against the sunrise's creeping glow. The grounds, draped in mists, are silent. They pass on soundless feet into their wing. Into the bedroom, where Silco, his fingers at the buttons of his tunic, stops.

The query hangs between them: electric. The same as every morning.

Mel doesn't answer, except to glide closer. His hands, deft, move to her sarong. The knot comes undone. The silk puddles at her feet. The undergarments, and the jewels follow. Piece by piece, her body is laid bare. His, likewise, is stripped of its trappings. Their kisses, in the dimness, are a languid back-and-forth. Each one a little deeper, a little longer.

Each one a little closer to trust.

Mel lets him push her down, into the sheets. Soon, all thoughts are flowing out of her: the waves ebbing back into the sea.

---

Today, they are scheduled to depart.

The SS Woe Betide is due to sail by eventide. There is so much left undone: a hundred details to smooth out, a dozen last-minute preparations to oversee. The expatriates from the settlement have sent Thank You cards, and floral arrangements, and a crate of the island's sweetest mangoes. The merchants from the bazaar have shared a case of their choicest liquors, and a selection of their most exquisite hand-woven tapestries, and a dozen bolts of silk dyed in rainbow colors. And the villagers have sent a passel of sunfruit, and a whale-tooth carved in the likeness of the sea-goddess, and jars laden with homemade honey, each with a sprig of violets floating in the golden nectar.

I must, Mel thinks, pen them a letter.

I must rise to thank the staff.

I must show my face.

At least once...

Except all she wants is to be in bed with Silco.

He, too, has work to do: his city's affairs to address, correspondences to review, ciphers to decode. He's a man with a rare gift for multitasking. She's seen him, in the morning glow: a picture of louche efficiency sprawled on the rattan armchair. One hand signing off on paperwork, the receiver of the speaking telegraph cradled between his ear and shoulder as he issues terse orders, then lapses into silence as his mind weighs the value of the intelligence being relayed on the other end.

When it comes to his city, his focus is singular.

This morning his focus is purely on her.

Through the windowslats, bars of butterscotch sunlight pour. The ceiling fan cuts slowly through the humid air, redolent of seasalt and their bodies. Behind the carefully-cracked window, Mel can hear the trill of birdsong, and the rustle of palm fronds, and the gentle wash of the waves upon the shore.

Pink is the conch shell sitting on the endtable, a gift from Silco's deep dives. Mauve is the bedspread spilling lazily to the carpet, a soft puddle at the foot of the mattress. Blue is the hue of Silco's good eye, heavy-lidded with the residue of sleep, and a hungry lassitude as he rolls Mel onto her back.

Gold is the paint streaking the canvas on the easel behind him: a portrait awaiting her finishing touches before she has it packed for transit. Gold, like the frame she'll choose in Piltover: matching her wedding band, and attesting to the same. Gold, like the fractaling streak that ignites behind her eyelids, as Silco fans her thighs open to fit himself between them: the fullness of him dipping into her, teasing in and out, then sinking home.

Crying out, Mel thinks: This is how it ends.

In the days afterward, she won't remember her stay at the villa except as a flurry of sketches: the sea, the skies, the sands. And, most of all, the spiky loose-limbed silhouettes, all of which have resolved into a full-color nude on the canvas.

His torso, framed by the parabola of sunset, holds a deep-sea elegance. The lithe contours are etched by the eerie palette of fading twilight. Teals, and indigos, and amethysts: each color evoked by the subtle interplay of water and shadow. His bare shoulders, caught against the coronal threads of sunlight, like sharp juts of coral. The torso, with its cobra's hood of sinew, tapering into a narrow waist. The hard cut of hipbones, showing the navel and the hair below it, then disappearing into the distorting medium of the sea.

His head is half-turned, the features indistinct: just a hint of aquiline nose, the cutting edge of jaw, and lips parted to bare a glint of teeth.

Greeting, or threat.

The eyes are what complete the piece.

They've been rendered in exacting detail. The right eye, she's captured in all its softness: the blue so vivid, it's like a drop of the ocean. A vibrant green rings the iris, and a band of gray limns the pupil. Sea and storm: fused. The left eye is a bottomless void: the sclera inked black. In the iris: a starburst of blood vessels, red lines spiderwebbing from the center, with an inlay of gold to mimic volcanic flare.

His scars, too, have been rendered patiently. The shadowy left side of his face is a latticework of crisscrossing gouges. In some spots, like the rippled sands on the shore. In others, the cragged rocks of the reef. Each contour is traced out with the precision of a goldbeater's needle. She's overlayed the scars in an impasto of cadmium red and jet black: a tapestry of violence, with a touch of decay.

In sum, it's a creature of myth. Half-submerged, and on the cusp of a choice:

Ascent, or descent.

In her ear, Silco whispers, "Where've you drifted off to?"

Mel's lashes flutter. His body, striped in gold, is a languid arch over hers. One hand, callused, cups her breast. The other, scarred, clasps her wrist loosely between the fingers, trapping it against the sheets. His body flows skin to skin with hers—achingly slow.

Mel, nuzzling underneath his jowl, breathes, "Nowhere."

"Nowhere, hm?"

His tongue whorls in the hollow behind her ear. She shivers, arching beneath him. The tip of afternoon, she thinks, is when he's at his best: the ferocity of the night's hunger faded, the frenzy of late evening's appetite yet to come.

The heat, still banked, becomes a thing to be savored.

"I was thinking," she whispers.

"About what?"

His palm, cradling her breast, traps the nipple between forefinger and thumb. He rolls it round and round. Mel's breath catches; she bites her lip.

"About—about you," she manages.

"I should hope so."

"The painting. It needs, mmmh, something."

"Something?"

"To complete it."

He gives her nipple a playful tweak, and she whimpers. His dark chuckle rumbles through her. "A title, perhaps?"

Mel nods, but it's halfhearted. Her mind is funneling to where their bodies meet. His cock, heavy and slick, filling her. Every downstroke, a delicious ache that ignites in secret out-blooming shudders. Every withdrawal, a burning drag that makes her toes curl and her breath break in soft quavering cries.

A solid fortnight of coupling in every variation has abraded her body's meridians raw. Her nipples are swollen from the rough lavishings of his mouth. Her sex, a sweet throb of soreness. Her thighs and hips and wrists: braceleted with the imprint of his fingers.

Her whole body, a canvas of his design.

His moods are mercurial as the muse. Sometimes, he'll have her all over their rooms: the parlor, the pool, the patio. A propulsive physical meltdown, her body no more than a malleable armful flung across the table, or hauled up on the counter, or draped over the divan. He'll bend her over his knee, her backside raised for his palm or the flat of his belt, each searing wallop making her sex pulse until the wetness soaks the insides of her thighs. Or he'll take her pinned against the window, with the panoramic glitter of the sea beyond, her breasts crushed to the glass and her hips canted for him as he rides into her from behind, a fistful of her hair caught in his fist, the other hand dabbling slickly between her thighs, the glass fogging to the soundtrack of her stuttering sobs.

Other times, he is artistry itself. He'll set her in the center of the bed, a pillow beneath her hips, then kneel between her thighs and address himself to her: languid strokes of tongue and the teasing edge of teeth, not permitting her to come until she's thrashing and pleading, her fingers seizing at fistfuls of his hair, her heels drumming his spine. Or he'll have her in his lap, her arms threaded about his neck and her legs hitched up: the close-locked grind of her hips a syrupy rise and fall, their foreheads tipped and their gasps sawing together, until the pressure builds and builds and builds into a shuddering bloom of bliss.

Now and then, Mel gets the sense he's not just playing games, or pushing boundaries. There is a gleam in his eye: hunger, and yet deeper. Sex feeds it, like an underground well, leaving him, after the pleasure, sated but never satisfied.

In that, he's not alone.

Sometimes, Mel feels as if they're both drowning, willingly, in the hypnotic swells of give and take. Each stroke, each gasp, is a moment closer to—

To what?

Someplace there is no way back from.

Today, he's in one of his rare lovemaking moods. Unnervingly patient; unbearably thorough. His eyes, good and bad, sear into hers. His skin sears too: her breasts sliding with a ticklish friction across the hairs on his chest; his belly grinding hers in a slick gluey slide. The rest of him, a hot cage of bone and sinew, anchoring her to the sheets.

The room is a tropical swelter. A fever, down to the depths. And she is burning alive.

Silco's eyes, feral black, shine down.

"Gods," he grits. "The way you feel—"

Mel, breathless, manages: "Good?"

"Fucking divine." His jaw works, and his head dips. He groans into her hair: "I could stay inside you forever."

He shifts the angle, and Mel's world blurs. A cry drags out of her. She, for whom pleasure is so often a phantom. Who can go from crooning sweet nothings in a man's ear, to mentally tallying the merits of a trade deal. Who's made a study of seduction, but for whom satisfaction is so often a mirage.

Only Jayce—her heart's darling—had broken the curse. A reclamation of her self; her soul. He'd lacked the polish of experience, much less its pretense. But his heart was golden, and his hands were gentle. The way he'd touched her was a revelation.

It was a joy that, in a hundred lifetimes, she'd never have the courage to paint.

With Silco, her courage crosses limits beyond reckoning. The sensations he ignites are raw, and real, and primal. Sometimes, in his arms, she is nothing but need. And the depth of it unsettles her even as the intensity consumes. Other times, it is an ecstatic annihilation.

No artifice; only her deepest truth laid bare.

"That's it," Silco breathes, as she arches to take more of him. "D'you feel that, petal? Feel how full you are?"

"Gods. Yes."

"Say it."

"I feel you. All of you. Oh please, I'm—"

"Mine. You're all mine. And this?" His free hand slips down, cupping the sopping seam between her thighs. "This is all for me."

His cock withdraws by slick increments, then slams back in. Mel's head lashes from side to side. Her cry—ragged, ugly, helpless—is unrecognizable. Reflexively, her hand whips down, but Silco catches it before she can touch herself.

He pins it back to the sheets. Her body, bucking wildly, is trapped.

"No," he growls. "No touching. You come on my cock, and only my cock. Understand?"

"Please—I can't—"

"You can. Ssssh. We'll teach you how." His strokes are languid. Deep. So deep. The pressure, building inside her, is unbearable. "You've taken so much already. My fingers. My belt. My tongue. Now, I'm going to give you something more. Something to remember when it's all over."

His mouth, scalding hot in a ring of teeth, seals over her nipple. He suckles, deeply and rhythmically. Mel whimpers. With every tug, a throbbing wire connects her breast straight to her groin. Her body, already strung taut, goes tauter. His pace does not change. His rocks with an undulant rhythm. The motions—back and forth, side to side—grind his pelvic bone against her mons. The sounds, a low liquid litany, are obscene.

She's too far gone to care.

Mel's thighs slide helplessly wider, ankles crossed at his tailbone. Then she can't stop herself, and begins to buck in lewd frantic circles. All she can feel is his mouth on her breasts, and his cock inside her, and the bolt of pure lightning looping back and forth from her nipples to her clit. The shocks are small, and constant, and deliciously cruel.

She's close. So very close. The pressure's gathering, but the peak isn't, she cannot get there and her body is an agony of unspent need, and the only thing that can put it right is if she can only come, oh gods, if she can just come—

Silco lets her nipple go with a wet pop. The icy air is a shock.

"Look at me," he says.

Mel's lashes flutter open. Every inch of her is on fire: a pleasure so acute it borders pain.

Silco's eyes, good and bad, burn into hers.

"There she is," he breathes. "There's my greedy little slut. D'you like that, hm? Like the way I'm filling you? My cock all the way inside your sweet little cunt?" Mel sobs, a shapeless sound, and his hips surge deeper. "Answer me."

"Yes. Yes."

"You love this, don't you? Me, taking what I want. And you, giving me everything. Dripping for me." His rhythm slows to a tortuous crawl. Her body chases his, but he won't be moved. "Kindred's mercy, you're squeezing me so tight. Do you know what you're doing to me, Mel? How fucking good you feel? How much I want to come inside you?"

Mel can barely hold his stare. Her head rolls from side to side. Tears spill hotly down her cheeks. She's never wept, in bed, from pleasure. She's never had cause to. She doesn't know what it means, but the tears come. They always do. And they come the hardest, when he's inside her, and there is nowhere left to hide.

"Gods," she sobs. "Silco—"

He darts his open mouth at hers, biting the name softly from her lips. "Not yet. Look at me, Mel. Eyes open."

He lets go of her wrist and seizes her by the hips. His weight presses the final few stunning inches of his cock into her. Mel gives a strangled shriek. She is so full. Her body, pinned by his, can barely stir. All she can do is endure the exquisite stretch of him.

"There's my girl," he breathes. "Eyes on me. I want you to remember this, once we're home. I want you to feel me, whenever you walk down the Council chambers. Whenever you shake hands with all those pigs and potentates, and make them dance to your tune. I want you to remember who you belong to. How good it feels. How empty you are without me."

He's barely moving. Only circling his hips: a grinding pressure that's at once excruciating and sublime. Mel's cries pitch higher. Her body feels simultaneously split apart and stretched too tight. She can't get her breath; she can't get enough of him. All she can do is watch his eyes. They are almost black; a stricken shine that speaks of a suffering as deep as hers. It's a mirror: the cracks in reverse, but the same.

The same.

His mouth, a hot breath away from hers, shapes into a smile.

"I'll be remembering, too. Your delicious body under mine. Your pretty tits, and your wet little cunt, and all the ways I've had you. All the ways I'll have you, again, and again, and again, until I've taken my fill. And Mel..." Their foreheads touch. His left eye, a bloodshot star, glows with a terrible tenderness. "...I don't think I'll stop."

A sob lodges in Mel's throat. She tries to speak. To tell him she feels the same.

That her nights, her days, her thoughts: they're all becoming for him

Except he's kissing her, and she needs all her breath for what comes next. Beneath her starfishing palms, the flex of his body becomes a tidal force: the sinews bunching and smoothing, the bones moving fluidly beneath the skin. He's the sea-monster, come to claim her.

And she, the shore, is his homecoming.

Mel's hand splays down his spine, the bony knobs a ladder for her fingers. Streaks of sweat cut their skins. Their bodies are quaking. Bright, blinding waves of sensation breaking, only to replaced by others. They will never stop. She no longer wants them to stop. She's keening, a wordless siren's song. The climax, a golden horizon, is so close.

She can almost taste it.

Almost.

"Silco," she cries, her nails gouging into his flesh. "Now—now—"

The tendons in his throat go taut. She hears the strangled growl trapped within. One palm, delving into her hair, curls into a fist. And his hips—without mercy—slam. Each thrust is hard enough to shake her bones. The mattress shrieks in protest. Mel's head falls back, and her voice is no longer her own. It rises from someplace so deep she cannot recognize it, breaking free and flooding the airwaves.

Her climax doesn't crest.

It overflows.

The scream, tearing out of her, is a frantic rise and fall. She can't stop it. It's too much. Too good. And it won't stop. She comes, and comes, and comes, and he rides her through it. Each spasm, jolting her body, is more drawn-out, more devastating than the last. Their bodies are a liquid symphony, and the tide is rising, and all she can do is drown.

He fucks her like he wants to drown too.

His groan is almost imperceptible at first, then rises over the span of a dozen pummeling strokes until it's a full-throated snarl that shakes the rafters. His cock buries itself all the way, and there it pulses. Filling her, and filling her, and filling her.

Mel's sob, a long quaver, echoes in the aftermath. She is still coming, a slow rippling clench that subsides into deep, low-down spasms, then a fine web of tremors. They stay locked together: a spent tableau of bodies connected at the fulcrum of throbbing heat. Sometimes she, and sometimes he, will give a soft shivery gasp, and a pulse of wetness will seep out, to be soaked up by the sheets. The entire bed is a debauched mess.

She doesn't care.

He's inside her. He is hers, hers, hers.

The sunrays, a rich apricot gold, hang over the bed. The sea, a susurrus, echoes their breaths. Cradled in her arms, Silco is completely still, as if poured over her. His face, the unscarred half, is nestled into the crook of her neck. The weight of him, bone and muscle, is a solid anchor.

"Don't go," Mel breathes. "Not yet."

He chuckles, a ragged tenor. "Go, where? You've bound me in my bones, you bloody lamia."

"You've emptied mine. It's only fair."

"Fair, hm?" He bestows lazy wet kisses across her breasts. "When did a Medarda become the judge of what's fair?" His teeth close, playfully sharp, on her nipple. Mel mewls, and he hums. "Fairness is never owed. Only taken."

"Don't—quote my mother when you're inside me."

"One of mine, actually."

Her fingers trace the soft hairs at the base of his neck. "Now you're being perverse."

"You bring up your mother when I've just fucked you within an inch of your life. And I'm the perverse one?" He presses her breasts softly together, covering them with more kisses. "I'll not have the pleasures of our bedspread overshadowed by her specter."

"No." Mel shivers. Her fingertips, in his hair, tug gently. "It's just us. Only us."

He bites softly, again. Nuzzles into the damp valley between her breasts. She feels his sawing breaths: slow, steady, sated. Mel rests her cheek against the crown of his head, and drifts too. She doesn't want to break the spell. Even if the afternoon's slipping away. Even if a hundred little details must be addressed. Even if today's the last day, and the ship sails with the high tides, and their lives go back to what they were before.

The politics and powerplays. The two cities, with the gulf between them.

And the marriage, jagged and fragile, that must survive it.

Hope, Ambessa always said, is the worst thing to leverage in a negotiation.

Better a deal than a dream.

Silco stirs, and his weight lifts off her. Her body is left empty, wet, aching. It's too soon. The room is softly-lit haze, but a chill has entered her bones. The shock of her own vulnerability. The cold of it is all she knows. Reflexively, her arms and legs begin to curl in, as if to ward it off.

Then: a touch.

Silco's hands, cradling her kneecaps, ease them gently apart. He's studying her, with an intensity both predatory and pensive.

"What?" She is trembling. "What is it?"

The words dry up. Kneeling between her thighs, he dips a finger into her. Mel gasps. Her oversensitized flesh is aflame. His stare, roaming over her, is a fire in its own right: lingering on her breasts, her belly, her mons, and the seam glistening below. The finger withdraws, and he studies it slowly, and lifts it to his mouth.

"So sweet," he says. "And all from me."

He dips his head, and his tongue laves her, a long slow lap. Mel cries out, hands flying to his hair. He does it again, humming like a contented cat savoring a bowl of cream.

"Sil—Silco—"

"Hmmmm."

Her fingers, winding into his hair, tug. "No more. Please."

He lifts his head. His mouth is lewdly sheened. "Had your fill, then?"

"Of the games." Her thumb caresses the scarred jut of his cheekbone. "Not you."

His expression shifts. Inside, the monster goes quiet. The man emerges, and his hands are gentle as they coast up her thighs. Kissing the hollow of her navel, he spills to his side, head propped on one bent arm. The lines of his body are gorgeously lax, a pink flush in the hollow of his throat, and the tip of his collapsed cock.

Mel thinks: I did this.

She made him feel this way. Made him let go, and lose himself, and find her in the midst of it.

And soon, it will all be a memory.

Idling against the pillows, Silco murmurs, "Melancholy suits you ill."

Mel jerks from her reverie. "Mm?"

"Your face. A hundred miles away." His knuckles nudge under her chin. "Are you plotting a coup?"

Mel summons a reflexive smile. It can be unsettling, how rapidly Silco's mood can shift. From a darkling purr to a backhanded sneer. As if the past few hours have been wiped clean. The bed, and her body, still sticky with a proof that no longer counts.

Other times, she wonders if it is she who has lost the gift of playing the game. If a fortnight of pleasure has left her, in every sense, unmoored.

"Not a coup," she says. "Only a snapshot."

"Of."

"This place. The sea. The sky." She circles a fingertip across his chest, right over his heart. "You."

"I'll still be there."

"Yes, but—"

How to explain? The foreboding, that the bubble will burst, and everything will dissolve to dust. That the marriage, in a moment of pure clarity, will falter. That the future, as planned, will skid sideways. That the only thing keeping the peace, and the treaty, and the cities united, is a single bed.

The one they're lying in, and will, very soon, have to depart.

Reflexively, Silco's eyes flit to the nightstand, where his smoking case sits. Mel's stare follows, then returns to him. It is a testament to the budding trust between them, that her next words are not a reproach. Only a sad little intrusion of reality, that must be given its due.

"You want to smoke, don't you?"

"I do."

"Then smoke."

He makes no move toward the case. "It can wait."

"Silco." Mel's palm cups his jaw. "A few drags won't incinerate my lungs. Or anyone else's."

His smile, thin, is a little self-deprecating.

Six a day now down to four. But the habit is too deeply ingrained. Like his city: a need he will not, or cannot, relinquish. A need that is as much a part of him as his scars. Already, a restlessness hums at the edges of his torpor. The villa has been a sanctuary, a place apart. But Silco is a creature of complex needs, and, like all complexities, requires constant calibration.

Throughout their stay, they've all, in their own way, come due: his desire, seething from the same recesses that hold his ambition, has found, in her, its fullest expression.

But the longer they linger, the more it will transmute into edginess. Already, the last few days have brought precarious glimpses. A growing tendency to go prowling beyond the property; the occasional bouts of tight-lipped surliness; the way he sometimes wakes in the middle of the night, and his fingers find the nape of her neck, as if to reassure himself of her presence. The way he takes her, afterward, with fury and few words, as if to reassert his claim.

All of these, Mel knows, will worsen. Two nights ago, he'd needled her into a fight over—what? Politics: the Iron Pearl's shipping lines, and their impact on Piltover's trade tariffs. Residences: their shared home under construction at the Promenade, and the necessity, in its design, of armed guardposts at every high-point. Marriage: his commitment, and her lack thereof, demonstrated by the fact that she was still keeping tabs, however discreet, on Jayce.

At that, she'd plucked a teacup from the breakfast tray, and sent it whizzing toward his head. Silco's reflexes, honed by decades of dodging blows, had saved him a concussion. But his expression, in wake of the brittle explosion held no anger. Only a secret satisfaction, that she, who'd kept a lid on her self-possession for so long, had finally let him see her. Her secrets; her soft spots.

All for him to make use of: in his complex and insidious ways.

In the morning, they'd made up: a sweet, slow, syrupy interlude, and then a longer one after that. In the evening, Silco had taken her to the shore, and, while she sketched the sunset, had sat a little ways apart, a book in his lap, and his fingers, when the impulse took, tracing down the curve of her spine. It was an apology, and an admission: he'd started the fight on purpose.

"A little friction," he'd told her later, "brightens the spark."

He wasn't wrong—but he wasn't right, either. Their tempers, when lit, could be combustive. Cooler heads had to prevail, if they expected the middle ground of their marriage to stand. So: an agreement was made. No more fights during the duration of their time here, unless they could be resolved before the sun rose.

No more going to bed angry. No more going to bed alone.

They've honored the deal. But the time is coming to an end.

"Go on." Mel pretends to lay a hand over her eyes. "I won't tell a soul."

"You'll just inhale secondhand, hm?"

"Mother, in the womb, breathed in the smoke of every one of her father's wars. The fumes did her no harm." She lets a beat pass. "Though her father did plenty."

"Ambitious. I admire that." He pushes himself upright, reaches for the case. "My own mother used to say the Kindred throws hurdles in a child's path, to see if they'll leap."

"Did you? Leap, I mean?"

"Over hurdles, or out the window?" His chuckle is dark. "With my mother, the latter was preferable."

Mel's eyes trace the sun-struck contours of his face: shore and reef. "She must have been a striking woman."

Silco, the lighter's flywheel sparking, stops. A wry little smile cuts the corner of his mouth.

"Looking back," he concedes, "she was."

"You say that as if you forgot. Have you no photographs of her?"

"Photographs cost money. Something I never had. And it's all to the better. Some women are meant to be kept in the mind. Not the hand."

He states it with a touch of bitterness. It makes Mel wonder what else was lost, in those bleak boyhood days. What other things he was denied, because he had no coin, and no name.

How much, even now, is unnamable.

Softly, she says, "I would have liked to meet her."

"No, you wouldn't. She was mad as a hatter. And when she wasn't mad, she could sniff out a liar a mile off."

Mel dares a smile. "Then she'd have nothing on me."

He meets her smile with one of his own: the rarest sort. The smile of a man who'd grown up with nothing to lose, and everything to prove. Who has, in his own way, lost everything, and gained the world.

The smile, the most honest he owns, is a small tribute to the woman who'd given him life.

And to the woman he's found in it.

He says, "She'd have been delighted with you."

"Oh? How so?"

With a studied indifference, he tips a cigarette between his lips, and lights up. The red tip winks in the distorted pupil of his left eye.

"Because," he says, "you've a talent for charming the most vicious vipers into coiling round your wrist."

It is, in its own way, an admission. That he is, indeed, coiled round her wrist.

Or, better put, every part of her.

He has no inkling, Mel thinks, that it's the other way round. That he's the one who's charmed her, compelled her, caught her. And keeps catching her: again and again. Off-guard, and, increasingly, off-balance.

Smoke, bittersweet, coils lazily through the air. Sunlight creeps in deepening shades: a glint of burnished gold, a spill of honeyed amber, and finally, a soft dusky orange. In a few minutes, the hour will turn, and the evening will come.

A few hours, Mel thinks, and it will be over.

A week, and this will be a memory.

They'll both be back home. Where the stakes are higher. Where the risks are hidden.

Where they'll never be exactly this again.

"Will you miss it?" Mel asks. "This place."

"A place is only a place. I have a home. Zaun."

"Your playground of progress."

"It's where I'm at my best. Stirring up trouble. That, and making the troublemakers wish they'd never been born." The smoke paints the air between them. Behind the shivering veil, he grows somber. "Still. As far as places go, it's a good one. Scenic. Jinx would love it."

"You miss her."

Silco takes a drag. The smoke floats in hypnotic rings. "I'd miss my spleen. That, I can live without."

"You don't mean that."

"I do. Once it's cut out, I will carry on. As will my city. But Jinx? That's a vacancy that nothing, and no one, can fill." A muscle ticks in his jaw. "So, yes. I miss her."

Mel doesn't say: Will you miss me, when we're apart?

When I'm in my tower, and you're in your lair? When the day's done, and we're in our beds, and we're each a hundred miles from the other?

Instead, she says, "I forget how quickly time moves when you're young. How everything seems the height of emergency. Without a stable foundation, and a sure hand, it's too easy to let chaos take hold." She sighs. "Jinx is lucky to have a home in Zaun. And a place by your side."

The veil of smoke parts, a little. The red of his left eye burns through. "And you, Mel? Where will you stand?"

"Where do you mean?"

"Come now. We've a lifetime of political wrangling ahead. Let's not get a headstart." He grinds the cigarette out in the ashtray. "You've seen the routes to the Iron Pearl. You've seen the revenue it will bring. What will you tell your Council, once we're back? That they should levy taxes—or worse: penalties?—to wrest it from us?"

"We won't tax your routes," Mel says steadily. "Nor will we penalize Zaun for doing business."

"Turn the other cheek, hm?"

"Nothing so altruistic." She dares a smile. "There are ways to turn a profit, even if the markets aren't the ones we're accustomed to." Her mind maps out the logistics: a plan that's been in the works for weeks. "You'll recall the trade embargo? Every foreign good, entering and exiting the ports of Piltover, must be taxed."

"A disaster, and I'll say it again: the Councils were idiots to levy it."

"A disaster, if handled right, becomes a windfall." Her lashes dip slyly. "What if those goods did not count as imports?"

Silco's good eye slits. "Explain."

"You want the Pearl to be a neutral harbor, with tax breaks for all comers. Piltover wants the same: but with the added incentive of being the primary hub." Mel's fingertips, a playful tap, tap, tap, mark out a tune on his belly. "Why not let them both have their way?"

"How so?"

"Piltover could establish its own outpost in the Iron Pearl. Not a watchdog, but an intermediary. We'd smooth the waters between more conservative buyers like the Kirammans and their more, shall we say, libertarian counterparts, like your chem-barons. For a cut, of course. It'd be a tidy sideline. A little cream for the Council's coffee."

His eyes acquire a hard sheen. "How much cream?"

"Thirty-five percent."

"You've some balls on you."

"And they recognize the value of a good deal."

"So do mine. And thirty-five is an insult."

"Thirty-five is a fraction of the cost for hosting a full-scale foreign delegation in the Iron Pearl for expos, and seminars, and symposia." She goes on with her small caresses, tracing figure-eights down to his navel. "Thirty-five is a quarter of the time to establish trade ties with foreign investors. Thirty-five is the full benefit of Piltover's diplomatic clout, without a single ounce of political entanglement. To say nothing of Piltover's vested interest in seeing the Iron Pearl's routes protected, and patrolled by its own navy."

"And a chance for Topside to gets its foot in the door. Literally and figuratively."

"The benefits of a win-win, Silco. For everyone."

He grunts. "If you think I'll allow Topsides fleets anywhere near the Thesaurus—"

"Oh, I know better. The Pearl's military presence will be exclusively Zaunite. Piltover's naval strength will be limited to a small detachment." Her palm traces the arrowing line of fine dark hair below his navel. "Think of it as an insurance policy. It will set the hearts of wary buyers at ease, and pique the curiosity of newcomers. The more commerce that's transacted, the more Piltover and Zaun profit."

"And what's stopping Piltover from turning the Iron Pearl into its own private fiefdom?"

In the silence, she hears the rebuke: Again.

Mel lays a kiss to his shoulder. "The same reason I agreed to sign that 'idiotic' trade embargo in the first place. So our two cities, between them, can establish a robust market for the good of all. Your resources; our technology. My influence; your innovation. And a mutual trust, between us, to keep the peace."

"You really believe that," Silco murmurs. "That it's all the same."

"I don't." Another kiss, lingering. "This, between us, is ours."

His breathing has deepened. "And the rest?"

"The rest is a choice."

"And the profit, a corollary."

"Think of it as the sweetener." Her lips curve against his chest. "I'll charm the vipers into coiling, and you'll dole out the venom in small doses. That, and the cream, will have takers singing the Iron Pearl's praises far and wide."

His chuckle, rumbling up from his chest, is thick as treacle. "And all this, in return for thirty-five percent."

"To keep my Council from going mad, and upping the ante, yes. Thirty-five will do nicely."

"Fifteen."

"Thirty, or you can negotiate with Councilor Kiramman. Though I can't guarantee her terms are as...generous."

"Or her assets." He helps himself to a handful: palm cupping her breast. "Twenty. Take it or leave it."

"Twenty-five, and I'll take it gladly."

"Twenty, and I'll take gladly." He punctuates the words with a squeeze. "You'd make a good gangster, you know. Ambessa was a fool for not putting the talents to use."

"There's only room in my life for one tyrant." Mel, sighing, lets him have another handful. "So: twenty-five. I'll see to the Council's cooperation."

"And they'll help themselves to a slice of that Zaunite pie."

"Naturally."

"And your coffers will be fattened, and your city will rejoice in your prowess, and you will go to bed every night a happy woman." Silco tips a knowing look. "Eager to make your husband a very, very happy man."

Mel's eyes, through the dappled sunbeams, hold his. "It's a win-win."

His features are inscrutable, and for a moment Mel feels a cool trickle of foreboding. Did she read the situation wrong? Were his objections more than a negotiation tactic? Is this a step too far, even with their marriage as a pretext?

Or, worse, has he played her so well that she's lost all her sense of the game?

Then he smiles—a slow curl of lips—and the dread recedes. The leftover smoke, a gossamer swirl, dispels as he crooks a finger.

"C'mere, petal."

She likes the way his accent abrades on the word. No immaculately pruned vowels or copperplate consonants. Just the blunt truth of him: a smuggler from the Black Lanes, bred on bonemeal and bootlegged liquor. A man who's lived his life with the aftertaste of blood in his mouth, and has risen, and risen, until his bite can bring a whole damn city to its knees.

Until a woman from Piltover's golden towers can, with a crook of his finger, slide into his arms.

Nestling close, Mel listens to the beat of his heart: a steady drumbeat that has come to mean something like safety. Soon, their worlds—their games—will resume. But here, now, they are simply themselves. Whatever they've shared together, in these waters, in these sands, in this bed, has made them each, in turn, a little braver.

A little more ready to face whatever comes.

"Do you think," she asks, head tucked beneath his chin, "that we can do it?"

His fingertips stroke up and down her spine. "Strike a bargain? We've been doing that since the start."

"Not that. I meant—"

"What?"

She hesitates, and his hand stills. "Us."

For a moment there is silence, except for the whisper of the sea. Then, Silco's fingers thread into her curls. Gently, he smooths them off her temple. Something cool and moist touches her dipped eyelids. His lips. Kissing each one, then the spot between her brows, before tipping his forehead against hers.

He does that a lot, when the mood suits him. Perhaps, as a boy, his parents had imparted the same gesture. Or, perhaps, between him and Vander, or him and Sevika, it had been their way of sealing an oath. Or, perhaps, he is just the sort of man who takes to a habit, once he sees its value.

But the intimacy of it, Mel thinks, is uniquely his own.

"I believe," he says quietly, "that if we were able to spend a month in a villa by the sea, and not tear each other limb from limb, then the odds are good."

Inside Mel, a knot unspools. Not completely. But it is a little smaller.

The future, a little less stormy.

In the bathroom after her wash, she is wringing the wetness from her locs, twirling each piece between her palms, when she hears Silco's footsteps, the bottom of his callused soles rasping across the floorboards. Through the gap of the doorway, she sees his backlit outline. The encroaching day flattens the sunlight into red arteries: dustmotes glitter like embers.

Leaning a shoulder against the pillar, he scrutinizes the canvas in the corner.

Her sea-monster, with his bared teeth, and his burning eye.

A soul, suspended between light and dark.

She'll finish the painting soon, and set it to dry. She'll take it back to Piltover. And she, too, will have a choice. Keep the masterpiece for herself, a memory of what's been.

Or share it, and reveal a piece of her that is only his.

Crossing over to where he stands, Mel sets her hands on his shoulder, and rests her cheek against the ridge of his spine. His body, a solidly lean taper of sinew, is still bare, though his trousers hang loose on his hips. She smells the lathery traces of soap on his skin.

And beneath, she swears, the sea.

"I think," she murmurs, "it needs a finishing touch."

"Oh?" He tips his head toward the portrait. "Horns, perhaps."

"I had something else in mind."

"A tail?" Half-turning, he encircles her waist. His thumb circles the small of her back, before his fingers fan out, palm dipping. "Mine would be a pronged barb. Long as a whip. In bed, it would wrap around you, just here. Like this."

"Not a tail," Mel says, her breath catching a little.

"No?" He gives her rump a sudden slap, and she gasps. "A paddle?"

"No." She bites her lip, her voice gone shaky as his palm caresses the sting. "Not a paddle."

"Ah. A pitchfork then, to spear my victims?"

"Silco." She cups his jaw, and tilts his face to hers. "A heart."

His unscarred brow quirks. "A heart?"

"You heard me."

"Seems a bit much for a sea-beast."

"Do you forget? All legends have a monster searching for a heart. Whether to consume, or to safeguard. It doesn't matter. A heart is the final piece to the fairytale." She looks past him to the canvas. "I'd paint yours in gold. Medarda gold, with a streak of Zaunite silver."

"Would you, indeed?"

"To match the colors of our wedding bands."

"And what will you do with this intimate portrait? Hang it in your Council chambers?" A smile ghosts his lips. "A bold statement. 'We are, the lot of us, in bed with Zaun.'"

"Why—" she wields the frown that can jellify the spines of a roomful of kings, "must you always twist my meaning?"

"It's a question. Your fine Topside establishments are all the same. Well-lit. Airy. And abominably stuffy. I'd be all covered in confusion to find myself there. It's the last place I should hope to belong."

"Not all places. Not my home."

"Your penthouse with all the Medarda reds?"

"A color that agrees with you." Her fingertips drift lower, dipping into the low-riding waistband of his trousers. ""I'd place you in the farthest end, where the play of light and dark is richest. I'd let only the bravest visitors venture close. And I'd show them: the heart of Zaun, and the pinnacle of Piltover. Side by side."

His chuckle curls down her spine.

"Brazen, even for you."

"Perhaps that will be the title?" Her fingers tease the wiry hair at his groin. His breathing deepens, and her hand dips a little lower. "Brazen."

Hoarsely, he says, "Too obvious."

"Tycoon?"

"May as well call it 'Tyrant.'"

"Typhoon?"

He flexes, a lazy roll of muscle. "Try harder."

Her fingers, curling, find him. She'd not meant to incite their talk into another game. But a little thrill of relish passes through her. Sometimes she wonders if it's the Shimmer that makes him run so hot. Other times, she wonders if it's simply his nature. A decade her senior, but with an appetite that can still, at times, catch her off-balance.

She feels like she's in possession of one of those fire-crystals, a spark struck from the core, that will kindle for years to come.

She's always had a penchant for crystals. Especially the ones that burn.

"Terror," she amends, "from the Deep."

"Tycoon, typhoon, terror. A pattern emerges."

"Patterns are predictable." Her fist glides from root to tip. Gods, he's already hardening. "You, are anything but."

"Then the title better suit."

"I—oh."

His right hand has gone between her thighs. His palm, cupping her mons, holds her steady while his fingers tease the lips. She's still, despite the bath, a little slick, a little sensitive. A whimper catches in her throat, and Silco's grin unslings into wickedness.

He is not the only one who's hungry.

"There we are," he says, teeth catching her throat. "A little inspiration."

"Oh gods, that's—"

"A fine start. But: the title."

"The Art—" Her lashes flutter. His finger, crooking, circles. "—the Art of—"

"I'm listening."

Gasping, she finishes, "The Art—of Compromise."

His mouth claims hers: hot, deep, drugging. In her hand, his cock pulses. In a moment, he's waltzing her back, not to bed but across the soft patchwork rug draping the ottoman. Mel's calves hit the edge. Her legs give way, and he follows, tipping her to the cushions. Between her legs, his fingers delve deeper. Coaxing her, with a fluid articulation of fingers and wrist, from dripping, to desperate, to delirious.

Mel's cries rise, a high-pitched plea breaking in her throat. The pleasure, cresting, liquifies her bones. When it ebbs, she is trembling.

Silco, above her, is a long lean shadow cutting through the fading afternoon sunrays.

Just like the portrait.

"What," Mel catches her breath, "what do you think?"

"Of what?"

"The title."

Chuckling, her wrists pinned by his palm, he settles between her thighs. Mel's last coherent thought is of his smile: a cutting glint of teeth. As if they've just played their game to a draw.

And then he is inside her, and the rest bursts into blood-red sensation.

A tide, breaking.

"I think," he growls, "you're a devious little slut, and I'm going to fuck you again."

And Mel, with a moan, welcomes the flood.

This, she thinks, is how we end.

By beginning again.

---

Mother—

I write this letter by the seaside, on a paper whose fibers are curling with the damp. I'll spare you the details. Suffice to say, the honeymoon has been an experience. We are presently at the villa in Wuju. We will be departing soon to Piltover. The journey here was an ordeal, but the destination worth it. The island is lovely, the locals kind, and the sea air is doing me a world of good.

It is, after all, a pleasant alternative to seawater.

I nearly drowned on my way here, Mother. And for the first time in years, I was truly afraid.

But then Silco dove in. He pulled me back. He saved me. I am still in awe of the fact.

Also, I am furious.

How dare you, Mother? How dare you tell me to doubt his intentions? How dare you insinuate that Silco would abandon me to die? How dare you assume the worst of him? Of me?

It was your words, and your doubts, that made me hesitate during this voyage. Your voice, inside my head, that made me hold myself back when I should have held on. That lifelong lesson—to trust no one, to depend only on myself, to never let the mask slip—nearly cost me my life.

Mother, I know better now. Better than you taught me.

I will not let your past poison my present.

And I will not let the past rob me of my future.

Your daughter,

M

P.S. Yes, the medicks confirmed the news.

It's going to be a girl.