ribbons of tyrian velvet

The field was bathed in the sunshine of midday, heating Eva's usual black leather to an uncomfortable temperature; the surface of her skin was damp with a light sheen of perspiration, but her eyes were narrowed, focused, as she twisted her body, her feet dancing over dirt and grass, her sword flashing with every movement, every stance and form that she knew. She'd been practicing since early morning, determination driving her to take few breaks, to push herself harder. Eva exhaled and lowered her sword, leaning on it for support. She could still remember the training Karl had given her those years ago; she still referred to it constantly to keep her skills sharp, her body conditioned. She was older, perhaps a bit softer in the hips and chest, but she hadn't lost it. She would keep it for as long as she could. Thinking of Karl brought a smirk to her lips, and she whistled to the hound who waited nearby. The dog, ever a dutiful companion, came trotting up, anxious for her attention, and she lazily patted his head, that smirk remaining as her gaze became unfocused, her thoughts shifting away from the animal. "Well, Karl," she said to the dog, "shall we see if we can find your namesake to annoy?"

Ilyana had scarcely returned to the Reach when she heard that voice. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she only vaguely understood that her body was turning toward it; she felt outside herself, lost in a state of confused unreality - but the face that she'd known so well was there, beneath the beard and the shaggy mane, beneath that wildness that was so foreign. She'd approached Edward Butcher in anger and confusion, and gone away from him in a state of shocked uncertainty. When next she saw him, she'd found herself swept up in the heat of the past, had nearly lost herself to the temptation to dive in head first, to resume what they'd once had, to throw herself back into the role of near-wife and mother. But she'd checked herself. Ed had been angry, and she supposed he'd had a right to be. When she'd gone, she'd done so knowing that he might never speak to her again - that he might never let her see Madelyn, no matter how she loved the child who'd been lost to her for so long. Ilyana believed in her choice, however. She needed time - they both needed time - and she needed to get away from Ed, away from the city, away from the confusion that the melding of past and present had created within her. Things had changed, not just in who Butcher was, but in who she was, too. When the letter came, Ilyana started packing a bag for an immediate trip to Caledon. She wasn't sure if it was the promise of escape, simple concern, or the distinct pull that its sender held for her that drew her the most - but she acted without hesitation, and she was gone by midday.

She was half-paying attention to some random tavern-goer's attempts to converse with her when she saw Karl approach the Sun. Lilli's eyes followed him up the stairs, a quick glance over her shoulder assuring her that he'd gone only as far as the wall next to the door. She could feel his eyes upon her, and her heart skipped a beat before lurching into double-time, pounding away in her chest. Every moment that she didn't move, that she didn't approach him, seemed to pass at a snail's pace - until she simply couldn't stand it anymore. She turned; she greeted him. She dismissed the unimportant man and asked Karl to walk with her. They needed to talk. She needed to know what would happen, what he wanted. She knew her own feelings, but his remained a mystery. Lillianna would be stern, if needed. If she could handle a whole room full of unruly students, she could handle Karl - even if she had to grab him by his moustache and force him to talk.

Elle groaned as the sound of a wailing infant jarred her awake. She reached over to prod at Jakob's side, hoping he'd offer to go tend to Gustav, but her husband was either still asleep or skillfully feigning it. She sighed and kicked the covers off, then dragged herself out of bed. The walk was short, but she made it at a risen's pace, only fully waking once her eyes were upon her son's face. He quieted when she took him into her arms, and, as she stood there gently swaying, she realized that she was glad Jakob hadn't gone in her stead. Tired though she was, the moment was worth it.

Lola sat down on the edge of the bed that she hadn't used in sometime, staring into the mirror that hung on the back of the door. She'd just changed the sheets out of habit; it kept the room smelling fresh, and it reminded her of the place that she held in the household. It reminded her that this was where she was meant to be staying, even though she wasn't. "I like you," she told the mirror. "I really like you. A lot." Her reflection's brow knitted, and she detected a subtle flush in the facial region. "I lov--" She cut off at a sound outside of the room and sat up straight, staring at the door, but it was just the house settling; there were no footsteps. Mike wasn't home. Her eyes closed, and she slumped with relief, flopping onto her back. She had had such plans - such terrible, awful plans - and she'd completely failed at following them. She didn't regret that she had; on the contrary, it was exquisite to find that life didn't have to be the empty shell that she'd prepared herself for. The problem was, she had no idea what to do. She was fumbling along, feeling her way blindly through a role that was growing progressively less defined, the rules unknown. She knew how she felt; she knew, to a degree, what she wanted - Lola just didn't know how to reach for it, or if she needed to. Did she have it already? Six, but she didn't even know. She felt utterly foolish. ...Which suited, she supposed. The man definitely made her silly . . . among other things.

The children were always more unruly when the weather warmed up, and Lillianna was exhausted by the time the day's lessons had concluded. She breathed a sigh of relief as the last little devil disappeared from the classroom, plopping down on the rickety wooden chair that sat behind her worn and scuffed desk. The orphanage was perpetually over-budget, leaving her to provide most of the supplies she used, in addition to her donated time. Lilli was young and able to keep up with both teaching and working part-time at the Coin, but that was only because she still lived with her parents. At twenty-four, she was growing somewhat tired of that arrangement. Still, she couldn't imagine doing anything else. Even if she was tired - more and more so, lately - she couldn't even begin to think of stepping away from teaching, and she needed the income from the Coin to ensure that she could teach effectively. Sighing, she leaned back in the uncomfortable chair, pressing her eyes closed and rubbing them with her fingertips. She needed, perhaps, to take a few days and rest. A sense of unwellness had settled over her, and she could only imagine that it was from near-constant stress. Thoughts thus engaged, Lillianna fell right to sleep at her desk.

Katya knew from the moment that Philip walked into the door that there was something amiss. His demeanor was off: he was nervous and guarded, making no effort to approach her, and she could tell by how he answered her inquiries that he was trying clumsily to be evasive. She approached him warily, unsure what to expect, the coded letter she'd been reading when he walked in completely forgotten on the table. Foremost in Katya's mind was the expectation that Phil had done something silly, and she was going to be angry. Then he spoke. Though she thought she'd braced herself quite well, her mind couldn't register what he was saying, or what he was doing, until she had been staring down at him for several seconds. Four words, in particular, echoed throughout her head, and she repeated them mentally until they made sense, until she could be certain that she'd heard them right. Katya'd been asked something similar before, but it had been different. This time, she had no doubts; she knew that there was only one way to answer Philip's question, that there was only one answer that she wanted to give, and only one that she was capable of speaking. "Yes."

Walking the streets of the Reach felt strange to Ilyana. She kept expecting to see Ed and Madelyn every time she looked up - to catch a glimpse of them walking with some other woman, some stranger, and, yet, though she'd wandered the streets for hours, it had not once happened. She supposed that they were truly gone, that perhaps they were never coming back, and she wasn't certain whether that was comforting or not. She'd searched for them, of course, perhaps two seasons ago, when she'd come back and found the house empty, devoid of her new family. Ilyana had searched, and found nothing. Even Butcher's mother had vanished. There was no note, but their things were gone; there was no sign of a struggle or even a hurried departure. She'd returned to her family's estate in Queensdale, having no other notion of what to do, and hadn't gone once to the Reach until she at last felt as if spotting them on the street might not kill her. Still, she expected it. She looked. She wondered. Her time with the Butchers had been comparatively brief, but it made up her only real experience with belonging, with love, outside of her own blood. Ilyana had never been one of those women whom men desired for more than her body, for more than one night; she'd never turned a head like she had his. She'd accepted her place as a diversion, who sought only the same in others - as a creature who took pleasure where it could be had, who required nothing from anyone else, when she could do well enough for herself. But now, as she walked those familiar streets with their unfamiliar faces, she felt lost. There was a hole within her that had never existed before. She felt jealousy; she felt uncertainty. Where it had always been strong, her confidence was now shaky at times. Ilyana took a deep breath and made her way toward the gate to the Arch. Divinity's Reach held no interest for her. The broken remains of the free city, however, might serve her well.

Zed squinted at her reflection in the mirror, eyeballing her hair, making sure that its center crest held strong and straight. She couldn't remember the last time she'd bothered fussing over her appearance - sometime during her earliest days in the Vanguard, she supposed - and it felt foreign to be so concerned, now. She wanted to believe that it had to do with her desire to make a decent impression, to appear professional to prospective clients, but, in truth, she knew better. It had to do with . . . him. At the very least, it had to do with what had happened with him. The thing was that what had happened had entirely to do with the man himself, to begin with. He was a soldier, her superior, one of the strongest, most capable men she'd ever known. He was massive, intelligent, and serious, and he treated her like an equal, neither dwelling on her gender nor dismissing it. So it came back to him. She'd never felt that wildness in herself before, that desperate need to experience everything that she'd been denying herself for over a decade. She hadn't realized that her body could do what it had, that she could experience such . . . sensations. And his strength... Zed blew out a hasty breath, unintentionally fogging the mirror, then swiped her hand across its cool surface to clear a broad strip of glass. She felt hot all over, memories of his restraint blurring with those of his own streak of wildness, and she had to splash cold water on her face to try to fight that feverish haze that was threatening to overtake her senses. Even as he'd been shooing her out the door, she'd been considering trying to slam him against the nearest wall, to take more from him despite the soreness that still radiated throughout her body. Of course, even the element of surprise wouldn't have prevented him from stopping her - but she'd been extremely tempted to try, nonetheless. Only the knowledge that he would, undoubtedly, do so had kept her in check; the threat of rejection wasn't something she was quite prepared to face, and she was concerned that she might lose track of the fact that it was only physical, and nothing more: an odd worry to be confronted with, and one that she'd never expected. Zed groaned, stepping away from the mirror and giving it the finger. She needed to find another job, to get the fuck out of her tiny flat and do it with a purpose. She needed a distraction, and the coin wouldn't hurt, either.

There were shadows in the house that never seemed to shorten, corners that light never seemed to touch, no matter how many windows were uncovered. Their two rooms were the worst, dingy no matter how well cleaned, with one window that was high and tiny, that let in almost no light, keeping them plunged into a state of perpetual evening. Candles were lit, as many as could be afforded, but it made no difference; the rooms were tombs of rotting wood and torn paper. "House" was a grand term for the broken down old shack, but it was what Lola knew. She could remember, vaguely, living elsewhere - a place with a garden - but the flowers were all that remained of that memory: flowers and light. Her whole world, now, had narrowed almost entirely to those two rooms: to the one where she now slept, the one that had formerly been the small parlour where they'd invite people to visit them - and the one where her mother tossed and sweated, dying slowly, the stench of it never quite abating, no matter how vigorously Lola scrubbed. She had slept there, too, before. The rooms had seemed like a home, if small, if poor. Now, they were a prison sentence that she could not look forward to the end of. When her mother died, she would have nothing. She knew what she was supposed to do, what she would do, what her mother had been training her to do: she would search for a job in a grand house, batting her eyelashes as she'd been taught, looking up at fancy gentlemen with her wide blue eyes, hoping to take one of them in, and so be taken in. They were tricks that she had never practiced on anyone save Sean, and she was not allowed to see him more, though she missed him; Sean was nearly as poor as they, her mother had said, and he would only keep her down. Lola was too pretty, her mother said, to be so common. She must be pretty for a reason; she must be made for greater things, for finer places. Lola didn't know about such places - not in any realistic sense; her mother had tried to explain them to her, but she'd never worked in one, herself, and her stories were all second-hand. So they dreamed about manors and estates together during her mother's lucid moments, of the feasts and the fashion, the parties and the pageantry, and Lola spent the rest of her hours trying to keep her own small, dark world clean and her mother comfortable. But the day was approaching. It was a fact that she knew was inescapable, that Grenth could not be staved off forever. She dreaded it, because it would mark the end of the life she knew, the end of the only person she had to love. She would be thrust into an existence that she wasn't truly prepared for, that she'd never had a choice in or a chance to question. Still, deep down, in the most secret reaches of her heart, she waited for it, too. She would be free. She could do as she was told, or not. She could run to Sean; she could become a bandit or join the carnival, she could find a job in a shop or serve drinks in a tavern. It was a guilty pleasure, the idea of turning away from her mother's wishes, if one she knew she'd never have the courage to attempt. It kept her thoughts away from the shadows and sickness when they were all that she had to keep herself company; it kept her from dwelling on the circumstances of her existence, on the solitude, on the despair. But it could not keep death from claiming her mother.

The road was dark as she walked toward home, the memory of that knife-point pressing to her throat still as fresh in her mind as everything that came after. Her hand strayed to her neck, fingertips grazing the bruise left there by a lover's teeth, and she smiled faintly to herself, a sense of satisfaction, however temporary it might prove to be, washing over her. A sound caught her attention - the scuffle of a boot against the dusty street - and her head snapped in its direction, her violet eyes narrowing, her hand moving to the grip of her sword. It took her only a moment to spot the dark silhouette of a man in the shadows, and her head tipped to one side as she drummed her fingers against the cool metal of her blade, the action lazy, her hair tossing against her bare shoulder, her chest hidden from view by an illusion conjured to replace the torn upper portion of her ruined dress. "May I help you?" Delirium asked brightly, beaming at the shadowy figure. She swayed in place, rocking girlishly on her heels, her free hand straying upward to twirl a few blonde tresses. "Your coin," he said in a low voice, a pistol materializing from the shadows, pointed directly at her stomach. Delirium clicked her tongue, her brow furrowing and her mouth forming a small, childish pout. The hand not on her sword dropped to the chains at her other hip, and she shook her head exaggeratedly, making her hair bounce. "I only allow certain rogues to steal from me," she chirped, her pout becoming a frown. "You seem neither charming nor particularly well dressed. You're not even wearing proper leathers." Displeased by her scrutiny, the man lurched forward and Delirium paced back, tsking; she moved easily in her heeled boots, her lush figure sweeping away with the fluid grace of an experienced dancer. She hummed softly, toying with the thief, darting one way and then the next, knowing full well that a gunshot sounding so near the centre of the city would be something he'd prefer to avoid. "Don't blink," she warned, her voice sing-song eyes sparkling with mischief. She watched him closely, waiting for him to fail to heed her warning - and then she was gone, the soft swell of her breast pressed to his back, the blade of her sword drawing a thin line of blood from his throat. "I warned you," she whispered into his ear.