Festivals are rehearsals for a kinder world no one has built.Selivarra of the Scales
AVYLENA
“Avylena. Sit.”
Faerwyn says it before I get both boots inside my quarters.
She has already taken over the room. My table has vanished beneath paint trays, brass jars, loops of chain, and leather straps cut for festival wear. My comb has been shoved against my prayer cord. Red paint stains two of her fingers. A fine chain clicks in her braid when she lifts her head and takes me in.
That one look is all she needs. She sees the set of my shoulders, the stiffness riding my spine from the yard, the part of me that never quite comes off shift, and decides for both of us.
I set down my gloves and sit.
My quarters are narrow, built for rank and sleep rather than comfort, but the window gives me the whole eastern drop of Starlit City. Far below, the Festival of Embers is waking. Fire rings bloom around the lower plazas. Public Mirrors flare awake one by one along the main lanes, tall panes of polished light set in brass. Beyond them the city rises in terraces, bridges, towers, and the blue civic current running under the streets like veins beneath skin. The black needle of the Arcanum cuts the far skyline. Whatever else the city is, it knows how to make power look beautiful at dusk.
Faer dips two fingers into silver and touches them to the base of my throat. The paint goes on cool.
“You look ready for inspection.”
“I came off shift an hour ago.”
“You had an hour to let go.”
“I took off my armor. That is the extent of my miracle.”
Her mouth curves. “Then I am here to improve on it.”
She draws one spiral, then another beneath it, and links them down my collarbone with the same steady control she uses on a blade. We have spent too many years beside each other for hesitation. She knows where I hold tension, and every touch loosens another piece of it.
Faer switches to shadow-blue powder and brushes it low over my hip where the harness will leave skin bare.
“Sit still already. We are never getting done if you keep moving.”
“I moved once.”
“You thought about moving. I saw it.”
“You enjoy this too much.”
“I enjoy being right.” She leans back to judge the effect, then reaches for more. “And I am very right tonight.”
She is. Faer looks like trouble before the paint even finishes its work. The red bands crossing her shoulders and chest pull heat from her copper skin. Her green eyes catch the room every time she moves. High elves are not supposed to come with that kind of coloring, and Faer has never once wasted the advantage. People look twice when they meet her eyes, then try for a third look without getting caught. She takes that attention the way some people take coin, as something owed.
She catches me watching and smiles. “There she is.”
“I was sitting right here.”
“Your body was. The rest of you has been undressing him in your head for a week.”
Heat moves under my paint. “Faer.”
“What? I’m being supportive.”
“You’re being obscene.”
“No, obscene is how long you’ve both been circling this without doing anything useful.” She taps my sternum with one paint-stained finger. “Tonight, let him look. Then decide if you want more than looking.”
She does not even have to say Sin’s name to bring him into the room with us. Rule One never felt heavy when it was only doctrine. Never bind your heart to a mage. You may be ordered to kill one. When she fastens the last of her own wrist chains, the links chime against each other.
She circles me once, tightening one strap, loosening another, settling the harness where it belongs. The leather sits skin-tight over my chest and hips.
“Stand.”
I rise, and she steps back to study me.
For a moment I let myself see what she has made of me. Silver winding down my throat. Blue low on my hips. Skin left bare because a festival runs on looking and I looked exactly how I wanted to look: painted, pleased, and ready to make the whole night notice.
“Better,” she says.
Faer bumps my shoulder with hers. “Tonight is a festival. You are allowed one bad idea.”
“One?”
“Start there.”
A real smile finally breaks through. She points at me.
“Keep that. Now you look worth dragging into public.”
By the time we come down from the Fortress terraces, the whole lower city is awake.
Drums, then the woven roar of thousands of voices under the hiss of the skyrail overhead. Small plazas open out of the crowd with fire pits sunk in brass rings, and shrine posts fed by the same current that lights the whole district.
Too many of the brass plates wear my mother’s sigil. Of course she had found a way to put her name on the night.
Faer moves through the crowd beside me with the confidence of a woman who expects space to open and has been proved right often enough to stop doubting it. People look. People try to hide the looking. Two painted women like us will do that anywhere in the city, and here the effect widens lanes.
We find Sin near the edge of the main tent. He is standing still, a head taller in the middle of all that motion, and that steadiness catches me before anything else does. The crowd shifts around him and makes him easier to see. Broad shoulders. Silver curls already damp with heat. Storm-blue skin. A black vest molded to his body. Hands built for work and much worse decisions.
Mage. Drow. The yard taught me those words like warnings.
My body learned them another way.
He sees the silver at my throat and stills. His gaze follows it down my collarbone before he drags it back to my face. That brief look warms me under the paint.
Faer elbows him. “Blink, mage.”
He exhales and gathers himself. “You both look unfair.”
“Good,” Faer says.
A stall works purple crab over coals, shells bright and wet in the firelight. My mother would call the smell vulgar and then have servants clear the room quickly enough to preserve her dignity.
Faer buys two cracked claws and shoves one at me. “Eat.”
I bite into it. My wrist charm warms over my pulse. At the edge of the crowd, Scaleborn stand in brass collars with heat rippling off their skin. They hold the perimeter while everyone else pretends the night belongs to them. Their eyes move through the crowd.
We push into the main tent. Light, heat, and bass hit almost at once. The boards under my boots thrum with the music. Rigging throws color up the canvas ceiling. Bodies move everywhere, some with skill, some with wine and courage doing the work for them.
Sin ends up behind me in the crush, his chest brushes my back whenever the floor shifts. He is trying to keep his composure.
We pass a glitter bowl at a paint station and I dip two fingers into violet powder and flick it into his curls before he can stop me. A little catches in his lashes when he blinks.
He gives me a look.
“You deserved that,” I say.
“For what?”
“For standing there with that face.”
Faer laughs around a mouthful of crab. Sin mutters something in drow and wipes at his hair. The glitter only spreads.
The current of bodies carries us out of the tent and into Mirror Plaza. Raised docks sit like public altars in brass rings. People lean hip to hip at the rails while timers sell them one bright minute at a time. Light from the panes throws shifting bands across cheeks, braids, and bare painted skin, making the whole plaza look richer than it is.
We slide into an open station. A brass placard wakes.
PANE 9 DOCK READY.
Concourse Services licensed to House Aevorin.
Of course.
I dock my pocket pane into the lower slot. The larger pane wakes, splits, and frames us. A ring of light climbs the brass rail as the capture starts.
“Don’t,” Sin says.
“Too late.”
He looks up, sees himself glittered and unwilling, and winces. “You are cruel.”
“I’m preserving history.”
Faer leans in beside him. “Smile.”
Above us, one of the Crown sconces hiccups. Two short blinks. One long. Then steady gold again.
Sin’s thumb taps once against his cuff. Then twice more.
He saw it. So did I.
End of excerpt
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