“Please take a seat.”
She sat on the armchair opposite him, her shoulders turned enough to keep his attention, looking past her instead of landing.
Along the walls, she saw steel caught by the light at varying angles, blades mounted in ranks, some heavy, some slender, all kept within easy reach. Two swords pulled her back more than once, no matter where she looked: an Ulencia sword, and another kept hidden, wrapped in black cloth. The contrast was intriguing.
Between the weapons, the plaster gave way to paper. Sketches pinned and repinned, corners curling, lines layered over lines in graphite and ink. Designs abandoned mid-stroke shared space with forms worked and reworked to exhaustion. Esra’s art.
On the kitchen table, she noticed a square of cut foil dusted with traces of brown powder, which she recognised as the infamous star-mushroom.
She shifted her weight. The rug beneath her shoes yielded slightly, the nap dense, almost warm. Black fur coarse, the hide left whole. It carried the faint, stubborn presence of something that had once been very much alive. A direwolf.
The notepad lay on her lap, thumb pressed against it as she tugged her stubborn, tight skirt down. The red fabric pulled back the instant she let go.
Glass touched glass at the sideboard. Esra poured the liquor, line rising cleanly, stopping exactly where he wanted it. He watched the liquid, not her; he didn’t really need.
She looked around, big eyes lingering on the space between things, until they caught on a round, sealed jar. Inside, a glowing golden lily floated, rotating on itself.
Everything was so beautiful, telling its own story, but each trinket made her feel on edge.
When he finally turned with the two glasses, the corner of his mouth lifted. He handed her one.
She accepted it, but a second too late. Her fingers touched his knuckles before immediately retreating to her lap.
For a fraction of a second, something seemed to creep under her skin, a crawling sensation that threatened to swallow her whole.
“Are you all right?”
Her answer came too quickly. “Yes, yes,” followed by a small burst of nervous laughter.
She set her glass down again without drinking, her eyes skimming to his hands, then away.
Esra noted the pattern. The hesitation. The stubborn hunger that made someone uneasy between their legs. The way attention slid toward him and immediately retreated, as if drawn by something they didn’t know they wanted. Sex.
Up close, her eyes held a vivid blue beneath the soft disorder of dark waves. He searched in her complexion the seed of a Menschen, the Blue-Ones, but still she had this naivety of a human. He scrutinised her, but more to feed his bored curiosity than chase.
He took the far end of the couch, one ankle crossed over the other knee, glass balanced loosely in his hand.
She cleared her throat.
“I was expecting something…”
Her hands spread, making a motion of something growing.
“Something?”
“Big,” she said, then rushed to fill the word. “A mansion. A penthouse. You know. Big coin.”
His eyes moved once, slowly, around the room. The couch. The table. The walls close enough to touch.
“This works,” he said. “Bedroom. Kitchen. Bathroom. Living room.” A faint smile. “Only one person lives here.”
“But you’re the founder of Eann. It’s the biggest name in fashion history since—”
“Since the Summerqueen era.” He nodded. “I know. I was there.”
Her face lit up.
“So why are you—”
“I lived in a palace larger than a city,” he said, cutting in gently.
The smile faded, but didn’t disappear.
“When you have everything, too much starts to feel like nothing.”
She froze, then bent over her notepad, pen racing.
“That’s… that’s a very good sentence. I’m going to steal that one.”
He tipped his glass once, just enough to set the liquor moving.
“So,” he said, eyes lifting to her at last, “why are you really here?”
She hesitated, then nodded to herself.
“They’re filming another documentary about the Summerqueen, Eura—”
His brow rose just enough to cut her off.
“Another?!”
“Another,” she confirmed.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The glass turned in his fingers.
“And you need me to confirm what they’ve already decided,” he said. “That she is cruel. Unstable. A spectacle that conveniently explains everything. Selfish, arrogant, spoiled. A madwoman who didn’t see the means to reach her goals.”
He smirked, amused.
“But they never seem to mention how extraordinary she is in bed, or out of it.”
She shook her head, too fast.
“No. That’s not— what I thought was…” She searched for footing. “Who better than the Uncrowned King to tell her story through his own?”
He studied her through the veil of the alcohol, the room blurring behind the curve of the glass. After a moment, he swept his long golden hair back over his shoulder.
“I’m not the only story that tells hers,” he said quietly. “She was not alone. None of us would allow it, even when she tried to push every single one of us. We couldn’t.”
“I know,” she said, then added, almost apologetically, “but you’re the only one with a press office.”
“Did you fuck Paul?”
“Frank.”
“Oh. Really?”
“It wasn’t that hard.”
“Really? Must have been disappointing.”
Microscopic scars encircled his mouth, the faint suggestion of old stitches, and it curved again. He took his time with his drink this time, letting it linger before swallowing, then leaned closer, close enough that the space between them narrowed without quite closing.
“Your name?” he said.
“Muna Dragustea.”
He tilted his glass in a slow circle.
“That’s a very Menschen name, but you are…?”
She knew what he was asking for and reached for the small brooch at her collar, unpinning it. The fabric shifted, opening just enough to reveal her generous cleavage as she pressed a fingertip to her skin. A bead of red surfaced, bright.
“Human. That’s what red blood means, right?”
“Rotblut.” His attention flicked to the blood, then back to her eyes. “A human chasing the story of the Sun,” he murmured. “What are you really after?”
She didn’t look away this time.
“The truth. I think the world deserves it.” A beat. “And I think she does too. And it seems, you more than anyone.”
The smile finally faded.
“She does. She didn’t deserve what they are writing about her,” he said. “Eura is… I mean was… She was.”
She waited.
The moment stretched long enough for the room to settle back into itself. Esra did not move, did not rescue her from the pause. For a brief moment, he was back at Whitestone with her, happy.
At last, Muna reached into her bag. The recorder emerged from between papers and notebooks, heavier than it looked. She set it on the table between them, carefully, placing it exactly in the centre.
A soft click. Then the faint whir.
“Interview recording in Antares, Summer 554. With…” She hesitated. “Let’s start with your name?”
He glanced at the machine, then back at her.
“Esra Ann.”
“You’re more than just a name.”
“It will do,” he said. “My friends called me Ann.”
Muna nodded, already adjusting, pen held firmly but not touching paper.
“You were born and raised in Ormgrund. The Fisherman District.”
“Correct,” he said. “You did your homework. I lived on a small island called Maria-Se.”
“So, Mr Ann, how does your story begin? In a little fisherman’s island?”
He did not answer right away. His vivid blue eyes, marked around with scars resembling tiny dots, drifted past her, to a place the recorder could not see.
“With a dream,” he said at last. “That became my dearest personal nightmare.”
The dream always began the same way.
Esra felt his body surface beneath layers of wool and silk. Pillows crowded around him, too many to be practical, softness brushing bare skin, conspiring to keep him where he was. His body lay half-covered by golden lilies, heat trapped and lingering.
He felt happy. True, bright happiness that he couldn’t understand. That he had never felt before.
There was sweetness on his tongue, the faint crumble of pastry, cinnamon, and the flavour of honey in the air.
Then came the sound. Soft. Careless.
The small guilt of someone chewing too quickly, swallowing before the next bite, trying not to be noticed. A petty crime taken in secret, a little too much, a little too fast.
He never needed to open his eyes to know he wasn’t alone.
Esra opened his eyes to his reflection caught in a silver platter at the bedside. But who he saw was her again.
Vivid blue eyes met his through the warped shine, framed by hair of gold that slipped loose, half-concealing her face. She was smiling.
Her wings fell around her, following the lines of her body as naturally as breath.
The words left him before he could stop them. She spoke, not him.
“Did you save a bite for me, my love?”
She turned just in time to catch herself, lips pressed together as a laugh threatened to escape.
Reflected in the platter’s dull shine, he sat half-draped in sheets, wings spilling down his back like a translucent mantle. In his hands, a plate held nothing but the collapsed evidence of an apple pie: crumbs, a smear of filling, guilt no longer avoided.
“Good morning,” he said, swallowing the last mouthful.
She moved to sit beside him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his, arranging her expression into something resembling fake anger. She could feel his embarrassment like a warm ripple and beneath it, not a trace of regret.
“You didn’t think,” she said, “that I might be hungry? Starving? Weak?”
He glanced down at the empty plate. “No.”
“Sometimes I think you’d choose an apple pie over me.”
She sighed theatrically, the corner of her mouth betraying her.
He looked up at her then, caught between defence and amusement.
“It doesn’t pain you,” he said. “You’re mocking me.” A pause. “And trying to make me feel guilty. I can also feel you, you know?!”
He shifted.
“Besides, I told the boys to bring you breakfast later. You were asleep. I thought I—”
“Apple pie?”
He blinked.
“Of course not,” he said, a little too quickly. Then, narrowing his eyes, “Did you want? Really wanted?”
At last, she laughed, the sound giving way as she leaned into him, resting her head against his shoulder.
“I dreamed last night,” she said.
He tilted his head slightly. “A good one?”
She considered it.
“I don’t know. I never remember them.”
“If it doesn’t speak to your Saat,” he said lightly, “then it was only a dream that belongs behind the Veilla.”
“Maybe.”
She smiled into his skin.
“Or maybe this is the dream, and none of it is real.”
He huffed a quiet laugh.
“I could believe that.” A pause. “Which would make me your dream.”
She lifted her face and kissed him, his lips still carrying the taste of apple and cinnamon.
“Yes,” she said. “You are.”
The tent flap flew open without warning.
A boy stepped in, hair tied into a careless knot, a black robe hanging loose on his narrow frame.
“Knock! You need to knock, Magi!” Yeso snapped, already moving, wings sweeping forward as he reached for the sheets to cover her.
The boy blinked.
“There’s no door,” he said, glancing back at the fabric. “What was I supposed to knock on?”
Yeso dragged in a breath and let it out slowly.
“What is it?”
“Balenos,” the boy said. “The centaur’s calling for you. The humans broke their own treaties again.”
“Tell them I’m coming.”
The man looked at her, and all the colour drained from his face.
“What’s happening, my love?”
She turned back toward the platter.
In its dull shine, something was wrong.
Esra could see the fine lines drawing themselves closed around her eyes, her mouth, neat and precise, as if sewn by an invisible hand. Before they sealed, something slipped desperately free from her lips, dark and quick, skittering out of sight.
A spider.
“Zonnestra!”
The man’s voice broke the tent, calling her name again and again, growing louder, desperate, until it stretched thin and began to dissolve.
She tried to answer. No sound came.
Esra tried too, but nothing.
She tried to see, but only darkness met her stitched eyes, and Esra was blind.
She tried to move. Esra, too, could do nothing but let it happen.
Again.
Esra tore awake, lungs burning, his skin drenched with sweat…
" […] I. A Magi may not be owned, commanded, bound, or claimed by oath, by crown, by council, by house or by blood. But it is commanded by Saat. […] " from the Handbook of Advanced Elemental Theories and Practical Applications for the Trial of the Elements by Professor Edgar O. Duvencrune