Chapter Fourteen The Villainess on a Mission of Seduction

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Villainess on a Mission of Seduction

Lia was dying to meet her new mother and sister, starving for family and love. Hope is dangerous. When you run to an embrace, beware a knife in the back.

Time of Iron , ANONYMOUS

T he Night Market was like the palace in one way: both lived on the edge. It was unlike the palace in every other way. Past the many-coloured stalls was an ash-grey stretch of land that must be the graves of the unmarked dead. The stalls were rickety nods to structure bound with bright cloth, balanced precariously along the sudden drop that was the dread ravine. Beyond the edge was a profound dark, lit by the occasional scarlet flare. On the verge of darkness, Rae saw a lot of light and life. A performer rolled a flaming hoop, circling people cross-legged on the earth and playing a board game with boards and pieces made of cracked bone. Key peered at the board, clearly unsettling the players. He watched like a hawk, which was to say he gave the impression a disembowelling was imminent.

When Rae caught his eye, he sketched a brief diagram in the air.

"What's that?"

"That's how the black pieces can win," said Key.

They strolled on, though the player moving black pieces was now making urgent noises indicating Key should stay.

The moans of ghouls in the ravine were almost drowned out by skin-covered drums thumping and harp strings strumming. Rae's heart followed the drums, warming to the idea of dancing on the edge.

If she was her real age and not sick, and she met Key at a club, would she ask? She risked a glance his way. Key was peering with mild interest into the depths of the ravine, profile outlined by the darkness, red sparks reflected in his eyes. She thought she might.

Rae moved to the music, her new assets jiggling. After her previous wasted and withered body, having abundant flesh was a thrilling shock every time. "If we'd never met before and you saw me at the Night Market, what would you do?"

There was a thoughtful pause. Swaying to the beat, Rae arched her neck and glanced coquettishly over her shoulder. Key was nowhere to be found.

Until she looked ahead. Key stood directly before her, one gloved hand on her waist. The other held a blade to her throat.

"I'd rob you at knifepoint." Key touched his forehead lightly against hers. The edge of his smile brushed her cheek, as the edge of the blade kissed her throat. "But I think you're pretty."

Rae's fingers danced along his belt, then curled around its leather edge. Her mouth curled too. "How flattering. Look down."

She held the knife she'd taken from his belt in position. Below the belt.

"Are you sure you want to rob me?" Rae murmured teasingly. "Don't make any sudden movements."

Key threw back his head and laughed with abandon. "You're full of surprises. Like a magic trick in the shape of a woman."

He tucked away his own blade. For an instant, she had him at her mercy. He wrapped his fingers around both her hand and the knife, taking the blade and using his hold on her to spin her beyond reach of other weapons.

Rae spun back in towards him. "Do you like dancing?"

"Never learned."

She thought of his advice on how the black pieces could win.

"Do you like board games?"

She'd never considered Key having hobbies. Even main characters only got plot-relevant hobbies, like combat skills, painting their beloved, or meticulously writing out their own life stories. Minor characters seldom got hobbies at all.

Key nodded cautiously. "I think so."

"You think so?"

"Nobody ever asked me what I like before. People don't want to play with me, but board games and puzzles look fun. I enjoy thinking things out."

That made sense. Being as good at fighting as Key wasn't a purely physical skill. He must make and swiftly adapt plans to bring someone down, while everyone dismissed him as a thug. Or a henchman. Everyone got him wrong. Who was he really?

" Prince of princes, emperor divine. Hope reborn, love of mine. Oh how we adore you, we are waiting for you, when will you come home? "

Two girls in cheap gold great goddess costumes danced past, laughing and kissing and singing the song for the dead. A king-in-waiting, ladies-in-waiting, a Palace on the Edge. This whole country lay in wait.

Rae felt guilty past the telling of it. This was the festival for the Death Day. Key was an abyss foundling. All children abandoned at the edge of the dread ravine counted their ages from this day.

"Happy birthday!"

He blinked. "Happy what?"

Rae gripped his hand in a distressed vice. She kept meticulous calendars. She'd never forgotten a friend's birthday before. "You're twenty today. What do you want?"

Sounding amused, Key drawled: "You know what I want."

Oh.

The dread ravine provided mood lighting. Nature had truly gone high drama on Key's face. His cheekbones were cliffs with little caves underneath. The simmering glow of faraway ravine fires stroked red fingers along the angles of bone, and lit the ends of his eyelashes. Darkness claimed the hollows beneath.

They stood close, hands linked at the edge of the abyss. Her red velvet cloak whipped around them in the wind off the ravine, circling like blood trails in water. There was a wicked thrill in wielding this new body, which might inspire contempt but never pity. Rae closed the distance.

A birthday did deserve a kiss.

It wasn't a sweet kiss. His mouth was faintly, intriguingly bitter. He tasted like stirred ashes, and the awakening of fire.

"Actually," Key murmured when their lips parted, "I meant money."

When sheer embarrassment propelled Rae backward, he held her elbow, nuzzling his nose against hers to share a laugh and a breath. "This was nice too."

This close, she could see how he'd just missed heroic good looks. His nose and neck were both slightly out of proportion. When he stretched out his neck a certain way, head tilted at a weird angle, he seemed more hunting animal than human. His villain's mouth was made for twists, sneers and insincere smiles, but he looked slightly off when he grinned. Maybe the writer never actually gave him a real smile.

Looking at Key's imperfect smile was oddly soothing. Rae told the story in her mind of how she wasn't completely mortified.

So he hadn't been asking for a kiss. Reasonable, as she was his mentor and he probably had a crush on the most beautiful woman alive. Still, kissing handsome young men was standard villainess behaviour.

She tried to laugh. "Villains occasionally do sexy things to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to sin. Random make-out scenes, revealing garments, and excessive lounging against walls. Nothing that matters."

When she turned away from him and the ravine, he used their linked hands to whirl her back again. The drums of the Death Day beat hard. Her eyes were level with his mouth. Villains often had cruel mouths. As mouths went, Key's was a homicide.

"If nothing matters," murmured the Villain of the Cauldron, "all that matters is making it good."

He kissed her and Rae saw red. Crimson fire burned away even the dark behind her eyelids. It was a long time since she'd been kissed, and she had never before been kissed on the edge of impossibility with so far to fall.

Once more this body turned traitor, flesh weak, evil in its very bones. How strange to have blood roaring into heat beneath her skin, after being half dead and cold for so long. Key ducked under the shadow of her velvet hood as he slanted his mouth against hers, gloved hand sliding up her spine to pull her in against him, her breasts crushed with slight delightful pain against his chest. Sparks flew from the dread ravine like fireflies dancing around their heads, her eyes were dazzled, and her body felt real under his hands. Rae slid greedy hands into his hair and kissed him ravenously.

She felt dazed by desire, the mere fact of an eager ache between her thighs shocking. She'd believed she would never feel these impulses again. For so long her body had seemed made only for pain. Apparently Lady Rahela's body was a harlot in the sheets and a harlot in the streets.

Key trailed his mouth down the line of her throat where his knife had rested. She had forgotten pain was only one side of a coin and this the other. The sting of needles was bitter cold, but the sting of his sharp teeth was so sweet. Blood might rush to parts of her body and make bruises. Equally insistent for attention, blood could rush and pound to produce a different ache.

Alight with discovery, they moved against and upon each other. Key murmured in the hot space between neck and ear, "Can I kneel at the altar?"

"Sorry, what?"

He lifted his head to kiss her mouth, deep and filthy. "May I speak in tongues at nature's treasury?"

She smiled bewilderment into the kiss. She didn't know what he was talking about and didn't care, as long as he didn't stop.

"What is the point of the king?" Key sighed, and slid down along her body to his knees.

"Oh, you mean going down ."

They were in public! Villains were off the chain.

He grinned up at her, perfectly and gloriously shameless. "Is that what you say in the palace? Seems oddly unspecific. Where would I be headed, the knees?" His hand curled around her ankle, no higher, but in this world that was electrifying scandal. He leaned forward and tilted an evil smile up at her. She felt his breath warm through her silk gown. "Maybe not."

"We shouldn't," Rae murmured, half alarmed and half thrilled to hear it come out as a purr. The idea shouldn't seem both filthy-wrong and bone-shakingly right. She shouldn't be tempted.

"Absolutely, we shouldn't." Key's laugh was a simmering thing, low and fierce as the fires down deep in the abyss. "It would be wrong and wicked."

Years of feeling she'd missed the bus of life, lost every chance at youthful adventure or maturity. Embarrassing not to have sex, embarrassing to still want magic. Being a final girl who wouldn't even survive, her fate all horror.

There were times when you had to ask yourself, what would a true villain do?

She lifted a hand gleaming with blood-red stones to toy with his wild hair. The flames of the ravine crackled like laughter. Key's eyes gleamed.

She could be wanton, and blame Lady Rahela.

The raucous laugh of a drunk sounded in her ear. A hand pawed at her ass. "Come with me, sweetheart. I'll show you how a real man—"

"Dies?"

Swift as a breath, Key rose. His voice was calm. His gesture was negligent. His knife opened the man's throat. Blood spewed from the wound and Key shoved him casually aside. The stranger was suddenly the one dancing at the festival, twitching in his last throes. As he tumbled over the edge of the abyss with his throat cut, his feet were still kicking out in a clumsy jerking protest at his own death.

"Sorry." The bright glint of the knife disappeared up his sleeve. Key sounded genuinely regretful. "I know you hate blood."

So a minor villain had murdered a nameless character in the slums. That was barely a footnote in the story, and the dead man was a creep who groped girls in the street.

Rae shrugged the matter off. "I don't care."

A chill had quenched all heat in her body. She refused to care.

Key regarded her approvingly. "You don't mind death. Not the way other people mind it."

The careful way he phrased that, the intent way he watched her, gave Rae a sudden idea. She chose her words carefully.

"It's hard for me to think of the characters around us as real people. Do you understand? Are you like me?"

Key's grey eyes went eagerly bright, silver as a magic blade. "I think so."

Rae grasped his arm. "You walked into the book too?"

"Sorry," said Key. "What book?"

His face was blank as a page with no story on it yet.

Rae sagged. "Ah. You're a sociopath. My bad."