Page 55 of A Theory of Dreaming
Preston said nothing. He figured it would confound Southey more than anything, to be faced with passionless silence. But his blood was pulsing hotly and his heartbeat roared in his ears.
Southey was undeterred. “You don’t seem too impaired to me, though you pride yourself on your restraint, don’t you? But you’d have to be potted and mad to think that you deserve her.”
Very pointedly, Southey’s gaze slid over Preston’s shoulder, to Effy. She had one hand clasped in her pearl necklace, anxiously twisting the strand. Her face, which had been ruddy with laughter, now turned utterly pale.
Preston’s voice came out in a rasping whisper. “What did you say?”
“I said, you must be delusional, if you believe you’ve the right to bed a pure-blooded Llyrian girl,” Southey said. “What does her father think of you defiling his precious daughter?” He gave Effy a languid, lecherous stare. “You’re too beautiful to waste yourself on him. Come on, then—I’ll show you what it’s like to lie with a baron’s son.”
He took a step toward her, arm outstretched. What overcame Preston then was beyond thought, beyond reason, beyond even articulation. It was pure, white-hot rage that rose like bile in his throat. A single beat passed, the tick of blood behind a bruise.
And then he had his hands at Southey’s throat.
His fingers bunched the front of Southey’s shirt, forcing him backward. He slammed him into the wall, hard enough to make the paintings rattle on their hooks.
Southey was at first too bewildered to fight back, too drunk. He started to claw at Preston’s grip in a clumsy way, only managing to nick him with his fingernails. But he was spitting, choking, foaming with fury. He swiped the side of Preston’s face, hard enough to make his skin sting, and that was enough—enough to make Preston’s rage rise and consume him. With his hands still grasping the front of Southey’s shirt, he hurled him to the ground.
The other partygoers—Southey’s friends—leaped out of the way. With Southey supine on the floor beneath him, Preston raised his fist and brought it down fiercely upon Southey’s face. Southey howled.
The impact reverberated through Preston’s own arm, but he couldn’t feel the pain. He couldn’t feel anything except the surging, nauseous pulse of adrenaline. And anger. And hate. The thought flitted through his mind, like a bird thudding against a windowpane.
I could kill him.
But he was snapped quickly from that preoccupation. Southey had managed to get his arm up and strike him back. It was not a solid, knuckled punch—instead, he jammed the flat of his hand under Preston’s nose.
His glasses shattered, and blood spurted everywhere.
Vision rippling, shards of glass crunching, blood making his own skin and Southey’s slippery, Preston struck him again. And again. In the slightly removed part of his consciousness, he heard Effy screaming. He heard Lotto cheering. And then, at last, twostrong-armed porters, who had been supervising the ball, gripped him by the shoulders and hauled him off Southey.
Southey remained moaning and twitching on the floor, while the porters heaved Preston to his feet. He didn’t realize how hard he had been breathing until he was upright again, coughing and spluttering, and still shot through with the bitterest, blackest hate.
Nineteen
Dearest Clementina,
We read fairy stories and dreamed of those knights in shining armor. Brave, loyal, clever, and good. They littered the earth with the corpses of slain dragons and climbed the ivy to reach us in our secret towers. Now, in my advanced age, I have come to wonder what lies beneath the helmet and mail. These knights—are they rageful? Are they callous? Or worse—are they simply mortal, given to all the passions and tempers of ordinary men? I find such a thought so difficult to bear. Would that I could still believe in the untarnished gold of our girlhood heroes.
—fromLetters & Annals, by Antonia Ardor, 124 AD
Effy was shaky and almost numb. She watched, unable to move, almost unable to breathe, at the scene unfolding before her.
After several moments straining against the porters’ grip, Preston’s body at last went limp. He stopped struggling, and the porters hesitantly let go of his arms. He stumbled slightly forward, hand raised to stanch the flow of blood from his nose.
Lotto moved to catch Preston before he tipped over, slinging Preston’s arm over his shoulder, while Effy knelt to the ground. Her brain was not working, only her body. She picked up the mangled remains of his glasses—the lenses cracked and shattered, the frames bent beyond repair.
“Effy, stop.” Preston’s voice was muffled but sharp. “It doesn’t matter.”
But you can’t see without them.She couldn’t manage to find the words. Instead, she stood up, trembling, cradling the crushed glasses in her hands.
Southey scrambled to his feet. Blood ran down the front of his shirt and there was already a garish purple bruise swelling his left eye.
“You could’ve killed me!” he screeched. “Argantian scum—”
“Oh, like you weren’t begging for it,” Lotto shot back.
“Enough,” broke in one of the porters. “You’re both in deep trouble.”
“He started it!” Southey bawled. “I was just making idle chat—”
