Page 114 of To Touch A Silent Fury
Vellintris was a peaceful dragon, Chaethor replied, her tone utterly mournful.
I stomped along with the rest, my body rigid, like a soldier marching to someone else’s drum. They called out my father’s name. “Braxthorn! Braxthorn! Braxthorn!”
I looked at him, then. The man who had forced Kallamont to kill his own mother. The man who had killed a dragon whohad never harmed a person to my recorded recollection. His eyes shone as he stared out into the chanting faces. He glanced my way, and his face soured. There must have been something in my gaze that gave me away.
Norgallin the Hammer, who had killed the dragon Andillin, stole her egg, and subdued the five kingdoms. Praevontil the Kind, who listened to his Moontouched brother until the very end.
Watch us, he declared. And yet, all I saw when I watched my father was a man so desperate to live up to them that he was nothing at all.
My father looked back to the crowd, and so did I, clapping as long as the last man, and then returned to my seat. I was glad that Tanidwen had not arrived in time to hear it.
It took me several minutes to acclimatise. I felt distanced from myself, as if one part was pinned atop a burial scaffold and the other was at the bottom of the Oktorok. Quaffing another drink helped, and the murmured congratulations forced me to conjure some kind of reply whilst men slapped my shoulder.
Eventually, it was Chaethor who brought me back, making some joke about Braxthorn’s clothing. It was not so shocking. I knew the death likely lay with him; I should have expected him to claim the action.
My embroidered golden tunic lay heavily around my chest in the warm air. Betraying my aunt’s ever strict advice, I unbuttoned the top two fastenings of my white shirt, exposing my collar to the stuffy air and finding some relief in it. I sighed and wet my already dry lips with my tongue, leaning back, and once again casting my eyes to the hallway door.
Tanidwen.
Blessed Edrin, it was unfair. Why had I given her Plonius? He was too good a tailor for me; withher, she was Mephluan remade. The Muse of the Five.
Thread Ersimmon had painted her as a blushing bride-to-be. It was effective and memorable. She was perfect in that moment, like snow at dawn.
Plonius rewrote her as an ancient goddess.
The emerald green gown clung to her waist before floating from her hips down to the floor. A gold bodice netted across her torso, extending up past the fabric of the gown to her collarbones and flaring out towards the tops of her bare and dusted arms. Her hair fell in the softest curls, and her eyes, needing nothing to be spectacular, somehow came to life, drawn and accentuated with golden browns. The only loss was her beautiful mouth, hidden behind golden beads that signalled her availability to every man in the room. Her skin sang against the gold and the green, the warmth of it in perfect complement to the richness of the colours against her.
Tanidwen Treleftir.
She was staring straight at me.
She held her skirt with her right hand, and her left trembled slightly.
I stood. She swallowed.
I had not taken one step before a man ducked into a deep bow before her, the depths of which would honour a queen.
Septillis? No. Another white-haired man. He straightened, and I only saw his braided white hair as he raised his arm to her. What Brother was here? I did not expect one.
Tanidwen smiled at him, and my heart skipped. By the Five, I was wrecked.
This was it, I could refute it no longer. She stayed in my mind through no guilt nor intrigue. Her deception could be damned, for I long understood it. I still wanted the girl, more than anything.
Cursed to fall for women who hated me. Or maybe just the same woman, in all her forms.
Edrin, she was beautiful.
And every man here saw it. I watched my brother watch Tanidwen, and it churned against me with such vehement anger I found it hard to concentrate. I forced myself to sit back down before too many noticed I had arisen.
As some kind of distraction from the woman I was unhealthily obsessed with, and the brother I wanted to kill, I watched him. The man who escorted her for her first dance.
Definitely a Brother from his stiff posture and formality, but not from the Sightlands, and certainly not one I was aware of. His hair was longer than we tended to wear it in the Triad, yet he wore the muted pastels I associated with the central Scentlands. Whowashe?
“Theollan of Lavendell.” A voice came from behind me, spoken close to my ear. I turned to find my aunt, Princess Derynallis, leaning over my chair, watching Tanidwen with cold eyes. I had been distracted indeed to let her creep up on me. “Arrived earlier today.”
“For what purpose?” I asked, keeping my tone as icy as hers. It was the only way to speak to her, with the same cold detachment she favoured in all things.
“He is a renowned scholar, apparently,” she said, coming to sit on the silk-covered chair beside me and glancing down at her dirt-free nails. “There is some matter of redrawing the northern borders.”
