Eleos slurped her soup, hiding a feline smile that crackled the air around them. Those black eyes watched him, gauging his reaction.

In a burst of fury, Tavlen flipped over his bowl and stood. The severed fingers rolled across the table with the heavy thuds only dead flesh could make.

Telei and Chant overturned their bench to stand. Fent brought his goblets to his chest, and Knif reached out to save the basket of bread from the broth that sloshed over the cracks in the wood.

Eleos licked the broth off her lips and stirred her meal. She watched the fingers tumble alongside the carrots and potatoes. "Not pretty, are they?" she asked, hostess warmth undercut by a dangerous edge.

The crowd had converged at the commotion, hemming them in like they were fish to be watched in a bowl. The dog snarled a series of growls, his thick sinew trembling with the thrill of an impending attack.

"This." Tavlen felt his voice come from somewhere deep and jagged in his chest. "Is a disgrace."

Gailit was shoving through the throngs. "Forgive her, lord dragon. Defective, I said, lord dragon."

But Eleos didn't so much as glance at her Head Lioness. Neither did Tavlen.

Chant blocked the woman from approaching, his war beast at his side. Whether it was the hand on the axe hilt or the canine's dripping red teeth, Gailit was deterred.

The tigress stared at the boiled pink fingers like they could speak to her. "Disgrace," she repeated, setting down her spoon and tilting her neck to the side for a crack. "Because you are a clean dragon, I assume. Coven purity laws and the rest."

Telei loomed behind her, his hands in fists. "Dead flesh is sacred," he was saying. "To feed it to a dragon—"

Tavlen silenced him with a flick of his wrist.

Eleos ran her eyes over the green and orange wool of the elk-skin's attire, a maliciousness alighting the contours of her face. "I figured since you shed the blood," she said, "you could drink the blood. Funny how these Coven laws work."

Fent prodded a dead finger with his spoon. "Where did you even get these?"

Eleos stood slowly, a tiger rising from the reeds. "From his wife," she spat. "She left them for me at the Cages. And you know what the cagers I spoke to said about you? About Nim? 'You know dragons, Lady. They take and take until they have all they want. What's some blood to them?'"

In a movement as sudden as Tavlen's had been, Eleos shoved her bowl of soup to spill alongside his. Rage tore her features.

"So now you have it, dragon Unyielding. The flesh and blood of the South!" She advanced on him. "So, I ask again, snake. What more does the good dragon want?"

One of the ribbons overhead began to smoke, her tone kindling Tavlen's impatience. Fent snatched it from its string before it could combust.

"Answers, tigress," Tavlen said quietly. "I want answers."

The tigress wrapped her hand around the black diamond down her chest. "Then, by all means, ask. But don't take my fingers, pray." She tilted her head in Gailit's direction. "The Kana don't condone violence."

"Of course they don't." The smell of dead flesh boiled in soup stuck to Tavlen's mouth, undermining her sentiment.

His gaze honed in on her like she were a flickering flame he was trying to decipher. Something in him locked her in his sights; making every stroke of gold on her face seem too bright, every grit of her teeth feel like a tightness in his own jaw.

Dragon focus.

It was an odd sensation—something he hadn't felt in years—that only came when dragons were on the hunt or being hunted. (And the predator-prey dynamic in this situation was conundrumous at best).

He must have frozen, studying her through his glare for two beats too long, because it was Fent who took up the interrogation. "If the Kana do not condone violence, how did they produce a killer like the Wing Ripper?"

Eleos tilted her head to answer over her shoulder but refused to let Tavlen out of her sight. "Dragons," she said simply.

Fent withdrew his pen, setting his small bottle of ink in the pool of broth on the table. "Dragons." He carefully wrote the word. "They trained him?"

"Ha. No." Eleos looked to the dead fingers in the soup. Her anger dampened with a cold weight. Grief, maybe; remorse. "But they pushed him to it."

"With the..." Fent flipped through his pages, balancing his book on a knee he'd propped on the bench. "Romna ordeal? Was that her name?"

Her shoulders tightened. "We don't need to go back that far. He broke his peace vows and was excommunicated. That's the end of it."

Tavlen leaned forward to catch her gaze; he felt safer with all that anger looking him dead in the eye. "And where is he now?"

Eleos let him look at her, her lips twisting in a wry, dead smile he felt strangely familiar with. "Surely the exile understands excommunication. We no longer keep in touch."

Gailit spoke from the crowd. "As I said, dragon. She has no answers I can not give you."

But everyone watched Eleos and the table, Gailit and the dragons too feverishly for that to be all.

Tavlen crossed his arms and settled back on his heels. "Let's return to Romna."

Eleos made a sound in her throat; a still-skin affecting a growl.

It made Tavlen laugh, a cruel sound he'd not heard from himself in months. "Rumours have it, kitten, that Romna's suicide was a fake." Tavlen gestured widely to the crowd. "Seven years later, might she be here? She must have been close to the Wing Ripper too. If I take her to the Coven's Temple for inspection... might our Wing Ripper come play hero again?"

He smiled at the way she coiled her temper in tight little fists at her side.

"My sister died those seven years ago, snake. The past you bring up is nothing but an old wound."

"Knif." Tavlen turned to the kid, eyes still on the little tigress in her gold chains. "Find me the sister. And her child."

Tavlen grinned at the stillness that overtook Eleos. He could almost feel the panic locking her bones.

Gailit tried to round the bear-skin, but Chant's beast snapped his teeth and advanced; slobber splattering her silk. The lioness growled at the beast, personally offended to be threatened by a dog.

Chant signalled Blade aside and advanced himself. Gailit straightened her red silks and retreated. "Please, dragon lord. Don't bother with the still-skin. We have nothing to hide. We are peaceful!"

"Silence, cat," Tavlen said.

Eleos crossed her arms, the black diamond clinking against her bangles. "Don't speak to my mother that way."

"Answer his questions, cub!" Gailit's growl was beginning to reverberate deeper; a rent to fur imminent.

"Go, Knif," Tavlen ordered. The crowd parted for the kid and Eleos reached to stop him.

Tavlen stepped in her way.

The tigress curled her fingers in the edge of Tavlen's cape instead, twisting the material as if she would rather it were his throat.

"Save your anger, kitten. If you have nothing to hide, we have nothing to find," Tavlen taunted, feeling her pulse spike in the place her wrist brushed against his arm.

Two ribbons above caught fire with a whoosh.

She was close, her eyes looking up at him with a hatred so deeply inset, Tavlen felt it burrow like an awl in his chest.

"I am so done being civil." Eleos pulled away like a wraith in black silk and stood on the table's bench.

Tavlen braced himself, expecting her to fly at him in attack. But she only snatched the burning ribbons from their strings and smothered them in the pool of soup.

She studied the ashes of colour in the broth, hands on her hips, jaw set.

"Careful, Eleos," Gailit warned. Chant preyed a step closer, ready to detain her.

The crowd leaned in, watching Eleos like one watched an eagle about to plummet.

"Well." Eleos impatiently flicked a wrist in Tavlen's direction (who found, to his embarrassment, he awaited her next move like everyone else). "Ask your question, snake."

His dragon focus held every inch of her. The hair falling from its heaped crown. The wine and panther and paint on her skin. The clink of bracelets as she flexed her hand.

Tavlen took a deep breath in through his teeth. He packed all the heat he could taste in the anger, the soup, the crowd into each word. "Where - is - your—"

Before he could finish, Eleos flew at him, her arm rising in a wide arch. "You tell me where my brother is!" she screamed. Something melted on her face in her temper; something half-crazed, half-desperate.

Tavlen prepared himself for a hit, but only got the tip of her finger pressed to his chest. "You drove him out of his home. His pride. Hell—his goddamned mind!" Her finger fell with each accusation. "And you ask me where he is?"

Tavlen wrapped his hand around hers; her skin cold under the burn of his palm. With contained fury, he lowered it back to her side.

She yanked her hand away. "Don't you dare deny it, snake. You and your kind. The scales that choke this land. Scales of violence and hate. Of bloodthirst and feuding and games." She spat the last word, stepping back with a harsh laugh.

"Where a man loses his own flesh!" She lashed out at the table, slapping the broth and splattering the crowd. They flinched, suddenly implicated. Eleos slowed her breath and laid her hands on the sodden wood. "Because he was loyal," she finished emptily.

"Listen here," Tavlen reached for her, needing to pin that cold flesh in a place he could manage all her fury. Something in him was growing, darkening in his mind. It rode the line between outrage. And guilt.

"No!" She ducked away from him, but found herself face to face with Telei. She turned the other way, only to find Fent tucking his notebook under his arm. And Gailit blocked by Chant and the dog.

She shoved the hair from her neck and turned to Tavlen, seething. "You made my mother the shame of her pride. Made my brother a killer. Snakes and serpents—you raped my sister!"

Her voice broke and she raised her face to the endless black sky, knotting her tears in her throat. She rubbed her hands up her cheeks, smearing black with gold, and reeled in a snagging breath. "So you tell me where my brother is. You should—for the sake of the sky—know far better than me."

A quiet echoed her words.

If she really was skinless (Tavlen had met so few still-skins in his life; he'd expected them to be as incomplete in self as they were in skin), Eleos wouldn't know that the dozens of creatures converged on that platform listened to the hitch of her breath. Intently holding their own for the way her bleeding heart slowed back to that cold and heavy tempo.

For a moment, even Tavlen himself couldn't hear anything but this tigress and the dripping of soup down the table. Ribbons rained around them in ash. They caught in her hair like grey snow.

The first thing Tavlen felt was the cool drip of adrenaline down his spine. Then a tension breaking between his ribs. With it came a hot rush of disbelief, outrage and indignation down his chest.

"Little tigress." He stalked closer. "I am not finding you very helpful."

She looked up with a sneer. "There is a reason I am not allowed to deal with snakes, dragon."

Tavlen's own sneer twisted in a smile. "Can't keep your pretty mouth shut?"

"Crush a snake's head or you'll find it in your bed."

"Another idiom." Tavlen was close enough to her now that his boots almost trod her toes. He grinned at her. "Forget to tell your sister that one?"

The tigress swelled with anger, fisting her hand in his shirt to drag him closer. He could smell the spice of broth on her tongue.

Then, a small voice sounded next to them. "Found the child, Unyielding."

Eleos released him, swivelling to Knif. She sagged with relief when the only thing the kid had to show for his find was a bloody lip and a yellow headscarf.

Tavlen frowned and snatched the satin from the boy.

"She, uh." Knif touched the edge of his swelling lip. "Didn't want to come. And the mother left early."

Tavlen pressed the scarf to his nose, breathing deeply. Under the blur of a scent muffler, he could smell a light coconut perfume. Shampoo, maybe. Damn the South and their chemistry. He tossed the scarf back to Knif. "Read it for me," he ordered.

Knif hesitated, his pale blue eyes flicking to Eleos.

"Don't," the tigress said. Her eyes were on the kid, but her fingers wrapped around Tavlen's wrist. "Leave the past out of this." There was the fraying in her tone, a desperation that made him smug.

He untangled his wrist from her grip. "If the girl is what I suspect she is, this violation of purity law is most definitely a concern of the present. As overseer, I have an obligation to keep our coasts clean."

Knif lifted the scarf to his nose, eyes still on Eleos. "Hair cream. Kana. The sea."

Tavlen held out an arm to keep Eleos from lunging for the scarf. "And?"

"And..." Knif balled the scarf in his fist.

Eleos shoved Tavlen's arm away. "Alright! Alright." She reached for the scarf and, this time, Knif let her take it. "I'll help. Only what I know, mind. Useless as it is."

She retreated to the edge of the crowd, wrapping the scarf around her palm; afraid Tavlen would take it from her.

Victory unfurled in Tavlen's chest alongside a deep satisfaction. He straightened his shirt. "Anything the tigress knows is a help."

"I hadn't heard from him in months," she spat.

Fent dipped his quill in his ink (which he'd rescued and reestablished on the twice-flooded table). "How many months?"

"That's hardly relevant." She tightened her grip on that scarf.

Gailit spoke from the sidelines. "You will answer, Eleos."

The tigress flinched. "Ten. Or more."

Probably around the time the Wing Ripper had left the queen's guard. But that was still months before he'd been seen with Ilina's glass. The chance of Eleos knowing anything of it was slim.

Fent updated his notes. "And this silence was unusual?"

"Yes." Eleos' gaze drifted to Gailit. "But I... recently received a missive."

"How recently?" Tavlen demanded.

She looked at him askance. "Tonight." Something within her was pulling from the crowd; her shoulders hunching, her hair falling in strands over her face. "But I burnt it. So you'll have to trust my word when I say he gave no hint as to his whereabouts other than that someone in the North owed him a favour."

Fent refreshed his ink. "And how'd you get this letter?"

The look she shot Fent was withering. "Someone in the North owed him a favour."

"And where'd you burn this letter?" Tavlen asked.

Eleos frowned and turned to the fires below the platform. "Down there. Though I can assure you I did the job properly."

Tavlen tsked a laugh through his teeth. "Show me."

Eleos wrapped her arms around herself as if losing her secrets left her cold. After brief consideration, she pivoted on her heel. "This way."

The crowd parted. Telei, Chant and the dog flanked the rear, with Fent at Tavlen's right and Knif dutifully shadowing the Worm with his inkwell. The festival-goers followed, a swarm of sparrows diving down the stairs after them. Gailit was at their head, reluctantly joined by her mate.

Eleos led them to a low rising fire pit on the celebration's outskirts and gestured to the orange flames. "As the snake requested."

Tavlen studied the fire. It was small and discontent; restless, but with too little fuel to breathe as it should. Tavlen braced himself and held his hand over the flames.

Fent crept closer to watch.

It had been a long time since Tavlen commanded fire that lived outside himself. But that night, under the eyes of hundreds and the disdain of a still-skin tigress, it came easy to him.

The yellow-tipped flame leapt from the pit, the thrill of Tavlen's attention rousing the simmering coals to a dance. The gold tendrils of fire licked his fingers with a sizzling kiss.

The crowd gaped. Some backed away a step.

"Magic." Someone whispered.

"Unholy sorcery."

"Only the purest of bloods..."

Tavlen couldn't hear them anymore, the heat and hiss in him matching the restless flame beneath his palm. He waited until even he couldn't tell what has self and what was flame. And, like a note slipped under a locked door, he suggested a thought, a will to the burn. Orange and yellow fire unfurled in his fingers like the feathers of a phoenix.

With a sharp intake of breath, Tavlen withdrew his fist from the flame. The fire dropped back to a smoulder, sulking that he was him taken from them.

The beach breeze was cold on his skin, tugging at his cape like a noose. Tavlen unwrapped his fingers one by one.

Inside, rested a piece of paper. No. Two. And a small, black marble settling in the cracks of his palm. The marble was made of glass.

____________________________

I always feel there should be a pause between that ^^^ and this vvv

. . . . .

ANYWAY.

If you are googling if conundrumous is a word. It's not even though it should be. Which is a conundrum. One I thought worthy of solving for you today. Behold: the newest English word.

c o n u n d r u m o u s . *confetti, fanfare, elephants, the whole shabang*

Excerpt:
"Eleos stuffed the scarf in a pocket strapped to her thigh (showing far more skin than Tavlen had prepared himself for) and led them to the fires below."
Lol. Poor Tavlen.

This was the first scene I ever wrote with these two. Original drafts involved less crowds, spilling hot coffee and maybe some strangulation of an unhelpful tigress (yikes). But -- yay! So happy to share this one with you.

Expect our next instalment on Friday. With maybe a surprise post in between. :D

Thanks for your reads and support. They make my heart dance. :)

Also since I am on a computer I can now add chapter dedications. So expect those retroactively sometime this week. :)

The first example of which will be kaira__lee! Thank you for your time and votes! Hope the story adds a little spice to your life! (Too soon after dead fingers in soup? Yeah, maybe too soon).