The tournament involved three consecutive nights of festivities. The first was a celebratory feast, where contestants paraded and preened so spectators could place their bets. Then came the individual games: contestants from both sides sparring one-on-one. The final night pitted the two teams against each other.

It was the afternoon of the first night and Tavlen's warriors drilled each other in giddy anticipation of the blood to come. Or Tavlen assumed they drilled each other. He was stuck in his office playing nanny to a bored Court dragon.

To his credit, Reylin had suggested they visit the training grounds, but there was no way Tavlen was giving an ex-military snake a tour of their training regime. (Tavlen had only been allowed to take one third of his army South. He'd primarily filled those ranks with his weaker divisions to focus on training. Information Veritrith would greatly appreciate).

Though Reylin didn't seem to take his role as spy very seriously. In his week on the Coast, this was his first visit to Tavlen's manor (beach lounging with beer was a busy business, see).

Everything about Reylin the Son was an irritant. The way he kept his hands clasped innocently behind his back, the way he meandered around the office or feigned interest in the window while his eyes really lingered on marble Tavlen rolled on the desk. His very presence grated like sand on a burn.

Not that Tavlen liked his office much anyway. Perched like a great boil of stained glass over the city as it was.

Tavlen held up the tiny glass marble he'd stolen from Eleos of Kana. He positioned it so that it covered Reylin's face and closed one eye, as if he could blot out the broad shoulders and blonde hair from his office entirely.

"So many creatures in one place," Reylin said to the window, rocking on his toes like a museum visitor half-bored with the view. "Rather incredible really. If the Court saw this, us dragons would be in trouble."

Tavlen tucked the black glass back in his fist and slumped in his chair. "If you're trying to make me feel better about exile, don't."

Reylin's polished boots made soft clacks on the stone as he ambled back to Tavlen's desk. He dipped his head to smile at Tavlen's scowl. "Just trying to make conversation."

Tavlen tossed the marble in the air and caught it again. "No need to do that either."

Fent leaned against the empty bookshelves at Tavlen's back, copying one of his many notebooks with a quick hand. (With Tavlen's tendency to burn anything in his vicinity, the Worm had developed a rather frantic compulsion to copy his notes over the years). "We could talk about the missing vials from the Coven's last shipment for us," he suggested.

Reylin shrugged but didn't glance in Fent's direction. "You decided to move against the Venomous." He plucked a glass figurine from Tavlen's desk and held it up to the long stretch of windows, which checkered the afternoon sun in orange and green on the floor. "Contrary to my advice, if you recall."

Fent refreshed his ink in the well at Tavlen's left hand. "Not against. Just not with." The quill clinked against the glass rim. "For now."

Reylin's eyes finally flicked to the secretary, the barest thread of annoyance stitching the corner of his mouth. "You do realise I am here to take our Queen Venomous back her answer." He set the figurine down on top of the letter he'd brought, sealed in Veritrith's red wax. "Her patience is not eternal."

Tavlen wove the glass bead through his fingers. "I'm already banned from court. What more can she do?"

Reylin leaned against his desk. "Take your title. Call you a traitor. Slice the last sin-scar down your cheek and smile while you're torn to bloody little bits by Coven law."

Tavlen tossed the marble in the air again. "She wouldn't dare."

"The Venomous dares a lot of things."

"Like sending you here?" Tavlen glanced up.

Reylin's features arranged into something like hurt. "This again?" He sagged onto the desk.

Tavlen balanced the glass bead on the inkwell's discarded cork. "The Venomous wants us tucked under her wing for a reason. Removing me would be inconvenient and difficult."

"Why do you think she's been cutting your vial shipments?" Reylin snatched the glass marble from its resting place. "What's a dragon stuck in human skin?"

The phrase, thrown carelessly, conjured for Tavlen a woman in gold and black. With chains around her neck and a snarl on her lips.

Eleos. The tigress caught in human skin.

Reylin flicked the glass bead in the air and caught it. Pausing, he held it up to the light as he had the glass figurine. "This one of Ilina's?" he asked.

The image of the tigress crumbled to ash. Leaving in its place only the cold emptiness of Ilina's absence.

Fent's scribbling scratched to a stop. The room, for a moment, felt like it would tumble off the hill it perched on. Tavlen's hands tightened on his armrests.

There were times—rarer now, but unforgettable still—when that absence grabbed Tavlen like a thief in a crowd. It was dizzying; like someone hollowed out his bones and expected him to stand and walk like everyone else.

Reylin felt the sudden depth to the room and protectively curled his fingers around the glass. "Are we not even speaking of her anymore?"

Fent tucked his quill in the spine of his book. "You have some gall," he said, uncharacteristically snarlish.

Tavlen raised a staying hand. "No, Fent. Hospitality first." When he looked to Reylin, he hoped the tightness in his jaw looked something like an apologetic smile. "Only you, Lin. Only you are not to speak of her anymore."

Reylin straightened off the table. "I thought we were over this. I'd never hurt anyone as sweet as Ilina." His regret twisted into a smile meant to hark back to their good and gone days. "She turned out too pretty to hurt, eh?"

The loose tie on Reylin's linen shirt combusted. The dragon calmly pinched out the flame with bare fingers, his smile saddening. "So much distrust. Always looking for enemies."

Tavlen's hand fell back to the armrest. As he watched the heir to the Blue Vein slump defeatedly on his desk, Tavlen wished he could conjure anger again. This was the dragon most likely to have taken her. But he felt nothing again.

He'd been ten when their mother died; Ilina, two. They'd cowered in hovels and starved like rats, lived off cockroaches and curdled milk. He'd pulled himself back from despair, disease and death over and over again to see her fed, happy and safe. Without her to centre that reason, the old death and despair slipped dirty fingers back under his skin, leaving him gutted and cold. Like a fish cut for eating but left as bait in the sea.

A tap of glass on wood returned him to the office. Reylin had set the glass bead between them like a peace offering.

"You can't stay here, Tav," he said softly. There was earnest imploring in his voice. "You're wasting away. And you'll end up forgotten and bitter and alone." He gently pushed the letter towards Tavlen in a rasp of paper. "Surely mating the red snake isn't that bad, eh?"

Tavlen was still a husk of bone. Not a muscle in him remained to move the letter away if he'd wanted to.

"You'd get to come home," Reylin was saying. "Fent could have all the vials he could ever want. You could scout out the best talents and put us all to shame. Flames, Tav, you'd get to see your lands again. The ranks you left behind."

Tavlen's heart did beat faster at that. He turned away from the snake and opened the top drawer of his desk with too much force. A clatter of glass marbles, quills and half-used vials clamoured to the edge. Somewhere in there was another letter, folded in a small triangle and coated in orange wax. Tavlen had yet to decide if it was worth opening.

He quickly grabbed the hourglass he sought and shut the drawer again. (If he had half the wits he was supposed to, he'd have given that letter to Fent for safekeeping weeks ago).

Reylin didn't seem to notice. His eye was on the hourglass Tavlen held. A pretty cylinder of glass with grains of purple sand. The contraption was encased in a ring of silver and suspended in the centre by a thin thread of wire. Tavlen spun the hourglass in its ring, the familiar whirr calming to him.

Reylin looked away.

The sound would have been familiar to him too. Tavlen had spun Ilina's hourglass through countless sleepless in the Northern barracks.

Tavlen turned the key in the drawer's lock and made his way to the window.

The warmed glass gave the Southern heat enough texture to taste. Below, the city was heaped like a pile of laundry in the crook of the mountain: a sunbleached teetering of stacked buildings and tarped markets in sickly shades of orange and pink. Or perhaps the colouring was the fault of the stained glass; the amber and jade light stretched across his face and floor like the scales of a sleepy dragon in the sun.

"Tavlen." Reylin was behind him, close as a conscience. "You're dying here."

Tavlen watched the bored sway of the docked ships in the distance. The hourglass whirred. "Tell me where she is," he said quietly. A point in an argument they were pretending not to have.

Reylin answered tiredly, "If I knew, I swear I'd tell you."

And the gutted silence refilled the office, broken only by the metallic swish of the hourglass.

Reylin wandered back to Tavlen's desk and rearranged his papers, inspecting those of interest. "Tell me about this Kana case, then."

Tavlen tsked. "You'd help me find the Wing Ripper?"

"Seeing as I've known you longer than I've known the Venomous and you're determined to incite her wrath, I should probably side with you. Make your death quick and painless, at the least."

Fent leaned back against his bookshelf. "True brotherhood."

Tavlen turned away from the window. "You'll meet the Kana tonight." Reylin was invited by default. "But nothing fun will happen until tomorrow. Nothing to discuss."

"It says here they're peace-vowing. What are we going to watch? A debate?"

"Top-predators vowing peace in times like ours?" Tavlen's hourglass spun with a hiss. "They're just nobles contriving a reason to keep their hands clean of the Culls."

Reylin sat on the edge of his desk to inspect the Kana's papers more closely. "While it sounds like good sport, I don't see how it will lure the Wing Ripper home."

"It won't." Tavlen sat back in his chair. "Not if he's half the assassin he claims to be. But it will keep the Kana in check the next time they withhold information."

"And you're the Overseer now."

"Hm." Tavlen let his boil of an office and green-leather chair behind a mahogany desk speak for themselves. "So when you scuttle back to our queen's Court, be sure to tell her of my great service in righting these wayward nobles."

"Yes, that will soothe her spurred soul." Reylin shuffled through the papers. "I'll pretend I didn't hear that. And what about this Eleos fellow? Some lion brother never brought in for questioning?"

"Mm. Yes." Tavlen considered correcting him. But there was something satisfying in mistaking that fire of a woman for a great, burly lion. So he leaned back in his chair instead. "Fent got the participant list from the Kana this morning. And, alas, this Eleos is not among them."

"Oh?" Reylin looked affronted (perhaps he would better suit the role of reforming overseer than Tavlen; he should suggest it to Veritrith).

"They said he wasn't allowed to attend as punishment for..." Tavlen waved a hand at Fent.

"Instigation," Fent finished.

And Tavlen thought the punishment fitting. Nothing would irk that little still-skin more than being sidelined from her family's disgrace. But to have her tucked away, safe and smug with her secrets, aggravated him. He was getting desperately sick of secrets.

Tavlen turned to Fent. "Isn't Jeha meant to be coming by?"

Fent checked his notes. "Telei was to have him for a training session beforehand."

Tavlen stood in a creak of leather. The windows that lined the other side of the room overlooked the centre courtyard with its packed dirt and craggily olive tree.

Sure enough, Telei had drawn a ring in the dust below (he believed training was most effective when miserable and public). And Jeha stood opposite; hair matted down his neck and arms helplessly limp at his side. Other recruits meandered about, half-watching the failure of a training session as the elk-skin taunted the young man to hit him back.

Fent joined him at the glass. "Told you he was hopeless."

"I don't see a bruise on him." Tavlen studied the kid's stance. His arms were useless, but his feet had promise. They were positioned at careful angles, ready to scurry off with the next swing.

"He looks young enough to learn," Reylin agreed. "But scrawny as scamp—where'd you find this one?"

Tavlen hadn't asked for his input. "Fent, the whistle."

Fent dug around in his vest pocket for a thin, purple whistle made of glass, its pitch only Ilina could ever replicate. Tavlen unlatched one of the green window panes and spun it sideways to open it. A trill of sharp notes caught the courtyard's attention.

Reylin flinched. "I forgot about the whistles."

Telei looked up at his signal with a wrist over his eyes. Tavlen added a quick, impatient pitch to underscore his mood.

Jeha wiped the sweat from his neck and Telei waved him off.

"Here's to hoping the kid showers first," Fent said and turned back to the desk.

Reylin tapped at the amber glass. "I don't think I've seen Telei in years." (Most of Tavlen's ranks were best kept from Court circles). "Speaking of, where is our Golden Dragon?"

Hopefully crouched outside a window, plotting Reylin's death. (Patiently eavesdropping from a shaded slope of the roof, he meant).

Neither Fent nor Tavlen answered him. They had learned long ago not to excuse her absence. Lyra calculated whom she allowed near her person with impossible logic. The Worm was included in her acquaintance within his first week, but Telei took three years. (Even Fent was confused by this decision). But Tavlen had only known her to rescind that trust once.

Reylin had once known Lyra well enough to answer his own question; now, the realisation dawned slowly. As did the anger. But Reylin left the windows and kept his emotions to himself. The room sank into a silence as thick as the heat; that volatile concoction of boredom, fury and hurt the Court was known for.

Veritrith had been cruel to send him. Tavlen slumped back in his chair. Reylin should have kept to the beaches for another few weeks.

Jeha knocked before he entered.

Tavlen was testing how fast he could spin the hourglass with a single flick. "Come in."

The kid was no easier to look at the second time, even with freshly showered hair dripping to the floor like a kitten pulled from a bucket. His skin was the pale that absorbed the hues of whatever he wore; that day, a grape-purple shirt made his beardless face and long, twitchy fingers look bruised.

Tavlen smiled. "Jeha, meet Reylin the Son."

Jeha's razor-bone jaw tightened. His intake had revealed a deep mistrust in Court dragons (apparently exiles like Tavlen and his troops didn't count), but he swallowed down his prejudice and swept a bow to rival a court snake. "Son," he greeted formally.

Reylin tossed the papers he was reading back to Tavlen's desk. "He looks half-dead, Tav!"

"That's hardly my fault." Tavlen rubbed his eyes. "Come here, Jeha."

Jeha carefully approached the desk, something quiet and hunted in his steps.

Reylin surveyed the kid with an arched brow. "What's your talent, then?" He asked with a jerk of his chin. Jeha kept his eyes rooted to the desk's clawed feet. "Come now—we know the Unyielding only gathers the best and the brightest."

Jeha tucked his hands behind his back and braved a look up to Reylin's eyes. "I tell the truth," he said plainly.

Fent leaned against the side of Tavlen's great chair. "You can't lie to him," he translated.

Jeha blinked slowly, his eyes never leaving the blue dragon's.

Reylin laughed, a pinch to the sound. He swung off the desk in a tactical retreat to the window.

Tavlen felt a smile turn his lips. "How about a demonstration?"

"I'll take your word for it," Reylin said tightly. He'd pulled a vial of gold liquid from his pocket and fiddled with the cork.

"Turning to venom?" Tavlen laughed. "I hear her new concoction is even more potent than her first."

"He's nervous," Fent agreed.

Jeha's lips set.

Reylin turned from the window and tossed the vial to Tavlen with more force than necessary. "When you accept the Venomous, you'll get doses of these yourself."

Tavlen caught the small bottle on instinct. He held it up to the slant of scalding sun for inspection. Despite himself, Tavlen was intrigued (Veritrith held the new and improved vial over her Court like a carrot on a string; with her marriage proposal looming between them, Tavlen had decided it was best to maintain disinterest).

"What's the difference?" he asked. The syrup swam with gold flecks that spread down the glass like oil.

"One a day and you rend whenever you want for however long you want." Reylin stuffed his hands in his pockets. "No special diet necessary." 

That was a significant improvement. There was nothing worse than the constant measuring and timing of red venom. Let alone the price of dragon liquors when he'd been drinking.

Tavlen uncorked the bottle for a whiff. It smelt of wax and crushed flowers. Tempting. Tavlen assumed it was like the red vial; once on it, there was no getting off. He corked it again. "Must be nice for you, eh? Rending to whatever form, whenever you want."

Reylin's smile hesitated.

They had both been put on the vial at the same time, when it was first tested on troops in the Northern Mountains. While Tavlen's greatest gripe had been the diet (reduced to porridge and tea when he finally had money to eat whatever he wanted), Reylin had been most concerned about his magic. He'd hoarded vials like no other—not that their commander would limit their many-skinned dragon in battle; he'd been given double what Tavlen was allowed.

Tavlen turned the vial over in his hand. "You can taunt me about my secrets and I can't taunt you about yours? The Worm already knows. And Jeha..." Tavlen decided he was feeling extra spiteful. He tilted the vial in the kid's direction. "The Son can rend to any creature he wants if he thinks about it long enough; one of the only magics of his kind."

Reylin rolled out tight shoulders. "Ilina was a person, not a secret."

Tavlen paused, the vial tipped upside-down. "Was?" he echoed, quiet as death.

"Is, Tavlen. Is!" Reylin ran a hand through his hair. "A slip-up."

"A slip-up." Tavlen's lip curled. "Tell that to Jeha's face." He set the vial on the desk. "Tell him."

Reylin gave Jeha a pained look. "I don't know where Ilina is. If I did—she'd be here now."

"And do you think she's dead?" Tavlen demanded, standing from his chair.

"I don't know! Hopefully not." Reylin looked away from Jeha to Tavlen. "Whoever took her would have flaunted her death if so."

"Unless it was an accident," said Fent. He was taking notes on the blue dragon's responses.

"Even then!" Reylin spun back to Jeha. "Tell him I'm innocent!" Moments after his words, his face twisted like the cinch of a noose found his throat.

Jeha's head tilted in pity. "That's too broad a claim to be perfectly true."

"Then tell him I don't know where she is!" Reylin ran both hands through his close-cropped hair. "Tell him I've been looking. And that I wish with everything she'd never gone missing, he'd never been exiled and Veritrith had never set her eye on him."

His brow was slick with sweat and he sagged against the desk. "Hell. That's cruel."

Jeha turned to Tavlen. "Everything he just said was true," he reported.

Tavlen sagged against the desk's other side.

"And I would give him back his vial," Jeha suggested in his cool, understated way. "Gold venom is highly addictive."

Tavlen waved his hand and Jeha rolled the vial to Reylin's side of the desk.

"Power hurts only as much as the sins you commit to keep it," Jeha said cryptically, watching him fumble for the cork

"Or the sins you inherit," Reylin added bitterly, downing the rest of the bottle in one go.

Jeha stepped back and bowed to the desk. "Anything else, my Lord?"

Tavlen stared at Reylin a moment longer before answering. Reylin had withdrawn a wide square of blue cotton from his pocket and dabbed at the back of his neck. His breathing was elevated, but he looked angry. Not nervous.

Jeha's magic was a potent thing (Nim was only just allowed home. His recovery had been ugly). A feud with the Blue Vein while Tavlen was in exile would be the end of him. They were one of the reigning veins; eligible for the crown rotation that came (in theory) every six years. If they did feud and Tavlen won perchance, his own line would be eligible for the throne. And that was the last thing Tavlen wanted.

He'd learned the higher you flew, the more terrifying the fall. Something in him pitied Reylin for that. He suspected it was this pity that had driven them apart in the first place.

Suddenly, the glass blister of his office was too claustrophobic; an overturned teacup he'd shatter it to smithereens if kept underneath it much longer.

"Dismissed," he said shortly and stalked to the balcony doors.

They opened in a white flash of glass and the heat outside fell on his shoulders like boiled wool. He revelled in the burn of it.

Fent had followed him. "The feast begins in two hours," he chided quietly. Like he knew Tavlen wanted nothing more than to fly so high this manor, its courtyard and the heap of city were nothing put pinpricks along the sea's hem. Until there was nothing left of him but wind and wings.

"I know," Tavlen said weakly—they couldn't spare the vials. He glanced over his shoulder.

The dragon had the kerchief pressed to his throat like he was still afraid a secret might slip out.

Fent tilted one of the balcony doors closed. "How about I take our lordling down to Arsa, eh? Have our housekeeper give him a bit of a tour. " (House-keeper was Arsa's favourite term for her role as weapon's steward. And she gave tours of blades like some gave tours of palaces—with just as much gory detail).

Tavlen's chest had emptied again. Which Fent took as assent. Reylin seemed just as relieved to be herded out as Tavlen was to see him go. Neither wanted a feud; thought now Tavlen suspected that was Veritrith's hope.

He waited until their voices were muffled to silence and withdrew a vial of red glass from his pocket. The liquid was thinner than the gold venom, runny and bright like fresh-slit blood. He studied the measurement lines. Just a quarter of an hour. He could spare that much.

Tavlen downed half a swallow and rended to his second skin. With wings spread behind him like four black sails, Tavlen dove off the railless balcony and spiralled towards the yellow cracks in the sky. The melting sun sunk deep between his scales snd he flew until he forgot himself.

He'd be back, of course. For another dinner of manners and posturing and secrets.

He would sit there with Reylin like a good boy and watch the Kana preen. But tomorrow. Tomorrow, the lion's and their secrets would bleed. As would anyone else who tried to keep her from him.

___________________

When I drafted this, it was winter so writing about heat was balm to the soul. Now it feels like I wrote my own death sentence. 

I'm a blob of sweat over here. Sometimes, I can see the reflection of myself in my computer screen, and in that reflection, the sweat on my face is so shiny I can see the reflection of my computer in the reflection of my face on the screen! It's like sweat inception over here.

Just an update.

In other news, my Instagram experiment (aka posting on socials like every other 20-something) has come with one revelation in the last few weeks. My life is supremely boring. Shocking, I know.

I eat. I sleep. I sweat. I drink coffee from pretty (much the same) mugs like everyone else. It's kind of disappointing actually.

^^ Maybe I'll make that an insta post. Sounds mundane enough with a side of original. A pepper of profundity if you squint just right. Now I got to take a picture though. Crap.

Also my Instagram story yesterday had a typo and my old English teacher watched it and then DIDN'T KEEP WATCHING PAST THE TYPO and now I'm mortified, rejected as a human, and my heart has been koala hugging my throat for hours. *sweats even more*

This is what keeps me up at night folks.
Welcome to the circus.

I have googled so much on bunnies in the last few days. Weird creatures those. 
This chapter is dedicated to @RaptorRN for all their comments and votes. So appreciate you. And I applaud you for having three bunnies; just one scares me enough. :)