Play with Fire -- Sam Tinnesz

Growing up in a small town, working with cattle or being holed up in my room with clay and colorful paints, there wasn't much time, money, or places for obscene mockeries of romance and dance. My mother was an EMT. My stepdad took care of the farm and helped the neighbors when something mechanical broke down. We weren't caricatures of humans parading about ruddy flowers and bone. 

We weren't monsters.

I missed my parents. 

And though I felt it, I tried not to think about the guilt behind what I'd seen and what I'd asked of Ajax. His eyes, the yellowed rot of old fish and roiling worms, and the hate behind that dead facade, had my skin crawling. I saw Ajax in the masked dancers, Akta's limping puppet, twisting past satyrs and grinning masks and the few lambs in the crowd of wolves. I picked up the hem of my dress and moved faster, to the outskirts, as if I could run from the thought, as if standing beside a dead cat's bones and a couple bouquets could cast out the haunt. 

While the Walrus had inferred that my friends where trying to be friendly with the neighbors, it was easy to spot the group of wary-eyed women. I wouldn't have called them friendly, or even trying very hard. I think it was sinking in with them, as it was with me, that with each passing second the temporary reprieve, the honeymoon affair between predator and prey, was drawing to a close. There was uncertainty ahead for them, and death for the others.

The wolves were hungry. Tomorrow they'd feast.

Those trapped with the other Lords did not seem inclined to greet my friends, family, now, I decided; we were all we had left; and among the other demons the freed women were not entirely welcomed, except by the lesser creatures, the ones that reeked of ambition and slime and shaded corners. Yazmin waved, but when I asked her where Dakota was this evening—this was exactly the event the blonde would enjoy—she had no real idea. Val flat-out refused to say. 

"Sorry, Tay," Val said. "She'd pull my tongue out if I told you."

I frowned. "And you're more scared of her than you are me?"

"Well, yeah." Val shrugged, running a hand over her freckled shoulder. Yazmin smiled agreeably behind her. "Kota didn't promise to keep us safe."

I spoke to them for a few songs further, and then I was off skirting the edges in search of Chiro. He wasn't going to be in the middle of this. He was smarter than that. After that demonstration, if he made the foolish mistake of rustling up a real fight, this time I'd kill him myself.

I found him where I'd expected him; or maybe where he'd expect me to have gone. He sat on a bench outside the great hall, fingers roving absently over the top of Gabe's head. Both heads turned at the click of my heels. 

"Chiro," I said, as the door closed behind me. The muffled melody carried on. I tugged the King's cloak around my shoulders as if it could insulate me from the music. Gabe's claws slipped across the stone tile. The big dog careened into me, and I pet him this time, I pet him, and thought about the little scarred calf. They'd always been on my side, I thought, nosing the hound away to take a long look at his owner. Since the night I'd been killed, they'd been on my side in some weird, twisted way.

Chiro rose. I considered the man who'd overseen my arrival in this world, but I didn't hate him like I hated the others. After what we'd gone through, I wasn't sure I ever could.

"Lady Wilson," he said nodding politely, speaking in the clipped tone of someone who'd just had the rug pulled out from under him. "Come to take anything else from me?"

"As a matter of fact, I have," I said, offering my hand. "A dance."

"Is that a request?"

I glanced back at the door, let my other hand fall from the cloak. I would've thrown it off if I could, but others might see my tender shoulder. Chiro might see my tender shoulder. This healed slower than the other wounds.

"Yes," I said, nodding.

He made a show of sighing, and rolled his eyes when I complimented him on his choice of attire. He was wearing a tie; it was a little crude, and had the mark of the old seamstress' fading talents, but it was a nice attempt, would have looked nicer if both it and his vest weren't spattered with blood. His hand took mine, and then, after a brief command for Gabe to sit and stay (he didn't), and then finally letting the hound loose into the hall and closing the door after us, Chiro led me away from the music, away from the coming and going and into a quiet corner of courtyard.

"This is the safest plan for everyone," I said after one last check around the quiet gardens. The macabre festivity hadn't yet spilled outside, but the courtyard was prepared for that inevitability, little orange lanterns, colorful ribbons and roses tressed around the King's now skeletal conquests. 

Chiro's eyes were dark and full in the lantern light. "How is a forest exile safer? How are you safer?"

He was angry, but polite, and I wasn't sure I appreciated that, settling down on the grass and patting a spot beside me. I wanted him to yell at me, maybe because I wanted to yell at him. "We're dealing with a volcano. I won't let you be incinerated."

He paced the garden path instead, kicking a stone here and there. It'd ping off into the leaves and occasionally something skinny and lizard-like would scuttle under the brush. "That's not your choice."

"As your future queen, it absolutely is, and it looks like the right decision, after that stunt you pulled." I was going to call him human, caught my tongue and rolled my shoulders back defiantly. "You can't kill everyone, Chiro. Not now."

"You would get through a number of demons before morality became an issue, Lady Wilson."

"You know that isn't my point."

He plucked a flower from a nearby wreath and pulled the petals. One by by one, little curls of sunset reds drifted across the grass between us. "Would you like to know why I'm considered the Prince? Because I've killed the worst and I keep the rest from trying. They're all worms, squirming trough the soil, feasting on flesh, waiting for their chance to gnaw on the juiciest bit. They see an opportunity, they take it. I had to do that. You can't give them any room to think, or breathe, or they will eat you alive."

"And I had to use your wealth," I said. "I told the King what I'm telling you now: I will not be cheated."

"I'm going to find Dot first," he said. "But if for some reason I didn't, I wouldn't have cheated you."

"But he would," I argued, picking up a petal. My nail punctured the delicate edge; bloody hues darkened its pretty appearance. "No room to think or breathe, right? That's what I'm doing."

Chiro was quiet a few moments, twirling the barren stem in one hand. "You aren't doing it well."

"Speaking of not doing things well, the King is my wyrm, Chiro, worst of them all. Why haven't you killed him?"

"He made a deal with the Witch for a sort of immortality. You can kill him, but he's the equivalent of one key fitting the lock. The other keys won't work. The other ways to die don't kill him. Everyone makes a deal with the Witch at some point. The only side It keeps is Its own."

"Fuck," I whispered, turning my head away so he couldn't see my anxious frown.  It was a good thing I was already sitting down. "I thought he could die and you just hadn't finish the job."

 I didn't look at him, but I heard his footsteps crunch closer, heard something sorry underneath the prideful layer in his tone. "I finish what I start, Tay Wilson."

After a moment, I scrunched the broken petal in my palm and found the nerve to regard him. "So you've made deals with the Witch, too?"

"A few," he said, and touched his own shoulder. "It starts with a mother's sacrifice." 

"And what did It ask for in return?"

"I believe our dance has ended," he said abruptly, tapping my cheek. His smile didn't quite reach his grey eyes. "Good night, Lady Wilson." 

"Chiro," I said, pushing to my feet, and it may have been the high-pitch in my voice that held him still beside a grinning horse skull. "After tonight I'll be with the King, guarded like the last hen on earth. Will you just listen to me?" He didn't move. I went on. "I don't know much about the ceremony, or what happens now that you're involved. I know I got a tattoo from this creature, Terryl, the King called her an 'inkrat'? Do you need one?"

"Already been marked by the Witch. It's customary for human women." 

"And between you and the King, how does that work?"

"I'm your bride," he said, frowning, not at the word, I thought, but at what I'd done. "The King will likely be your first husband under the Witch's eye. You'll run first, and once you're married, I'll go after."

He wouldn't quite explain what would happen, only that I'd undergo the ritual twice, but that didn't matter. Knowing wouldn't change the end result. I told him, "I won't make you follow whatever awful traditions brides are responsible for completing. Even if I have to do those things to please the King, you don't."

He shrugged. "I've got nothing to be ashamed of. You have to run; I can, too."

 "No," I said. "I'm not like them. I won't treat you like that. We're equals."

"Except when my Queen makes demands otherwise," he said, and this time when he went walking, flinging the flower stem into the bushes, he kept on. Unable to think of anything right to say, I watched him leave. He would be gone, and there would be no privacy between us again, not for a while, not until after the King was dead, or until I was nothing but bones in a grave myself, with those awful worms rolling over me. 

So I did the only thing I could think to do: plucked off my stupid heels and ran after him. I had to fling one at him before he even stopped. "Chiro! Chiro, will you wait?" He took one glance at my shoe ten feet too far left, grey eyes flat and calculating.

"I'm not a dog," he hissed, and disappeared down the stairs to the hot springs.

I bit back my comeback all the way down the stairs until I saw him, shrugging off his coat beside one of the smaller pools. His shoes had been kicked off to one side. "You're worse than a dog," I panted, one hand on the stone wall. The heat down here wasn't helping me catch my breath any faster. "You're a-a, a cat."

He rounded on me then, and that was when he started to yell, about my stupid ass always getting in trouble and not thinking things through and how bad the King would hurt me now. And I yelled at him, about keeping his stupid ass outta trouble and not thinking enough and how bad the King could hurt him.

At some point he stopped, and I stopped thereafter and when I met his gaze there was energy there, and ire, and something else.

I pulled off his mask. Ignoring mine, he tore off the cloak, spun me around—I let him, was very conscious of how quickly I'd permitted his touch, even this rough handling. The pads of his fingers danced across the irritated skin of my shoulder.

 "What the fuck is this?" he hissed, knocking me back around.

"A snow leopard," I said calmly, catching my balance before I fell into the warm water. "Thought it'd be fitting."

"You think his good eye is going to see a snow leopard skull? You better have a dragon on your ass." He started pacing again, swearing and pacing. "Your father's going to skin me when he sees what I've let you do."

"You didn't let me."

Shooting me a dark look, Chiro ran a hand through his sandy hair. "I didn't tell you not to. I didn't think you'd do something so stupid."

"He doesn't have to know. Besides, it's just a tattoo."

"Everyone will know," Chiro continued. "And it's not just a tattoo. Your human mother wore a ring, yes?"

I nodded.

"This is our ring. This does more than say you're taken; it shows by who. Why'd you pick this?"

"It has meaning to me." At his displeased frown I chewed my lip uncertainly and added, "You know, 'cause of my ice problem and snow leopards being winter ...animals ... and all."

He crossed his arms. "You're an idiot, Tay."

"I'm not his," I said, and there was venom dripping off those words, not toward Chiro, but towards the endless struggle of this purgatory. "I won't be his."

Chiro, maybe sensing the worry beneath, stopped. He went over to an edge, crouched down and washed his hands in the springs.

"Why'd you have to be human?" I asked, sitting beside him, plunking my feet into the water. Very carefully, after drying his hands, he lifted the edge of my mask and brushed away a tear. 

"I believe, and correct me if I'm remembering this wrong, but I'm human because of you," he said, and started to rise. "Now, if that's all—"

"It isn't," I said, and grabbed his wrist. 

He pulled me to my feet, but my grip stayed firm on the cuff of his sleeve even after we'd found our footing. The muscles in his arm tensed, his posture tightened. That strange energy had returned to his stormy eyes.  

"Don't do anything you'll regret, Lady Wilson," he said in a carefully measured tone.

But I did. I had to. I pushed, not a lot, just set my hands on his shoulders and shoved him a half-step away from the springs. I knew what I what I was doing. I knew what I'd done. I could see it in the lines drawn across his face. I could see desire flex in his grey eyes, thick as the ink on my back. I wondered if he remembered that first cut he'd drawn on my arm with his claw. He didn't know how a thrill had jumped through my veins back then, some dormant part of my brain flicked on by a bloody switch.

I didn't crave pain, not from the King or Chiro.

But a little. A little's enough. A little from this man was exciting.

"You've done a lot for me, Chiro." My hand slid down the front of his vest, tiptoeing across smooth buttons. His hands were at his side, moving just slightly, indecisively. I looked up at him and said with a demure smile, "Do more."

He pushed me back, and I let myself fall, just on the edge, my hair dipping into the water. I'd sat up onto my elbows when he knelt over me.

The stone was warm and flecked slightly with water. Steam tickled the back of my neck. His tie swung forward, and I grabbed it and tugged hard. Whatever bit of attention Chiro hadn't surrendered became mine. I kissed him like I'd never kissed anyone before, not violent, but hard, and greedy.

Do more, I'd told him, and then he didn't give me any room to think or breathe. He just did.

He hiked the dress over my waist, ran his palm along my stomach, grey eyes rarely flicking to mine, more interested in what he'd exposed than my expression. Then, with a slow-spreading smile, he hooked his fingers in my panties. He left them dangling on one of my ankles, where they'd remain, forgotten the second his mouth kissed the delicate skin of my belly. And with that kiss and a slip of his finger, he wrested control from me.

In a small space of steam and heat and indulgence, I was free to simply exist. Exist and feel and what feeling there was. At the moment a delicate swell of pressure made my hips jump uncontrollably, his now-wet hand was set firmly on my thigh in exchange for use of his tongue. 

And when he had me there, writhing against his jaw and mewling for him to come into me, he sat up, and drew me against his chest, and whispered in my ear that tonight was about lighting a match, not setting the woods on fire.

After his mouth had finished what he'd started, after the earth had gone still enough for me to remember how my legs worked, Chiro kissed my cheek,  collected his attire, and left. A little dream of something that could be vanished with him, and my night was bleak and festering and rotted once again.