She'd never known about the horn, about the botched and desperate attempt to wrestle it from Mister Catch. Had never known about the beating, the brutal damage that had been levied against Tennant, the thief, her
friend--
She sat at the Inquisitory with a desk wholly swept of its work. A paper-stone was at one corner, a dipper of ink perfectly aligned with its assigned quill at the other. The two bottles were perched in front of her, delivered by someone who'd recognized her name on the note. A play was acted out across the wood, invisible and seen only to her, a dancing memory locked in her eyes with sound and sense.
Cherny, falchion snapping out, a vicious steel tongue lashing out in defense of a friend, a knight.
Niall, the eyes going wide, skin going cold. No flare in the azure marks on her skin. No heartbeat.
Pretense.
The knuckles of her bare hand were swollen, bruised, scraped wholly free of their dark flesh. They were patches of wet pink and scabbing blood, still spackled with slivers of tree-bark and splinters of wood. Her numb fingertips shook as they held the note. She read it several times. Too many, perhaps. She saw the word
beautiful on each pass.
Beautiful Gloria. The girl scraped the parchment with a jagged fingernail until that adjective refused to exist, until it was nothing more than a hole torn in the top of the little page.
Her response was delivered to the Broken Dagger that afternoon by hand when she went to retrieve Cherny's shears.
She refused to look at the grass, at the blood that had turned it soft.
Please drink them with me Tennant. Tonight. Tomorrow. Whenever.
Please.
- G