#cora taskon

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Something was dripping.

The sound cut through the sweetly soft darkness that Alucard Emery had been wrapped in. It was a spell, the darkness, wearing off with every drip.

He didn’t want to leave that blanket of velvet around his mind, and he tried to sink back, to grab onto it with hands that barely twitched against some kind of rough constriction around his wrists, as he felt himself shifting away from that safe place towards wakefulness.

No, no, no. He didn't want to wake up - if he woke up, he might have to deal with the pounding headache behind his temples, the twist of nausea that unsettled his stomach, the way the world had spun off kilter and he might slide right off the edge to a whole new hell.

Rhy.

He groaned, the face of the man he loved burned behind his eyelids, frozen over with Kell’s command, solid and unchanging as stone. No, let him sleep, he didn’t want to remember Rhy that way. If he stayed in the darkness, maybe it would all have been a dream.

He couldn’t escape it. Sleep escaped him, drew further and further away, left the pounding pain in his head behind. He was already in hell. Not the dank hold of the ship, no, he felt no rocking, smelled no human waste and misery. He wasn’t shivering and bruised and broken.

Still, he felt like he’d wake up with the manacles back around his wrists and his Rhy, his prince, Rhy would never know he hadn’t wanted to go he wanted to be with him he wanted, he loved-

He was not in that hell, but in this fresh one. Luc’s eyes cracked open, winced at the pain brought on by only candlelight and the softly lit globes that lined the walls, closed again. Someone murmured something nearby.

He’d come back to Rhy, with all his love, and it hadn’t been enough to hold off the attack. They had already burned down the Sanctuary and swarmed a mass of faceless armor into the streets, bodies that cut and killed like machines made of magic and skin. It was an army of demons led by the white wolves that controlled Kell to hurt Rhy, and there was nothing he could do to keep the streets from running red.

Hell had been the face of the woman who had smiled at him when they hit him, had looked down at him with wide blue eyes in a pale white face, eyes that burned as she said, I remember your voice, Alucard Emery, although I must say you've changed a bit. I know what you sound like crying out for him. I used to love to listen to you - my brother and I both.

He’d never seen her before, he was sure of it. He’d have remembered evil like that.

He groaned, head in a vise of pain, trying to remember past a throb that wouldn’t let him think . Had Rhy made it out before they broke down the door, when Luc was on all fours on the ground, scrabbling to pull one last bit of magic before they buried him? No, he’d been frozen.

Had that scowling black-clad slip of a girl that followed Rhy everywhere since Kell had gone missing spirited him away in time? No… no, she wasn’t there. Rhy had sent her for Tieren Serense.

Luc had done everything he could, but if there was any one truth in Alucard Emery’s life, it was that ‘doing his best’ rarely worked out for him, especially when it really mattered. When it mattered, he ended up hit over the head and dumped somewhere in chains.

Were they chains? He frowned, slumping forward, trying to force his eyes open again to look down. Was this another prison ship? He could feel the cold metal around his wrists, and when he tried to move them they were held and he heard the familiar soft rattle.

He had promised himself he would never go in chains again.

But Alucard Emery’s promises had never been more than window-dressing over his betrayals.

Read the rest here

[pinkcupboardwitch]

Extremely niche ADSOM ships that I am now fully invested in, you can’t change my mind:

Beloc/Hastra

The grumpy one is soft for the sunshine one. Need I continue. (The survivor and the healer are soft for each other)

Ojka/Calla

The “I will devote my life with unnerving obsession to a god-king I barely know” one meets the “I ship everything but also I am sensible, do you want some tea” one.

Athos Dane/Col Taskon

Age difference and terrifying blonds. Col’s the strong and stoic type who’s willing to take orders from his sixteen-year-old sister. Athos appreciates men who know how to follow, and he loves stoic types.

Mandatory dueling scene between the best swordsman in Vesk and the sorcerer-king who casually beats him into the ground.

Astrid Dane/Ned Tuttle

One-sided. Ned is fully in awe and more than a little terrified of her. Astrid looks at him like he’s scum on her shoes and not even worth the trouble of torturing. Think Uncle Andrew and Jadis from The Magician’s Nephew.

Cora Taskon and Astrid Dane

Platonic. Two stabby manipulative blondes who lounge on a giant bed, eat chocolates, and compare coup notes. Astrid Strongly Encourages a rethinking of Cora’s willingness to target her own family.

[nikov]

“What future is there for me?” 

[incorrectsom]

Is this some sort of peasant joke that I’m too rich to understand?

Princess Cora

[andrrewminyard]

He tried to speak, but he didn’t know what to say. “It’s complicated,” he managed. “Of course it is.”

[ashintheairlikesnow]

I do love your portrayal of Cora Taskon. You've given her so much character ❤

Thanks, Anon! A lot of my inspiration to take on Cora Taskon - in Endurance and in AUs - comes from my friends @pinkcupboardwitch, @orchidscript, @muffinworry, and @dr-dendritic-trees! We have talked at length about the disservice done to Cora Taskon, who has hints of a fascinating steel under the stereotype she found herself locked into, and who exited the story far too soon.

In Endurance, I wanted to bring her in to showcase the strength that Veskans are said to have - and to highlight similarities between White London's Maktahn people and Veskans as well.

I wanted to give her the storyline I think she deserves, and I wanted her to get that story dressed all in pink silk, sword in hand.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

When the grand room plunged into unnatural, total darkness at Kell’s command, only one person could still see.

 Cora clutched onto his arm, let out a muffled shriek at the sudden heavy black of the air around them, but Alucard Emery was not blind so long as there were any threads of magic left. 

No, where the world had gone dark, he could instead follow the colors that wrapped around those still fighting, the fading sight of the threads attached to the dying men and women on the floor, and most importantly, the thread that connected Kell and Rhy and never faded, a thread that shone even now as brilliantly as the sun.

 “Don’t let go of me,” Luc said through gritted teeth. He grabbed for her free hand and shoved his own sword into it, closing her fingers around the hilt. “Hold onto this, I’ve a sense you’re no doubt a better swordfighter than I could ever be. Defend yourself, when we get to the bottom, and try to find somewhere to run to.”

 “You won’t be with me?” Cora whispered, high-pitched and terrified, but her grip on the sword was strong and sure as she took it from his hands. “Master Emery, I can’t-”

 “You can, Princess,” Luc said firmly. “You are in line for the throne of Vesk, you have trained with a sword in your since you were still swaddled, you have metal in your magic and I can      taste it    in the air around you. We may not win this-”

 Kell wailed the words As Isera down on the ground floor, and then the darkness of the room lit up in a sudden blinding white light, the Soner Rast shaking around them, the very earth shifting underneath, magic surging and fighting to answer his call. 

 He was crying, broken sobbing Alucard could hear even two stories up, recognized the hateful older brother that had stood between he and Rhy every step of the way with his disapproving glares and that damned  wrinkle between his eyes. Kell needed to be saved as much as Rhy did, and Alucard had no idea how to do it.

 How do you save someone from a curse carved in blood that lasts until their death? How do you do that when to kill Kell would be to kill Rhy as well and therefore the king of Arnes?

READ THE REST ON AO3

[ashintheairlikesnow]

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Holland said incredulously. The other three simply stared at him, Cora with a mocking smile directed more at the idea than at him, Kell with a very old pain in those blue eyes, and Rhy with absolute fury. “He’s not in any of the photos? ”

“They put him in the company Christmas photo,” Rhy said darkly. “So people won’t talk. They keep the articles he was in when they brought him home framed. Sometimes if magazine people come over, Mom puts up some photos she’s taken of him so it’s less obvious all the other photos are of me.” Rhy opened up the next bottle of champagne, and he and Kell both took drinks straight from the bottle. 

“Because they are  fucked up, ” Cora sing-songed, sitting back in her chair, kicking her feet up over one arm, as though her incredibly expensive bridesmaid dress was just sweatpants and an old T-shirt. “You want more stories? I’ve got some fucking stories for you, Holland Vosijk. The first year, they spent like three grand on Rhy’s Christmas presents, and all Kell got-”

“Stop it, Cora,” Kell snapped. “He doesn’t need to know all of it. Presents don’t matter, they’re just  things. ”

“Fuck, Kell, don’t just repeat what they  tell you  ,” Cora grunted. “How about when you  begged them  to go to school with Rhy and they told you all of your  problems  would be bad for their  reputation?”

“Wait, that’s really why?”

“I was going through a phase,” Kell said, taking another drink from the bottle, all but chugging the champagne from it. There had been times, before, when Kell would be strange and angry and refused to talk or see him, and it clicked into place for Holland all at once that it had always been after a conversation with  them. “I was acting out.”

“No, you weren’t, Kell!” Rhy groaned. “You were being  fourteen years old,  who  doesn’t  act out at fourteen! I started  drinking  at fourteen, and they never even noticed, they were too busy being up  your  ass about everything and treating you like a goddamn criminal!”

Holland felt like he had walked into a soap opera, or a teen movie, and wanted badly to simply turn and walk out of it. He was nearly thirty years old, and he’d lived a lot of life in that time, but nothing had ever been like this for  him.

“Stop trying to justify them, Kell,” Cora drawled. “And stop drinking all my champagne. What about when you got into all those Ivy League schools and they made you go to Arnes U because Rhy was going there?”

Holland blinked. “You got into  Ivy League schools? ”

Kell laughed, a little bitterly. “I’m not as stupid as I look.”

“That’s not what I meant-”

“No, I know it’s not. I’m. I’m sorry, Holl. It was only two of them, and anyway, it was just nice to know I made it in. I didn’t mind staying here for Rhy.”

“But that’s not the point, Kell,” Rhy said, enunciating each word with great care in the way of the rapidly-getting-seriously-drunk, and Holland could tell this was a very old conversation indeed. “The point is that if you want to leave, to travel places, you should be allowed to! You shouldn’t be stuck never going anywhere just because of me!”

“Yeah, well, it’s in the goddamn  contract , isn’t it?”

“Jesus Christ.” There was something he’d been thinking about for weeks now, and it rang louder and louder in the back of his mind. He looked over at Kell, whose face was a mask of hurt and anger. “Kell, you’ve never told me-”

“It didn’t come up,” Kell mumbled, pulling away from him again, stalking across the little room, leaning over with his hand on a wooden side table that had a spray of fresh pink-and-yellow roses in a vase. “You went through so much, I just - I didn’t feel like being the poor little rich boy-”

“Kell.”

Kell didn’t look at him, didn’t even turn in his direction. He kept his eyes on the roses, and Holland tried to think of the right thing to do. He’d never been good at this; it’d been just him and his brother and his dad for so long, and then once his brother had gone crazy it was just he and Dad, then alone on couches and halfway houses, and then the Danes - who were never upset about  anything  - and he had no idea what you said in a moment like this.

There was one thing he’d been thinking about, and he worried if he asked, Kell would say no. (Click here to read the rest)

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Oof Cora's throwing shade

I still ship it though :D

You should, because so do I.

The Veskan girl blinked at the boy’s smile, the way the scar pulled at it just a little to make it slightly rakish and one-sided. “Oh,” She said softly, as though understanding the answer to a problem that had vexed her. “Oh."

There was a sound outside

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Can you give us a teaser for The World's Worst Tea Party?

Fuck yes I can

"Alucard… Master Emery, are you waking up?" The voice that spoke was older and female, gentle and concerned, and he knew that voice, didn't he?

She sounded tired, so tired, and he knew what tired was. He knew her and some part of him tried desperately to rise to greet her, but his wrists would not move and his feet seemed rooted to the ground. He tested one ankle and then the other; no movement at all, not even the rattle of a chain. "Alucard, please let us know if you can hear me."

Was he sitting? He was sitting. He was in a wooden chair with a hard back, carved with slightly rounded arms in the Arnesian style. 

Why were his wrists so cold? 

Drip… drip… drip…

"Is he all right?" A second voice asked, much younger than the first but still female. This new voice had an accent - sharp on consonants and long on vowels. Familiar accent, familiar voice.

His head hurt so badly.

Was she Veskan? Did he know a Veskan?

“You sound lovely,” Alucard said, his words slurred like a drunkard’s, trying to raise his head. “May I have this dance, milady? Although I m… muuuust warn you my heart belongs to another… Ah, fuck, where am I?”

“Ah. Indeed, our lately absent Alucard seems to be returning to himself.” A hint of wry humor from the older voice, but it was so faded, so drowned under the exhaustion of the woman speaking.

He knew her, but he couldn’t stand to lift his head and see.

“Take it slow, young man. You are still bleeding and I believe you have had a good blow to the head.”

“I think I’ve probably had several good blows to the head, but I appreciate that you noticed,” Luc groaned, flexing his hands. No broken fingers, so that was something. Why couldn’t he move his wrists? He pulled on them again, and felt his heart drop as his slow-moving, fuzzed-over mind finally recognized what had happened.

He was wearing metal cuffs around his wrists, spelled to cut him off from magic, bound to the arms of a chair with a loop of heavy chain. Where his veins usually buzzed with the eternal press of three kinds of power, he felt… nothing.

Bereft. Devoid. Helpless again.

Drip… drip… drip… 

What was making that dripping noise?

The second voice, the younger, spoke in a sudden hush. She sounded like a girl, maybe not even fully grown. "Do… do you think she comes back to kill us soon?"

"I imagine so, Cora." It clicked, then - the Veskan princess, the girl in pink will who'd held a small dagger with all the ferocity of a warrior. "Try to be strong, dear. We may yet make it out of this." The older voice coughed, an awful wracking sound, and some dim light of thought shone through Luc's pain to think, you won't make it far with liquid breath like that.

Sailors who went into the water sometimes sounded like that when rescued. They didn't live long afterwards unless there was someone nearby to draw it out. Luc had used his own magic a hundred times on his men to save them from dryland drowning.

It was delicate, though - had to pull out the extra seawater without damaging the moisture naturally in the lungs.

Took a lot of focus, and he had none to spare.

The owner of the older voice was slowly suffocating in her own body, and Luc couldn’t even feel a hint of his magic to try and help. He couldn’t even move.

"I hope you're right," Cora murmured. "Why did she do this? Why hold us here? I don’t understand."

"She is gloating,” The first voice replied with firm certainty. “It is not enough that she has all but won already. She must have an audience, too."

"An audience? For her coronation?"

"If she intends what I think she intends... for her wedding."

Cora gasped, but Alucard couldn't quite understand what the voice was trying to say. What wedding?

The older voice went hard-edged and angry. He knew it, then. Queen Emira. "She means, I imagine, to parade myself and Master Emery before my son when my Rhy is forced to marry her."

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Endurance

If you’re here because or partially because you’re reading Endurance (my Shades of Magic longfic in which London is currently burning down), I have five pieces of enthusiasm I badly want to share with you:

1. Chapter 42 introduces Cora Taskon - but trust me, this Cora Taskon has more on her mind than petty disputes with her siblings and I can promise you that by chapter 46, you’re going to get to see someone cut that corset off so Cora can kick some ass

2. Rhy is going to put those months of sword and knife training to use, but probably not on who you think, and it’s gonna be an angst train

3. Holland Vosijk is going to do something monumentally, incredibly, truly spectacularly stupid for the sake of Kell Maresh - and no, I don’t just mean acknowledging he’s in love with him. It’s way stupider than that. Think of the stupidest thing he could do to show Kell he cares because he’s a trash baby who won’t just say how he feels and then magnify that by like five

4. Chapter 40 was not the last time Hastra will look into the eyes of Athos Dane

5. Beloc’s back, bitches, and he’s a sweet teenage boy dealing with significant trauma while having his first crush and he absolutely falls flat on his face about it and it’s so goddamn cute it hurts

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Writing Excerpt For Today

(a sneak peek at the World's Worst Tea Party)

In the corner there was a boy - nearly a man, but not just yet. He was very short for a near-man, dark-haired, staring at them with odd angry dark eyes in a blank face. Luc caught a hint of a scar across one cheek, cutting through his eyebrow, another marking his lip, pulling it slightly to one side, a strange dark scar like the top spire of an odd tattoo sticking out of the low neck of his oddly colorless shirt. 

He could see silvery tracks of scars circling the boy's neck, clearly carefully and purposefully carved.

His wrists ached in sympathy.

"Hey-" He tried to say. "Can you help us?"

The boy did not so much as flinch, only continued to stare, arms crossed, leaning back against the wall. 

"Don't bother," The Veskan girl scoffed. "He's one of them, came with her. Some kind of servant, he's useless. He doesn't speak your language."

Luc caught the faintest flicker of the boy's eyes her direction, the way they narrowed a little in anger and his jaw tightened. 

Yes, he does, but he doesn’t want you to know it.

He squinted at the scar sticking out of his shirt, and felt himself go still, studying intently. It wasn’t a symbol he knew, but the style he recognized immediately. Bone magic. He’d seen some press-ganged sailors with scars like that. He’d seen slaves in foreign markets with similar ink.

The symbols might be different, world to world, but they were easy enough to recognize regardless. 

"Nyder du det du ser?" The boy snapped at him as he realized he was being stared at. He pulled the neck of the shirt up to cover the mark. "Ærgerligt, hvis du gør. Hvad er du? Du er ingenting. Kun kongen kan tvinge mig."

"You're under a compulsion spell," Luc said slowly. "That's what's on you, isn’t it?” He whistled, long and low, which made the stabbing pain in his head stab harder. “Aren’t you in a state. Do you serve the queen?”

The boy glared at him. “Kongen.”

“Kongen,” Luc said, puzzled. “Kongen… what-”

“King,” The Veskan piped up. “He’s saying king.”

“How do you know that?”

“In Veskan, you say king as kung. It’s not the same, but it’s close. Boy. Servant. Look at me, boy.” The boy’s eyes slid over to her, and his glare faded somewhat as the sneering contempt faded from hers. “Ah. Thank you. Do you serve the king of the other world?”

“I don’t serve,” the boy finally ground out in the Arnesian Royal tongue. “Han tvinger mig.”

“What did he say?” Luc asked. Emira sat to the side in silence, carefully breathing in very slow but shallow pants. Luc wanted so badly to get to her, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t even move his hands more than a half-inch above the arm of the chair.

“Oh, that was almost just the same as Veskan. He said… ‘he forces me’.” The girl shook her head a little. “I don’t understand.” 

“He’s a slave,” Luc said finally, wearily. “That’s what he means. Isn’t it, boy?”

The boy slowly nodded. He pointed to the place where the mark would lay under his shirt, jabbing at the spot with one finger. “Ja. Slav. Ah... sang varmere." His face turned red for no reason Luc could understand.

"Oh!" The Veskan girl exclaimed. "He's not a servant, he's a slave!" Then, as the knowledge sank in, she looked horrified. "... Oh. He's a bed slave. They did away with those centuries ago in Vesk."

"Three centuries, give or take," Emira murmured, forehead shining with sweat. "We gave up slavery, nearly all of us, after the doors closed. Makt did not. Our letters... Astrid always questioned the wisdom of that choice..."

"He's a Maktahn slave who speaks Arnesian Royal," Luc said out loud. "Isn't that interesting. I'd say you are far more than anyone gives you credit for, and I for one intend to turn that to my advantage. Where’d you learn it, boy?”

“None of your skide business!” The boy snapped out loud, and his voice was nearly ragged with anger. All three of the people chained to their chairs jumped - even Emira, although hers was hardly more than a slight jerk of her shoulders. 

“Fair enough,” Luc muttered. Did everyone in Makt have anger problems? Kell must fit right the fuck in. "Why aren't you speaking it with us now?"

Some of the anger drained from the boy's face and was replaced with fear. Not fear, no - terror. His eyes went to the door to the hallway and back. "Hun kommer måske tilbage og hører mig. Hun ville være så vred at de ikke vidste det."

Luc looked to the Veskan girl, who slowly shook her head. "I don't know all of it, he speaks so fast. But the first bit sounded like 'if she comes back'."

"The queen you serve," Luc said slowly. "She doesn't know you speak Arnesian Royal, does she?"

For the first time, the angry boy in the corner smiled.

"Well, then," Luc said out loud. "We know something she doesn't know. Good for us."

The Veskan girl blinked at the boy's smile, the way the scar pulled at it just a little to make it slightly rakish and one-sided. "Oh," She said softly, as though understanding the answer to a problem that had vexed her. "Oh."

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Writing Excerpt From Today

The Emery family had always been good at hoarding coin and ambition and waiting for their chance to spend or strike, after all.

Was he a viper, still, too?

Is that what Rhy would think he had been, a snake to steal away in the night? It was clearly what Kell thought - Kell had been the one to forbid him from ever returning, after all. Kell had been the one to ensure he would be arrested if he did.

And that little ankle-biter is gone now. 

Oddly, he didn’t feel as happy about it as he had at first. Kell was an annoying bit of skin and teeth, but he was also the strongest protector Rhy had. There had only been one person who knew Rhy better than anyone else in the world and kept his secrets, no matter what they were, no matter who they involved.

Kell had been the wall that blocked Rhy off from a world that saw him as something to use, he’d been the protector and Rhy’s shadow and his guard dog, and without him… what risk was Rhy taking just to live his life as prince?

Rumor had it Prince Kell had turned traitor, was working for another world hellbent on hurting this one. While they’d waited to be given clearance to leave the ship, sailors from another vessel had come for some good old-fashioned royal mudslinging with the crew and Luc had eavesdropped shamelessly.

A captain might be too good to gossip, but a good captain always knew when to listen to it.

There were doors open between worlds, that much was true. The glow of the Isle had dimmed, they said. There was a large door open at the Three Farms that had been blocked off after someone from another London had shot an arrow at someone from this one.

And, the gossipy sailors said, there was a new one last week, at least one new big one. But the people had begun to wonder if there were little ones, too, that no one had seen.

What happens if they put one in a closet? The sailors asked. What if there’s one hidden in plain sight, and none of us know? What d’you think they’ll do?

Kell was hemming the city in with doors, one by one. Setting up the ruin of his own nation? Preparing to attack his own brother, to take the crown for a foreign ruler?

No. Luc, for all his hatred of Kell being in his way, could not see Kell ever for any reason turning on his brother’s crown.

Rumor had it that Rhy screamed in pain at night with no wounds on his skin, that he had once collapsed often at dinner or breakfast but had begun to steel himself against it, eating with grim determination and in silence while his eyes sang the pain he did not show. 

The soft untried smiling peacetime prince looks more like a prisoner of war, the sailors whispered. But not broken; only tested.

Rumor had it that he disappeared down into the training room for hours at a time with a Sanctuary acolyte to hide his condition as best he could, practicing how to defend himself if Kell killed all his guards.

Luc swallowed at the thought. For all he and Kell had loathed each other, he had never once thought him capable of doing Rhy harm.

Rumor had it that Rhy stayed  in his room, turned away suitors and friends, only left the palace with ten guards surrounding him - in case of attack by Kell.

 Rumor had it that he could be seen on his balcony, watching the sunrise and sunset.

The sparkling, shining, shimmering prince of London was darkened by the loss of his shadow.

Rumor had it that when the mysterious pain was its worst, the prince spoke to Kell as if he were beside him. A guard had witnessed one of the attacks, a sailor whispered behind one hand. Luc had better ears than they gave him credit for, of course, and heard it all anyway. 

The prince was laid down in his bed and given something by the Aven Essen, the sailor said. My cousin Hastra works as guard now, he was called to see if the prince needed healing. I heard from his mama that Hastra said Rhy grabbed onto his hand and called him by the Aven Vares’s name, he thought Hastra was Prince Kell. 

Hastra said he looked right at him and said, ‘I’m here, you’re not alone, I’m right here with you, Kell, we’ll always be together’. What d’you make of that, eh?

Madness, maybe, One of Luc’s own had said. They’ve always been too close if you ask me, the two of ‘em. No brothers get on so well. Maybe there was more to ‘em, more we don’t know.

He’d seen Stross shoot a nervous look his direction and only shaken his head, minutely. Sailors gossiped; it was what they did. He wouldn’t stop them, and he’d learned something important that he couldn’t quite understand.

In all the world, there had only been one person who had never let Rhy down. 

And now there were none, Luc thought. Now Rhy is all alone up there, betrayed by his own brother, but when he is in pain he speaks to Kell as though there was never a betrayal at all.

Luc thought of the look on Kell’s face when he’d told him never to come back and bother his brother again. He’d been angry, sure, but the strongest thing written across Kell’s face hadn’t been the anger, but his love for his brother, the wound and the hurt and the pain he had felt right alongside him at Luc’s perceived abandonment.

Come on, Kell. Did you think so little of me as to assume I’d leave your brother all sweaty just to pursue a life of crime? He’d asked, trying to put the old humor in his voice even as his wrists had been in agony where still-raw wounds were pressed under the iron cuffs that bound his magic.

I don’t care about your life of crime, Kell said raggedly, and through his attempt to seem strong Luc had seen tears standing in Kell’s eyes and fought the instinctive urge to mock them even as the unfamiliar sight made his heart go cold with a kind of fear. I care that you hurt him, you chicken-livered son of a bitch, and I don’t care what I have to do, you’ll never hurt him again.

No. Kell would never turn on Rhy, and Rhy knew it, and...

What was Luc missing?

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Writing Excerpt From Today

(I showed this to @pinkcupboardwitch but it got a bit expanded when I thought about it and it doesn’t really give anything away, so... why not?)

“I hate to ask, but I need metal. You need to bleed for me, or this isn’t going to work.”

Cora's mouth was a thin hard line as she lifted the blade and let the edge rest against her wrist. She took a few deep breaths, trying to remind herself that it would only hurt for a moment, just for a moment. She had witnessed so much bleeding already, and what was a little more?

She had to be strong. She had to be Veskan, and Veskans did not fear to bleed in war - and war this was, even if it wasn’t her war. It had been her choice to come here, and now she must be strong and face the consequences of her decisions.

“Please, Miss Taskon-”

“Your Highness,” She said coldly to the man, turning her eyes on him. He only smiled at her, but with the indulgent smile of an older brother who knew little sisters well enough to know she was only cold because it would help her feel more capable. “I am a Princess of Vesk, and you will address me properly.”

“Apologies, Highness,” The man said easily. “It’s been a while since I had to stand on ceremony, I am out of practice.”

The black veins around his eyes were terrifying, they were leaking into the whites, staining them gray, ringing dark around the edges like he wore kohl. His hands were black at the fingertips and she saw the black veins skittering up his arms, could see them trailing up his neck and clustered over his heart through his torn shirt, where every heartbeat stained him darker and darker still.

Cora had never seen corruption before, but she knew it for what it was, and yet she had to give him her blood or they would never get out of here alive.

She took a deep breath, winced her eyes shut as tightly as she could, and started to press down. Just before she could force the blade’s edge deep enough, a cold hand with long fingers settled over it.

She blinked, looking down at the old scars etched across the knuckles, wrists that were carved with tiny symbols she didn’t know, and finally raised her eyes to look at the servant who had been in the room with them, the boy her own age.

There was an anger in his eyes, she realized, a deep well of rage like her own, like the anger that had always lived in her as she went through the motions of a life she didn’t want and couldn’t stand to see stretching ahead of her, on and on and on.

He shook his head at her. "Nej," he said softly, then frowned. "Ah. I mean... no." His accent was a little like hers, but softer on the consonants, and his voice was surprisingly low and deep, already nearly a man’s when he spoke like this.

His eyes were warm and deep and for all the anger in them, he looked… gentle, too. He was scarred and so thin he swam in his clothes and shorter than she was, but when he gripped the knife, she let it go. She let him take it. 

She was Veskan, and she was strong, but strength did not always mean throwing yourself on a sword. Sometimes it meant accepting the help others chose to give you, too.

“Why?” The man asked. “She has metal as her element, boy, I need her.”

“Why help me?” She asked the boy, and there was a harsh scar across his cheek; he had been cut, that scar had been made on purpose so he could never hide it, she thought. What are they like, in your world? 

"I have metal, too,” The boy said stubbornly. “It isn’t right to force a lady to bleed. I should be the one to feed you. I’ve fed them before." 

“Them? Do you mean- are you talking about the queen?” Her voice wavered, shook, and she thought of the mad blue eyes of the woman who had done- who had cut- who had nearly-

She felt her knees buckle and the boy quickly slid an arm around her waist to catch her, his eyebrows furrowing in worry. She pushed him away, but maybe hesitated a moment longer than was proper. His hand was cold, but his arm - his body - was warm. “It’s all right,” He said softly. “Don’t worry, your Highness.” He cracked a smile at her, an odd one-sided thing, and she had a strange sort of thought that she quite wished he was noble blood, too.

Did you need a pedigree to be noble, though? Cora had never asked herself that question before, but she asked it now.

“Cora,” She said softly, and extricated herself from his grip. “He can call me by my title. You can call me Cora.”

The smile widened, just the slightest bit. “I’m Beloc.”

“I’m… pleased to meet you, Beloc.”

“This is all quite lovely,” The man with the black veins snapped, “but we are nearly out of time, and I have a prince to save. Can we get back to the courtship later and fucking bleed now?”

“S-sorry,” Beloc stammered, and all his anger and easy smile was suddenly gone and replaced with an instinctive well of very old fear, and Cora’s eyes widened. 

The boy she was looking at had been hurt so badly, for so long, and still he wanted to bleed so that she would not have to, and he’d only just met her. Cora had been raised on selfish ambition and she had no idea what to do with this.

She turned to the man with black veins, narrowed her eyes, and said, “If you make him afraid again, I’ll disembowel you myself. I am not scared of you, knave.”

“Duly noted,” The man said dryly, but something gentled in him, and she saw the slightest hint of guilt. “Apologies, child.”

“Beloc. His name is Beloc.”

“Apologies, Beloc. Happy now?”

“Happy. Go ahead, Beloc.”

“Thank you,” Beloc said quietly, and then he drew the knife across his wrist with the easy flourish of someone who had bled in some way nearly every day of his life.

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Excerpt From Writing

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Holland said incredulously. The other three simply stared at him, Cora with a mocking smile directed more at the idea than at him, Kell with a very old pain in those blue eyes, and Rhy with absolute fury. “He’s not in any of the photos?”

“They put him in the company Christmas photo,” Rhy said darkly. “So people won’t talk. They keep the articles he was in when they brought him home framed. Sometimes if magazine people come over, Mom puts up some photos she’s taken of him so it’s less obvious all the other photos are of me.” Rhy opened up the next bottle of champagne, and he and Kell both took drinks straight from the bottle. 

“Because they are fucked up,” Cora sing-songed, sitting back in her chair, kicking her feet up over one arm, as though her incredibly expensive bridesmaid dress was just sweatpants and an old T-shirt. “You want more stories? I’ve got some fucking stories for you, Holland Vosijk. The first year, they spent like three grand on Rhy’s Christmas presents, and all Kell got-”

“Stop it, Cora,” Kell snapped. “He doesn’t need to know all of it. Presents don’t matter, they’re just things.”

“Fuck, Kell, don’t just repeat what they tell you,” Cora grunted. “How about when you begged them to go to school with Rhy and they told you all of your problems would be bad for their reputation?”

“Wait, that’s really why?”

“I was going through a phase,” Kell said, taking another drink from the bottle, all but chugging the champagne from it. There had been times, before, when Kell would be strange and angry and refused to talk or see him, and it clicked into place for Holland all at once that it had always been after a conversation with Emira or Maxim. “I was acting out.”

“No, you weren’t, Kell!” Rhy groaned. “You were being fourteen years old, who doesn’t act out at fourteen! I started drinking at fourteen, and they never even noticed, they were too busy being up your ass about everything and treating you like a goddamn criminal!”

Holland felt like he had walked into a soap opera, or a teen movie, and wanted badly to simply turn and walk out of it. He was thirty years old, and he’d lived a lot of life in that time, but nothing had ever been like this for him.

“Stop trying to justify them, Kell,” Cora drawled. “And stop drinking all my champagne. What about when you got into all those Ivy League schools and they made you go to Arnes U because Rhy had to go there because Maxim’s friend is the Dean of Business Administration?”

Holland blinked. “You got into Ivy League schools?”

Kell laughed, a little bitterly. “I’m not as stupid as I look.”

“That’s not what I meant-”

“No, I know it’s not. I’m. I’m sorry, Holl. It was only two of them, and anyway, it was just nice to know I made it in. I didn’t mind staying here for Rhy.”

“But that’s not the point, Kell,” Rhy said, enunciating each word with great care in the way of the rapidly-getting-seriously-drunk, and Holland could tell this was a very old conversation indeed. “The point is that if you want to leave, to travel places, you should be allowed to! You shouldn’t be stuck never going anywhere just because of me!”

“Yeah, well, it’s in the goddamn contract, isn’t it?”

[incorrectsom]

Lila: Hey, there you are! Wow, you two are still talking, Kell hasn't bored you to death by now?

Kell: Hey?

Lila: He's so boring.

Cora: Actually we were having a really great talk.

Lila: Keep your pants on.

Cora: What?

Lila: I mean, keep your pants on, girl!

Lila: I mean, those are nice pants, I really like your pants. Where'd you get 'em?