33. Yveun

“She means to make a fool of you.” Coletta nursed a glass of wine, reclining in a chaise.

“That much is apparent to anyone with eyes.” Yveun continued to pace the room. It was large and open, with a gaping maw of a balcony and tall ceilings. It was more elegant than he wanted to admit and befitting of his station—which fed his anger further. Petra insulted him with one hand, while lauding him with the other. She toed the line finely enough that he could not challenge without seeming in the wrong to the masses.

“What is also apparent is that you are letting her.” Coletta regarded him with eyes the same color as the drink she consumed. Eyes that stripped him bare. Eyes that judged him even more harshly than he judged himself.

“I have not—”

“You are the Dono.” When Coletta wished to be heard, none would interrupt her. None would sway her. She was not a flashy weapon like most Dragons, and was all the more deadly for it. “You only do what you wish.”

“You would not have had me sit in the place Petra prepared at the Court.”

“I would not have had Petra organize the Court at all.”

He loved and hated his mate all the more when she was right.

“You did not consult me before this whole affair and you took a half measure on the matter, Yveun,” Coletta admonished. “You wanted to make a statement by holding the Court on Ruana. But you merely gave Petra the opportunity to show Nova what a Cobalt Court would look like. The only thing Dono about you today was the title servants called you as they fattened you on Xin food and drink while you sat out of sight and out of mind of the people.”

His claws strained against his fingers from the tension he put them under. Still Coletta sat, and sipped, and spoke.

“You sent a half-trained ‘Master Rider’ into the fray, who was made into an even larger fool than you by an Anh.” She straightened slightly. “I gave you Leona. I instructed you to nurse her in every way a man can. You had one of the greatest tools of our past forty years of work, and you wasted her.”

“There is something deeper here.” Yveun knew there must be. He would not let so much power slip through his hands otherwise. There was a variable he was still missing. “The Chimera on Loom—”

“You would blame your shortcomings on a Chimera.” Coletta stood, walking to the balcony. “That is the only thing I could imagine to be worse than blaming them on Petra.”

Yveun watched as the small-framed Dragon ventured out into the night. She possessed all the grace of a Dono. But Coletta had never desired the title. She couldn’t win it by normal measures, so it had suited her better to attach herself to him. They needed each other in different ways.

“It is only through half measures that these things are allowed to happen.” She raised her wine to her lips again, savoring the taste. “And if they continue, you will lose everything, Yveun.”

She didn’t say “we” or “House Rok”. The statement was so pointed, it was nearly a threat. She wanted him to be made aware that the House would live without him. She would live without him.

He stood to lose the most.

Yveun felt like a man before a god as he approached Coletta. She stood, washed in night, like the Divine Patron under which she was born—Lady Soph, the Destroyer. He hated admitting he had erred. But if he was to swallow his pride, he would do it before Coletta and no one else. He would drink the bitter poison of her words, to save himself from anything else she might concoct.

“Did you know that the most deadly flowers are oftentimes the most delicate?” Her tone had shifted. It had taken a softer note. There was danger in the quiet.

“I would believe it.”

“They are beautiful, Soph Pearls, the most delicate of all. When the tiny white flowers finally lose all their petals, the smallest fruit forms. And in this is a toxin that can slay even a Dragon with some magic in their gut.”

She smiled, revealing her gray, abused gums. Worn from years of her work, from years of experimenting with flavors. From working up tolerances and immunities. From breaking down her body out of reverence for her Lady. From the belief that to create, one must first destroy.

Coletta held out the glass she had been holding. The wine sloshed, airing with the very darkness itself. The stem of the glass dripped between her fingertips like a moonbeam.

Yveun met her eyes. Coletta changed nothing in her stance. She was as still as silence personified. As ever-present as death itself.

He reached for the glass, showing no fear. He took it from her fingers and he drank. The alcohol burned lightly, cutting the sweetness of the wine. It was a jam profile, sweetened with fruit and aged in light wood. He savored the flavors, holding them on his palette, searching for anything he might have missed, before swallowing.

“Do you like it?” Coletta asked.

“It is the same wine we drank today,” he observed.

“It is,” she affirmed. Yveun waited patiently for her to impart the importance of having him try something he’d consumed all day. He waited for the spark of magic of his stomach churning against poison. “This is a specialty for this side of Ruana, a favorite among House Xin. So loved that it does not even make shipments out of this corner of Nova.”

“I was not aware.”

“I know you were not.” Coletta shot him a glare from the corners of her eyes, conveying her lack of appreciation for his interruption. If such a look had come from anyone else, Yveun would have killed them on the spot. “Because you have become drunk on power, and are operating under half measures.”

Something indeed churned in his gut, but it wasn’t poison. No, anger at the truth his life-mate was lying before him tore at his insides. He had become drunk on power, on the idea that he was an invincible force and his rule was as inevitable as the sun rising. And tonight, that would change. There was something already brewing in the air.

Yveun took another long sip. “But you knew.”

“I knew.” She smiled into the blackness. “I knew, and I knew where the wineries are. I learned of each of the storerooms where the vintage is kept.”

“It would be a shame if someone tampered with the brew.”

Far on the streets below, the first cry cut through the night.

“Such a shame.” Coletta took back the wine, helping herself to another long sip. “For the flavor is right.”

More screams as Dragons fell, convulsing on the stone streets that sprawled out beneath them. A symphony of agony his Coletta had produced sang to them with all the beauty of a full orchestra.

Yveun wrapped a hand around her hip and smiled into the night alongside her. It was going to be a much shorter Court than he was accustomed to.

“There has been word from the whisperers to Loom.”

“What did they say?” Yveun asked over a particularly high-pitched cry.

“Two messengers arrived to the Harvesters’ Guild. They came to sow seeds of dissent from the Alchemists. They are seeking to rise against you. A rebellion has formed.”

Yveun cursed under his breath. It was hardly a surprise. An annoyance, the persistence of Fenthri. At least, that was how he’d always viewed it. And that had been the problem. He had treated the men and women in the gray world below like children, poor helpless creatures in squalor, in need of his guiding light.

After all he’d done, they still stood against him.

“What did the Guild do?”

“The Vicar Harvester took their meeting. It was one of their Masters who alerted the guild’s Dragon whisperer to Nova of it.”

“Without order from the Vicar?” Yveun clarified.

Coletta affirmed it with a small nod.

There was only one reason for the Vicar Harvester not to immediately come to him, not to immediately take the rebels’ treasonous heads: they were entertaining the notion. Or they were trying to hide it. It didn’t matter which to Yveun; both were equally unforgivable.

The Harvesters had been a loyal guild. From the beginning, they had followed his laws when he had shown them the error of their ways. They had remained in communication. But the Fenthri were fickle creatures. They tried to fit multiple lifetimes in what was not even one-fourth of his.

“I have taken enough half measures upon Loom.” This was what happened when one tried to leave room for the foolishness known as kindness. He had tried to be kind to Loom, and this was how the Fenthri repaid him.

Delight rose in his mate. Coletta’s magic shifted to a pleased pulse that hummed against his palm. It was a wonderful physical sensation to the auditory wonders of the world falling apart around him. It encouraged him to be one step more vicious, to be wholly committed.

“The guilds on Loom are bold anew. Squashing their last rebellion was not enough, because from its ashes the Fenthri rose again. Attempting peace by allowing them their guild cultures, to allow them to teach, was far too generous. They forget too quickly, and for that, they need a firm hand.”

There would be no more exceptions. No more half measures. The tree had rotted; he would no longer pick through the fruit. He would cut it down at the base, burn out the roots. He would till the soil and plant again.

“The world below is broken beyond repair. It must be destroyed and rebuilt.”

“Lady Soph and Lord Rok,” Coletta referred to both of their Divine patrons with a toast, continuing to pass the glass back and forth between them.

“Tell the whisperer that all Dragons loyal to me are to be pulled from the guilds. They will be moved to New Dortam, where my Riders will shuttle them back to Nova. Then, the Riders will remain on Loom and take over the Revolvers—and their weapons.” The plan took shape with vicious precision. “The Harvesters are to be made an example. It will show all of Loom that I am their King, that they thrive by my will and that they will die by it too. If even the most willing and loyal guild could not resist entertaining treasons against me, they and the rest will know none are safe, from the tallest of their mountains to the deepest of oceans. The land below is mine, and they will know it in every unbroken scream.”

“Merely the Harvesters?” Coletta pushed.

Yveun’s magic surged, his bones hot with power that boiled over into the atmosphere. He wanted to rain magic and blood down upon Loom from the chaos he would unleash on Nova.

“No. Destroy the Harvesters without warning. Lay waste to the Alchemists before their pathetic rebellion can retaliate. Shatter the Rivets’ tallest clockwork towers so that nothing may be rebuilt. Stop every one of the Ravens’ trains and snuff out trade and communications. Then, when the four are destroyed in absolute, bring the torch to the Revolvers’ gunpowder. Explode all those who know how to make the tools of war to disrupt this world’s divine hierarchy.

“Let them cry for order from the chaos. Let them beg for a savior to deliver them from the suffering they will know.”

“And you will be that savior?” Coletta asked after a long stretch.

“When I return their lives to them, I will be Lord Rok Himself. I will be their red God.”

“No half measures,” Coletta said with singsong delight.

“No half measures,” Yveun repeated, and savored the tuning sounds of discord in the air as he stepped behind the conductor’s podium for the greatest symphony of destruction ever composed.