“It doesn’t matter if I do or do not. You have or haven’t tampered with them. You will or won’t. But this wave has crested, Arianna. There is no turning back progress now.” He paused, and Arianna had nothing to fill the silence with. “Don’t exhaust yourself. We need you alive.” With that, the old man departed.
“No turning back progress,” she repeated, staring at the boxes that lined the table. Was it really progress? Or was her creation the thing that would drive Loom to its demise?
Coletta
Along the narrow, depressingly unadorned passage away from her Gray Room was another receiving area—a collection of holding cells, really—where incoming Fen would be tested on their worth. Rok only had room and resources to support a select few of the wretched creatures, so the pack needed to be thinned. This area had been re-purposed as an observation room for the two women who currently occupied the space.
Topann lay on the table in the center of the room, a book Coletta had granted her open flat. The woman cupped her chin with her palm, lazily flipping the pages as her foot, with a mind of its own, rocked a chair slightly behind her back and forth. Where she was the picture of serenity and patience, the other beast in the room was not.
Fae crouched before the barred door to one of the cells that lined the perimeter and grinned at the cowering Alchemist inside. With one claw, she scratched away at the lock. A deep groove had already formed underneath the harrowing sound of her claw.
At Coletta and Yveun’s arrival, the two women were on their feet with varying speeds and levels of decorum. Topann stood straight, head bowed, hands folded demurely before her. Fae leaned heavily against the door of the cell, causing a faint clanking sound as the hinges strained under her bulk. Her purple eyes drifted lustily over to Yveun, the foreplay between them beginning with a mere look.
“How many organs do you each have?” Coletta asked.
“All of them,” Topann answered dutifully. “Save for lungs.”
“What she said.” Fae gave a mocking imitation of Coletta’s flower.
“The sickness, the magic rejection . . . You worked through it?” Yveun walked straight for Fae. “I want to see.”
“I’ll let you see inside me, if it pleases the Dono.” Fae made a show of leaning forward to whisper in his ear, but it was really entirely for the titillation of the man before her. Coletta, in turn, gave an approving look to Fae. She needed the woman to smooth over her mate’s rough edges at the impending news.
“How did you do it?” Yveun couldn’t seem to decide on which head he wanted to let govern his actions, and his body pivoted between her and Fae. Coletta knew his curiosity was great indeed if it pulled him away from the purring sex goddess before him.
“At first, we used like-organs.” Coletta motioned to Topann. “A symbol of Rok’s strength certainly required the best organs and nothing less. So I scoured the underbelly of Lysip, and then topside when that did not work.”
“But you said none of them took,” Yveun recalled.
“Indeed. Fae was the key.” Having a recklessly accepting test subject had more than proved Fae’s worth to Coletta. “She experienced no problem accepting Rok organs, even those from below.”
“A particular Dragon, then?” Yveun theorized.
“I thought the same, but Topann still rejected them, even ones regrown from the same stock.”
“You said you now have all of them but the rarest?” Yveun looked to her flower. “What did it take?”
Topann looked uncomfortable now. She folded and unfolded her hands firmly, working up her resolve. Coletta spared her flower the difficulty. The agony was needless.
“It took no half measures.”
“What does that mean?” The slight edge to Yveun’s voice from earlier was returning.
“Well, Fae as a Tam could accept Rok organs without rejection. I assume Xin can accept Tam organs . . .” Coletta wanted to see if he could put it together on his own. She had every faith her mate could, but hate blinded him too much. Prejudice was the true antithesis to progress. “Xin organs. A Perfect Rok Dragon requires Xin organs.”
There was a long silence.
Then, an explosion.
“What?” Yveun turned his head to the Alchemist in the cage. Coletta knew he hadn’t realized at the time that she was locking him in there for his protection. A kindness truly befitting a great ruler like herself. “Explain this, Fen.”
“I-I can’t!” He scooted away from the opening of his prison. Coletta could almost smell the sour aroma of fear oozing from his pores. “She’s right, but I don’t know why, it just is.”
“Explain!”
Coletta let the exchange drag on a moment. It was good for the Fen to see Yveun in a fearsome role, to reinforce the image of their great and terrible ruler.
“I don’t know. I’m not a proper Alchemist. I never received—”
“Do you want to give me excuses?” Yveun’s voice dropped, low and deadly, as his hand gripped the lock. Coletta wondered if he could rip it off. She almost wanted to let the situation escalate long enough to see him try.
“Magic rots Fenthri. We know Fenthri bodies aren’t made for it, so it rots us out . . . It doesn’t matter where the organs come from, it’s a property of magic.” The man swallowed hard a few times. “Perhaps there are different types of magic in different Dragons, in the different houses? There’s no way we could’ve known because it’s all magic for a Fenthri—it causes the same issue no matter who it’s from, or what type . . . But perhaps it explains why some can have three organs before falling, and some only two. Perhaps different houses have different potencies, or certain organs are noncompatible in a single body . . . ” The man trailed off into his own thoughts.
Yveun turned to Coletta. When his world was at its bleakest, its most unstable, he turned to her. It was their balance, their equal parts. “What does this mean?”
“It means that nothing has changed,” she said easily. “We hunted Xin before, purely for their deaths. Now, we will hunt them for their organs.”
Yveun was quiet a moment, but only just. With a half-snarl, half-roar, he buried his fist into the nearby wall, splintering and cracking the wood. “No, we will not.”
“No half measures.” Coletta shouldn’t have to remind him of their house’s motto, of how his failure to embrace it had only led, time and again, to their failure.
“This is not a half measure, this is a matter of our pride! We shall not lower ourselves to Xin for strength.” Yveun swung his head toward Topann. For a brief moment, Coletta could feel him considering saying something, but he abandoned the notion, storming out of the room. Even when he was pushed past his limit, he knew better than to disturb her precious flowers.
“Fae.” Coletta was unfettered. “Please go see to the Dono.”
“With pleasure.” The woman practically moaned the last word in her carnal excitement.
“Then you will head down to Loom.” They didn’t have time for dalliances and her mate needed to learn how to be placated without a toy to keep him occupied. If Coletta could teach him that one skill, how much easier would her life be?
“Yes, I remember the deal, what you gave me all this power for. Kill the girl, nab more gold.”
“And another, after Florence.”