CHAPTER 31: POACHING

The auditorium thrummed like a hive of pissy hornets. Girls pressed to our shoulders as we made our way through the aisles. Their voices were pitched high.

Laughter and cracked across the space and leashes flickered under the shifting light of the Corpusculaire.

The structure billowed with muted yellows and bright purples. Strong perfume and nervous sweat filled the air.

Lily and I made our way to confront the bitch Cechele. Our shoes slapped against the marble floor with enough force to echo.

Lily kept pace half a step behind me, her silver-backed tarot deck flicking back and forth between her hands while her pigtails bobbed from side to side.

Cechele draped across two seats in the first row of the infirmière section, lounging sideways with one knee hooked over the armrest. Her pristine white skirt rode high enough to flash the lacy tops of her stockings. Aifric sat rigid beside her in a pale-green uniform, fingers twisting at the fabric of her blouse so violently her knuckles had gone bloodless.

Cechele’s leash and its single obsidian bead caught in the light every time she tossed her head, laughing at whatever fresh poison she was dripping into the poor girl’s ear.

I stopped dead center at the front of the row.

"Cechele."

Her gaze slid down, slow and sickly-sweet. "Oh look, the warehouse hermit’s crawled out of her crate." Her eyes flicked to Lily as her lip curled. "Brought your fortune-teller to read my palm? That’s a new level of desperate."

Lily snorted, low and dry.

Cechele unfolded herself with theatrical grace, rising so the pleats of her skirt settled perfectly across her thighs, every inch of her held purchased prestige. Her chin tilted up, as if she was posing for one of the oil portraits dotting her family’s estate. "Come to beg for your pick back? Too bad, Aifric here’s already mine. She will be more than useful." Her gaze dropped to my skirt, lingered, and she smirked, "Unlike some people, who tend to think with the wrong head entirely."

You want to go there?

The air around us went brittle. A dozen conversations died mid-sentence and Aifric shrank another inch.

I stepped forward. "If you feel like elaborating," I said, soft enough for only the first two rows to hear, "I’ll take you outside and finish what we started earlier."

Cechele’s laugh came low, delighted. "Yeah, I think I’ll decline."

She drew close enough for her rosewater perfume to bite at my nostrils, sharp and cloying.

"So," she said, voice pitched for my ears alone, "who’s the unlucky sap you’re going to doom with your second pick? Some stupid piece of ass I’d guess, seems to be all you’re interested in, perv."

"That speaks well to your thoughts of Aifric, given you just poached her from me."

Her nose wrinkled. Aifric kept her mouth shut and I felt a tinge of guilt for drawing her into our crossfire.

Cechele carried on, "Well if you’re not just looking for a pretty pair of legs, I’d guess it’s one of the big combattant names still floating. Crea? Cordial?"

I kept my face blank. Or I tried to. My jaw locked so hard my molars click.

She caught the twitch at the corner of my mouth like a cat eyeing a mouse’s tail.

"Or..." She drew the word out, tasting it. "It’s something else entirely?" A slow, vicious smile spread across her face. "You’re going to waste the pick on your girlfriend? The baker’s daughter who squeaks when you bend her in dirty bathwater!"

My silence spoke louder than any denial I could have mustered.

Cechele couldn’t suppress her giggles, their sound bright and cruel. "Heavens you’re predictable. Second round, Serica? Second? You’re going to burn a premium pick on sentiment!" She tapped her lower lip with one manicured finger, pretending to think. "You know, I wasn’t going to bother taking a second from you. Too easy. But now?" Her eyes glittered black and bottomless. "Now I think I will. Just to watch you choke on it."

Her words hit like a slap. Heat crawled up my throat; I felt Lily shift behind me, hand half-raised, ready to yank me back if I lunged.

I should have lied. Should have spat out any name. Instead I stood there like a statue while she read every flicker of panic on my face. She’d decided, right then, that ruining me was worth more than whatever optimal pick she originally planned.

Stepping past me, her shoulder brushed mine hard enough to shove. "Enjoy the rest of the show, moron."

She descended the steps with that same unhurried, aristocratic sway, skirt flicking like a satisfied cat’s tail. Every head turned as she passed; she dominated the aisle the same way her father dominated a fifth of the city. At the bottom, she paused, glanced back once, and mouthed two silent syllables I didn’t need sound for.

"Cor-a."

Then she was gone, her small stature swallowed by the queue of tacticiennes waiting for round two.

Lily let out a low whistle. "We could have handled that better..."

I couldn’t answer. My pulse hammered so hard I tasted iron. I’d done it again, let Cechele inside my guard, let her see where to cut deepest. Cora was three sections over, pink hair glowing like a beacon, trusting me to bring her home. I’d painted a target on her back the size of the entire fucking auditorium.

My hand dragged down my face, nails digging crescents into my cheek.

Idiot. Fucking idiot. This was the worst possible scenario, losing Cora to that cunt.

The next four years of my life flashed before my eyes, four years watching her suffer under this miserable tyrant, four years I could have been sharing a common room with her. We could have snuck out in the middle of the night to rendezvous, every night.

But no, short of descending the steps and lodging my pocket-knife into Cechele’s back, I had no recourse. There was some possibility of pulling her back in an event, but there was no guarantee of it.

Things were impossibly out of hand. I had no way to stop Cechele. All I could do was approach Cora. She sat among the combattants, and I approached, head hung low.

Hell, I don’t want to say this.

She flashed me an unassuming smile as I tucked my hair behind my ear.

"I fucked up."