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Chapter Text

There is little to be heard inside these chambers. Though the hearthflame whispers and rustles in the unheard language of its ancient tongue, it is needless of wood to sustain it: no snapping, no hissing. Any servants who might be scurrying through the walls are busied tending guests of import and too well-trained to impose their presence besides. Hosted at such a distance in the sprawling keep, the noise of the banquet carries not.

Iphigenia despises being left alone like this, trapped in the unbroken quiet that breeds a clamorous mind. She reaches beyond her keening thoughts, into a long-forgotten dream, into the hazy memories of a life once known.

This late in the eve, the tables will have been cleared of fare and wetted through with spilled drink. Candlewax will have splattered onto the silken table runners, themselves red like overripe pomes, skin split and leaking out, or else the deep purple of fading injury. Back when she could attend such an event, fae would not have been so bold as to steal away with one another even in private, but here, in this rancorous keep, the alcoves will already be writhing with sweat-slick bodies and stinking of the pleasure taken from them with hand and teeth.

Her eyes begin to prickle, then blur over with tears. She blinks these away before they can spill—but the burning remains, spreading further down her throat and into her lungs.

Smoke, Iphigenia realizes belatedly. There is smoke filling the room.

She frowns through the accumulating haze and over to the hearth, but the fire there flickers pure. It is as she toes into her slippers to locate the source that the smoke gathers thicker to itself. The tall silhouette of a male is unmistakable in its cloying depths.

Her stomach drops.

Only the court’s spymaster is known to possess such abilities and have permission to use them within the confines of the Forest House. She has never met the male, but she knows the displeasure he elicits in his father as a forceful thrust past her tongue, as a grip tight in her hair. She has seen the throat-bobbing fear of the females he selects for a night, then witnessed the aftermath of him on their naked bodies: handprint bruises and bloodied teethmarks, blackened eyes and swollen mouths.

It takes force to leave such lasting marks on a fae. It takes rage. It takes hate.

Iphigenia lowers at once into a curtsy, her head bowed, her eyes downcast. She fixes her gaze on the point of his shoes as they materialize, a spot which she has found to be safe on any male. Firelight flickers balefully back at her in the shine of them.

Emile Vanserra does not speak in his approach, so neither does she. Nor is she foolish enough to rise until he has given her leave.

Even in her periphery, he cuts an imposing figure. The fineness of his dress is austere and understated. He does not embellish himself with anything more than gilded embroidery along the trim of his doublet, a fashion plucked from the frame of Lord Eris. On his hand of flesh, he bears only his signet ring and his marriage ring. She does not let her attention drift to his hand of metal, though neither does she make her avoidance apparent. She has heard that either can spur his anger.

The acrid bite of smoke threatens to seize her chest.

At length, he says, “Let me see your face.” Hours spent deep in a cup muddle his words through. He must have been in attendance at the feast.

Iphigenia straightens up and lifts her chin, dutifully ignoring the unsteady of her pulse.

His mouth is the High Lord’s when she lifts her eyes to it, and it curls with disdain in just the same way. He snorts. “Father always has preferred his whores to look like his lady wife. Funny, that.”

So Iphigenia has often heard whispered in her wake, though she has never laid eyes on the Lady of Autumn herself.

Emile steps closer, close enough that Iphigenia can smell the brimstone and ash of him, close enough that his body heat gropes at the thin, sheer fabric of her peignoir. If only it were the corseting of a lady, holding her tight, keeping her safe; if only she might scold his impropriety and storm for the door at the intrusion of him in her chambers.

She stands, and she waits.

“Are you without a tongue?” he rebukes. “I cannot imagine you maintain father’s favor absent one.”

“Beg pardon, Lord Emile,” Iphigenia replies. She gestures behind her, where an ornate flagon rests atop a small table near the bedside. “May I pour you a glass of wine?”

Perhaps he will drink of it and swoon, long enough that his father will seek her out and rebuke him upon being found in the same room as her—though it is just as likely she will suffer these consequences in kind and will have to soothe the High Lord of his anger.

It would be worth it.

Emile considers a moment, then waves a dismissive hand. The metal one, heavy and punishing in its arc through the air. “It would only go to waste,” he says. “Father has need of you.”

Odd that a son would then be sent, seeing as only females are permitted to prepare her for his use, and even that is done under his watchful eye, for his pleasure.

All the same, Iphigenia lilts, “Of course.” She takes a step towards the door, eager to overlook the strangeness of his arrival if it only means she can be free of his presence. “Shall I go to him now?”

Emile eats up the space she won between them. “Tonight, it would please him for you to entertain one of our esteemed guests.”

Iphigenia’s brow dips.

The others, she has heard, are enlisted to these tasks by any with the coin to sway them, especially those without the security of a well-positioned lord or lady. They set pleasure herbs in the hanging braziers and fill goblets so that they never empty. Long accustomed to such vices themselves, the lush of their bodies distracts easily from the threat of their minds. Information is drawn out as simply as a moan, then echoed back to whoever can best make use of it.

But this is only what she has heard, for the High Lord does not share that which belongs to him.

Earlier this night, while the others were perfumed and rouged and ornamented for presentation to those attending the banquet, she was instructed to keep to her chambers so that there could be no doubt to him that she would remain untouched. All of his immediate cortege in Autumn know who she belongs to, but it would insult his lady greatly if he were to claim Iphigenia as his own before visitors beyond their court. So here she has waited, his pretty petal, perfectly preserved for his plucking.

And his alone.

“The High Lord requested me by name, highness?”

Emile’s smile does not reach his eyes. “The whore is plenty clear, don’t you think?”

Shame reddens her cheeks as would the back of a hand.

With rapt attention, he watches the color bloom in the wake of his blow, a youngling marveling at a fireworm macerated and luminescent underfoot, just before he seeks out the next to see if its spectacular death will entertain him the same.

Floundering: “And—he was asking after me? A task such as this might s—”

“Father is not the only lord you answer to,” Emile snaps.

The words splatter Iphigenia like bile, acidic and foul. She startles first at the force of them, then the sting as they settle into her skin.

But she knew from the moment of his arrival, did she not? The wrongness of it, the strangeness.

The High Lord did not send him for her. This wayward son is here of his own accord.

Without preamble, Emile reaches for the gauzy overlap of her peignoir, splaying it open and exposing her breasts. The dark gems inlaid into his marriage band scrape against their inner curves as he samples the smooth of her flesh against his knuckles.

It is so presumptuous a caress as to freeze her in place—a tendency found in only the most helpless of prey animals.

In her stupor, he slithers his touch up to the collar about her throat, welded into place by the High Lord. He skims his fingertips along the base of the golden setting, and his nostrils flare. She knows from his father that this portends anger, or desire, or both.

Alone.

Iphigenia is alone with a male who displeases his father and beats his females, and he is touching her as no other has dared since she caught the eye of the High Lord upon her arrival at the Forest House.

The sylvan walls of the room begin to press in against her. She can taste her pulse around her tongue, metallic and throbbing. She meets his eyeline as though the sickening beat of her heart does not thud, thud, thud into her teeth, quick as that of a rabbit too frightened to flee.

His satisfaction with her rising panic finally glints at the flat of his stare.

“What pleases me,” Emile drawls, the alcohol on his breath souring her stomach, “pleases father in turn. So long as I am kept happy, he need not know who brought me the information I seek, nor how it was obtained. There are many in my employ.”

Then why must it be me? Iphigenia wants to demand. If you know what it will do to me should he hear tell, why must it be me, as it has never been before?

But Emile's heavy hand is still on her neck, overlaid atop the collar, and there is only a parted robe between her and his discontent. She thinks, too, looking now into his eyes, that he might hope for her to object—that her obedience in this is all that will keep him from ruining her himself. She does not understand it, but she does not need to in order to heed the threat of it.

The fingers on his hand of metal twitch.

Her eyes burn.

“Who am I to attend, lord?”

Emile tightens his hold on her for a long moment, then, slowly, he drops his hand away.

“The cuckold of Spring has emerged from his dereliction," he says. "His attendance was not anticipated tonight. You are to ascertain what recalled to him his duties and whether it shall persist.”

Iphigenia resituates the drape of her peignoir as she listens. Once it is in place, she holds it closed just beneath her clavicles, her other arm pressed tight across her abdomen.

The High Lord of the Spring Court.

His clawed spectre has accompanied her throughout her short life. His role in the savage murder of the High Lord’s two sons is the stuff of lore, of cautionary tales and childhood admonitions. Do as I say, lest the beast of Spring come sate his appetite with you, too. She knows that long ago, he spurned an evil witch and doomed all of Prythian for it—and after, he sat idle and free for fifty long years, all the while the rest of their lands suffered in her gnarled hands. It was not until a young human came along, of all things, that their people were championed, and she had been so repulsed by him that she rejected his advances in favor of the High Lord of the Night Court, a land rumored to be darkling and hostile and barren, to say nothing of its master.

On the night Iphigenia was taken from the safety of her estate and carted off to the Forest House in the back of a lord's opulent carriage, she thought the terror in her belly would never find its match. Even catching the eye of her own High Lord did not give rise to this, for he, at least, was familiar to her, the way any god can be known to its followers in glimpses; she knew what obeisance he would expect of her in the very moment his gaze swallowed her up. Yet this simply, she is back in that carriage, her face pressed to the curtained window, her eyes screwed up tight against the world, the motion of the wheels thudding rhythmically into her skull.

The unknown leers at her with black-chip eyes and an acetic grin.

Her silence begins to stir Emile's impatience. It is something she feels between them more than anything he does, a tautness taking shape no differently from that of his father.

A plea for guidance, Iphigenia hears herself ask, “What does he enjoy?”

Emile laughs. It is a harsh, unpleasant sound. “What all males enjoy. A tight cunt and a wet mouth.”

Iphigenia flattens her palm against the beat of her heart. She knows her High Lord; she knows it is not so simple a thing. This one will have his own preferences and expectations for her appearance, her demeanor, her technique. He will want her to preempt him, and if she cannot, she will be faced with his discontent.

She thinks of the other girls and their lasting marks.

She thinks of the carriage ride and its silken curtains.

She thinks of the High Lord and his collar around her throat.

She looks to Emile’s hand of metal and absently murmurs, “The handlers will know that I have not been summoned. They will have questions.”

Lowly: “Are you so lofty a slave that you cannot prepare yourself?”

The anger in his tone yanks Iphigenia back to the now. She drops her gaze to his baleful shoes and bows her head. “No, lord."

“Then do so,” Emile rejoins. “And make haste. He retired to his chambers in the east wing some hour past." His edges begin to blur into smoke as a grin slashes across his face. "They should be simple to find. I'm told father summoned you there to mount often enough.”

In his wake, the chambers descend back into a thunderous quietude.

And Iphigenia, trapped with her too-loud thoughts and trembling limbs, makes ready for the High Lord of Spring all on her own.

Chapter Text

Without a guide to follow behind, the servant passages are labyrinthine and daunting. They are lit not by enflamed sconces as the main corridors are but rather by a smattering of murky faelights set into the ceiling high above. The thin cast of their light is hardly enough to reach the floor, as though they have been submerged in water deep and left to the drowning of time. Still, their glow is cold enough to chill the bone.

Iphigenia opens her palm beneath the tray she carries.

Into life blooms a flame like a flower, delicate and unassuming, catching the crystal of the goblets on either side of it and spurring their fractals into a dance around her. There is none of the potency in her magic that ripples off the High Lord when he brandishes his own, yet the keep turns its focus on her all the same. She can feel it pulsing, keenly aware of her procession through its sylvan veins, as unrelenting in its attention on her body as its master.

It notices: her hair curled in loose, cascading spirals down her back, the darkness of its hue eased by the bright blossoms she coaxed out of the herbage in her chambers; the pale purple of her gown, its vernal color and bishop sleeves belied only by the cut of its neckline to her navel and the sheerness of its fabric; the simple chains she scavenged to adorn her ears and wrists in place of the dripping gems fashionable in her court; her scent perfumed with rose oil, dabbed on hastily enough to glint still on the tender flesh at the crook of her elbows.

She might pass for any other female trussed up to serve a Spring male his fantasies were it not for the High Lord's collar, its rubies red as a slash across her throat, bleeding forth her betrayal.

Would that the magic he wove into its forging did not rebuke her glamours, but he is as precocious as he is absolute. He would never permit her hide his claim to her.

A curl suddenly at her lip, Iphigenia wields herself against the watchful keep.

Rot spreads from the next fall of her foot, and the next, and the next, so that the wood beneath becomes soft enough in its putrification to give beneath her weight.

Nearly nostalgic, a damp, earthen scent gives rise. It smells of requital.

As though she is a splinter to be expelled, the Forest House bears down around her on all sides—but as ever, it does little more by way of further retaliation than tend its own wounds. Its boundless wellspring of power surges in her wake, and it is as though she never brought harm to it at all.

She suspected, the first reckless time she lashed out, that the High Lord might feel it in his connection to the heart of his lands. Fear and thrill struck her akin to think it so, yet nothing came of her small defiance when he called on her in the aftermath. That eve, he bedded her no differently than he had the one before. Like she was a blossom ripped clean from its stem, lovely and gaping and nothing beyond, not until he filled up the hole he tore in her.

Her fire wavers in her hand, then extinguishes.

In the sudden dark, Iphigenia turns the final corner. Emile spoke no mistruth. Even for the menace of the passages, it had been natural to navigate to these chambers. She stands before the false wall, holding tight to the serving tray, and stares at it until the metal handle takes shape in the paltry light from above—until her resolve steadies itself in the cage of her ribs.

She is no better prepared standing at this precipice than she had been upon receiving her orders, but the truth of her plight is one she is familiar with: there is simply no other choice. She may lash if she pleases, but it will amount to naught in the end.

A petal bears no thorns.

And so Iphigenia lifts her fist to do nothing more than knock.

The very moment her knuckles rap against the wood, a rush of magic quests out towards her, balmy and windswept, as fresh on the skin as a dewdrop on a flower. It snuffles up her spine in its withdrawal, and there, scraping along her nape—that is where she feels the whetted edge of eyeteeth.

This is a beast which cloaks itself in benevolence to disguise its true nature.

The High Lord suffers her no such pretenses. His games are for his satisfaction, not for deception. They leave her as worn of mind as she is of body, but she knows how to perform for them; she knows when she is meant to bend and when she is meant to break, when to fawn and when to fight. She knows not how to mold herself to another. Least of all one which she cannot see true.

Tenuous from its outset, her resolution abandons her entirely.

Long enough passes that she worries she will have to knock again. Worse, that he will not permit her entry even if she does. There would be no mercy found in Emile if that were the case, a distinctive lack carved into the male's makings. She glances back the way she came, like the Forest House might have kept his plenty and will choose now to open up to her passage elsewhere.

Anywhere, so long as it is away from here.

Home, even. She could forgive her father if it meant she did not have to suffer this any longer, or at the very least remain cordial with him. She could smile at her mother just as she used to, guileless and with youthful hope, so that her mother would never have to know what became of her only daughter. She could return to her life like all of this was only a long dream that ensnared her, the wrong mushroom eaten of the wood, the wrong circle broken in passing.

But embittered by her treatment of it, the Forest House shows her no such mercy.

The false wall opens.

A warm light pours out onto Iphigenia. Its radiance stuns her as she turns into it, so overwhelmingly does it pierce the gloom. She blinks once, twice to adjust her eyes, and the form of a male cuts through.

The High Lord of Spring has a breadth to him that Iphigenia has not before seen in any Autumn nobility. Though he is not of the towering height Lord Eris possesses, he stands above her own High Lord—and thus well above her. The simple linen of his moss tunic permits no misgivings that it is anything but muscle beneath, taut around his shoulders, sleeves rolled up to his elbows as though his forearms could not quite fit them. Though there are no claws yet on his hands, they, too, are overlarge where they rest at his sides, near double the size of Emile's metal fist and at least as intimidating.

Her weight would be as nothing to him. He could throw her about without even dampening his brow.

Composure faltering, Iphigenia concedes a half-step back. She cannot loosen the clench to her stomach, nor control how fiercely her heart takes to racing.

With the light at his back, the High Lord of Spring regards this in obscurity. His voice is tangled over with thorns when he says, "What is this?"

For a moment, all she can do is blink. Then the words she prepared alongside her body speak themselves on her behalf: "A gesture of welcome, High Lord." She lowers the tray, a casual motion, just enough so her decolletage may be better displayed. "That you might have every comfort available to you as an esteemed guest of Autumn."

In this, she finds he is a male like any other. His gaze is a tangible weight where it falls at once to her breasts—

—but just as swiftly, it drifts. Not down to her hips, nor lower to the silhouette of her legs, but away from her entirely. Somewhere into the gloaming over her shoulder.

He says, "I've no need."

Beneath the collar, her pulse flutters. Its unsteady thrum against the unforgiving metal brings her skin to prickle with itch. Her thumbs shift idly against the tray, but she cannot offer herself any relief.

"Fae wine as decadent as this ought be known by all at least once, High Lord." A pretty verse she has heard spun before, no matter that it is mistruth off her tongue: "Its fruits were plucked from the sun-ripened fields of our eastlands and aged to decadence in the cellars of this very keep. Its body meets the tongue like silk on the skin." A small smile to curve her mouth, as though shy. "It would be my honor to serve it to you."

Curt: "As I said."

What can be said in defense of the rabbit who does not flee, who does not even freeze—but instead forces her way between the jaws of the wolf and prays he will eat gently of her brazenness?

Iphigenia breezes forth, close enough to the High Lord of Spring that she must tip her head back to look upon him properly. Were it not for the tray, she would be pressed flush against him.

He finally looks back to her face. A few glimmering strands of hair slip free of the tail he has pulled them back into.

"I think, High Lord," she says, the lilt of her cadence woven into a temptation for him to sample, "that you will find it well to your liking if I stay."

His nostrils flare. The muscle at his jaw tenses.

Anger and desire poise themselves like teeth about her neck.

The High Lord of Spring lifts a hand, and she wills herself remain limber, pliant, succulent for him to tear into.

But instead of reaching for her, he leans away and settles his palm against the false wall.

In preparation to close it on her.

The collar cinches tight in place of the jaws. No longer an itch but a constriction, like two hands have already settled atop it—one of metal, one of flesh, both intent upon her ruin. Her breaths come shallow.

As the High Lord of Spring readies his part in this condemnation, her eyes begin to burn.

There is no acrid bite of smoke to blame it on this time. Only the bright of the light she could have had, had she never been so naive as to step foot in that carriage.

The blurring silhouette before her gives pause.

At great length, the High Lord of Spring says, "One glass."

Pitifully, Iphigenia replies, "High Lord?"

"The wine."

Having nearly forgotten it, she looks down to the serving tray. The tears welling at her lash line crest, but she wills them to steam before they can spill for him to see.

As her vision clears, she sees her opportunity anew: the crystal goblets, the flagon of wine—and tucked there beside, a small sachet of pleasure herbs gifted to her by a whore upon her arrival.

To ease your mind, the whore had said as she pressed the sheer pouch into her palm, and your body.

I have no want of this, Iphigenia had replied, though it had taken at least two attempts before she could rouse her voice enough to be heard.

Pupils wide over her sloshing goblet, the whore had smiled. Not quite sadly, for she no longer seemed in possession of the capacity, but with something reminiscent. Then, on a shrug that rid her of the haunt, she said, But you will, and floated away.

The High Lord of Spring will be just as mistrustful as she had been if she brings them to light herself, or else adds them to the brazier hanging in his chambers—but if she can draw near to the hearthfire, can keep his attention on her and away from the smoke long enough for it to settle in his mind, then his muscles—

Iphigenia dips her chin. "As bid, High Lord."

He moves aside slowly enough that there can be no mistaking his reluctance. She crosses the threshold as though she does not notice.

At once, Iphigenia realizes that these chambers were selected with intention. They are just as lavish as she remembers them: draped in thick, finely woven brocades; ornamented with complex works of glass and jewel-crusted statuary; furnished handsomely enough to remain in uninterrupted for days and weeks at a time. Well-befitting a visiting lord.

Had they not been chosen as insult.

For on the air, she catches it still—the forceful scent of the High Lord's arousal. Beneath it, faint but undeniable: her own, then that of those who came before.

It was not enough to laugh privately at the expense of the High Lord of Spring, hosted here in the High Lord of Autumn's whore den. Whoever boarded him had to make sure he knew they were laughing, too. The matter of ridding these chambers of their stench would have been as simple as the wave of a hand, but he was undeserving of even that.

Iphigenia nearly loses grip on her tray. Only just does she manage to settle it on a small serving table beside the flickering hearthfire.

Emile sent her on a fool's errand.

The false wall snicks shut, then a sharp rush of magic begins to encase the chambers.

Now.

She must do it now, while he is otherwise focused.

The sachet is in and out of her palm before her heart can beat its full course. The pleasure herbs within hiss as the fire eats of them, but she obscures this with a sloshing pour into the first goblet, then the second. By the time they are filled, the deep crimson of blood, her artifice has been made complete.

All that is to be done is keep the High Lord of Spring's attention away from the rising smoke until it has worked its way into his system.

Breath shallower yet, Iphigenia glances to the flames—

—and a ferocious, snarling gust of wind extinguishes them.

Behind her, at a much nearer distance than she had realized: "Who sent you?"

Here, in this spiteful keep, all words are double-spoken and all intentions are threefold. Such bald accusation has a sort of stunning effect on her that she has never suffered before. She parts her lips, presses them together, parts them again, but choked by pulse and collar both, no words push up from her chest.

At the periphery of her mind, right where it meets the body: a base stirring. Run, her meat demands of her. But if she could have run, she would have done so long ago.

It is always mistruths which serve best in these moments, especially when they are by half.

Iphigenia turns to face him with one already aspill. "I was sent to ser—"

A rumble in his depths, the High Lord of Spring warns, "Don't lie to me.

The jade of his gaze is as cold and unyielding as the stone itself. He stands close enough that she can see herself reflected there in miniature, a little prey thing before him, her own eyes wide and dark. She drops them hastily to his shoes.

Around her, the walls of the Forest House press, and they press, and they press.

By half: "I have no wish to lie to you, High Lord."

Her naked fear alone would have charmed her lord. His eyes would have blackened where she could not see them. He would have taken her by the neck and drawn her into the cradle of his lap, or else put her directly onto her knees. There would be no need for words and no room left in her for thoughts. She would know as instinct what was expected to ease his bearing, and so she would offer it of herself.

This lord, with his stone gaze and his fraying patience, only says, "A name. Or leave."

A choice that is no choice at all when both spell death by the same rageful hand.

Iphigenia feels her fate, abruptly, as a certainty. She cannot run from it, and she cannot cry out against it, and she cannot fend it off. It is not something she looks forth into but something which pulls her backwards, as though with the weight of memory already come to pass.

Emile Vanserra is going to kill her tonight.

This close to failure, he will smell it on her even if she manages to succeed, and he will not permit her survive it. A fool's errand, a trap snapped shut—one that she knows not the mechanisms of and thus has no hope to free herself from.

She will not be missed. She will not be mourned. Before a moon has passed, she will be forgotten, except for the occassional evening the High Lord reminisces on the skill he cultivated of her throat and how tedious it is to have to train another.

Eventually, not even that.

As though shoved, Iphigenia drops to her stinging knees before the High Lord of Spring, head bowed, hands trembling. She fists them in the scant, defenseless fabric of her dress, where they shake instead against her thighs.

Once, such debasement had bruised her. Now, it comes without care for the pain.

"Please, High Lord," she implores. A blossom, pure and white, falls from the shifting drape of her hair. "I will do anything. Anything, if only you do not send me away."

His mud-spattered boots shift, first with a transfer of his weight, then back from her entirely. Voice tight, he orders, "Stand up."

Swallowing thickly, Iphigenia obeys.

The High Lord of Spring regards her for a long, terrible moment. Borne on it, his scrutiny is judgment. The state of her life, the state of her death, arbitrated by a beast and his appetite.

"This is the last I'll ask," he forewarns. "Their name."

These tears, she does not bother turning to steam. As they are the only grief that will be spared for her end, she lets them spill hot down her cheeks.

"He will kill me, High Lord."

It is not the one before her whom she beseeches, but it is he who answers. If she did not know better, she might think his tone had gentled.

He says to her, "You won't be overheard."

As this is a high lord unlike her own, she knows not what to say to entice him away from this questioning—nor what the consequence will be for her continued disobedience.

"Even so," says Iphigenia, soft, sorrowful. She tucks her hair behind the points of her ears, then clasps her hands tight atop her navel. With a look over to the cold, empty hearth, she names, "Lord Emile."

Thick silence. Then, quiet but unmistakable, a growl.

Under his breath, the High Lord of Spring says, "Insufferable prick."

And nothing more.

Iphigenia quails. "I know—little else, High Lord. Only that he was—displeased by your attendance tonight." The tears begin to pool under the metal of her collar. Her breath slides unevenly against them. From between the jaws of the wolf: "I beg your pardon."

She expected to shake all the harder now, or for her belly to bottom—but there instead, rooted at the core of her: a macabre satisfaction. If she is to die tonight, at least Emile will suffer his due. High Lords do not abide such indignities, and in this, he has spat upon two. No more than a petal lost will she be, but the male before her is made of thorn and claw, sinew and anger.

His wielding would be a spectacular thing.

Iphigenia's regard draws to him of its own volition.

He is looking to her, but the unrelenting plane of his gaze has dulled. Like he is elsewhere. Another time, another place, just as she wishes to be.

An unbidden sniffle from her seems to recall the High Lord of Spring to himself. His mouth flattens as he tracks the path of her tears, and at his sides, his hands draw into fists, then his fingers flex wide.

"I was about to leave," he says. "When you arrived."

Here now, Iphigenia feels it, that constriction around her throat, that portent of her death.

There is nothing left for it. He will take his price from Emile, then his leave. She will be forced to face her end.

Alone.

Her tremors worsen.

Her belly bottoms.

Her breath seizes.

Then, through it all: "If you want to come."

The words flit past her, hollow-boned as a bird in flight. It takes Iphigenia overlong to capture back the wonder of them, to wrangle them into her hold and keep them still enough to make sense of. Even when she does, their wingbeat does not settle in full.

"To Spring?" stumbles from her mouth, dumb and ill-footed as a kit.

Tersely, he nods.

As when a hold on the neck finally, blissfully releases, Iphigenia is overcome by the urge to gasp. She draws in fresh breath and thanks the Mother above for her clemency—then, in the very same, curses her for her cruelty.

Freed of her High Lord, only to find herself at the mercy of another.

But—to be freed of her High Lord at all. Never has she let herself consider such a thing, not even in those lonely, quiet moments he abandoned her to. For if ever she did, she would have to look into the face of the looming truth.

That her death alone would see her free of this place.

That she was living already in her own tomb.

"Yes," Iphigenia blurts. "Yes." Shakily, she palms away the tears still staining her skin. "I would like that very much, High Lord. If you will have me."

As though a great wind has at last swept through to dislodge a rotting pome from its bough, the Forest House shudders out in glee.

The High Lord of Spring looks to the collar around her neck and nods over again.

The silence grows taut.

At the mercy of another High Lord but freed of her own.

Freed.

Freed.

So long as she can make her egress without notice. Not only that of Emile but of the lords, the ladies—the servants, the sentries. The keep itself might be glad to be rid of her, but in this, its watchful nature is dually damning. Any who bear witness will either speak flippantly of what they saw to someone aware of who she belongs to, else they will know themselves and go at once to the High Lord in attempt to garner his favor, or avoid his wrath, or both in one.

The High Lord of Spring will not be so generous as to intercede then.

"If I am seen with you," Iphigenia says carefully, "my lord will be most displeased."

The High Lord of Spring huffs. It might have been a laugh were it not so devoid of mirth. "Your lord," and this, he says with unrestrained contempt, "doesn't concern me."

Such is a privilege. Perhaps he is not afraid, but that does not mean she has no need to be.

Once, she might have told him so. Now, she speaks around the fear numbing her veins.

"It is only that I have no wish to spur discord on your behalf, High Lord," Iphigenia demures, "and I'm unaware of any passage from this keep that stands without guard."

His nostrils flare. If not desire, then anger with her for overstepping in some way.

As inapparently as she can, she shifts that she is just beyond his considerable reach.

He crosses his arms atop his chest and says, "I know a way."

With that, the High Lord of Spring leads Iphigenia back the way she came.

It is disorienting to follow behind him in the murky dark, to trust that whatever secret the youngest Vanserra spilled about this keep will lead her toward freedom. Their footsteps echo before and behind in haunting double-time, like there is someone always about to come across them. She has the urge to cast her flame ahead—something of herself as a guide through these passages, so that she can better see beyond him.

Where they are heading.

What the dangers will be.

What she must endure to survive them.

Anywhere, Iphigenia reminds herself, so long as it is away from here.

Better to be thrust into the unknown than to meet sure death.

Perhaps she need not be bound to this high lord at all once they are beyond the sentries. Perhaps she will be able to slip away surrounded by the open forest, where her magic will meet the earthen ground and know itself at peace over again. She can make her way to a faraway village, sell off her jewelry to a vendor who would rather pocket his profit quietly than make report of the strange female who sold it to him, take her leave before he changes his mind. She has heard tell that Ceres can be most accommodating to unchaperoned ladies. There, she can figure out how to get word to her mother.

Iphigenia reaches to her throat and meets only bare skin, then the grating jewels of her collar.

The sharp pang of loss strikes against her breastbone, rattling out fiercely along her ribs. It occurs to her that she is still familiar with the press of these walls—that she could ask the High Lord of Spring to stop, just for a moment, just long enough for her to slip in and out of her chambers. It occurs to her also that asking anything more of him might see her a burden left behind.

Flattening her palm against the beat of her heart until the pain of it dulls, she walks without a word.

The steady gait of the male before her flags. With a brief glance back, he asks, "Do you need to get anything?"

Iphigenia blinks. "I— My chambers are just ahead, if I might take a moment in them." Her hand slides away, back down to her side. "I won't be long."

She feels that rush of magic from before quest out now ahead of them, snuffling, searching.

"Do you—" A pause. "Will you be alright? Alone?"

Now it is she who slows. In the moment of hearing, she imagines this asked with concern—not for the preservation of her body that he might best use it but for the sanctity of her self as a whole. Then she sweeps it aside to consider.

If Emile is in wait, it matters not whether she is accompanied inside. If not, there is greater danger in the scent of a male lingering behind to confront the High Lord upon his seeking her out tonight.

Iphigenia stops before the false wall and says, "I will be, High Lord." Above her shoulder as the firelight within pours over her: "Thank you."

The High Lord of Spring does little by way of response save tense his jaw.

Though she knows it matters not, she still leaves the entrance open while she sets to her tasks.

First to her boudoir. She does not bother changing. Anything the High Lord has bestowed upon her would be just as revealing as the costume she now dons, if not more so. Rather, she reaches between layers of gossamer and silk, all the way to the back corner, until she finds the thick cloak she wore on the carriage ride here.

There is no time to linger on the sight of it, nor the smell.

She secures it atop her collar and arranges the hood over her head, then makes for the small table at her bedside. Inside a drawer, the locket once gifted to her by her sparkle-eyed mother lay in pieces beside its chain. These, she sweeps into an inner pocket of the cloak—and just before she goes, she grabs up any jewelry left out.

Lungs quickened, Iphigenia has the false wall shut behind her within the minute.

The High Lord of Spring regards her strangely in the returned dark. He says, "That's all?"

She tells him, "I have nothing else, High Lord."

Long enough passes that she begins to worry that she ought have packed a bag for appearances, but surely he will want her dressed to his tastes and not those of another male. He turns away before she must consider it further.

As they walk, Iphigenia attempts to occupy her mind with the branching turns he takes—how each might map to the main corridors adjacent. But she was permitted to roam so rarely, and even then, never freely, so as to keep the Lady of Autumn unconfronted by her existence. By the time they reach the place they can walk no further, she gathers only that they are somewhere in the south wing.

The treen walls here have curved in on each other. Where they meet, a serpentine coupling runs from the ceiling above to the floor below, as though something sprouted forth from behind at the inception of the world.

Her mother bears a scar not unlike it across the low of her abdomen. Sometimes, she would complain still of pain from it.

Like always I could split back open, she would say, face pinched. And when Iphigenia would press a heated hand to her belly, apologies spilling profusely forth, she would shush her and say, As I would again, to see you alive and well in my arms.

The Forest House shares no such sentiments.

No sooner does the High Lord of Spring splay a glowing palm against the seam than the keep bears down upon him. If it could wield itself, it would now—but it is bound to its master as consummately as she, and even the liberties of so great a force are ever at his behest. All it can do as an enemy lord prises it apart is try to tend its wounds faster than he can inflict them.

The tendons of his forearm taut, the veins along it thickened and bulging, the High Lord of Spring gnarls, "Always hated this fucking place."

At his back, Iphigenia feels the Forest House turn its regard onto her like the point of a finger. An accusation. An incrimination. A taunting reminder that it has seen all she has become within it—that she will never be able to hide herself away.

Iphigenia wields herself against the watchful keep if only to do what it cannot.

Rot spreads from the hand she slaps against it, putrid and furious, until the surrounding wood is so soft it has no recourse but to give way.

The High Lord of Spring splits the world open on a thunderous gale.

Almost, she thinks she hears the keep shriek—but there is a broad hand on the small of her back, ushering her through the rend in the wall before she can parse it out. She glances back to admire the damage she helped wrought, resinous and oozing. Then, with dizzying finality, the keep closes itself against her.

For a windswept moment, there is no sense to be made of life beyond. Then blooms into it a flame like a flower, casting new light onto that which once was dark.

They are underground. A warren made out of the hollow left behind by primordial seed. The scent of damp earth and long-forgotten rain cushions them. The skittering sound of paws on detritus is all around, little beasts sent fleeing from the arrival of an apex predator—and beyond it, a distant roar.

"This way," the High Lord of Spring says.

The roar grows near, nearer, until it is a deafen atop them. On the other side of its clamor: an opening. Enough ambient light is afforded by it that the flame can be laid to rest.

They are expelled into the woodland, just beside the relentless rush of a river. The trees bend low in these parts, reaching down toward them as though to pluck them out from the ground all the faster. The shadows they cast are as fingers; the markings in their bark are as eyes.

Though Iphigenia is away, she is not yet free.

Every crackle of branch underfoot speaks in the harsh language of condemnation. The efforts of Autumn to keep track of her still—to know where she walks, always, and to rebuke her with each breath. A final spite of the Forest House, to rot all of the land it inhabits against her.

That faraway village she hoped to find seems now an unreachable thing.

When the High Lord of Spring speaks again, she startles. She had been walking beside him without a thought for it, clutching the edges of her cloak tight to her body, eyes trained on the roots seeking to trip her.

"Once we leave this court," he says without looking to her, "I have no plans to return." A pause. "Are you certain of your choice?"

As ever, Iphigenia realizes that she does not have one.

Autumn is as its High Lord. It will not permit her live now that she has betrayed it so. If she stays here, she will have her freedom as death alone.

"Yes, High Lord."

He looks to her then, down and aside where she walks along with him. Here, against the twilit ochres and shifting umbers of the wrong wood, his eyes are not jadestone. They are the hesitant green of new growth.

"Do you know the state of Spring?" he asks.

Iphigenia says, "Word has tendency to travel swift in this court, High Lord."

"And still you would come?"

"Yes, High Lord." Near a plea, no matter what such a thing will entail: "If still you will have me."

His mouth flattens. It seems as though he is about to say more.

Then his nostrils flare.

Iphigenia goes still, that terrible tendency of helpless prey animals. She feels, even here in the open, the walls press—the collar cinch—the hands tighten. One of metal, one of flesh. For on her nose, she, too, smells it.

The acrid bite of smoke.

The tall silhouette of a male coalesces from the darkness stretched between the trees ahead, poised already to strike.

In defense of the rabbit: the wolf, with its thick fur and generous tongue, eats always more tenderly than the viper.

Emile Vanserra looks from her to the High Lord of Spring. "You," he sneers, "have something that does not belong to you."