A/N: I'm afraid this chapter is a little on the short side, but the next one lines up thematically better. Thank you everyone for your patience at my slowness at getting up the Jewel bonus!

Cyphonia sat in silence all the next day at the second competition, gray and still, replying only when spoken to. Once again she was able to pass the interviews by rote and instinct, voicing the words of politics and economy that she had heard and thought upall of her life. The queen declared her bright and clearheaded if uncreative, and the king said he was quite taken by her deference to her elders and menfolk.

Martin grew anxious and ill respectively when he heard those words, and he drew Cyphonia aside at the first opportunity. She followed him down the hall unresistingly, her eyes distant as if seeing sights that lay nowhere on the earth.

“What is it that bothers you so?" he asked worriedly. "You've scarcely picked at your food, and you haven't said more than a word to Sophia or me all day.”

“I'm sorry,” she murmured, more to the floor than the prince. “It's just—I said such terrible things to Namryn. I couldn't even bear to go and see him today, not after what I said, and I could see that becoming a habit. It scares me, Martin, that I might avoid him again and again just because it's an inconvenience to me to look my own misdeeds in the eye.”

The prince sighed and put an arm around her shoulders, letting her lean her head against him. “It's all right to be angry sometimes,” he said gently. “I'm sure Namryn knew that you didn't mean what you said—or at least will consider properly the things you did say,” he added hastily, as he had realized how infrequently Cyphonia lied even when she was throwing insults at others. “Surely a gladiator has thick skin, hmm? He'll be alright.” He reached out and lightly touched her chin, drawing her gaze back up. “Now tell me—are you going to go ahead with this plan of yours to free him, or not? Because I need to tell my parents sooner rather than later if I am holding a gladiator competition. They won't be so happy if I just spring that one on them.”

She sighed wearily, staring blankly into his forest-green eyes. “I don't know,” she admitted. “I told Namryn that I would free him just to spite him, but I don't believe it truly. Martin—I think it's best for him that he's free, and it seems to me that I have never been wrong on such a matter, but I don't know how to convince him of this.”

“Well,” the prince said, cocking his head to the side. “It seems to me that his biggest worry was the inconvenience to you. If you convince him that it won't be, then perhaps his other fears will go away.”

Cyphonia considered this for a long moment before she managed a faint smile for her friend. “You are sometimes wise,” she told him. “I just may take your advice.”

Martin gave a crooked smile back and bowed slightly. “I do try,” he said solemnly. “Now let us be off before the others think I'm unfairly coaching you on how to win.”

“They're fools if they think I need coaching,” Cyphonia told him with a toss of her head, but she was smiling again. “You go back, Martin—I need to corner that servant of yours who lived by the fairies and ask her another question about them. Tell... tell Sophia that I didn't end up using the furniture maker idea after all, and that she should feel free to explain it to your parents about it during her interview, if she wants. She helped come up with that one anyway.”

He promised that he would, and Cyphonia slipped off to the kitchens, taking the long way there so that she could think as she walked. She found the quiet, aged woman who had been so helpful in the past, and asked her question.

An hour later, a liveried servant approached the prince as he was talking with Nuara, one of the two other eligible ladies, and bent down by his side. “My lord,” the man murmured with a touch of anxiety, “I was asked by the stable keepers to inform you that, as you requested, your horse was saddled and loaned to the red-haired lady of Parcado. They, ah—they grew concerned when they realized she meant to take the beast for herself, and not for a man that could ride him, but by then it was too late to question her further. And since no horse can match Akinazuma for speed...”

Martin blinked a few times, and then leaned forward and settled his head in his hands with a groan, causing the young lady next to him to make worried noises and fuss over him. He held up a hand for silence, then said clearly, “Inform the stable that they indeed acted as I wished. But, ah, next time a lady says that I requested a loan of my horse, perhaps ask them to encourage a safer, less spirited mount for her to ride, one that is not of the disposition to kill its rider.”

“As you desire, my lord,” the servant replied with a bow. Martin managed a sickly smile as he turned to Nuara and said, “So, I believe that you were speaking of your father's wine fields...” As the girl brightened and continued her conversation, the prince could only hope that his impulsive friend wasn't getting herself into too much trouble.

The guard of the gladiatorial rings was greatly surprised to look up from the evening ranking lists and find himself face to face with a massive blood stallion, which was blowing out great huffs of air and looking as chagrined as a horse could. The expression of the sorceress on his back was even more alarming than the horse's presence, and the guard swallowed and moved his hands subtly to cover his genitals, remembering stories of mages he had heard in the past.

“I need to see Namryn,” Cyphonia demanded as she loosened a belt at her waist, which he realized on closer inspection was a rope wrapped several times around the stallion's broad chest to herself. She leaped lightly to the ground. “I also need someone to take care of my horse. Tell them to be careful—he bit three grooms earlier.”

The guard noticed that, contrary to her words, the fearsome beast was subtly leaning away from the girl, as it would a snarling lion.

“Ah,” he said anxiously, “I think that Namryn's actually up for a fight quite soon... but I'm sure that the schedules can be rearranged,” he added hastily when her eyes darkened further and a smell of smoldering started to pervade the air. “Go in and I'll have him sent your way.”

Cyphonia waited by the fairy's cage, tapping her foot impatiently and glaring at the back wall until the clay parted and daylight shone across the dank space. A sweaty and mud-spattered Namryn hissed and growled at the guards that shoved him in with spears, but straightened when he entered Cyphnoia's presence, turning to look at her in surprise. The guards left gratefully when she waved a hand at them. When the clay closed again, she marched up to Namryn and grabbed the damp shirt on his chest with both fists, ignoring how he flinched away from her touch.

“You are wrong,” she hissed, marching him backwards until he collided against the bars of the cage. “Just like always, you are presumptuous, and mistaken, and wrong.” She was too upset to notice she was starting to repeat insults already, even though she had hardly gathered her spear for the thrust yet. “Disillusioned, possibly misled, definitely foolish, and wrong, wrong, wrong!”

Wide eyed, Namryn hesitantly lowered his head and said, “May I inquire as to what you speak of?”

“Your name!” Cyphonia shouted, releasing him this time. The fairy's head snapped back against the bars, expression lost, and he quickly wrenched his gaze away from her.

“I should not have said anything,” he murmured, his voice cracking halfway through his words. “I knew it was a mistake, and more the fool I—please, just disregard whatever you have learned. Please. Ignore it, let it go—”

“I can't ignore something like this,” Cyphonia cried, releasing him to bury her fingers against her scalp in frustration. “Just, just say it alright? Tell me your name.”

“No,” he whispered.

“Tell me your name!”

“No!”

“Tell it to me,” she said clearly, glaring up through her wind-swept hair at him, “or I will not visit you again.”

He stared at her then, grief and panic on his face as his eyes tracked across hers. Finally he whispered, “I will not.”

Cyphonia groaned and dropped down to sit on the dirt, throwing decorum and manners to the wind as she buried her face in her hands. The cook's words echoed through her head over again. “Names?” the woman had said. “That's something I haven't thought of in a long time. It's one of their traditions, you see. A fairy will keep his or her name from the one they intend to make their life partner. Then they exchange their names at a ceremony. It's seen as the dearest gift one can give--especially since, as you might guess, this practice can go wrong fairly easily.”

“You're insane,” she whispered sharply. “Delusional. With—with lots of false illusions. You don't even like me, you have barely anything to say to me, you shy away from my touch! And—goddess, Sophia; she's the one you always smile at, whom you've held in your arms, and you told her your name without a second thought!”

“I do not speak to you,” he told her in a low, distant voice, “because it is agony to not use each breath to tell you how the sun pales beside your radiance, how the stars fade under your glow.” He lifted one hand helplessly and said, “I cannot bear your touch because it is all I can do not to cling to you in longing desperation, and I know that it is something I cannot ever do.”

Cyphonia dropped her hands into her lap and let her head loll back to look at him. “But,” she said hollowly, “it's completely meaningless. If you care about me for even a moment, it is because I saved you, because I'm the only one you can be whole beside. If you look at me with favor, it's because the only other faces you've seen are that of my friends. What you feel has nothing to do with me at all.”

He only looked at her, so she pressed her lips together briefly and continued. “I can only guess that a fairy's partnering is like our marriage,” she said. “This makes my words more true. I may—I may look upon you kindly, I might be upset whenever you smile at Sophia, but I never questioned that it could mean anything. I have always known that a marriage of my people, for a lady of my standing, must be for gain or nothing at all. And you have no money, no lands, no business, no standing, no honor.”

“No,” Namryn agreed quietly. She wanted to hit him suddenly, she wanted to feel his flesh break beneath her hand if he would give up to her words without a fight, but she was clever enough to know not to hate those who sided with her. Too clever.

“And it has been nearly assured that I am the one who will marry Martin,” Cyphonia continued, watching him closely.

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me your name?” she asked again, her hands in tight firsts on her knees.

“No.”

Both were silent for a long time. Finally, Cyphonia said dully, “Why did you not tell me about what this meant, earlier?”

Namryn slowly lowered himself into a crouch beside her. “Because I knew it would only bring you pain,” he said quietly. “I had hoped you would die elderly before you found out.”

“Found out you made a split life's decision, standing in a ricefield with chains on your wrists?” she snapped, eyes flashing. “That without knowing a single thing about me, you wanted to be 'mine forever'?”

“I saw the spirit in your eyes,” he replied to the floor, “and knew that I could never see any other flame again without judging it wanting. I saw a mud-splattered girl fearlessly stand down ten soldiers and a murderer and risk her life hopelessly for a few coins, because she knew what she wanted and seized it whole heartedly. I saw her faults and I loved them.”

“Stop,” Cyphonia whispered, covering her face with her hands. They sat in silence again, quietly enough that they could hear the cries of the men and women fighting outside, the roar of the crowd. “If... if you wanted never to tell me,” she said at last, voice muffled by her flesh, “then why do so now?”

She heard the fairy sigh heavily. “I cannot beat Phaid,” he said, startling her into looking at him again. “It was my first task as a swordsman to do so. I had told my master that I had completed her lessons, for I had claimed that none in the land could beat me, and she wished to show me my folly. I fought the basilisk and lost utterly.”

“I still needed to prove myself in some way, so I fought and defeated the best human swordsman instead, because... because I knew that I could not lose.” He turned his head briefly towards her, a pained, wavering smile on his lips. “No human can match a fairy for speed, and none myself for strength. And so this curse is the just punishment for my hubris, and this imprisonment for my cowardly choice. But,” his eyes slid away, “meeting you has only proved to me how truly angry the gods were at my decision.”

“Yet you only care for me because I saved you,” she said, her voice pleading. “Only because I'm one of only three you know.”

“No,” he said quietly. “Because of who you are, and what you might become.”

Cyphonia twined her fingers together and tried to get her thoughts in order by brute force, taking each and shoving it into line. It was astounding how difficult his words were making that process. What plan could she devise this time? she wondered achingly. She knew that she could not remain unwed without destroying all of her dreams, as women could not be given business licenses in any city nearby. Therefore, she must marry.

She must marry correctly, as she had just said, someone moneyed and landed, or none of her dreams could be realized. Her parents would never let her be with a figure like Namryn—who was not even human, among much else—and eloped couples could not be married in any of the surrounding countries; they were persecuted by law and suspicious, taunting villagers alike. Therefore, doubly, triply, she could not marry Namryn.

She needed to save Sophia from a binding she seemed ambivalent about. More pressingly, she was still entered in a contest that she could not hope to lose, which would put her immediately into the position of marrying Prince Martin. Martin's money, lands, title, and sweet personality would be added bonuses to her that Cyphonia could not overlook. For all those reasons, he, not the fairy, would be her husband.

What sort of emotional position would that put Namryn in? she wondered. He could scarcely follow her into a future bedchamber to keep his sanity, hovering patiently by the side of the bed as he waited for her to finish. If he had some affection for her, as he professed, seeing her every day with a lover would have to be upsetting. It would bother others as well, as no court of simpering lords and ladies would stand for the continued presence of the now-nigh-infamous gladiator. She would lower both her standing and that of Martin's entire kingdom if she had Namryn at her side. And a queen certainly wouldn't be allowed to take daily, unaccompanied visits to a man at a gladiator ground, so there was no question of that.

That's why he was telling her all of this now despite his wishes, she realized, swallowing a lump in her throat. He was smart and had had much longer to contemplate all that she just had just realized. He was telling her that he could not defeat the one creature that might make him free of the rings, and he was trying to convince her it was his divine and desired punishment that he stay, as well. Namryn knew there was no hope.

And yet—might she prove him wrong? Might she, magical, clever, swift-thinking girl that she was, be able to make everything right somehow?

Cyphonia realized what she had been thinking at last, and cursed dearly her foolishness. How many years had she spent ridiculing the other girls for their ridiculous romantic tendencies, while complementing herself on her cool-headed musings? Being with Namryn would bring her nothing but grief, all of her desires undone. He could give her nothing but his sweet smile and a look of warmth in his eyes, such a fleeting expression even when it did appear.

But even as she thought that, Cyphonia knew she was, against all odds, failing in her efforts to give him up. As she lifted her gaze to his pale and pain-flecked face, to those searching sapphire eyes, she knew she could not agree with what either of them had said. Therefore, she thought, aching fiercely, she must find a way to do so—to convince herself that Namryn was right, and all of this was for naught. That she must wed and not see him again. That was all she could do for them both: in his madness he would not remember what he had lost, and in her marriage she could forget what she was leaving behind.

But Cyphonia would allow herself one further moment of weakness before she did so. She lifted her hand through the bars of the cage, reaching out to him, and for once did not fill with hurt and anger when he leaned back and cast his eyes away.

“Just once,” she murmured, and he obediently shifted towards her. She brushed her fingers down the side of his face, across the pale flesh of his cheek and down to his faint pink lips. For a moment she shut her eyes and they both held perfectly still, not even breathing. Then she let her hand drop and rose to her feet.

“I must return Martin's horse before he thinks I've stolen him for good,” Cyphonia said. The fairy made no reply, and since she could say nothing further, she left for the palace again. The girl had to ignore that the sounds that followed her out were not hisses or howling, but fierce, mad sobs. She ran for the door, leaped onto the stallion's back and tied the ropes around her waist, and galloped back to the castle as if she could fly faster than that sound forever.

Ways of dissuading herself from liking Namryn were both plentiful and quick to come. The first appeared two evenings later, when she went home after a day of studying her scrolls by the well. She had gone to her room, ignoring the pointed glares of her parents and a snide remark about her tardiness from her brother, to find her window open and an ashen Sophia sitting on her hide bed.

“Cy, oh, Cy,” her friend said, and abruptly burst into tears. Cyphonia, never comfortable around other's emotional displays, tried frantically to remember what she might have possibly done to offend her friend now. She wondered, her chest suddenly clenching, if Sophia had just found out about Namryn's words to her. “You warned me, I know you warned me, but I didn't listen at all,” she sobbed.

That didn't sound like what she suspected, and nor was she being accused, so Cyphnoia relaxed a bit. “My advice is often sound,” she agreed, going over to put hesitant arms around Sophia's shoulders. “May I ask which advice of mine you didn't take?”

“I, I went to see one of Namryn's battles,” Sophia sniffed, and a stillness settled around her flame-haired friend. “I knew that I should have waited for you, but since you didn't want to go—I didn't realize you were just being subtle again. I didn't realize that you didn't want me to go. I saw him, and... oh, it was horrible, just horrible!”

“There, there,” Cyphonia murmured, staring at the wall.

“There was one man whose arm he just wrenched off at the shoulder,” Sophia sobbed, “and he—he laughed when the blood hit his face. And another—I can't even speak of that one, it's far too gruesome! I thought maybe Namryn'd only be a little mad without you, in a dashing sort of way, but it isn't like that at all, is it? He's so nice around us that I thought it couldn't be that bad.”

“No,” said Cyphonia quietly. “It is that bad.”

“It is,” Sophia agreed, leaning onto the other girl's brown shoulder. “And now—I don't know what to think. I don't know if I can look Namryn in the eye again after seeing that. I don't know if I can look any man in the eye now, knowing that madness could make him become the whirling demon that Namyrn was. Even Martin could become mad, and that's the worst of it. He's sweet, but Namryn is sweeter, and if even Namryn can do what he did—oh, I don't know if I can participate in this contest any longer, not knowing that I might get married to a secret barbarian, I really don't.”

Cyphonia said nothing until she had a cap on her feelings completely secured, as she did not want to snap foolishly. “I don't see a reason to make generalizations about all men,” she pointed out, “and a warrior woman could do just as much damage. But as long as we keep Martin from killing mage swordsmen, he should be perfectly fine, as will any other man you might marry. Besides, as long as you keep me around, anyone so mad will become sane again.”

“Your aura doesn't protect against non-magical madness, though,” Sophia pointed out glumly. “But I didn't think of what you said about women warriors. Now no one at all is safe from this disease. Maybe I should join a little temple—one that has no other attendees but myself—and live there the rest of my days, where I don't have to get married or see anyone at all. You could visit me if you want,” she added after a moment's thought. “I don't think you could be anything less than sane.”

“Nonsense,” Cyphonia told her. “There's no way I would let you do that. You just need a few days to set yourself straight, and to forget what you saw. And as for Namryn—I think it would really hurt him if you stopped seeing him, or acted uncomfortably in his presence. He really does seem to value your friendship.” It was much easier for her to say such a thing, now that she knew about how Namryn had told Sophia his name right away. “He's a different person from the one you saw on the battlefield; you can't blame his curse for that.”

Sophia covered her face with her hands miserably. “It is really horrible of me, I know,” she groaned. “It's silly, thought, isn't it? In stories, the heroine never cares about what the hero has done. 'Oh, you tore out a man's intestines and ate them? I forgive you!' she cries, and then they ride away in a chariot drawn by golden horses. But it's so much more difficult in real life, when you have to remember the way the air smelled, and the cries of the crowd. I'll try to see him, I really will, even if I don't know if I'll succeed.”

“Try,” Cyphonia agreed firmly. After a moment she said, “Did he really do that—the intestines bit?”

Her friend clutched at her hair. “Oh no, that was the part I was trying not to think of,” she whimpered in a pitiful tone. “Let us speak of something else, please.”

“All right,” the taller girl said, smoothing out the linen sheet on her bed. “Are you confident that you don't want to marry Martin?”

“Is that the least scary topic you can come up with?” Sophia murmured, but her heart wasn't in it. “I don't know, Cy. My parents are so excited about the possibility, and he is very nice, and a prince of course. Any child of his would be lovely, too, and some days I can think of nothing more than that I would like those children to be mine. Plus, if I were a queen I wouldn't have to work in the field, and I could listen to bards all day or meet with all sorts of interesting people. Yet whenever I close my eyes I can see that battlefield with Martin out there instead, laughing as the blood flies off of his sword.”

“Have you talked to Martin about this yet?” her practical friend asked, and received a sardonic look in reply.

“He would only just about die of mortification,” Sophia pointed out. “I couldn't do that to him. No, I—I think it might just be best if I just let someone else win.”

Cyphonia sighed and leaned her elbows on her knees, tucking her fists beneath her chin. “Are you certain?” she asked quietly. “You have to realize that your parents are going to put much more pressure on you to marry if you lose this contest, and probably to a man of their choosing rather than yours. Don't you think you will regret this decision someday?”

Sophia sighed too and copied her position. “I wonder that too,” she replied morosely. “I wonder if I will spend all of my life asking the gods, is this good enough? if I wait, will things be better, or will there only be lost opportunities? The gods do not answer me, and nor does anyone else. I do like Martin, I really do. But when I think of spending my life together with him, only a blank meets my mind. At least it is not a fearful blank, except when I can picture waking up on some night and see him standing there with a sword in his hand, but it is an emptiness and I don't know why.”

For the first time, Cyphonia realized that she didn't have all of the answers in the universe. This made her cross, but she knew she must say something. “Why don't you go to a temple,” she suggested, “and talk to the priestesses there? Yours is a godly sort of question, you are right. Perhaps they can tell you how to force the gods into giving you answers. Find out what the omens are for this potential marriage, and go from there.”

“That is a good idea,” Sophia replied, brightening someway. She smiled shyly and said, “I knew you would have the right advice. But what about you? You always seem to be trying to convince me that it's best if I marry Martin, but what of yourself? You seem to like him—I've seen you go off with him sometimes—and he certainly thinks the sun rises and sets upon the sight of your face, but I never hear you speak of him in that manner.”

“It would be advantageous,” Cyphonia murmured. She didn't really want to think about the prince liking her so much, she found. “I am certainly considering it, don't you fear.” That was a lie—she had been trying not to think of the topic as much as she could, the last few days. But it had once been true, when she had been foolish and ignorant in her youth of last week. Now everything seemed different. “I think he is the best chance either of us will get of upward mobility, to be sure. If not Martin, then we're likely to be married in the year anyway, as both of us are getting to be old for our maidenhood.”

Sophia giggled and covered her eyes. “You always say things like that,” she said with a put-upon sigh. “Sometimes, I think you don't have a romantic bone in your body.”

“Sometimes I think you're right,” Cyphonia agreed. And sometimes, unfortunately, her friend was very, very wrong.

“Well, don't worry,” said Sophia soothingly, “maybe you'll lose the contest too, and then you won't have to think about it at all.” Cyphonia glared at her, and then they both broke into giggles at the sheer impossibility of that statement. Martin's parents, they were fairly certain, didn't even know the names of the two other girls competing, and they spoke of Cyphonia in the most glowing of terms, even if their impression of her true personality was at best skewed. “Or maybe Namryn will enter and win it instead! But—oh no, forget I said that, I don't even want to think about what kind of talent he would show off!”

Sophia left in a better mood than the one she had arrived with, clutching a batch of barley Cyphonia found in her growing magic ingredients pile, the only thing they could come up with as a sacrifice to the gods. Cyphonia felt glad to have cheered her, although she herself felt even more poorly than before.

The next two reasons to not marry Namryn came closely together that evening. Cyphonia wasn't even sure if she should count them as separate, except that the first one loomed so largely above her and was only found by accident, and the second one was very carefully of her own doing. The first was found in a new scroll she had recently smuggled from Martin's apothecary's collection, a treaties on the theories behind spell application that was even more arcane and dense than all the others she had read combined. It used long, winding words far more often than necessary and sent her frequently scrambling among four of the different dictionaries she had gathered, for the writer did not seem content to keep his musings in only one language.

But it was precisely because of this that Cyphonia came upon the break she was looking for. The writer had used a different word than the other scrolls she had read when talking about the “ingredient” that was needed for the aura-expanding spell. She realized that she had been foolishly only looking up the primary definition of the particular form of “ingredient” the other texts had listed, for she had not suspected such stuffy shyness on the behalf of the other authors.

The missing ingredient was the blood of a girl-virgin, shed on the day she became a maiden.

This thought whirled around in her head in dizzying loops until she had to go lay down to think about it. The getting of this ingredient—and it would have to be her own blood, she was sure—was not only a reason not to be with Namryn, she realized, but a flawless one, the reason. It was the one law every kingdom, despite their differences across the land, enforced: if a girl was pregnant, she married the father, or at least became his official mistress.

Fairies and humans, she was quite sure from the few readings she had found, could not produce children. Therefore, if she became pregnant, it would be verifiable reason for her to never be with Namryn—there would not be a single choice about it. There would be no backing out or difficulties in determining what was right and wrong and proper. She would have to be wed to someone else and Namryn would have to settle in what he thought was his just punishment, and never be haunted by her or she by him again. It was very simple. It had only not occurred to her before because it was so obvious, such a mundane way of solving an age-old problem.

And then she thought about what she had told Namryn before: that he had really only known them three, and so his love for her was unsound. It was equally true for her of course, she realized belatedly. How could she hope to discover what love truly was, when she had only known so few? If she found another she cared for, a man with wealth, land, and an eye for intelligence rather than beauty, then maybe she could put aside the notion of Namryn. She would find that his smile didn't mean quite so much to her and the words that set her heart and mind aflutter were nothing more than simple coincidences. Therefore, she would get a man that was neither he nor Martin, and her problems with the competition would be solved as well.

Of course, all this meant that she needed to find a man who would be both a worthy husband prospect as well as a suitable subject for producing children. Cyphonia started to draw up a list of people she had heard of that might fit the bill.

Then she remembered her earlier conversation with Sophia and sighed deeply. Her friend had no hope of losing the competition to those two dull, insipid courtiers, and Cyphonia could not condemn her like this with a clear conscience. With that in mind, she let go of her silly, idealistic notions, stole her brother's horse—a brown, plodding animal with none of Martin's stallion's impressive spark—and rode to Arcadia.

So the third reason not to marry Namryn was her standing in front of the wide-eyed, pale-faced prince, her hands on his silk-clothed arms, leaning up to press a kiss to the side of his rosy lips. She could hear his heart hammering against his bones, which was peculiar, because hers seemed to strike no more quickly than before. “Just once,” she murmured, and managed not to choke when she remembered the last time she had uttered that statement. “It is a woman's prerogative, is it not, to test out her potential husband before their pending binding? To see if their blood can move as one, flesh and spirit?”

“I don't know,” Martin replied hoarsely, then swallowed and said, “I mean, of course what you say is true. But—you're sure you want to? Really?” His voice squeaked up in a way she supposed was cute, and the blush that spread across his nose at the sound certainly was. His hands sliding down her back spoke differently than his hesitant tone, though she was distracted by the way she wanted to twist away from them, to bear her teeth in a smile and tell him not to go anywhere so quickly. She was supposed to be enjoying that, because it meant he was going to agree with her in the end, and she tried to focus on that instead.

“Are you willing?” she whispered, moving even closer to him, so that her chest and knees brushed against his. He stumbled sideways, as if not sure if he should meet her forward movement or flee from it, and she gently moved her hands to his waist to steady him. “Because, if you aren't...” She tried to remember what she had seen last time her and Sophia had sneaked into one of Verdant Unicorn's showings, and pressed her lips against the exposed flesh on Martin's collarbone. He gasped and trembled a little, so presumably that was right. “I could go home.”

“Go home?” he repeated shakily, and she made her eyes widen rather than narrow when his hands finally passed beyond her lower back. “I—I don't...”

“You must make up your mind,” she told him, slipping her hand into the gap of his tunic and across his bare chest. He whimpered again and she guessed that she liked the sound, in some sort of intellectual manner.

“But it's not really fair is it?” he gasped as he buried his head against her neck and pulled her so tightly against him that her breath was forced from her lungs and she had to spend a few moments with dark stars swirling in front of her eyes. “To let you but not the—others.”

“Oh, I didn't say it had to be just me, did I?” she murmured, because wasn't that an interesting thought, a scandal that she might be able to work to her advantage... “But do you really want to sleep with them?” she asked, turning to the side a bit when his one hand came up near her breast.

But his hand was just going up to her face, to cup it gently as he smiled with soft, shy, desirous eyes. “No,” he said, and kissed her, dry and firm and gentle. “It's only you,” he whispered against her skin, “it's always only been you.”

Cyphonia went sharply rigid, her mind turning into a wall of white fog. “Sleep,” she whispered back, and she almost didn't catch him as he dropped like a stone to the ground.

She held him for a moment, crouched and trembling against the rug on the floor. She had almost—could have almost—it would have made everything safe, she knew, and easy. Cyphonia could have almost made everything right, but so impossibly wrong, and she could not do it.

“Dream,” she whispered, twining her shaking hand into the collar of his fine garment. “You will remember this all as an especially realistic dream. If you want,” she said, swallowing, “you can even pretend I stayed, if that's what would make you happy. But when you wake, you will realize that it's never been me. That I—wasn't the person you were looking for. You'll like one of the others and tell her how to win the competition. Oh, but not Sophia, unless she comes up and confesses true feelings to you sometime; one of the others. Maybe I'll turn into her in your dream, and you'll realize how much happier you would be.”

Cyphonia leaned down and kissed his cheek, and that time it was real. She went to his bed and brought him a pillow and a blanket, tucking his head onto the one and spreading the later over him on the floor. Then she fetched her brother's horse from the stables and rode to the gladiatorial rings.