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<<link '' >> <<run Engine.backward()>> <</link>> <<if tags().includes('esme')>> | Esme <<elseif tags().includes('nicholas')>> | Nicholas <<else>> <</if>> <svg id="trefoil" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 100" height="0" width="0" preserveAspectRatio="xMinYMax"> <clipPath id="trefoilPath" transform="scale(200)"> <path id="trefoilPath" fill="#000" d="M.8 1.6H0C0 .4 0 .4.4 0 .8.4.8.4.8 1.6ZM.2.4C.1.5.1.5.1 1.6H.3C.3.5.3.5.2.4ZM.6.4C.5.5.5.5.5 1.6H.7C.7.5.7.5.6.4ZM.2.5C.3.6.3.6.3 1.6H.1C.1.6.1.6.2.5ZM.6.5C.5.6.5.6.5 1.6H.7c0-1 0-1-.1-1.1ZM.4.325A.1.1 90 00.5.4.1.1 90 00.6.3.1.1 90 00.5.2.1.1 90 00.4.075.1.1 90 00.3.2.1.1 90 00.2.3.1.1 90 00.3.4.1.1 90 00.4.325Z"/> </clipPath> </svg>

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<div id="wine"><h1 style="position:relative; z-index: 9;text-align:center;font-variant: common-ligatures historical-ligatures discretionary-ligatures;margin-bottom:0;">lilac wine</h1> <h3>darling wine duology, volume i</h3></div> <<include "Splash Menu" div>>

<<link "Start" 'introductio'>> <<audio "oneHumi" play>> <</link>> <<if (Save.autosave.ok() and Save.autosave.has()) or (Save.slots.count() gte 1)>> <<link "Load">><<script>>UI.saves()<</script>><</link>><</if>> <<link "Settings">><<run UI.settings()>><</link>> <<link "Colophon">><<run Dialog.setup("Colophon", "credits");Dialog.wiki(Story.get("Colophon").processText());Dialog.open();>><</link>>

//O beatissime lector, lava manus tuas et sic librum adprehende, leniter folia turna, prope a littera digitos pone. // Fecit ista opera <a href="lapinlunaire-games.itch.io">LapinLunaireGames</a> pro Anti-Romance Jam MMXXIV et Love/Violence Jam. sophiae qui in domibus fantasiis laetifice mecum saltat hoc opusculum est dedicatum <<message "Content Warnings">><<include "Content Warnings">><</message>> <hr> <h2 style="text-align:center;">Audio Assets</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://freesound.org/people/HMTSCCSound/sounds/554655/" target="_blank">bec low bell solo</a> by <a href="https://freesound.org/people/HMTSCCSound/" target="_blank">HMTSCCSound </a> | License: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons 0</a></li> <li><a href="https://freesound.org/people/Audeption/sounds/425171/" target="_blank">Church bell with street and some birds</a> by <a href="https://freesound.org/people/Audeption/" target="_blank">Audeption</a> | License: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons 0</a> </li> <li><a href="http://carlottaferrari.altervista.org" target="_blank">//Humiliamini//</a> by Carlotta Ferrari, performed by The Harvard Choral Fellows (dir. Carson Cooman). Available for use under the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank">CC BY 4.0 license</a> at the <a href="https://imslp.org/wiki/Humiliamini_(Ferrari%2C_Carlotta)" target="_blank">Petrucci Music Library</a>. Used without modification in segments and as a modified sample in select tracks. </li> <li><a href="https://freesound.org/people/patsywatsy/sounds/515397/" target="_blank">Uccle Church Bells</a> by <a href="https://freesound.org/people/patsywatsy/" target="_blank">patsywatsy</a> | License: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons 0</a> </li> </ul> <h2 style="text-align:center;">Code Assets</h2> <ul> <li>Chapel's <a href="https://twinelab.net/custom-macros-for-sugarcube-2/#/message-macro" target="_blank">Message Macro</a></li> </ul> <h2 style="text-align:center;">Visual Assets</h2> <ul> <li>"Cathedral" by <a href="https://www.behance.net/mariagraziamarino" target="_blank">Mariagrazia Marino</a></li> <li>"red rose flowers" by <a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/red-rose-flowers-kcKiBcDTJt4" target="_blank">Biel Morro</a></li> <li>"Heart Frame" by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/gdj-1086657/" target="_blank">Gordon Johnson</a></li> </ul>

TAG COLOR KEY: * red - Esme POV passage, tag "esme" * green - Nicholas POV passage, tag "nicholas" ---

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<h3>Vigil: nocte xiii Glory to the Trinity most holy and high: as it was, is now, and will be forever </h3> It isn't so often now that you and your wife keep nights as late as you once did, but tonight you sit together before the fire, reclined against one another like cats surveying their kingdom. Her weight is warm against you, her hair cool and sleek against your fingers as you card through it. “Darling,” she murmurs. Her eyes are half-lidded, gold drowsy and lax in the flickering firelight.<<visit "" "matins">> Her favourite wine blushes her lower lip, a stain hours in the making. The whorls of its colour match your thumbprint.<</visit>> “Are you happy?” You hum as you lay out your thoughts to answer, one hand combing through her hair leisurely whilst the other taps quiet and steady against the deep green <<link "glass">><<replace "#glass">>Each strike of your nails against the glass produces a high chime, pitch warbling as the bottle rocks. It reminds her of <<visit "bells said to portend the arrival of Old Blood, she told you once, many years ago before she wore the sign of your winged cross around her neck" "matins">>the Horned King's court and the Hunt that rides out from his table, she says, though she knows better than to let her fear snatch at your wrist to stop you<</visit>>. Her fingers are light on your arm now, fluid and loose like the hair spilling over her shoulders and between your own fingers.<</replace>><</link>> on the side table. You look down upon your wife and drink in the soft brilliance of her features, the silk trickery shine of her soft skin drawn over skeleton, the gilded storm that rages in those golden eyes that are so unfathomably beloved to you. The sweet metal tang of her hunger remembers itself on your tongue and seeps into your gums and the fine lines between your teeth. It recalls to your fire-warmed eyes the feeling of consuming as you are consumed and boils in the lining of your belly before spreading up through your throat like a sword finding its sheath. “I am,” you answer. A pleased chord vibrates from your wife’s throat, assonance trembling through your fingertips on her scalp as she turns to <<link "nuzzle">><<replace "#nuzzle">>She’s always more affectionate on nights like these, countenance thawed with whispers and wine after long days of glittering like ice to blind the eyes of your court at large. In the iron-lit light of your hearth, with no one but your content self to witness, your wife sheds the star-spiked coat you wove for her and bares to you a raw skin of her own creation. Your wife is privileged with secrets mined from your own impenetrable skin; it pleases you <<visit "beyond words" "matins">>terribly<</visit>> to know that you hold the same <<visit "terrible" "matins">>right to<</visit>> treasures of hers.<</replace>><</link>> against you, face pressed into your cool hand. “Good. <<visit "The" "matins">>My<</visit>> world is better for it when you are happy.” She curls her fingers into your sides and grips the edges of your laughter, pulling it close to herself like a blanket. Her heartbeat thrums under your lips and you murmur her <<link "name">><<replace "#name">>“My adoration. My emerald, my gold. My treasure. My wife.” She says nothing, only takes a long sip of wine and presses a lip-shaped souvenir of its taste into the lifeline of your palm. You smile and let it stain there, a burgundy wound binding your hand and her cheek until it dries and you return to slowly stroking through her hair.<</replace>><</link>> to feel it over your tongue like polishing a gem. <div id="name"> </div> A breeze brings the scent of roses and lavender through the open window. The gardens you had sown for your beloved are beginning to bloom. <<verso>>

<h3>lauds O Father, come to aid me; O Lord, hasten my salvation </h3> The bells that announce your marriage are of the same sombre peal that hours before rang to remind the city of its mourning for the last crowned emperor. Majesty, it turns out, wears the same face as elegy in your <<visit "new husband" "matins">>love<</visit>>'s faith. “My //wife//,” <<visit "he" "matins">>your husband<</visit>> whispers to you in the descent from the altar, steps stained red in sunlight through panes of holy blood. His lips are coloured the same, marked in the shape of your own; you smile<<visit "" "matins">>like the animal he sees in your skin<</visit>>, for at least in the strangeness of all this unfamiliar finery and butterfly-winged circumstance, you and your husband remain as you were when you met. You, a thing that bleeds, and he a severe, sublime canvas awaiting your claim. He the palette knife, you the muse, he the medium: both master and piece. Your rings flash together in your bed that night, flesh-warm gold and emerald glinting colder against the blood it coaxes sharply up beneath the skin. His fingers are yours.<<visit "" "matins">> You will hold his heart in your hands too. Even if your own must be surrendered for it.<</visit>> You have learned in the time you have spent with him, even before you learned to decipher how to <<link "love">><<replace #love>>His smile is an omen, the shadow of an owl's wing carving fulfillment from the moon as it hunts. Your husband heralds the hunt you have been brought up to fear, but <<visit "hounds have bayed in the hollows of your heart as long as you can remember" "matins">>another, greater hunger howls in your blood<</visit>>. He tastes of harvest, spilt over your split lips while he carves furrows through your hair, and you wonder if the god he beseeches will answer such a prayer, hissed through clenched teeth. <</replace>><</link>> him, that your husband is a cold man. And yet his blood runs hot beneath your lips, teasing at your teeth and tongue with the promise of fire, of molten honeyed salt like wine spilled from a god's weeping eye. You discover a half-moon on his hip, slanted and silver from sparring ages past, and sharpen your smile on it until you look at him with a face to match the hungry sickle in your heart. “Mine,” you breathe together, and tug with your fingers that belong to one another, until your flesh is bruised gold and spilling hot onto the whetstone of his hip and his heart nestles beside yours, ribs interwoven like the teeth of a great predator, jaws locked shut around the spine of a war-thumping heart. Your lord husband is cold but he is <<link "flesh">><<replace #flesh>>, and he stains your teeth like a favourite wine, every shared pulse between you another wash of your colour into his cheeks, dripping down his lips as he does yours.<</replace>><</link>>. Your nuptial night ushers in sleep to bodies bittersweet and bitten through as long-craved cloister fruit, your husband's hair spread over your skin long and dark as the sky before it lightens in the small hours of your shared slumber. In the distance, cathedral bells knock lurid sunrise into the sky. <<verso>>

<h3>prime My Lord, direct the work of your servant most devoted; yea, direct and sanctify my hands and their deeds </h3> Your husband's smiles are weapons, and <<visit "he teaches you" "matins">>you learn<</visit>> to wield yours just as well. His tongue, too, is as much lash as it is ligament, deft as the <<link "hands">><<removeclass ".hands" 'collapse'>><</link>> that yours mirror. The scar on his hip is a secret, a feast only your eyes have the privilege of gorging on, but your husband's hands bear ten miniatures of it at the base of his nails, half-moons illuminated by some divine brush with an eye for perfection. They gleam when he raises a hand, keratin buffed smooth as a shell; blood beads on them like pearls as he works and you <<visit "adore him" "matins">>imagine your places switched<</visit>>. He keeps their canvas trimmed short just for you, after all, clips himself out of the pointed arches of the cathedral that holds such sway over his soul and loves you with blunted claws. You are the only one in your husband's house who thinks to make offerings to the Old Ones, though you still don't see the difference in these branches of faithful appeasement: all gods veil their names and wear many faces. All gods, you murmur to yourself in a bastardised union of the prayer that lit your childhood hearth and the one your <<visit "sparkling finger now requires of you" "matins">>love smiles gently to hear<</visit>>, //all// gods know that the most precious gift is that which would kneel at the altar and call //for you//. You break fast with your husband after your clasped hands pray by his book. In the cathedral’s ichorous light, you watch <<visit "him" "matins">>your love<</visit>> take divinity upon the tongue and imagine how heady a swallow of god's blood must be. You remember the intoxication of your lord husband and find yourself suddenly, achingly, mortally ravenous.<<visit "" "matins">> Love, as you have learned so well, is a sacrament that must be spilled before it can be taken to swallow.<</visit>> He turns back to you, green eyes flashing <<link "fresh">><<replace "#fresh">>It is a startling reminder of the night you first met, evening set with all its star-blurred haze as though even then, it knew its place as treasured distant memory. The long-healed circle of your husband's first confession against your neck suggests nostalgia. The backs of your knuckles, where he had first taken your hand to kiss, burn. You wonder if this is the price of divinity. <</replace>><</link>> in the light of dawn, and reads your heartstrings through the taut sinew pulled from jaw to clavicle. Your husband knows you so unimaginably well, gaze deconstructing you to bone and <<visit 'bits' "matins">><<link 'bits'>><<removeclass "#bits" "collapse">><</link>><</visit>> as though he has held your blueprints all this time, and was merely waiting for your path to cross his. He slips a piece of scallop between his fingers to lure out the cat you were gifted at a wedding still so fresh in your mind and uses the other to pet her as she eats, fed sliver by sliver of peachy meat. "Such an obedient little beast," he notes, glancing at you in amused delight. "When she isn't chewing me out of house and home, at least." He <<visit "says nothing, but presses" "matins">>laughs, hand gliding to tenderly brush away a stray piece of hair from your face, and traces<</visit>> your name—one of your mutual choosing, a constant silken reminder of his adoration and aid—into your <<visit "hand" "matins">>cheek<</visit>> with cold fingertips. His hand imparts pleasure. It imparts satisfaction. It imparts ecstasy. In the light of his praise you are resplendent, radiant <<visit "" "nones">>and vengeful <</visit>>as the sun upon cities of flaming salt. “Come with me today.” And so you <<visit "do" "nones">>gaze upon him and follow<</visit>>. <<verso>>

<h3>terce In Triumph do the mute speak, the blind see, and all is transformed </h3> “It’s lovely. More bitter than sweet, you’d like it too. Especially with pistachios on top—” She breaks off, gaze flickering over you with a strange sort of twist to her lips. She’d hate it if she could see how it paints her features for herself, know how the slight squint and half-pursed, undecided mouth <<link "betray">><<replace "#betray">>It is an expression equal parts reluctant and desperate, both halves twisted blindly outwards like a plant aching for sunlight. Self-knowing naïveté is, on her features, something more than nakedness.<</replace>><</link>> her uncertainty and reveal her casting about with a pointed toe for the answer she lacks. <<visit "" "matins">> The sight fills you with equal halves admiration and occipital glee.<</visit>> “You’re staring at me again,” she says then, and the faintest touch of self-consciousness rounds her jaw before it settles into accusation, stark against its own shadow on her skin. She’s paled since your journey began, freckles slipping away like <<link "ghosts">><<replace "#ghosts">>Perhaps it is only an illusion, a forgotten consequence of the season’s inevitable departure combined with her wardrobe’s new intoxication with emerald green—the darkness of your house’s colours, you recall, has always made its members’ skin seem cold as marble. <</replace>><</link>> down a river. “What is it?” You feed your body’s need for breath with your eyes’ indulgence: another handful of heartbeats spent studying her eyes. “I gaze upon what compels me.” The <<link "hesitant">><<replace "#hesitant">>Vanity suits <<visit "this" "lauds">>your<</visit>> woman well—the quiet satisfaction lending new radiance to her features sparks something of the same blooded root in you. It is an ache in your heart, a dagger twisting out from your throat in the place of your tongue. Blood thrums at your temples; hers echoes at your fingertips, waltzing in perfect time through your shared silence.<</replace>><</link>> mouth slackens in surprise before tilting into something shyly pleased. She tips her face up to face you fully, glossy-paged book abandoned on the table. Her eyes glimmer, lips shaping her voice like molten gold into a challenge: “And does any part of me in particular compel you so terribly, or are you //so// taken you can’t pick?” Your answer comes fluid as poison. “Your <<link "eyes">><<replace "#eyes">>And they do: her eyes are the exact shade of gold you have gazed upon since your birth, woven around emerald green in the heraldry every head in the empire knows to bow to or lose itself. <<visit "Desire and splendour of birthright bloom in her eyes, gilding your vision: in her face you see your own want, reflected in silken shades of greed, and know it to be another species of yet-unsated hunger." "matins">>She is a creature of //wanting//, of ambition grown grotesque with its appetite—so you have known since you first touched the skin she hides it in. You have not tamed her; you have instead coaxed the jaws of the beast to snarl without snapping, to gild its fire-edged fur. You have taught her a new way of monstrosity entirely. <</visit>><</replace>><<replace "#eyes2">><<visit "" "prime">> Your palms itch; your mouth waters. <</visit>>The moon reflected in rippling water is a scythe and a sheaf; it wants to sever as much as it wants to be severed. So too are the gilded teeth lining your ribs.<</replace>><</link>>.” Taken aback, she blinks twice and robs you of the treasure in her eyes for a half a heartbeat before a smile, selfsame to the one yawning sharp and sickled from your heart to your jaw, bares her teeth at you. Her lashes veil a gaze a touch too bright to be entirely deliberated as you both are so wickedly deft at doing.<<visit "" "prime">> You imagine her veiled beside you, tongue a jewelled dagger shedding incautious blood in your name, and feel your throat dry with the craving of such tender violence.<</visit>> “Well, if you enjoy staring at them so much, marry me and I can be your first sight in the morning and the last every night.” “I will.” Her cheek flushes in the palm of your hand. Never before has the gold of your house been so stunning. <<verso>>

<h3>sext Blessed be the eyes of the Lord, who gazes from on high; may you who dwell in the heavens have mercy upon us </h3> <<if $cycle.includes("sunset")>> <<include "sext2">> <<else>> Noon finds your table laden with food, tablecloth crisp and pristinely white beneath a decadent spread. Your wife sits at your left hand; the sun strikes her hair and turns white gold to the memory of candlelight. The weight of your gaze lifts hers to meet you. Red meat stains her plate, knife and tongue working in tandem as she speaks. “The court bleeds your days into our nights, my lord.” You watch her take a measured sip of wine to avoid waiting overlong for your response. “The court has need of me.” “Do I not have need of you, and you of me?” You take her hand and bring it to your lips, then cup her skull to brush a tender <<visit "reassurance" "lauds">>reprimand<</visit>> to her forehead. “I took you as wife, not a pet to be cosseted, beloved.” “And a merciful wife I am, to act as beloved and guard dog both. My faith in my husband is enough to silence the rumours of a lover's blood on my <<link "hands">><<removeclass "#macbeth" "collapse">><</link>>.” Her eyes flash; her fingers tighten on yours. “You know as well as I what filth would be churned out should I not make my name so costly to print.” Your wife carries herself like a god and spits hellfire, buoyed by savage joy. She is fierce and she is <<visit "yours" "matins">>//yours//<</visit>>, and these two things together bring laughter from your lips to the table. “Were I to take a lover, would you have me doubt my own prowess to fear for him?<<visit "" "prime">> Your wrath is a force, beloved, but it is mortal.<</visit>>” She rises to your <<visit "teasing" "compline">>testing<</visit>> as expected. The dance you share is a strange one, but it brings you joy. Whether she flies or <<visit "falters" "vespers">>fails<</visit>>, she knows you will always bring her home. She knows you will always, always, //always// keep her place, that you would make your world a shrine to that which you adore. She raises her fork and keeps her voice level. “Were I a man, I would eat his heart in the marketplace.” “No divinity and no man are you either.” “No.” Your wife takes another sip of wine and smiles at you with red-lined teeth. It is like holding a candle to a mirror in a dark room. “As I am a woman and <<visit "" "lauds">>avowed <</visit>>yours besides, I would serve it to you instead.” You deliberate over this for a moment and proffer a bite of torte instead, ganache dripping from points of puncture like a saintly passion: she takes the wound between her teeth and lets it melt, raised brow a reminder that you married defiance in the shape of a woman. Your vow tastes of cherries and young, unhallowed wine as you watch the sunlight play over your wife’s hair and the razor-edged stars in her eyes. “You’d take the knife from my hands to carve it out his chest,” you suggest. Her smile is your favourite blade. You take your fork back feeling that the lipstick stamped scarlet near its neck is a kind of memorial. “I would,” she agrees. Her eyes darken beneath the sun, a nameless colour between reverence and sin. “And after you swallowed the last of him, I would hear again your preference for rarity.” She knows you well. Your wife smiles at you and turns her attention to the rest of the torte still on your plate. The blue of a stalwart vein runs cool over the side of her neck to vanish under her jaw, the same shade of her shadow pulled long and thin by the moonlight of your first meeting. Her next bite seems sweeter than the first. “Marvellous chef today,” you say, and feed her another. <</if>> <<verso>>

<h3>nones maydin face away, let not your eyes spy that which is not yet wretched and withered </h3> The bells in your husband’s city are sombre. When you first passed through the gates, you glimpsed the three set in each of the high towers of the city watch, tolls tuned to security in the key of butterfly-winged faith. It struck you as <<link "strange">><<replace "#strange1">> and reminds you now that the name you bore when you met your husband was one given to you as protection.<</replace>><<removeclass "#strange" "collapse">><<replace "#strange">>You were named then for safety and now as a warning: your parents’ first gift to you was a pragmatic one, your first name plucked from hagiography in the hopes that a stranger’s faith might offer grace where your own would not. The name you bear now demands its wearing with pride, tongue turned into a weapon and chin raised high to showcase that it knows fear of no blade but the one it houses; where once you were defined by distance to a blood circle, now you are known by its diameter.<</replace>><</link>> then. The bells sound thrice now, audible even in your husband’s estate so far from the heart of the city and through the formidable walls of warding that ring it. The ninth hour after dawn, three crossed by three, sacred to you and him both; as you consider the little hours and how you might spend today’s, your mind turns to <<link "trinity">><<replace "#trinity">>: yours and your husband’s both<</replace>><</link>>. The bells’ grave peals have ceased to fall strangely upon your ears, but still it unnerves you how your husband’s stained glass angels expect acceptance of a greater power’s constant gaze, and how readily his faithful welcome it—find comfort even. The divinity you know is one you have implored for blindness time and time again; even here, years and miles separated from <<visit "the child who danced for the coming of spring and in tribute to the Triumph, the girl you once were tastes prayer on her lips at the thought of being so seen:" "matins">>the Triumphant devotion of your youth, the prayer of benediction for the dead rises to your lips.<</visit>> “//Madra// speak your name, //maydin// turn away, //madabel// open every door. Triumph keep me as it keeps you.” Slowly, you raise a hand to know your face as your husband does, dragging the pads of your fingers slowly up from collar to chin to brow. Your fingertips linger at the apex of your cheekbone before sliding to the corner of your left eye. <<visit "" "matins">>Green, lurid and as sharply bitter as new leaves, flashes over your mind and you contemplate the feeling of diamonds in your blood and brass beneath your tongue. There is something comforting in the raw salt of it: your husband's hand knows your limits as well as it knows its own strength. <</visit>>Gently, you trace over your lashes with the tip of one glossy nail. //“Your eyes.”// He doesn’t know it, but in confessing his compulsion to you, your husband has <<visit "sanctified another temple within your body" "matins">>found another hollow in your body to claim and make sacred<</visit>>. In his arms you rest in divinity: in his eyes you are //become// divinity. The cathedral’s bells continue tolling in the <<link "distance">><<removeclass "#distance" "collapse">><<replace "#distance">>Your husband told you on that night, long ago, that he would have you on a pedestal at his side, would never again have your feet touch the raw earth while you wore his name. He kissed your eyes—and at the memory, you feel your lashes dampen as though under that night’s cool-lit mist.<</replace>><</link>> and you find yourself smiling to imagine how their peals mark the world you and your beloved share. The trinity of your youth has <<link "three">><<replace "#three">>You shut your eyes and allow the ninth hour to dye your vision scarlet through the thin veil of your eyelids. If yours is the face that ends innocence and empire alike, you wonder which holiness you are wedded to. <</replace>><</link>> faces. In naming your eyes, your husband apotheosised your visage into that of the //maydin//, of destruction stored in the Triumph’s ceaseless gaze; the pedestal he promised you is revealed to be an altar. Gold, you have heard, is the colour of <<link "greed">><<replace "#greed">>He took you with the eyes of a thief and gave you instead the eyes of a god.<</replace>><</link>>, but when your husband holds your hand and heart, he turns your eyes to divine devastation instead. The Triumph wears three and one at once: <<link "eyes">><<removeclass "#eyes" "collapse">><<replace "#eyes">>Together, your eyes recreate the emblem of his house. Your husband’s eyes are piercing, green as the jealousy that his court breeds into miasma, that you have mastered as a weapon where it hopes to waylay you. Piercing and severely beautiful, but for all your husband’s mortal grace, sublimity is not one of his eyes’ boons. From his tongue, however uninitiated it was at the time of bestowing, it is one of yours.<</replace>><</link>>, <<link "mouth">><<removeclass "#mouth" "collapse">><<replace "#mouth">>His mouth is a razor in your hands and reverence against your lips. The //madra//’s domain is creation; you think upon your husband in all his headstrong glory, and know it to be true. When he speaks, he speaks into existence.<</replace>><</link>>, and <<link "hands">><<removeclass "#hands" "collapse">><<replace "#hands">>The scarlet painting your vision blooms vivid green as your fingers press harder into the give of your eyes, blossoms of emerald and cyanide flourishing beneath your hands. Your husband’s are nearly as recognisable across the vast stretches of the empire as his visage, minted in memory and whispered tale just as his profile shadows the monarch’s in currency. Your lips part under the warmth of the sun and you recall their form: long-fingered and pale, knuckles impressively unscarred for a man so known for the iron and mercury of his magic and mind. He lifts a finger and armies fall; taps it against the table and makes blood rise; presses it to your skin and you are reborn. What domain is his then, if not the transformation of //madabel//?<</replace>><</link>> destroy, create, and transform. Your husband’s visage is easy to summon to mind: as you promised him, you are his first sight each morning and his last every night, and he yours. The bell’s final chime resonates as it did for your arrival to the city, your wedding, and for the remembrance of the long-passed monarch. The sun is warm on your face as you open your eyes; a breeze fans the scent of roses and lavender over your wine, glass relaxed and brilliant as it makes you. <<verso>>

<h3>vespers. Forgive me, O Father; forgive me, O Lord; forgive me, and graciously protect me this night </h3> The twins shriek with laughter as they chase a brightly coloured kite, cheeks red like their mother's wrath. You watch them play for a moment, one hand idly spanning the nape of her neck, before glancing at your eldest whilst he paints. Two kittens take shape on his canvas, fluffy fur rendered in careful strokes of grey and orange. <<visit "" "matins">>Were your sister here, she would be looking over his shoulder with a gentle, guiding hand. Amelia always had an eye for colour.<</visit>> “They say in the <<link "south">><<removeclass "#south" "collapse">><</link>> that your first language is the one your anger wears,” your wife muses. She corresponds in burgundy and recently resumed drinking the same, eyes burning bright when they land on you. “I suppose you came from the womb swinging.” After so many years together, her accent is a polished <<link "mirror">><<removeclass "#mirror" "collapse">><</link>> of your own. <<visit "The distance in her voice as she speaks about the hometown you met in is admirable." "matins">>You share smoke with her, but it has yet to scratch her voice into the same facets, though her voice already copies yours in how it curls away from the mention of her one-time home, rolled tight into itself. The bitterness at the base of her throat sets your mouth watering.<</visit>> You would almost believe she grew up here, like you, in the capital, with how glassy smooth she slips over honed tooth and serpentine tongue—if not for the faintest vestigial trill on the R of ‘lord’ when your thoughts <<visit "distract" "matins">>lead<</visit>> your kneading fingers into a pinch. Very nearly flawless—but then, perfection is reserved for divinity, and your wife is mortal, flesh and <<visit "" "matins">>fresh <</visit>>blood with a beating heart. You would have her no other way. She knows you well. You rub slow, firm circles into the soreness reddening your wife’s neck and smile as you watch your children. They’ve cornered the kite into a pocket of dusky wind, burgeoning magical signatures sparkling in the air as they harry it to and fro between their whims. “They’ve taken well to Enoch’s lessons,” you note. “He began casting young as well, nearly as early as I did.” “Mm. They take after their father. <<visit "Spectacularly clever lightshow diversion to avoid bathing last night." "matins">>Much better off for it too.<</visit>>” Your wife smiles as she takes your hand <<visit "" "matins">>from her neck <</visit>>and tugs you to sit beside her.<<visit "" "matins">> From here you can spy the raised edges of the secrets you gifted along her clavicle, kept glossy and rose-tender with oil. You think of the poetry you scribe along her back, verse to adorn every rib, and resolve never to conclude your manuscript.<</visit>> Spring tints her eyes <<visit '<<link "olivine">><<removeclass "#olive" "collapse">><</link>>' "matins">>olivine<</visit>> where the last of the daylight gleams off the grass as she turns to you. “<<visit 'Tell me again about your childhood. Growing up together—the three of you, in the most beautiful home and heart in the world.' "matins">>The greatest gift you've ever given me.<</visit>>” Your wife’s tongue bends to two masters and two masters alone: one commands challenge and the other praise. Determining which one she serves now is an exercise in futile grace, so you <<visit "answer" "matins">>raise a brow with the corner of your mouth and speak<</visit>> as calm and cool as the still water in the carafe: <<visit '“I’ve told you what there is.”' "matins">>“And you me.” You pause briefly, to trace the soft blue river beneath the skin of her neck, <<link "vein">><<removeclass "#vein" "collapse">><</link>> routing from jaw to collar like moonlight on water. “We could have more. Don’t you think the nursery looks lonely, so quiet and empty?”<</visit>> <<visit "“And I want to hear it again. Indulge me.”" "matins">>“You have an army at your <<link "fingertips">><<removeclass "#lucky" "collapse">><</link>>, darling. Another of children would hardly be a fair burden to bear.”<</visit>> She sweetens her demand with a section of orange and the pulse in her fingertips pressed to your mouth before it can thin in objection.<<visit ' “You know I haven’t spoken to my brother in years. Remind me what <<visit "it was like—or teach me something new" "matins">>we’ve lost<</visit>>. I expect your older brother and I had very different experiences as the eldest. And you and I—well, you had someone to look up to //and// someone to guide. <<link "Lucky">><<removeclass "#lucky" "collapse">><</link>>.”' "matins">><</visit>> <<visit "Juice mixes with the salt of her skin; you clean both from your lip with a neat motion. Her eyes track your hand the way yours do hers; under the fading sun’s vigilance you are washed anew with pleasure at how //well-made// you are for one another, how cleanly the sharp-honed curve of her fits against yours like a blade to its own cutting edge." "matins">>You catch her fingertip neatly between your teeth, biting through the cling of juice to taste the soft salt of her fingertip before releasing. She does not wince but presses her finger harder against your bite, crooking it against the edge of an incisor to bring you close. Her pulse offers itself to the altar of your mouth, a <<link "fingerprint">><<removeclass "#girlboss" "collapse">><</link>> pressed to the back of your teeth for you to suck clean later.<</visit>> “They’ve been asking to see another ballet. It’s been a while since we’ve used the box, and there’s a Farfallan adaptation opening soon. We could have a family night of it—bring Catell and Ryder along to make sure Sam’s enjoying himself too. Dinner before the show at that place you like, overlooking the tower. A little indulgence.” Twilight brings with it a fresh gust of wind; the twins’ kite twirls prettily before finding its way gently into descent. Their minder catches it, untangling the bright ribbons of its tail before handing it over; they hoist the balsa frame triumphantly between them, laughter bubbling bright before quieting into conspiracy. In the <<link "dying">><<removeclass "#dying" "collapse">><</link>> light, their ruddy cheeks and small hands are washed with shadow. Freckles, inheritance from their mother that you’d forgotten she had to offer with how pale she <<visit "keeps herself in the city" "matins">>is<</visit>> beneath you, crinkle into new constellations. “Papa! Here—we caught it for you!” Your daughter beams; her eyes are darker than her mother’s but still reflect the grass, amber turned emerald as she holds the kite out. She resembles you more as the sun sets, hair darkened and plastered closer to her head with sweat and shadow, eyes shaded green by the same. Her brother—first claim of your penchant for clothing pensiveness with intensity won by a mere three minutes, his sister inheriting their mother’s hot-blooded disposition instead—places down a jar in front of you. “Picture for us, Papa?” <<visit "Your boy" "matins">>He<</visit>> is eager and sweet, expectant only because you have the means and will to satisfy whatever your darling heir’s whims may be. This is no exception. The jar’s contents yield themselves easily, vessels slumping against glass once slit in service to your magic. <<visit "Your wife was once an artist; perhaps it was a shared joy for creation out of nothing that brought you together, you think as your fingers direct sanguine pigment over the coated fabric stretched over wooden frame." "matins">>Before she was your wife, Esme was a dancer. You wonder, briefly, as your magic paints the fabric with blood real and imagined, how ravenous your hunger would be without her to match and goad it now. She would still be doing the same little spins and curtsies she had then, perhaps—and you would have no perfect image to gaze upon, nothing to grasp in your left hand while you guide the world with your right.<</visit>> Your wife dries the canvas once your art is complete; the twins consider the twist-petalled rose below its northern star in silence for a moment before deeming it worthy of a cheer. “Pretty! Like you and Mama!” they chirp, nodding enthusiastically at each other before running off again to show their minder. Your wife watches them go fondly, then tilts the kite towards herself to see. She scoffs, eyes rising from the design and its slow-setting <<link "iron">><<removeclass "#iron" "collapse">><</link>>. It will outlast the memory of this fleeting moment. You are a pragmatic man: you would have your legacy inscribed in more than mere blood and bone. Such is the depth of your devotion. You recognise the sound immediately: a high, precise huff that, if not directly assimilated from you, is at least certainly ameliorated by years of intimate exposure. “Just like us indeed,” she says, and already you know the taste of her wine before it presses rich and warm to your tongue. <<verso>>

<h3>compline And with each step I am transformed by the grace of your hands; and in your name I sing, for your mercy is joy and does beget joyful creation </h3> Your husband intoxicates you with a cool hand and the scent of lilacs in mist, a curious heat stoked in dewy evening by conviction and immediate, ineffable ardour. A year and a day later, he fills your bedroom with blooms, branches tamed into great things of beauty that sweeten the haze of slumber with memory and fill your throat with a strange, familiar delirium. You dream together that night and wake in a garden of heady purple, speckled with ivory and a thousand delicate shades in between, colouring the waking world into merely a continuation of your dreams. His flirtation drenches its subjects in <<visit "" "matins">>sanguine <</visit>>opulence. Your childhood <<link "warned">><<removeclass "#warning" "collapse">><</link>> you of the Old Ones with stories of fantastical realms and impossible caprice, lures fine and tailored to slip past sight and hook even the sharpest wit. You know every tale by <<visit "heart" "matins">><<link "heart">><<removeclass "#heart" "collapse">><</link>><</visit>> and could recite your way out from the jaws of the Horned King himself and his Hunt; your reward is the hand of a mortal man made //more//, for your husband crafts this world of remembered haze as finely as any fae and poses <<visit "your soul none of the same danger" "matins">>a very different breed of danger<</visit>>. You remember dancing around a bonfire, passing the refrain of a story around the flames with every step: //and no grains did they throw, when a changeling babe ran home//—and the cool mist on your husband’s cold hand when he touched yours—//so dance, dance, dance, without a chance, chance, chance, ‘til the old friends all fall sleeping!// The lilac does not wilt: its soft, powdery sweetness follows you into the sugar at tea and syrup brewed to wine at supper, pastel granules strewn over steam like the rice you once dreamt of at an imagined wedding; its scent into your bath, with oils combed into your hair till it gleams and your husband murmurs of floral perfumed silk as he passes his fingers over your scalp; its wood into your day with the appearance of splendidly carved trinkets, gifted with eager, glittering smiles as quickly as your husband’s favourite artisans can deliver them. It becomes a ritual, this carefully chosen reminder of anniversary; like your tithes to the Old Blood and your husband’s marrow-rooted terror of them, it goes unspoken and all the more powerful for it. A year and a day turns to two and one to three and three, and so on spools time like a bobbin on steady shuttle. Each renewal of lilac suffuses the days around it, saturating your waking dreams like watercolour worked over and over. You drowse in your husband’s arms, nose pressed into the fragrance of nectar-sodden sheets beneath your cheek. The flowers sway and sigh around you, heralds of a time gone by and come again, petals soft and shivering. He kisses you and the feeling of it is rendered anew, his pulse painted fresh and rare beneath your lips. There is a strange delight in the sensation of a split lip, soothed and stung over by blue-tinted delirium, pale but spectacularly loud amidst the breathing of the lilacs. “//Witch//,” your husband bites tenderly into the crook of your neck. <<visit "This too is part of your dance together, as much earth as salt for how precious it is. His teeth fit perfectly in their divots as they always have, pearls set in the prongs of your body to shine beneath the lace you make of his shoulders." "matins">> His teeth meet inside you, tongue curling around crimped muscle. Your air rushes through his lungs; the room sways in ecstasy around you and you sink into the lushness he builds for you. He was born to this exchange; you have been made for it. There is a beast in your clasped hands that rejoices.<</visit>> He stains beneath your nails, crystallises dull crimson and mineral like he did then and always will—he speaks your name as urgently though this night is the first he has found himself so robbed of other speech, of will other than your shared one. It is an amusing thought, with so many years of this ritual wound around your spine like the band upon your finger, and so you laugh before you find his eyes and bind them with yours, unblinking and sacred. He names you //witch// and so you spit //slayer// into his mouth, turn the consonants hard upon the lathe of your tongue so that he may taste every bit of being <<link "smitten">><<removeclass "#smite" "collapse">><</link>> as you are, and understand your intent as deeply as you do his. He names you //witch// for your bewitchment of him; you name him //slayer// for what he has <<visit "done for your sake" "matins">>wrought from your hands<</visit>>. It was a most perfect horror that wed you, sublimity given will and shrunken to the sparkle of a diamond. The lilacs shush the scent of spilling, of your magic and his seeping into one another like violence from temper, wet iron into cut spice. The split lip is a twin, mirrored between the both of you as an appetiser. There is no end and no beginning to this feast: there is only the cold, firm hand at the small of your back to cradle you close and the raw-fleshed giddiness of memory born into new present. “//Beloved//,” whispers a voice from the fluttering petals, and just as you cannot tell where the past runs into present and future, so too <<visit "is the border between you and your husband lost" "matins">>do you lose yourself in him<</visit>>. <<verso>>

<<link "nocte viii">><<goto [[vigil]]>><<run Dialog.close()>><<audio ":playing" stop>><<audio "nocte" play>><</link>> <<link "matins">><<goto [[matins]]>><<run $cycle.pushUnique("matins")>><<run Dialog.close()>><<audio ":playing" stop>><<audio "matins" play>><</link>>

<h3>matins Lord, part my lips: and all shall praise your name</h3> As a matter of habit, your husband rises before you. Usually, you wake to the slow glide of fingers over your cheek when the caress of his eyes can satisfy itself no longer. Today, your bed is warm with early dawn's light and the absence of your love; your husband stands at the balcony, gazing down at the <<link "city">><<replace "#city">> His spine is an iron bar bisecting the open air; you dig your fingers into the hollows below your eyes to mimic the fall of shadow beneath his shoulder blades. The muscle flexes with each breath. <</replace>><</link>> once promised and forever fraught. The panes of the door are thrown wide open, framing him in glass and the soft lustre of a new day. He does not turn when you embrace him, only places his hands over yours as you find the slow thud of his heartbeat. The city knows his hands by the scent of blood they weave, copper and wet tang following his grasp. It is for the greater good, he says, and you know his faith is as strong as the truth he professes unto it. Your ring prickles at the base of your nameless finger as you <<link "mouth">><<removeclass ".nape" "collapse">><</link>> at the nape of your husband’s neck. The raised ridges of the petals carved into your own tingle in paired sympathy. Pleased, he pulls you to face him and kisses your palm. His grip is tight, steady as it was when he held the scalpel to your skin and whispered fleeting pleasure from its fleeting pain. Since you were wed, your hand has mirrored his, fingers fragrant with bloodshed: the ideal of your beholder, writ large by unspoken desire into the empty ledger of your body. He has made malleability of your beauty, shaped and glazed you into his most perfect image, and here you stand beside him, fired in the kiln of his—now your—court. Over your husband’s shoulder, the sun rises. Steam and smoke from chimneys below turn to flame in its light, and you remember that once, you were named for a (then) foreign saint. You have since learnt that yours is the life of a sinner, but on the heels of the first recollection comes another, whispered by a ghost with hair like fire: sin, like so many things you now wield, is another invention of your husband’s hand. There were days before he spoke the knowledge into you, after all, years and years stretching into the distant past before your hands <<link "drank">><<replace "#drank">> Once you were ignorant of its bliss, blind to the ecstasy of teeth buried in beating breast and the sore, bitter satisfaction of loving as you are loved.<</replace>><</link>> the blood they spilled like prideful wine. Sunlight strikes your hair and your trinity of memory completes itself: before you styled yourself the wife of slaughter, the mother of heirs to an empire wrongfully raised, vessel of a rage so pure it burns like spirit, you were an ember in a wild hearth. A breeze feeds you, <<link "fanning">><<replace "#fanning">>“I would see you forever triumphant.”<</replace>><<removeclass "#fanning" "collapse">><</link>> the sun's rising glow over your skin. Your husband is cold, but he is <<link "flesh">><<replace "#flesh">>, and you know his flesh well enough to coax songs from its ice<</replace>><</link>>. His blood sings against your pulse, hands gripping your body tight as he has seized so many things—land, power, //you//. The dawn is calm; his shriek is a song that shreds your lips as you clutch him close and kiss him. There is no foe great enough to topple your husband from his throne. To fall, he would have to first endure the long, aching indignity of dust. To imagine his dulling, to envision the fade of his severity and the blades behind his bite is unfathomable. Your husband stands alone at the peak of the world, looking down upon that which he has wrought—and you, product of his tenacity that you are, are the only one capable of piercing him into the future's annals with all the glory gore he deserves. Once you were signifier and signified, separate incarnations of a candle and its reflection in the mirror—but your blood and body are tangled together now, gold and green woven into a wedding knot that tightens itself into eternity. Only saints' bones do not decay. You keep your eyes wide open and trained upon him so that every face of every god may witness this, his most sacred incarnation. <<link "Once">> <<replace "#o1">>Once<</replace>> <<replace "#o2">> <<link "Once.">> <<replace "#o2">>Once, you knew nothing of martyrs, for your love had not yet taught you its name.<</replace>> <<replace "#o3">> <<link "Once.">> <<removeclass "#sky" "collapse">> <<replace "#o1">>Once<</replace>> <<replace "#o2">>Once, you knew nothing of martyrs, for your love had not yet taught you its name.<</replace>> <<replace "#o3">>Once, you did not know what you would become.<</replace>> <<replace "#sky">> The sky whistles around you with the voice of your love. <</replace>> <</link>> <</replace>> <</link>> <</replace>> <</link>> , you did not know how to fall, for you did not know how to sin. <div class="verso"> <<link "realise">> <<replace "#re" t8n>> <<link "reincarnate">> <<goto sun>> <<audio ":playing" fadeoverto 3 0>> <<audio "sun" play>> <<audio "uccle" volume 0.75 fadeoverto 30 0>> <<if visited("matins") is 1>> <<set $full to 1>> <<else>> <<set $full +=1>> <</if>> <</link>> <<link "regret">> <<goto [[verso]]>> <<audio "oneHumi" play>> <</link>> <</replace>> <</link>> </div>

<<if passage() is "verso" && $cycle.length === $fullDay.length>> <<addclass "#vigilHour" "chime">> <<elseif passage() is "verso" && $full is 1>> <<for _i, _heure range $dingdong>> <<addclass _heure "chime">> <</for>> <</if>>

The physician arrives with his usual quiet knock and weary, warm hands. The children are gathered in a loose triangle over the bedspread, pillows and tiny plush animals reenacting a fairytale whose narration appears to have been taken over by the creative whims of its tellers. “Blessed are the meek,” murmurs the physician to himself. His eyes are bloodshot, tanned skin marked with vicious incandescence where his veins have burnt in service to defiance of mortal vulnerability—though even with such clear markers of well-earned fatigue, the physician’s robes remain pristine, white linen and status-bearing gilt trim barred from the evidence of their wearer’s work by enchantments that will long survive their caster. The physician <<link "inhales">><<replace "#inhales">>The scent of his magic is floral and sweet in the back of the throat: a phantom posy of violets warms the room as though to ward off plague.<</replace>><</link>>. Braced, he offers the children a smile as he enters. “<<link "Samael">><<replace "#sam">>The eldest fixes the physician with the stare he inherited from his father, dark brows angling down over a deeply undesired disruption to the usual morning routine. <</replace>><</link>>. <<link "Felicity">><<replace "#fel">>That he addresses them in birth order is both habit and careful attention. <</replace>><</link>>, <<link "Silas">><<replace "#sy">>The twins are young enough yet that they associate his presence only with relief from scrapes healed over and fevers cooled by violets, ginger, and mugwort tinctures; they look up guilelessly, if confused by his sudden appearance in the absence of need. <</replace>><</link>>. We’ve an unexpected outing today. Your presence is required at the annunciation hall.” “What’s happened? Where’s Papa?” “All will be well. You’ll see him there.” The physician’s art is reassurance; his charges settle, gathered up and dressed for viewing and being viewed, and in short order they depart the estate. The sun rises slowly. When they arrive, the physician, as he is wont to do, steps aside and begins to <<link "pray">> <<goto [[verso]]>> <<audio ":playing" fadeout>> <<timed 5s>> <<audio "uccle" play>> <<audio "sun" play>> <</timed>> <</link>>.

<h3>lilac darling wine duology: volume i </h3> //sophiae qui in domibus fantasiis laetifice mecum saltat hoc opusculum est dedicatum// This is a facsimile of a book of hours recovered from the library of the Remington Estate. The original appears to have been a shared possession between Lord Nicholas Remington and Lady Esme Remington (née Malric), and is notable for featuring details from their personal lives within the liturgical text. Despite near-constant public attention, both Lord and Lady Remington were famously secretive about details of their personal lives, though surviving accounts of servants in the household reveal it to have been very lively. Both Remington's name sigils are also incorporated into the ward that once guarded the book's personalised prayers from prying eyes, suggesting they would have shared the most intimate and privileged aspects of their respective arcane identities. While the ward is now inert, it is a beautiful representation of Lord and Lady Remington's bond. This book of hours depicts scenes of personal devotion. Their illuminations and aspects may perturb you; additional information, should you wish to prepare yourself, is contained <<link "here">><<run Dialog.setup("Content Warnings", "credits");Dialog.wiki(Story.get("Content Warnings").processText());Dialog.open();>><</link>> and can also be referenced through the colophon below. Each prayer contains annotations from its originator; these are preserved from the scribe’s work as faithfully as possible. Annotations marked with trefoil arches on either side (as below) indicate a return to the //folium horae//, from which each prayer can be accessed. <div class="verso"> <<link "//folium horae//">><<goto [[verso]]>><</link>> </div>

Heavy (fantasy) religious themes, discussion of abuse, blood and very suggestive content. Implied cannibalism. Alcohol is consumed throughout and substance abuse is implied. Intended for readers 18 years of age and above.

Your days begin early and end late, hours kept long but consistent, steady as the patterns your wife wove early in your marriage bed, before her diversions turned their eye to embroidery in all its sepia maternal inclinations. The midpoint of this day, balanced on the hour to bisect dawn and dusk, sees your table anointed and running over: your wife sits with her wine and you with yours. She sits at your left hand with its sinister sparkle, place coveted by all those you refuse from your table. At your right sits a man you have known and held dearly since boyhood: your kingdom of flax and blood fills your heart to gaze upon, assembled as tenderly as lesser lords might caress thoughts of milk and honey. Your wife’s wit lances colour into your warden’s cheeks; her laughter is quiet, beautiful in the way of absolution. Her eyes slide from his face to yours and you feel in the weight of her gaze the <<link "devastation">><<removeclass "#devas" "collapse">><</link>> of being understood: like a carcass by the butcher, a knife by its wound, a creation by its creator, your wife opens her mouth and shows you your own flaying in the obedient cavern of her butterfly ribs. “Tell me, Enoch,” she says without lifting her eyes away from you, gold as summer grain. Her adoration and accusation bear the same stigmata, words bright through their holy slur. “Is it as shocking to a Beloved of the Goodmen that a Farfallan wishes to be //constantly// in the sights of power on high?” His answer is quiet, steady as the stone corridors you shared your youth in. Enoch has never been quicksilver to catch like you and your wife in either temper or disposition, a strange mountainous marvel of a man. “Not so much. I imagine the fears of folk in the south would be eased if they knew the love of a pantheon as Beloveds do, rather than terror of a god more like the Things it keeps away than the people it protects.” “But do you not have your <<link "Lethe">><<removeclass "#lethe" "collapse">><</link>>?” presses your wife. Her eyes are hooding themselves for a hunt, a telltale flash of polished tooth behind crimson lips betraying her as the wolf’s howl does its stilled hackles. “He of the dark shores, of memory snipped short so that no thread may turn an eye and bring treachery upon itself? Do you not beseech him to turn a blind eye, this god who sings to highwaymen before lords? Does he not hide his face beneath a cloak of his hour—is his gaze not an omen as the //maydin//’s is?” Enoch pauses, tired and silent against the harrying of her sharp teeth. You would pity him, were he a lesser man worthy of the insult; your wife is a <<link "creature">><<removeclass ".creature" "collapse">><</link>> of exhaustion for those without the raw flesh and iron heart to see that her tenderness requires that she be swallowed whole. Her tenacity harmonises with yours, gut strings plucked by caterwaul curved to precise, poisonous deliberation. You watch her tear apart the court lathering at her feet with glittering gaze and razor tongue, cold smile a scythe that calls to your stinging palm for //use//, and know that of all your life’s work, you will never surpass the achievement of devotional alchemy, of crowning a bride made to bear with grace a position of merciless immortality from a woman born to nothing. You are a man of the tangible realm, though you guide the city not with your hands but with your mouth, pressed to the ear of its crown—that your wife, ever a tempest in mortal skin, makes reverent wine of your foes’ blood fills you with satisfaction—//glory//—to rival the high noon’s sun striking cobblestone through the cathedral’s laudation. “He governs those born to the night’s ill fate—little wonder those who bear his love would ask not to. Names given by the day shine easier, as do their gods’ eyes.” Enoch’s recitation, clear as it is, brings your wife no satisfaction. You read the pursing of her lips and take her hand to <<link "rewrite">><<removeclass "#rew" "collapse">><</link>> the root of her tongue. “Your hunger is misplaced, beloved.” You raise a bite to her lips and watch her swallow words along with tender flesh. “My hunger existed before I did,” she says, teeth bold against your thumb. “How would you feed me, then? If the body is sacred where faces are not, why is a god’s gaze love and not destruction?” “Your Lord watches because he watches from on high,” you answer. “His attention is love because it is protection. It is unconditional sanctity. It is divine.” The gold in your wife’s eyes flickers with the sun overhead, pupils turned to blotted ink. She bites down: suspended in the sixth hour, your wife unknots ichor on her tongue to bind you for heaven.

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