Season notes: traumatized people people triggering each other, abuse, torture, fictional slavery, con noncon*, (attempted) blackmail
Attendance at court came with certain social obligations. Most were tedious, some annoying. And a few were worse.
Luohei were artists of glamourhai. The best of them could create a banquet to tantalize the senses, using their knowledge of their human subjects to draw forth sounds and movement alongside the strongest and subtlest emotion. In her own way, Jahlene was a luohei, but she was nothing like the ‘artists’ celebrated by the court.
No fae would fail to appear at an artistic demonstration sponsored by the emperor. Certainly not a middling-ranked noble in a feud that risked angering said emperor.
Jahlene had no choice but to attend.
Preparing for the evening, Jahlene warned Mattin of what would come. She wanted to leave him behind, but when she offered, he signaled that he would attend her. Silent service wasn’t a true language or even code. There was no way for Mattin to explain what he was thinking or why. Jahlene was tempted to ask but decided they didn’t have time to risk setting each other off. She would need to trust him.
Especially since she wouldn’t be able to taste him herself.
As part of her preparations, Jahlene closed off her glamour. It was a risk, putting her at a disadvantage if any noble tried to start court games. But better than risking an offending reaction to the luohei’s ‘art’.
They arrived as late as Jahlene dared, ensuring that the only remaining room was what no one else wanted and exactly what Jahlene preferred — in the back, with a poor view of the stage.
And they settled in to endure.
Jahlene didn’t know what disgusted her more. The way the luohei brutalized the humans around him or the way her peers delighted in it. She both wished and dreaded knowing Mattin’s reactions. Perhaps he would see no difference between the luohei glamour and her own glamourhai. If so… at least he had finally learned self-control.
She let her vision blur, focusing through the luohei and his subjects rather than on them, and prepared for a long night.
Mattin wanted to throw up. He had never seen, never imagined, anything like the savagery these fae called ‘entertainment’. The emperor had opened his private glamourhame—a huge room, larger than the dining hall back home—to his court. Mattin had attended Jahlene in the glamourhame several times since they arrived at court. Being away from home didn’t stop the need to feed her glamour. She had to use the palace’s public glamourhame but took Joth there late at night or early in the morning when few, if any, others were there.
What Jahlene did with Joth was different from either Crait or Jaffrey, and Mattin would have expected it to bother him. It didn’t, or at least not in the same way. Attending her in the glamourhame was still… difficult. But when it was just them, he could no longer lie to himself about what he wanted or why.
When other nobles were present Mattin did his best to focus on the lady and her needs, blocking out what the other fae did. Even if he did have nightmares afterward.
This was different. The emperor had arranged for a butcher these monsters called ‘artist’ to demonstrate his skill. He had to stand and watch the butcher torture people—and it was not the loving torment Jahlene practiced.
Already a young woman’s screams filled the room. The artist had put rings through her nipples and then attached them to chains that hung from the ceiling. She stood on tiptoe while the luohei whipped her viciously. Sooner or later, she would lose her balance, fall… and those rings would rip through her flesh. A similar ring through his shaft pinned an old man to the floor. Mattin didn’t want to see what else the luohei would come up with. Yet he had no choice.
He forced his eyes away from the scene before him and stared at Jahlene. Her face was a mask of serenity, all her feelings hidden away. But he didn’t need glamour to know she was as horrified as he was. He remembered the care she took with her toys. How she calculated everything she did to let her play to her heart’s content without harming them. She had even, he realized in hindsight, been alert to his own needs. Stopping her play early when he was overwhelmed in the beginning, gradually increasing the intensity as his comfort grew.
How much worse was this for her? Tasting the torment of the luohei’s victims, probably fighting her glamour to keep from feeding on their pain. The fae needed to feed on emotion, and pain and fear were easier to create than pleasure and joy. Whether Mattin liked it or not, they needed glamourhai. He didn’t lie to himself either—Jahlene liked hurting her toys. She enjoyed it, savored it, reveled in it. But no further than the limits of what they wanted.
And if the Mare gifted some people with the need to cause pain, didn’t it make sense that others would crave it? That they would fit together, like two clasped hands?
It was a strange insight to have, in this place with hopeless and desperate screams ringing in his ears. Perhaps he needed to see this… abomination and contrast it with Jahlene’s ways to finally understand.
He wished he could take them both away from the horror. But since he couldn’t, he could at least stand with her. She wouldn’t need to face it alone.
The one comfort Mattin could take from the night was knowing that Marta was safe in their suite and would never again face such torment. When he was finally able to collapse into bed, it was that thought which let him sleep.
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