I shuffled out of my bedroom into the living area.
My place was the top floor of aPre-Unificationwarehouse.Spacious, with the whole back wall being that slant of windows that started at about four feet up.Occupyingthe entire floor under it was my studio.Thefloor under that, the one at ground level, was divided into two.Ithoused a pizzeria and a mystic sanctum run by a witch namedAlchemy, whoIsuspected was just a human, butIdidn’t think she was a scammer.Instead, she wanted to have magic so much she convinced herself she did and was able to convince other people of the same.
Bottom line withAlchemy, her sanctum rocked.Theremight not be any actual mystical healing happening, butI’dused her before, and she gave great vibe.
Maybe it was time for another visit.
I went to the open kitchen and got myself a glass of water.
I stood at the counter looking out the windows, where, across the road there was a broken block that contained a row of sixPre-Unification, three-story brownstones, and next to those, aPost-Crash, personality-less, five-story cube filled with micro-flats.
Over the last few years, my neighborhood had begun shifting.
Island living off the coast had almost always been out of everyone’s but the elite of the elite’s price range, this being the reason it was populated by castles, villas, mansions and a gamut of really exclusive (but excellent) shopping and eateries.
Now uptown was becoming too expensive for most as well.
So downtown they went, buying up old brownstones or blocks of micro-flats and renovating them.
I didn’t pay attention, butIsuspected, instead of fifty units in that cube, there were now maybe ten, because there were always noisy construction crafts and rubbish tips lining the road, workers inside undoubtedly tearing down walls and making micro, macro.
Human, fae, demon, witch, conjurer, we seemed to always be searching for more space.
AsIsipped my water, it wasn’t hard to turn my attention from the nightmare to the night.
I rested a hip against the counter and glanced behind me at the seating area whereI’dleft the two empty bottles of wine and three glasses, the detritus ofGayle,CatandIdissecting and re-dissecting every secondIspent withPrinceAleksei(and incidentally, not coming up with any answers to his and my short, bizarre tête-à-tête).
We’d left the club almost immediately afterPrinceAlekseileft me because we had a ton of dissecting to do, and we didn’t want anyone to hear it.
Although we came up with no answers,Idid learn fromCatthat royal etiquette was expected to be observed, no matter where you were.
“KingFillion, but more,QueenCalisaare really into that shit,” she said.
She would know.She’dactually metKingFillionand had been presented toQueenCalisaand served two seasons at court in her seventeenth and eighteenth years.She’dalso been at a weekend house party atCapicePointwithPrincessAleeceand had been propositioned byPrinceTimotheein an ante-tent during a laser joust (she had declined, but only because he was more than mildly inebriated at the time, and if she went there with him, she wanted him to remember it).
I still thought all of that protocol nonsense was archaic.
Yes,I(along with everyone else) had seenPrinceAleksei’sbeast soaring over the midnight waters aroundCelestialPalace, and his beast was as handsome, huge and powerful asPrinceAleksei, with his gleaming blue-black scales, purple-hued webbed wings and abundance of cruel spikes.
Anyone with an imagination could hark back centuries and see that beast laying claim toNight’sFallin a manner no one would challenge him, and if they did, they’d be reduced to ash in purple fire.
But it wasn’t that way anymore.
Constant war, death, intrigue, broken accords and treachery had given way to the establishment of theFourRealms, the slender strip of a neutralCenterand diplomacy.
So sure, sometimes that diplomacy was tenuous and other times heated.
But there had been peace among the realms for decades.
And at this juncture, each realm had stood solid under their royal claims for centuries.
TheCenter, where nearly everyone who lived there was involved in governance and inter-realm relations, was where ambassadors debated, trade deals were forged, and compromises were sought for grievances.Onwardfrom that, each realm had its own government, both realm-wide and locally.
On the other hand, in the lands ofNight’sFall,Dawn’sBreak,Sky’sEdgeandLand’sEnd, kings and queens held state dinners, hosted elaborate balls and provided pomp, circumstance and militantly guarded tradition.
Not in generations had anyone in theCelestialPalaceshed blood or sacrificed anything for the glory ofNight’sFall.Andalthough the king, all three princes and the princess were delegates to theCenter, and the king’s word held great weight, each province, parish or county of each realm had an elected official at theCenter, so the royal family was not our only representation.
No.
