Chapter 15: The Empress's Whim
The Cherimony Room felt different after the stripping away. The air was closer here, thickened with myrrh and the dust of forgotten gods flaking from the walls. The gold leaf hieroglyphs seemed to watch, their stories no longer including mine. My arms felt naked, my steps silent without the chime of gold. Only the silver collar persisted, a constant, cool pressure against my clavicle.
Marisa stood before the low ebony dais, the heap of my former wealth glittering on a crimson silk cushion. She had changed into a sheath of sheer linen, her body a lean shadow behind the fabric. She held out her bare arm.
“Put them on me,” she said. It wasn’t a question. It was an execution of a different kind.
I picked up the first heavy arm band. It was still warm, or perhaps that was my imagination. My fingers trembled as I approached her. She stood perfectly still, a statue awaiting gilding. I could smell the lotus oil on her skin.
I fitted the clasp around her slender upper arm. It looked wider, more imposing on her. A declaration.
“Tighter,” she murmured. “I don’t want it to slide.”
I adjusted it, my fingers brushing her skin. She didn’t flinch.
One by one, I fastened the bands to her arms, each click of the clasp a lock turning in a door behind me. She remained silent, her gaze fixed on some point across the room, playing her part with devastating seriousness. When I moved to the ankle bracelets, I had to kneel. The obsidian floor was cool through my linen. Her foot was arched, elegant. I fastened the chain, my hands cradling her heel. The intimacy of the act was a hot coal in my throat.
“They’re looser than I remember,” she mused, her voice floating above me. “Did you shrink, Bella? Or did the gold stretch to contain you?”
I said nothing. I moved to the other foot, the chain slithering through my fingers.
The rings were last. She settled onto the edge of the dais, extending her hands. I took her fingers one by one, sliding each ring home. Her hands were stronger than mine, longer. The rings sat differently. They belonged.
Then she lifted her foot, placing it on my knee. “These, too.”
My vision blurred for a second. This was the deepest cut. I took her foot in my hand, her toes relaxed. I slid the first toe ring on. The silence was a living thing, breathing with us. I could feel Angela’s presence, though she wasn’t in the room. Her will was in the very air.
I fitted the last ring, a delicate coil of gold on her smallest toe. The task was done. She was adorned with the history of my favor. I was empty.
I lowered her foot, but my hands didn’t leave. I stared at the gold now belonging to her, at the skin that was not mine. A desperate, quiet ache rose in me, not for the metal, but for the simplicity that was lost.
Marisa looked down at me. “Is there something more?” Her tone was light, edged with the blade of mockery. “A lesson unlearned?”
The words were a test. I felt the old urge to placate, to soothe, to be the calm one. But that role was now inscribed in silver, not gold. A strange clarity washed over me, cold and clean.
Instead of answering, I bent my head. I pressed my lips, once, gently, to the gold-adorned arch of her foot, just above the glittering rings. It was not an act of worship, nor of submission. It was an acknowledgment. A surrender to the truth of the new shape we were in. A plea, without words, to let the mockery end. The skin was warm. The metal was not.
I felt her go still. The mocking energy that had crackled around her vanished, replaced by a thick, absorbing silence. I released her foot and sat back on my heels, looking up.
Her clever eyes were wide, the smirk utterly gone. She stared at me as if seeing me for the first time—not the former favorite, but the woman kneeling in the dust of her own past. She blinked, slowly. Her foot, now heavy with my gold, retreated slightly, touching the floor.
She said nothing for a long moment. The only sound was our breathing.
“Get up,” she finally said, her voice stripped of its playful cruelty. It was quiet. Almost simple.
I rose, my knees protesting the cool, hard floor.
She stood, the gold on her arms and ankles catching the dim light. She looked at her own hands, now glittering, then back at me. The understanding that passed between us was wordless and complete. The game had shifted. The mockery had been a prop, and I had just knocked it over.
“The Divine One wishes to walk in the evening garden,” she said, her tone now that of the First Hand stating a fact. “We will both attend her. You will wear the blue sheath. The one that matches your eyes.”
It was an order, but it was also a thread thrown across the chasm. An inclusion.
I bowed my head. “Yes, Marisa.”
She turned to leave, the gold singing softly with her movement. At the archway, she paused, not looking back. “The kiss was unnecessary,” she said, the words careful. “But it was noted.”
Then she was gone, leaving me alone in the room of flaking gods and my own haunting lightness. The mockery had stopped. What came next, I understood, would be far more real.