Little Saint Bride [Death and the Maiden, #1]

Chapter Twenty Four: Ponies, Goslings and Fools

Media is Hades and Persephone but it reminds me of Nerissa's choke hold later in this chapter! (Such a romantic).

'I didn't know you had it in you, brother. It was always I who turned my fancy from one girl to another, but never you. Not my cold, cynical baby brother. How glad I am to see you've finally come around!'

Flashback: one of my first memories of a child was watching my father come home from one of his afternoons at the pub, smelling of cigars and vinegar, and greeting my mother, preparing to welcome a potential investor to the house for dinner. Mother worked nights, usually-- in a bar where she'd met Father-- toiling late into the morning, before coming home and continuing to work in the way she really wanted: art.

Mother wasn't a conventional artist in the sense of canvas and paint. She was a sculptor, and a very good one at that. But what she really needed was the expensive materials and the publicity to turn her amateur hobby into a real business.

Thus, the investor; a prim man of expense and business, with a taste for the arts. He was coming from the Upper District, a place rumoured to have champagne (whatever that was) pouring from fountains, and each child had its own horse. They were only rumours, but it was enough to scare Mother into cleaning our shabby home from top to bottom, hiring a babysitter to mind us for the evening, and cooking more intensely than we'd ever seen her, a woman who normally got by on bread and cheese.

So when Father came home drunk, having lost at his game of cards and smelling like mould...

Well, Mother roared. 

The fight lasted until their divorce, but in some ways, I'm sure it still rages today. Perhaps she's never forgiven him for that missed opportunity with the investor, a man who paled at the sight of a gambler and his wife, no matter how talented. 

But I remember one phrase that she screamed at Father, very vividly: "I'm so ashamed, I wish I could flee this country!"

And now, over a decade later, I'm learning what she meant. Or rather, I could now fully sympathise with that feeling of wanting to flee and never be found as I face a hoard of onlookers.

Staggering away from Hadrian, I turn to glare at the person who interrupted our...conversation...and instead, find not just one person standing there, but around eight.

The man upon the horse had spoken. Golden hair like corn sits atop a sculptured face, and rosy cherub cheeks grin boyishly down at the two of us. The uniformed man, clad in white, salutes to us from where he sits on his mare, as clean and crisp as the ceremonial tailcoat that flows down his arms. I can't tell you what was worse; the fact that the man grips the sword at his waist with mock preparation-- as if someone were about to leap from the sky above and evade the seven guards around him-- or the fact his tailcoat has golden shoulder pads that make me question humanity.

The people around him are much less lavishly dressed. In fact, their uniforms are so dark-- with only the occasional, couldn't-resist golden swirl embroidering the heavy black cloaked uniforms, decked with swishing capes. As the man pulls his horse to, I watch him swing his leg over to the other side of the saddle, and hop down with nimble ease. 

We have a man on a horse and his team of bodyguards surrounding him. It's something for the world records, I'm sure, but right now I'm focusing on not hiding behind Hadrian as though I'm guilty, because I'm not. What's a bit of kissing, really? And...touching? And...a lot of tension?

I glance sideways at Hadrian, but his face is a mask of dark shadows and a perfectly placed expression of blankness. But I can see beneath the brilliantly formed armour the sweat beading his hair together, the way his chest heaves, how he tucks his hands behind his back to hide how they're shaking.