Kushiel's Dart

household, collared and bound to Melisande Shahrizai of my own free will.
    We moved among the guests, and a murmur followed. I could not but feel my nakedness beneath the sheer gauze with every step. Masked faces, feathered and furred, turned to watch our progress. Melisande glided smoothly between them and I trailed, tethered, in her wake.
    And to my chagrin, with a hundred eyes upon me and Melisande's hand at the end of my velvet lead, I felt a desire such as I had never known stir in the distant reaches of my being, like the wave that had drowned Ys gathering force in the far depths of the ocean.
    "Your grace." Only Melisande could make a curtsy seem the gesture of a queen receiving homage. A tall, lean man in a wolf mask inclined his head and looked gaugingly at her.
    "House Shahrizai arrives," he said dryly. "And what have you brought?"
    She made no answer but to smile; I sank deeply in a curtsy. "Joy to your grace on the Longest Night," I murmured.
    His fingers lifted my chin and he searched my eyes through the holes of my mask. "No!" he exclaimed, glancing at Melisande, then back at me. "Is it true?"
    "Phedre no Delaunay," she said, with her faint smile. It curved like a scarlet bow beneath the black mask that hid her features. "Did you not know Elua's City boasted a genuine anguissette , your grace?"
    "I cannot credit it." Without removing his sharp gaze from mine, he reached forward and gathered up the sheer folds of my gown, slipping his hand beneath them.
    I cried out then, out of pleasure and shame both. The Duc de Morhban regarded me from behind his mask, an amused wolf. Melisande twitched the line and I staggered, dropping to my knees in defense. The tiny diamonds sewn into my sheer gown bit into my flesh.
    "The Due de Morhban is not your patron," she reminded me, one hand twining in my hair in a gesture that was half caress, half threat.
    "No, my lady," I breathed. Her hand grew gentler, and I found myself leaning into it, pressing my cheek to the velvet of her skirts and inhaling her scent as if it were a sanctuary. Her fingers trailed down my throat, and I heard as if from a great distance my own answering whimper.
    "You see, your grace," Melisande said lightly. "Kushiel's Dart strikes true."
    "Well, have a care where it strikes!" he snapped, turning away. I could feel her low laugh thrumming through her, and a crimson haze rose to cloud my vision.
    I could not say what transpired during the remainder of the Due de Morhban's Midwinter Masque; and I tried, for Delaunay queried me at some length, having never known my wits to thus falter. I can only say that my time there passed as if in a fever-dream. As Blessed Elua is my witness, I tried to pay heed to what passed about me and what conversations I overheard, but the slender velvet rope Melisande Shahrizai had set about my neck had severed at last my connection with that far part of my mind that was ever thinking and analyzing at Anafiel Delaunay's behest, and I was aware only of her hand on the far end of it. When I reached for that calculating corner, I found only the indrawn susurrus of the great wave gathering, and knew myself doomed when it broke.
    If you were to ask me what I remembered of that Masque, it is only this: Melisande. Every laugh, every smile, every movement, all thrummed along the velvet cord that bound us, till I was nearly gasping with it.
    There was a pageant; I remember nothing of it, except the outcry of the horologer, Melisande clapping, and her smile. I see that smile still in my dreams.
    And too many of them are pleasant.
    It is a small mercy that Joscelin was not there to see me.
    When at last we left, the guests were fewer. Now it seemed I stumbled in her wake, and when the coachman handed me into the trap, I was quivering all over like a plucked harpstring. The velvet lead-line grew tight between us; she had not released it, getting into the coach.
    "Come here," Melisande whispered as the coach lurched into motion, and there was still no order in it, but the velvet cord twitched and I slid, helpless and obedient, into her arms. Elua knows, I had been kissed before, but never like this. Everything in me surrendered to it, until she released me and pulled off my mask, stripping off the last vestige of disguise. Hers she kept, glowing blue eyes flanked by the dark upsweep of cormorant wings. And then she kissed me again, until I could return it with no artistry, but mere craving, clinging to her and drowning under her