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Lady Lissa has never cared for the masquerades. Ostensibly Queen Andretta calls for a masque each month because she keeps the worship of the Veiled Goddess and finds it blasphemous for any to have their face uncovered at the same time as Her, but everyone knows she merely enjoys the gaiety of her whole court covered in jewels and feathers and fine fabrics and dancing until they drop. And so with each full moon the palace is ablaze in torches and gleaming with expensive silks, and Queen Andretta preens on her dais while watching her courtiers flirt and intrigue and plot below her. But for Lissa - gangly colt-limbed Lissa, who the queen has had to admonish every day to keep a civil tongue in her head - it has always been evening after evening of standing aside and pretending to look interested in a wall.
"And how is Lady Sol?" Queen Andretta chirps, leaning on the arm of the throne. Below them and Andretta's other ladies-in-waiting, the party continues in a menagerie of masks. It had been a mythical theme this time, and while Andretta had chosen the mighty dragon for her own mask, Lissa had settled with a harpy. Let anyone who dares approach her. Lissa will be more than happy to respond with a harpy's shriek and claws.
"She's well," Lissa says as tonelessly as she can manage. She's stiff, she's strange, she'll never let me stay in bed with her even though we've been wed for nearly a month now. "I don't believe she means to come tonight." Unless...
Lissa's heart leaps into her chest when she sees a shadowy figure slide into the open keep. The woman's tunic and breeches are stark black, contrasting to the riot of oranges and yellows in her phoenix mask, and as she moves through the crowd the other nobles step back almost as if unconsciously. As she reaches the dais and sweeps into an elegant bow, Lissa's pulse only increases.
"If you'll excuse me, my queen," the woman purrs, catching Lissa by the arm and leading her into the swirling mass of nobles in their turns, past them and into the shadows of the castle gardens.
"Nyx," she breathes.
"I was waiting for you," Nyx responds, twisting her around so that Lissa stands in front of her, with Nyx's arms pinning Lissa's against Lissa's back. Not too hard - not anything Lissa would have trouble getting out of - but a warning. Or a promise.
Still, she can't help but push back. "You took your own sweet time in coming to me, rather. With your inconsistencies, I hardly think I should keep to your schedule."
Annoyingly, Nyx doesn't rise to the bait. Damn that woman. "I couldn't get to you before now. Our mutual friend - well, she can be quite jealous. Another of those little quirks she'll never admit, not even to herself. But we both know her a bit better than that, don't we?"
"So she sent you here to - what, keep watch over me in case someone tried to seduce me away? Me, the harpy?"
Nyx turns her around and slams her against the wall, pushing Lissa's arms over her head and her own breasts into Lissa's. The pulse hammering in Lissa's veins starts to throb even harder between her legs. "She did not send me," Nyx hisses. "No one sends me. No one controls me."
Lissa pushes off against the wall and sends Nyx falling against the the soft ground, into a bed of yellow flowers. "We'll see about that."
She knows the game by now. Before Nyx can rise, she's dashed off, listening for footsteps behind her as she weaves through the corridors of the castle. Feathers fall from both of them as they weave through the maze of hallways. Every once in a while she feels the graze of Nyx's fingers against her back, and it thrills her enough to speed her even more.
When they reach Lissa's bed, Lissa spins to duck beside the door, her chest heaving from arousal and exertion, and fumbles for anything she can use as a weapon. Nyx bursts in after her and catches her ankle as she crawls away, her fingernails digging into Lissa's skin. Lissa grabs the nearest object - a shoe - and crashes it against Nyx's head, but Nyx shrugs off the blow and pins Lissa's arm behind her back again, harder this time, marching her to the bed.
When Lissa falls back into the bed in an ungraceful pile, Nyx falls atop her and pins her down, her hands rough on Lissa's sensitive breasts and her pelvis grinding against Lissa's. Lissa cries out half in pain and half in relief, pushing against Nyx's shoulders half-heartedly with one hand and with the other one reaching to stroke Nyx's clit through her breeches. Lissa's harpy mask had been lost sometime in the chase, but Nyx's phoenix is still tight across her face, and Lissa loses herself in a blaze of feathers and fire as she comes.
When it's over, Lissa expects Nyx to slip out of her bed and back into the night. It has been that way every other time they've come to together, after all. But Nyx does something unexpected - a tender, aching kiss. When Nyx pulls back...Lissa swears it isn't Nyx at all.
"Sol?" she says. Tentatively, she brings up a hand to stroke along her cheek, and when she runs a finger on Sol's ear, she unhooks the mask and lets it fall beside the pillow.
Sol jumps back immediately, picking herself up off the bed and jerkily throwing off the mask and clothes. "I don't - I didn't mean to - "
"Oh, please," Lissa says testily. "You change enough when you come to my bed, but not that much. I know, and I've always known, ever since the first night. Now are you coming back to bed or not?"
It takes an aching minute, but Sol unfurls her crossed arms, lets her shoulders fall, and ambles back across the room into the bed. "I don't know why it happens. I don't how to stop it," Sol whispers in her ear as she curls her body against Lissa's back. And before Lissa could protest or complain or say anything at all, Sol whispers, "Lissa?"
She taps Sol's hand where it lies across her breasts, and Sol squeezes her hand back in response.
"Will you stay with me?"
"Tonight?"
Sol doesn't answer, but the tenseness of her body against Lissa's back gives her a clear answer. Tonight. Any night. At all. Whoever I am.
"Yes," she thinks, and she means to both of you as she slides into bed beside Sol. Sol curls herself behind Lissa