The chatter, the casual banter, the idle conversation—all of it stuttered, drawing toward silence when Bardulf paraded in with his arm around the tall, royally dressed Terran as if they had been friends since the crib. Synthra’s eyes narrowed from where she stood a floor above, leaning over the railing overlooking the hall proper. The crowd’s reaction to Achilles—she preferred thinking of him that way—was less shock and more awe, a collective recognition of something rare and mystifying entering their sphere of awareness.
Synthra found it both utterly ridiculous and, begrudgingly, at least somewhat deserved.
The Terran Archon, the first of his kind, had not only become such after less than a month in Dawnhaven, but had triggered a Tribulation for his first Temper, defeated a second-tier Hydra while Untempered, and even managed to win the support of the Reds and the Princess who led them. Aylar’s relationship with Leonidas remained unclear to Synthra, not that she cared.
No, she had bigger things to worry about than something that trivial.
He has been wearing more red lately, she noticed while pursing her lips. Is that because of the Princess?
A moment of dubious consideration followed, and then Synthra blinked and glared down at the man, reaching out as if to strangle him in mid-air. How dare he make her think something so idiotic! The bastard! He’d cooked her thoughts into a hormonal stew ever since their match and that bloody Arena Competition. Why had she cared if he lived or died? Why had her heart bloomed when he’d triumphed?
Foolish! Stupid! Idiot!
I do not desire that towering buffoon.
He was pleasantly tall, though, she admitted to herself, and built with remarkably broad shoulders. Few men could match her for physique and height both, but Leonidas looked as if he could make her feel small, even delicate—
Synthra slapped her hands to her face inaudibly and scowled, shaking her head and glaring down at Bardulf and the human once more.
To hell with you, Achilles! I am not some easily seduced harlot!
So said into the comfort of her mind, Synthra turned on her heeled shoes and marched toward her room in the main building, near to her mother’s. If she were going to face Achilles, she would at least ensure her makeup was pristine. As if she’d ever let him get the satisfaction of seeing her at anything but her best. The scoundrel. He came unannounced, and only rumors of his approach preceding him had given her time to hastily ensure she looked presentable.
For her own pride! Not him! To hell with him!
Synthra nodded in satisfaction as she sashayed into her rooms and slammed the door behind her. She’d been practicing her walk in the new heels. Make a mess of her head, would he? She’d have the arrogant soft-skin drooling like an idiot when she walked toward him! As she approached her washroom, her thoughts drifted back to Achilles again, and specifically, the faint look of consternation—or perhaps concern—on his features. She’d grown to understand his expressions well after the events in the Royal Box following his tribulation, and his sporadic visits to the Guild thereafter to finalize his Strategic Keystone status.
Something had him worried, but what? Whatever it was, it was enough to unnerve the First Archon of Terran blood, and that meant it had to be something important. Was it Aylar? Had the Princess proposed?
Synthra’s eyes widened, and she looked at herself in the mirror.
No, that’s impossible. Aylar wouldn’t have proposed. She has too much pride. She’d want him to—
Did he propose?! After demanding the right to pursue me?!
Her eyes burned in the mirror, and Synthra snarled with an echo of draconic fury, lips blowing out a wisp of fire from her [Everflame Core] with a low growl. A slow intake of breath followed to soothe her temper, and she pushed down the reactive anger. No, Achilles wasn’t ready for that, yet. Ceruviel had said as much to Sinalthria, despite her surrogate Aunt’s frustration on the matter.
Ceruviel wanted Achilles to have a harem, according to what she’d heard.
Synthra snorted. Achilles wouldn’t be able to handle a harem.
Her expression flickered at the thought, and she eyed herself in the mirror.
…Would he? He was strong, and powerful, and very likely quite virile—
Synthra stepped forward and slammed her horned head into the reinforced managlass, repeatedly, until her brain shut up.
“What has my mother done to me…?” she asked the air in resigned horror, while staring down at the pristine white sink her hands were resting on. “One talk, one talk, and she has my mind betraying me and my hormones acting mad. I’m not even a half-Dragon! This shouldn’t be happening! Conquer me? Ha! I’ll show you who’s going to be conquered, you arrogant Terran bastard!”
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Synthra reached for her makeup as she nodded fiercely, and began touching up her face with the lightest applications—she needed barely any at all, and only used it to accentuate what already existed, to make her lashes just a touch darker, her cheeks just a touch sharper, her lips just a smidge fuller, and her natural blush just a little more noticeable.
In the realm of temptation, I was born to rule, Achilles. You will rue the day you committed to pursuing me! You have woken the Dragon!
Synthra had no need to prove her martial supremacy. That was a given. Perhaps Achilles would have beaten her, but measuring him by anything resembling a normal stick was absolutely boneheaded. The man was a gigantic anomaly; she could tell that much instinctively by how her draconic blood reacted to his power. Perhaps that was what it was.
“Perhaps I’m not going mad, maybe I’m just reacting to that energy…”
The theory had some measure of believable credence, all considered. The Terran wielded a power that not even her mother was able to explain or properly define, and Sinalthria had admitted to feeling the same resonance as Synthra—more powerfully, too. Something about Achilles spoke to draconids in a way that was impossible to understand. She’d seen it in the Hydra, too: it had been afraid of him, of an Untempered mortal. That mattered. That meant something.
Wait, but if that’s true, then no matter what I do, I’m not going to be able to escape that accursed energy effect!
Synthra stared at her sink for a moment longer, and then reared back and punched her mirror again, leaving no dent, but shaking the wall in the act.
“Damn him! Damn him! Damn him, damn him, DAMN HIM!”
Synthra took a moment to steady herself once more and made a meditative pose with her forefingers and thumbs, pushing her hands outward with a steadying exhale. “Calm, Synthra. Calm. We are calm,” she murmured, tossing her head to throw back her hair as she stabilized her mood. “We are not going to let some stupid, simple, uncouth, arrogant, self-obsessed, egotistical twit ruin our composure. Caaaalm.”
Synthra blew out a satisfied breath and set about correcting her makeup again, as if nothing had happened.
I need to thank Mother for this mirror, she thought idly as she applied the aborted finishing touches she hadn’t completed, or had ruined, due to her outburst. Truly, it’s quite robust. I’ll need to tell Ceruviel about it.
Satisfied that she had perfected her look, Synthra took a moment to examine herself in the mirror, idly fluffed her hair a little—for herself, not him, the bastard—and then nodded once in approval while brushing her fiery hair over her shoulder with her manicured nails.
“Now, Achilles, I am ready to do battle with you. You entitled miscreant.”
Turning on her heel, she sway-marched out of her quarters, focusing on the rolling movement of her hips as instructed by the lovely Terran woman who had sold her the heels. The art of the sashay, she’s said, with an accent that she had explained was ‘Latina’, which meant she was from some fierce southern land where women held the true power, apparently.
Synthra had simply enjoyed her advice, the way she rolled her Rs, and the insight she gave into men.
“All men are fools, mija,” the lovely woman had said while helping Synthra properly learn the balance of the heeled shoes. “They are simple creatures, and yet infuriating at the same time. As a woman, all you can do is take back the power yourself—first by making them realize what it is they are missing, and then forcing them to earn it.”
Synthra had nodded in understanding. The woman, Almaria, had made perfect sense.
“What if they have already stated they will have you?” she had asked after a moment, while looking over her shoulder and down at the notably shorter woman. All Terrans were short compared to Haelfenn, let alone one with draconic blood like Synthra.
Well, perhaps not all of them.
“Then you remind them that you are not a thing to be claimed, mija. You are a fierce lioness—”
“Dragoness,” Synthra had corrected mildly, and tapped her horns.
“—Ah. Si. Dragoness! You are a fierce dragoness, and not to be underestimated by a mere man. Stay proud, mija. Stay unyielding! This foolish boy will learn to worship at your altar, or may the Lord God strike him down for his pigheaded ways!”
Synthra had nodded with enthusiasm at Almaria’s words and turned back to the heels snugly holding her feet.
“Thank you, Almaria,” she’d said with genuine warmth. “Now, you said something about ‘defeating them without lifting a hand’ using this ‘sashay’ method? I would like to learn it in greater detail.”
A laugh followed her words, and Almaria gave her an approving grin.
“Si, mija. We shall make a weapon of these legs, of that you can be sure.”
Synthra re-entered the main hall of the Adventurers’ Guild like she was on a mission, taking determined and affirmed strides from the top level, her hands curled into loose fists at her sides as she made for the stairwell leading down toward the first landing, and then to the ground level from there.
Below her, she could still see Achilles with Bardulf, talking to Celia with his left hand in his pocket like it were some statement of affable relaxation. It did frame his shoulders nicely, though she’d never tell him that. The man was already too arrogant by half—he hadn’t even properly thanked her for risking her neck to have him made a Strategic Keystone!
Oh, how Sinalthria had scolded her for that. Another injustice to put at Achilles’ feet. Her mother had even accused her of being lovesick! Her! It was mortifying. Her only chance at vengeance was to make the man regret ever proposing to pursue her. She would wield all of Almaria’s tricks, if she had to, in order to bring him to his knees and make that happen.
Conquer me, will you? We’ll see about that, you arrogant basta—
Mid-thought, distracted as she was, Synthra didn’t realize until it was too late that she had misjudged the final step. A second later, she felt the moment her Dexterity Attribute failed to compensate for the difference in her faltering balance.
Oh. Shit.
Her hands went out as she raced through possibilities in her mind mid-fall, from using heat repulsion from her palms, to a flame leap, and even trying to turn it into some mad attempt at a cartwheel—until she remembered she was wearing her usual robes, and that would result in her showing entirely too much to the entire room full of people she lived and worked with.
Oh, Divines, I’m fucked—
Synthra’s fall was arrested abruptly, and she felt a firm, strong arm holding her around the waist. A blink of surprise followed, and she raised her head as the scent of something distinctly masculine and wild hit her senses. Black suit, silvered filigree, jewelled adornments, wind-kissed black hair, and a pair of blue eyes she momentarily found herself drowning in.
“Whoa, Synthra. You almost went for a tum—”
Synthra froze for a moment and then, as much by reflex as by a panicked mind-blank, she did the first thing she could think of before he could finish speaking.
She punched Leonidas Achilles square in the nose.
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