Tea.

This story is the second in the Kingdom series. Please read “The Doors” first. 

Alexa pours the tea herself, Jason, her handsome groom, hovering close in case she changes her mind. She smiles her lovely smile at Jane. “This is a new blend, you’ll love the hint of jasmine”. She sits back down with a graceful sweep of her skirt, her arms a constant dance, her hair a glorious blonde tumble.

Jane smiles back, soothed by the picture and the tea, which is a light, delicate pink and clear as a jewel. Soon she feels the odd sensation begin to wane, the strange, twisted thought that flashed like lightning through her head that day and left her someone else entirely. The lingering threads, threatening to weave themselves into something. What is it?

Alexa smooths her skirt over her beautiful legs and picks up her teacup. Jason places her napkin in her lap and offers her cake. She looks down at his perfect hand, brown and fine, so different from hers, his long fingers holding the cake. The fork laid by deliberately, the touch essential, if Jane wasn’t there he would be feeding her like a baby and making her suck off his fingers. Such gorgeousness should never be wasted, on either side, they know it. She picks the cake up herself and eats it, licking her own fingers like a child, then that little laugh and the shake of the beautiful head.

“Oh my goodness, look at me, you’d think I was starving. Maybe I am.”

“Oh! What am I saying? Forgive me Jane, this tea, the hot sun, I forget myself. Jason, hold my parasol over me please. Jane. Would you like one? I can call Bryson.”

Jane moves her chair into the shade nearby and declines. The shadows play on her shadowed eyes, with their sudden lines and new knowledge. Alexa smiles at her, noticing nothing but the bruises under her eyes. Who can blame her? Jane feels the tea relax her, she lets it go.

They both watch the girls, who are swinging under the trees, pushed by friends and taking turns. She looks a little closer, one of the girls is definitely not a girl. A silent presence, he pushes endlessly and says nothing. A quick look at Alexa, who’s cheeks are flushed as she cuts more cake. Jason stands just behind her, he has eyes, surely? So tall, so dark and smoldering, just this side of insolent.

None of her business, really. Leave it alone.

The sun is high overhead, the breeze cool, when was the last time it rained? She can’t remember. She misses it. When she says this aloud, they both look at her with scorn.

Alexa recovers her manners and gives that tinkling laugh.

“You’re crazy, Jane. You don’t mean it. I know, I remember how much it rained that last time you and, can I say his name honey-? Well, that last time you and Rowan had that weekend together and it rained, and you slept under those trees. Like savages, you said, getting wet and lighting your own fires.”

“Yes. I remember.”

The sweet voice goes on, lilting and curious, like she’s only learning this now. Jason looks at Jane with different eyes, assessing weakness, looking for the slightest grain of potential. Grief, Gain, Gold, Glory, what can be wrung from any wreck. The lightest curve to his lips, the hint of smoke in his black eyes, Jane notices none of this, she is spared the death stare from the predator who suddenly sees her.

“And so he just vanished, dive from the sky into the sea and never be found again. It’s hard to conceive of, really, in this kind of world. That such a perfect, well, it’s no secret that he was a well-made man.”

She is flushed again. Looking down at her perfect pink nails and biting her plump lips. Her breasts, lush and creamy, tinting rose slowly downward, a shiver, her green eyes suddenly finding Jane’s.

“Do you miss him?”

“Yes.”

“I can imagine.”

Jane feels it again, that tight flash, a sharp pain in her head.

“Rowan dived all his life.”

“Did he? I guess, well, these things happen, I think.”

“Do they?”

Alexa and Jason both staring now, both growing a bit paler.

“How’s your tea Jane? Jason, brew a fresh pot please.”

The parasol is folded, Alexa sweeps her glorious hair up into a knot on her head and pins it loosely. Every gesture a careless masterpiece, strands snake down the perfect cheek and   curl on her breasts. Jason looks down at her like a starving thing, a slave so far above his place he would die for it, if it were known. Bloodlines are controlled by Royal Mandate, one plays such a game only when one has nothing to lose.

Jane looks across at the girls, the eldest, Karaline, is still swinging, pushed by two friends who can’t stop giggling. A beautiful girl already, she will be a stunning woman, her mother’s classical beauty combined with her father’s laughing eyes, her mother’s sensuality, her father’s sudden intensities. She keeps her hair loose, her skin soft and white, her nails long and perfect, as a matter of course, liking them that way. Knowing nothing of the picture she makes. Nothing of what it will all cost her.

Alexa watches her with a cat’s eyes, seeing in her daughter the perfection she fell short of. A bittersweet smile, how not to be proud of such a creature, she is after all, the creator. She turns her glowing eyes to Jane, purring.

“She will be taller than me, you should see her dance, really there isn’t much I can teach her, she knows it all already. I did too, at her age.”

Jane holds her cup out for more tea. Alexa stirs and pours, in the silence the liquid curls into the cups, a slight flicker of sound. The soft, hushed click of fine porcelain, the polite pause to taste cake, Alexa demands the parasol again. Jane smiles and looks away.

The other girl, Sarah, just two years younger, is a quiet thing, with her father’s dark hair and brown eyes. She sits now, under a tree with her dog in her lap. He is sleepy and blinking, almost delirious, she is pulling bits of grass from his fur. Beside her squats the boy, stripping bark from a branch, for the dog. They are both silent, she watches his nimble fingers, he thinks of her hair in the sun. How to get her back out into it, this occupies his mind, while he shapes the piece of wood. The dog watches him, saving his energy. Jane sips her tea and waits.

When he judges it fit, he stands up, looks at the dog and hurls it out into the meadows, the dog up and running, the girl laughing. The dog reaches the stick, picks it up and drops down to chew it. The girl looking up at the boy, him suddenly finding a sliver in his hand, her rising to her feet and running out into the sun to retrieve the stick and throw it. Him standing perfectly still, with his eyes locked on her and her unruly masses of hair, his mind not trusting his eyes, his eyes insisting, but still, there is no such thing. Close his eyes for a few seconds, so hard! Open them again and see it, shining like copper, strands of red in her hair, hold his breath in wonder, feel his stomach sink. She is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, the nose a shade too big, the mouth too generous. The smile so wide, so full of vibrant life.

There is no red hair in the Kingdom. There never has been, it can’t even be imagined in this world of every other colour.

The boy finally thinks to look around him, his eyes meet Jane’s and hold. A long minute where secrets are exchanged, intents made known. Jane is mildly shocked to find a man there, she looks down first.

More tea, what can she hide in it? Everything, if she drinks enough.

Alexa looks up suddenly, she sees Sarah and the dog, ah- her breath sucked in, her lovely hands clenching the arms of the chair, white knuckles in a death grip. A sharp call and the girl comes running, the boy disappears, the dog brings the stick to Jane’s feet.

A whispered word, a brief caress and Sarah is sent inside. Alexa laughs her soft, lilting laugh.

“Poor Sarah, burns so easily in the sun. I have to limit her time outdoors. That’s why she has her lessons at home, the King is so good to us, letting us keep her all day. Karaline isn’t so lucky, she will have to attend the Vestals this year. But she’s always top of her class, so I’m not worried.” A graceful shrug.

Jane looks down into her cup, trying to see something there, in the leaves at the bottom. Trying to see anything but what fills her mind. What she knows about the Vestals. What a Vestal must never know, until it is her time to know, and then she will be told all- Jane stops her mind there, the pain in her head throbbing. Her heart engaged now, thumping harder and higher, right up into her skull where it pounds frantically to deafen her.

Think Jane, where did you learn this? Her fingers pressing into her temple, look up, Jason’s eyes hot and hard, a creature of his birth. A slave that takes, that needs to feed on the life of others to sustain his own. So dangerous. How is something like that just walking around? How does Alexa not see it in him?

So now there are two unthinkables in her mind. Finish the tea, slowly, the false calmness making her even more- what? What is she feeling? She struggles not to get up and run. Where? Anywhere but here where the third unthinkable hides in the house, and all of them looking green and healthy, and what is one supposed to do with that?

Run.

She puts her cup down, shakes her napkin out carefully and smiles at Alexa. A genuine smile, with attention to detail. Alexa freezes, a plea, a promise, the mother breathes just a little bit easier.

“Thank you for the tea, Alexa, it’s superb. Your daughters are lovely, I’m so glad to see them again. I should be going, though. I’m heading out to the sea, and it’s a long drive, as you know.”

“Oh! The sea. Yes, well, it’s bit cold perhaps, but really you should- are you sure you want to be at the coast Jane? Isn’t it a little too soon?”

A hint of gentle concern, slight expression achieved without moving her face, beautiful. How to rake your nails across someone’s heart without ruining a good manicure.

Think of the sea, stormy and dark at this time of year. Huge violent waves with evil intent, a killer out in the middle of nowhere, a killer on the shore. Will it tell her the truth? She will know it anyway. If Rowan is there, brought by now to a million bits of other creatures, other entities, if he is there, she will join him.