Rhianon-2. Princess of Fire and the Winged Warrior. Natalie Yacobson

At the end of the masquerade, when it is time to remove the masks, Fresia will announce to everyone that her companion is only human.

      Rhianon looked once more at Chloe. She was already flirting animatedly with some strangers and expressing her excitement at someone’s particularly well-done masks. Both her condemnation and unconcealed admiration seemed to be expressed directly, like a child’s. She could not bring herself to pretend or lie. It wasn’t inherent in humans, but she wasn’t human. And she didn’t see Rhianon as a victim at all. Although on the other hand, maybe she was used to her friend picking up here and there her companions for the night to get rid of them in the morning. And Chloe herself was simply indifferent to these temporary companions. She probably lost count of them.

      «Where have I got to,» Rhianon wondered if it would be possible to find ways to retreat, but ahead of her in the middle of it already seemed to begin to unfold the drama. No one was paying any attention to Rhianon herself yet. The guests, however, were encircling the host in a tight ring, and that ring was narrowing. How many of them were there, all dressed in fabulous costumes? Rhianon tried to count them, and felt dizzy. The counting seemed to only make more of them.

      Could someone from the School of Witchcraft be here? A hunch struck her suddenly, and Rhianon began to look around. A couple in black caught her eye. The lady and the gentleman were conspiringly dressed in dark colors, and they stood out sharply in the crowd. They looked strange amidst the riot of color, but elegant all the same. White lace was gracefully woven into black velvet and silk. It looked like an ornament, and there seemed to be some symbols lost in its weaving. Not just a pattern… Rhianon squinted to get a better look. The two were standing too far away from her, but a cavalier in exactly the same black camisole could also be seen beside her. They were black velvet and white lace. It was like a uniform. Had Orpheus told her that the School of Witchcraft had its own uniform? Rhianon strained her memory, but remembered nothing of the sort. Orpheus generally tried not to talk particularly much about the School of Black Arts. He did not talk about the other students in it at all. Rhianon looked once more at the stranger, and she thought that even under the black mask she recognized the same condemned man who had left her a star. It was only an illusion, of course. The blond hair, scattered across the dark collar, seemed so familiar, but the face beneath the mask was as if it didn’t exist at all.

      Just for a moment she was embarrassed. She didn’t like how long and attentive his gaze was. He continued to stare at her even as the attention of everyone present turned to the host of the reception.

      Fresia pushed her under the elbow.

      «Look!»

      Rhianon watched as several graceful women brought a basket full of grapes to the hosts. The gift must have been symbolic. But what it meant.

      «From our fields…» explained the girl in red whose hair and cleavage were also adorned with miniature tassels of grapes. Only whether the berries were made of jewels or whether the vines grew straight from her hands and scalp. Rhianon did not know; she could not get a closer look, nor could she hear all the remarks, as only scraps of phrase came to her. The master was saying something, frightened. He did not want to accept the gift, but the guests insisted. They wished that all his family could taste their fruit from the basket covered with leaves.

      «Imagine him as a lord, not a country gent,» said Freesia with a chuckle. «And he can’t behave himself.»

      Rhianon glanced over her shoulder and noticed the grapes rolling rapidly across the floor from the basket and seeming to turn into something else. One berry rolled so far that it fell right under her feet. For some reason Rhianon really didn’t want it to touch the hem of her dress. It glistened on the floor between her shoes, like a real ruby. Just a moment and that ruby spread across the floor in a living, sizzling juice. Rhianon clutched at Fresia’s arm and picked up her own hem. She saw the juice of the disintegrated grape burn through the floor, and small insect-like creatures swarming inside it.

      «Don’t be silly, no one’s forcing you to eat it,» Freesia hissed at her. Rhianon backed away, watching the other berries warily. They rolled off across the marble floor like hard stones. It seemed as if they were bouncing between shoes and hemlines of polished round rubies.

      Rhianon grimaced dismissively. What could be with those who tasted it. The piteous cries told her that before she could look. Something strange was already happening to all the people in the center of the reception; they were falling to the floor, whimpering, as if they were being burned from within. Rhianon saw the blood mixing with the crushed berries on the floor. And the fairies were laughing. Their laughter made their ears ring.

      «Why is it?» She asked Fresia quietly, so that the others could not hear.

      «He used to cheat us out of our fields and pay us no taxes,» Fresia explained.

      «You mean us?» Rhianon didn’t immediately realize that the term generalized everyone here, even her. It was as if she was already among them, and all because no one had noticed she was an outsider. And what would happen when they noticed.

      She tried not to look frightened, but a shiver ran down her spine. Watching the carnage begin was hard. Rhianon had never thought that all it took to kill was a touch of hands, fangs, and claws, not hard steel. Some creature only remotely resembling a disembodied lady merely touched the last survivors. They were children, unformed teenagers, crying, unaware of what was happening to them. The fairy only pretended to want to caress them, but the light touch of her fingers opened a network of sores on their bodies. The sores would appear and burst, and nasty parasites would crawl out of them, tearing the clothes on their already dying bodies.

      «And then the masquerade begins?» Rhianon asked softly when she saw the fairy take the masks off the dying men and throw them into the fireplace.

      «No, it is not at all,» Fresia ran her fingers playfully over her shoulders and leaned close to her ear to whisper, «we won’t need masks after that. After all, there’s no one else to hide from.»

      Even if that was a joke, it was a good one. Several of the fairies had already thrown off their bows, bravely displaying their bodies, covered only by a cloth of fresh flowers. One of the guests had slit the wrist of a corpse and placed a gilded goblet under it. The other fairies, who had cast off their masks, pinched and scratched the host’s body with pins. They checked to see if he was alive and laughed. Rhianon noticed that the clusters of rowanberries and grapes and buckthorn in their hair were most likely real and seemed to grow straight out of their skin rather than serve as decoration. How beautiful and scary it was. She wondered how she herself would feel if the flowers grew right out of her body.

      Her musings were interrupted by the whimpering of a dog. Someone who looked like a mischievous elf had fed the leftover berries to the lord’s hounds, and now they were wriggling in agony on the floor.

      «I don’t like dogs, it’s as if they were designed to interfere with my music and everyone’s fun,» remarked the same harlequin who had recently touched her train. Whether he had done it accidentally or on purpose, she did not know. He did not notice her now. He sat down in a comfortable chair by the fireplace, snatched a harp from somewhere and tossed off his jester’s cap. This fell to the floor with the mask attached to it. It must have been a mask, and not the whitewash and makeup on her face, as Rhianon had at first assumed.

      «What to play gentlemen?» The harlequin laughed, the harp, which had fallen with the mask at his feet, was now making sounds all by itself, as if someone invisible was plucking the strings.

      «You’d better not play at all, you’re not wanted here,» remarked some lady, who had also removed her mask to expose her face, whose forehead and temples were covered with a lush veil of violets, which stretched over her ears and even her neck, but the angry eyes on her face seemed even brighter than they were. They burned like two blue lights.

      «Is it redundant?» The harlequin raised his head, tossing back his thick brown hair, and Rhianon recognized his face. He had expressive and enigmatic eyes, which sometimes danced with laughter,