The architect of the scenario is sitting in front of me, smirking, and I hesitate as she raises an eyebrow at me. There’s a heartbeat there where I almost throw everything I have at her, all the tricks I’ve shown off and at least one besides; the moment passes as Zidanya steps forward, and the Lady Herself rises and takes a step towards her.

I don’t actually know why I feel the urge so strongly. There’s no seeming reason why I should be driven to the brink of attempted murder, and trying to puzzle it out has me hesitating at the threshold as the two of them embrace.

“Magelord.” Zidanya’s voice is more casual than usual, more relaxed. “Be known to my dearest enemy, who was least among my friends in the Temple, Lady Lillit Sheid. Lily, be known to the Magelord; my binder, my salvation.”

“Zanya, love, that’s unkind.” She has a low, throaty laugh that’s a delight to hear. “Magelord, I apologize for my junior colleague. You know how she can be.”

“Lady Sheid.” It’s shockingly easy to smile at her, even though there’s a siren going off in the vague direction of my spine and brain stem, an atavistic scream of rage. Junior colleague, as applied to Zidanya, suggests that the siren might have some merit; but I find myself mostly ignoring it, at least on a conscious level. “It’s good to meet a friend of a friend.”

Something goes weird in her face, and I look away for a moment. “Please call me Lily,” she says quietly, “and sit down. I prefer not to stand on formality with Zanya.”

“In which case, I suppose I’m Adam.” I almost introduce the others by force of habit, but it’s been a while since I made that mistake. I flick an eye towards Amber, who nods, and towards Sara, who shakes her head, and that’s that; I take a seat next to Zidanya, Amber and Sara flanking behind me on their feet, with Lily sitting across from us. It leaves two chairs empty, which feels immensely awkward to me, but nobody comments on it.

“Zanya.”

“Lily.”

The moment stretches, and I take the time to look around and take in the sights of the room. Well, mostly I take in the sights of Lily; she’s stunning, dressed in simple shorts and an abbreviated shirt that shows off visible abdominal muscles and clings tight to her chest. There’s a hungry lean-ness to her, viscerally compelling and intense.

I frown as the thought crosses my mind, along with others. I tend to be in for a bad time when I start thinking that someone is incredibly cute, so I shift my attention to the room instead of to her and whatever is going on with her staring contest with Zidanya.

There’s not a whole lot of room to distract me. The door that would lead back to the stadium has sort of melded into the wall; there’s a carving of a doorway and a coathook where the door and its handle used to be, and it transitions smoothly into five walls’ worth of smooth, lacquered wood paneling. It’s a dark reddish-brown, not far off from mahogany, and there are bookshelves and a trophy case of a wood that’s just a shade lighter. Other than the five chairs in a vague circle, that’s the only furniture, and the walls are unmarked other than one other carving of a door, which presumably can become an actual door.

The doors are a bit of a surprise. I hadn’t seen any runework on my way into the room, and I don’t see any on this side, which means that if there are runes they’re not on any of the surfaces that are being modified. That’s a first, and it’s not a comfortable one; with no ability to pinpoint what’s making the changes to the door, we’re stuck here.

I almost shake my head at that thought. We’re not stuck here; we’re guests, contestants, and the paranoia is starting to feel like it’s coming from an external source.

“So.” Lily’s voice startles me; I’d honestly forgotten about her somehow in the scant few seconds I was scanning the room, though in my defense it was a room containing fascinating new-to-me applications of magic. “A Magelord, an architect, a merovi, and a Reca walk into a tournament. How does this joke go again?”

“What’s a merovi?”

There’s a moment of silence after I blurt out the question, as my eyes flicker between Zidanya, whose glower has turned into a smirk, and Lily, whose smile has turned into something of a smouldering pout. “Lily, whose very name is starlight bled red. Lily, heart of a thousand rended hearts.” My eyes flicker over to Zidanya; her lips keep quirking up higher, and there’s a lilting, victorious tone to her voice. “A hand of centuries and no such word have you forged out of those you sent on from here. Had you so done, the Magelord would hear every kenning of it clear, through Omniglot; but he hears only noise.”

“Mmm. Omniglot? Truly?” Lily’s pout deepens, though there’s a cast to her face that makes me wonder if it’s genuine. “Conceded,” she finally says after a long pause. “The usual forfeit?”

“Not in the least.”

“Really?” Her eyebrows go up, and they stay there. “And here I’ve had our last liaison lingering in the mind, all so I could improve on it our next time. Found someone that much to your taste?” Lily leans forwards, fingers steepling in front of her. “Is it the omnimagus?”

“The Magelord. And the Reca.” Zidanya’s lips are quirking just a bit further, and her glare’s faded entirely. “Shall I your supposition add to my tally?”

Lily’s voice drops its lilt entirely. “Not a fucking chance; do you think I’m an idiot?” Her eyes move away from Zidanya for the first time since they’d locked eyes upon sitting down, to look me up and down with a frank, assessing gaze that has me fighting against every urge of my endocrine system, and then to do the same to Amber. “Didn’t take you for the type.”

“My heart in harness to the lambkin’s rides, as does hers, it’s true.” Zidanya’s smile fades into something else, something I don’t recognize. “Do you bring us into your demesne to oppose us, Lily?”

“Interesting. So you have gone over greedy, if it’s ‘us’.” Lily leans back, smiling a little.

“Zanya?” Amber’s standing just behind Zidanya, and her voice is somewhere between a purr and a growl.

Something goes wide in Lily’s eyes, and then narrow. “Greedy, greedy.” Her voice is a murmur, and then she breathes out an immense sigh and relaxes, smiling again, wider. “No,” she says firmly, “I have no intention of opposing you. Not if you’ve gone over sentimental. How did that even happen? The last time I saw your bindings, the Temple had so many pins and links set into your emotions you had the dynamic range of a particularly savage goshawk.”

“Last time you saw me, Lily, I was not alive.”

The difference in Lily’s body language is stark even to me. She snaps from her relaxed near-sprawl to something infinitely more present and intense. It’s also like a bucket of sparks down my spine; the spike of attraction is physically painful, like my heart is going to lose its regular rhythm. “Explain,” she says, and her voice echoes in the room, low and throaty and compelling.

My throat is too dry to speak, or I’d have shouted something, anything to answer her question. My eyes can’t leave her; my gaze traces lines across every inch of her skin, feverishly. I’m drowning in the tension of her corded muscles, in the just barely greenish tint of the bronze that is her skin, in the way her shirt clings to her breasts and in the way her shorts seem like they’re practically painted onto the curves of her thighs. I want to turn that messy ponytail into a braid; I want to try ten braids and see which accentuates the generous eyes and perfect features of her face. I want to luxuriate in brushing it out every time I try a new style and find it unworthy of her.

Zidanya’s hand grabs at my shoulder, pressing me down into the chair I hadn’t even realized I was rising from. “Stand down,” she says softly. “Lily, down.”

The pressure eases, and I can breathe again, and tear my eyes away from the Lady again. “What the fuck,” I say quietly. I check my orbs and Motes; I’m short a few, a set of amplifiers and a Disenchant which I had apparently used to try by reflex to counteract whatever Lily’s, well, enchanting effects were. I’m just glad I hadn’t tried to kill her, since starfire and Void would that ever have been a faux pas, especially since the horrified and embarrassed look on Lily’s face suggests the whole thing was a mistake. “What was that?”

“Some folk,” Lily says quietly, “it is unwise to surprise. I apologize for my lapse. Taveda, explain yourself.” Her voice is perfunctory, demanding, and I almost lose my shit at her, but I get control of myself.

“The Magelord inverted a siphon spell and fed my entire scenario into my root. First did shatter the bindings, and held I then together the defining structure, till the entire structure became meta-stable. I was fain to see the far side of it; to have seen worse agonies is not to wish them repeated, and it was some time stilling and balancing until I could mutate it into its ensouling convolution.” She looks at me sidelong. “And so I live, now,” she clarifies unnecessarily.

There’s a couple of beats of silence while my brain churns, and presumably everyone else’s does too. “So that’s what you were doing after we backlashed you,” I blurt out. “I was wondering! You disappeared, and then just sort of reappeared out of nowhere in the liminal space.”

“I felt Ty die.” Lily ignores my outburst, which is probably for the best. “Not long ago. They shattered, every piece of them at once.”

“Ty was weak and slothful, and if they’d survived long enough to incorporate, the Magelord would have found it necessary to emboss them. His Sky Kingdom was displeasing to my Adam’s eyes.”

“And now you have your Adam, and the Reca, and your freedom.” Lily smiles slowly. “If you can win through the tournament, of course.”

“If.” Zidanya smirks at Lily. “I’ve no doubt you will be fair in its design, will you not?”

“I do owe you a forfeit. Ah well.” Lily’s smile becomes a smirk, and her good humor and relaxed posture slowly returns. “Well. Practicalities, then. Let’s talk about practicalities, and about what we’ve got in store.”