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defire · 3 months ago

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Dance of Death Chapter 2:

Oh You Shouldn't Have

Content warnings for this chapter: manhandling, mild humiliation, victim blaming, child neglect, child abuse, implied abuse

Nife opened her bedroom door softly that night and peeked down into the hall. It was dark, and the cold door fixtures made a strange kind of tunnel, which she walked down very softly, so she didn't bother anyone. The kitchen maid liked to pop up and offer her services no matter the hour, which was sweet, but unnecessary. Nife was about halfway to the latrine when she heard her parents talking in the sitting room. She slowed down before she got there so that they didn't notice her listening.

"There is genuinely nothing we can do," Her father was saying.

"There must be something we can do to shield Raizden from this." Her mother said. "We have to denounce her actions!"

"And lose our support?" Her father said. "If our district doesn't think we have their backs, they'll make a request for our deposition."

"One which can only be signed off on by the other lords!" Her mother insisted.

"But the thing is, dear, she's right."

Nife's heart fluttered at the recognition from her father. She hesitated, wondering if she should go into the sitting room and join the conversation.

Her mother groaned–

"That doesn't make us any safer! Our image in the nobility's eye is paramount!"

"Let's talk about this later. We're all tired. I'll talk to Nife about this."

Nife stayed up late in her room, pretending to do schoolwork, hoping that her dad would come. He didn't.

Nife was still waiting when Warren came up and knocked on her door, a couple hours after sunset. She knew it was him because he stepped in a light, measured way that you could barely hear.

She opened her door, beckoning at him to come in and sit by the fire. He sighed and came in, glancing around to make sure nobody saw him. As soon as she closed the door, he pulled a folder out of his jacket. It was red, and thick with documents.

"My copies of our tax and audit records." He explained, sitting down in an armchair across from her, and setting it on a table between them. He put his forehead in his big hand, rubbing it over and over.

"Sounds arid." She said.

"Not tonight, it's not." He said. "Look, Nife, I know your heart's in the right place. It is. But our house cannot take another blow. If you are so much as fined for the things you said today..."

"I'd like to see them fine me for objecting to violence..." Nife said, tapping her fingers on her chair's arm.

He shook his head.

"They can make something up... you don't understand how much they can get away with. Everyone's on their side."

Nife stared at the folder, wondering just how serious it was. She reached for it, walking her fingers on it to pull it closer regretfully. Opening it, she saw what Warren meant.

"Wait..." She flipped through it faster. "Lord Creps got a hell of a stranglehold on our properties... Is there a single one that isn't mortgaged to him?"

"A few, to Lady Wry." He said.

"Why Lord Crep?" She shook her head. "The Wrys usually outbid him."

He sighed.

"Father was trying to play them off each other and make our enemies fight over us, but we're deeper in than we were supposed to get. At this point there's a chance that one of them will send assassins for our family, to get us out of the way while they are ahead."

"Assassins?" She said slowly. "...Aren't we all a little too magnificent for that?"

"...Ostensibly." He said. "But their tactics are getting dirtier. We've been their political rivals for a long time, but... your actions may end up being the last straw. There's almost nothing left to liquidate. So please, Nife..."

He pressed his hands together.

"Stop gambling with our reputation, before it's too late."

Nife bit her lip, putting the folder back on the table and pushing it toward him. She sighed and leaned back.

"Nife?" He said.

She nodded, looking at the fire thoughtfully.

"I will try to be more discreet." She said. "I'd thought... people would be more excited to improve..."

Warren stood up slowly, tucking the folder under his arm. He patted her arm gently.

"I know you never meant to do this." He said. "And father isn't angry, he's just too busy to discuss it with you."

She nodded and looked into the fire as Warren left. As soon as he'd closed the door, she blinked the tears out of her eyes and wiped them off on her sleeve. Then she went to bed.

The morning sparkled with orange like the desperation in Nife's feet as she pounded down the hall and slipped past Markee, her evil tutor. He was supposed to teach her economics and politics. What he actually taught her was how to avoid him and why it was so important to lie.

She glided up the familiar steps she always took to climb the laundry line where he couldn't touch her. The wood pile trembled under her steps, but she didn't hesitate, already compensating for the expected shifts with gentle sways of hips and bending knees. Springing from the top, she grasped the handhold on the wall, long fingers pressing into the crack. She told herself the pounding of her heart was excitement, not fear.

She wasn't afraid he'd be angry at her for what she'd said at the ball. She wasn't picturing the pinching, slapping, no, she was just teasing her tutor. She was definitely in charge of this situation.

"Hey." She snapped at herself, levering herself up smoothly just before Markee's hand swiped just past where her foot had been, and she jerked her leg up with a nervous chuckle.

She didn't like it when her natural sarcasm poked at her own thoughts.

Finding herself choking on anxiety, she forced herself to breathe. No matter how nervous she was, she had to breathe slowly if she wanted a real chance at climbing away from him. He was fast, if not dextrous enough to follow her.

Finally stepping onto the laundry line, she smiled down at him victoriously, trying not to pant. She savored his irritation.

"Join me," She said sarcastically. "It's a beautiful view of the miasma."

"You know I can't climb on that!" He fumed.

She knew that. Banes might be good runners, but they were generally terrible at climbing on things. She'd had to actually teach Caboodle how to find the handholds on a stone wall, and he was exceptionally good at it, for a Bane.

She stepped forward onto the laundry line. She always walked on the laundry lines. It pissed him off.

"Oh, I'm so sorry. You're so pitiful down there." She said. "Poor little Bane can't get himself off the bottom."

"You do not talk to your elders that way!" His voice carried across the courtyard gardens as he followed her on the ground.

She flinched and hid it with a chuckle, nearly losing her balance. She paused, swinging the line rhythmically under her booted foot to rebalance.

"It appears I do." Nife said. "I mean, we've been over this. Apparently, this is how I speak to my elders."

He jumped and tried to catch at her. She stepped back to avoid him, turned, and walked back to her starting point, making it look easy. It wasn't that hard once you understood how to predict the wobble of the line. Now she was just barely out of reach again.

She glanced down at him, realizing he was seething mad with a twinge of anxiety. If she made him angry enough, no amount of cleverness would actually save her from the sheath. She shook her head and grimaced, red-tinted curls drooping over her eyes from behind her horns.

Maybe she should stop annoying him. But it felt so good to have the upper hand.

"I didn't know you could go that red." She remarked. "Like a beet..."

She glanced down at him.

"A very old beet, to be fair." She added, twirling her hands around to the rhythm of the wind in her hair.

She had a special Druid magic that made people listen to her, if she wanted them to, as long as she was dancing a little bit. It gave her time to add an extra dig here and there.

"This isn't a game, Nife..." He growled.

"No, it really isn't." She said.

It wasn’t. She couldn’t afford to provoke him any further.

Nife jumped down to the wall, and then to the ground, catching herself gently in a crouch. She got to her feet and ducked away from him before he could snatch her arm.

Suddenly there was someone else in the way. She ran right into her father and stopped, panting.

"Father!" She smiled at him. "You're not late!"

She hugged him. He smelled like all the whiskey people had been drinking around him all day at his business meetings.

Markee came stomping up. Nife let go, looking back at him.

"Lord Raizden," Markee bowed deeply to her father, before Nife could say anything.

"What's going on?" Her father asked.

"Your daughter is late for class. Again." Markee said, glaring at her.

"Nife, go to class." Father said, starting to walk again.

"Wait, father–"

Her father glanced at her, then did a double-take.

"What are those marks?" He said. "Are you hurt?"

Nife's cheek and the inside of her arm still ached.

"Markee can't slap hard enough to hurt." She said, side-eyeing the man.

"That is not true." Markee said, reddening up again angrily. "She fell. She was climbing on things again."

"Aren't Banes supposed to be honest?" Nife growled.

Her father sighed impatiently.

"And Druids aren't?" He said. "Nife, I told you that you need to either lie better, or quit doing it. Now, you're wasting my time, I'm sorry. Oh--" He added, to Markee. "She can be a handful. Be patient."

He hurried off.

Nife felt Markee's hand fall on her shoulder. She didn't move.

"You're in trouble." He said.

"Nah..." She whispered.

But she was.

Markee walked in front with her to the library, and all the way there, Nife imagined what would happen if she wasn't wasting time with him studying. She would sneak out of the Fireplace room with her friends, where they would usually meet, and climb down the inside courtyard with them using ropes to make it easier for the others. Then they would start bouncing on their feet against the wall, hanging by the ropes, and sing nonsense shanties about "heading round the cape" while spinning and bouncing in the air.

Sometimes other people would come out across from them and start yelling at them to quiet down, and Nife would say such a perfect, mildly toned insult, they would have to go away to be offended privately.

Then everyone would laugh and go back to singing, a little quieter. That was one of the main reasons people had started calling Nife a bad influence–she always encouraged them to do fun things, though it was usually Kit's idea. That didn't really matter, since she usually took the fall for him, since she wouldn't get in trouble anyway.

Now, instead of being a bad influence, she had to go to the library with Markee. The Raizden library was a high-ceilinged room with an upper gallery, and books going all the way up to the ceiling under detailed arches. The windows had those crossbar muntins that made her feel like a prisoner looking through the bars.

The moment they reached it, Markee turned around and Nife reflexively cringed. He grabbed her by the hair. Nife knew she had about three seconds before he started yanking her around and twisting her ear.

"There are easier ways to move me, Markee," She said. Be clever enough, and she'd take him off guard and he might relax. Physically fighting with him probably wouldn't be worth it.

"I heard what you did at the meeting," His voice trembled with the effort of dragging her head down by the hair. "And I'm not pleased."

"Yeah, well," Nife winced as she tried to poke his wrist with a horn. "Maybe you should've thought about that before taking me on as a student."

Markee grunted and let her go, rubbing his poked wrist. He looked at her with that expression he often had--a mixture of respect and frustration. Mostly frustration.

"You understand I'm assigning you more homework, since you clearly don't understand how to gracefully navigate political situations."

"That's hardly fair," Nife said. "My offense was most gracefully delivered, I think. It's not anybody that can take the space of one ball to pit the houses against each other with a few well-placed words."

"So you're saying you did that on purpose."

Not really, Nife thought. She considered her options quickly. The only times he got really rough with her was when she acted really stupid. So she pretended to be smart. She took a musing tone as she spoke.

"The words of the few govern the many, Markee. Maybe you're just jealous that I have fingers in more pies than you."

She sighed and looked out the window as if thoughtfully contemplating the wisdom of her own words.

She was practically holding her breath, hoping he didn’t start the slapping again, or decide to punish her for her mockery from the laundry line. This was an especially inspired move on her end, pretending to be poetic.

After a long pause, he sighed.

Nife clenched her teeth against a victorious grin.

"Let's discuss your homework then." He said finally.

That Thursday, Warren pulled up his mask as he quietly went in one of the many entrances to the secret Druid sparring guild, making sure no one was looking too closely at him. It wouldn't be good for anyone to recognize the inheritor of Raizden entering the unmarked, apparently unused office building.

He hung up his coat onto a very overloaded coat tree, and was not very surprised to see a rather large group of members assembled today to practice in the big open space they used in the middle of the building. They'd chosen a space with no windows, but high ceilings--plenty of space for the heat to go, and no chance of anyone finding out that the Druids were still practicing their illegal martial art.

Glowing pieces of rough-cut quartz dangled in pieces of netting over the shiny bamboo floor, which now squeaked under the shoes and bare feet of the Druids, who were already sparring.

Druids often secretly passed down the Druid martial arts inside their homes, but if it wasn't for Raizden's private "charity", which was actually secretly a space for practitioners to sharpen their skills together, they wouldn't have many pros left.

Nife had brought her wooden practice daggers, even though Eden, the Raizden family's private martial arts instructor, kept telling her she should really practice with another weapon for once. She almost never missed a throw anymore.

As Warren wrapped his knuckles for heavier sparring with the higher-ranked Druids, he watched them fight, picking up techniques with just his eyes.

Every fighting Druid had one to five earrings going up the right ear, indicating their rank.

There was only one five-ring here, Arcane, who had been accused of being a rebel, but no one here cared about that. Eden had four, and Warren had three.

At that moment, Nife sauntered across the floor to him, hands up and fingers twitching for her knives, which she had stuffed into her knife belt instead of the metal ones she normally carried.

"Fistfight me." She said. "You too coward for this?"

She pointed at the second ring on her ear, which she'd earned only a few months ago. He shook his head.

"I came here for a challenge, Nife," He said. "Not you."

Nife tilted her head with an impressed nod.

"Warren, you'll regret that." She said.

The two of them paired off with sparring partners and started fighting.

With Arcane easily dodging Nife's strikes and landing small hits whenever he felt like it, she had gone quiet.

Warren parried his partner's strikes coolly. He was sparring with Glacier, who moved with deceptive speed–he appeared to be sinking slowly back, but then he would land a hit before you realized it. He was using Druid illusion magic to his advantage, appearing to fade from sight, and Warren had to use his heat vision to track him.

Unfortunately, Warren's heat vision was very blurry at short range, and suddenly Glacier had gotten past his long arms, and pinched his fingers around Warren's trachea, following him back with another squeeze every time Warren tried to get out.

"I've got you–" Glacier said, when suddenly a knife came flying out of nowhere straight for Warren's eye.

Warren moved quickly before it hit, stepping back and hooking down Glacier's arm, grabbing the dagger before it hit him in the face, and then stepped forward and pointed it into Glacier's gut, showing him he had enough space to stab him.

Another dagger flew at Warren, and he deflected it with the one in his hand.

"Nife, stop throwing those." He called to Nife, picking up the second one.

He heard Nife stifle a chuckle.

"They should call you 'Monkey Wrench'." Glacier yelled at her.

Warren threw the right-hand knife at him, just missing.

"Hey, what was that for?" Glacier frowned, kicking the wooden dagger in Nife's direction.

"Her name's Nife." Warren said, advancing with the second dagger.

He used his unfair advantage and spent a couple minutes theoretically kicking Glacier's ass. By the time they were finished, Glacier was practically drizzling with sweat and completely out of breath.

"Goodness, remind me not to piss you off," Glacier panted good-naturedly as they stepped back and lowered their hands.

"Don't piss me off." Warren said with a smile, wiping sweat off with a handkerchief.

"You're such a dandy." Glacier said, going away to get a drink of water.

They swapped partners several times, and Warren spent the last few minutes sparring with Arcane, getting twisted in knots and then punched in the back of the head by Nife's random daggers. Nobody could pose a challenge to Arcane.

As they sat around drinking water and recovering their stamina, Arcane patted Warren's knee.

"You two need to stop working together." He said enigmatically. Warren could never tell how serious he was being.

"Actually, I'm bullying him." Nife winked at Warren. "Clearly he's not being challenged enough."

Warren, who was completely exhausted, shook his head at her.

"I agree," Eden said. "I'm giving you your fourth ring, Warren. Think so, Arcane?"

Warren clenched his fists, uncouth levels of excitement rising up at the acknowledgement. He tried to mask his enthusiasm with a drink of water, and choked.

"You were pretty entertaining today." Arcane said to him. "I bet you'll reach five rings one day."

Warren, clearing his throat, blinked teary eyes at Arcane and grinned.

"I absolutely will." He said.

First chapter: Next chapter:

Taglist: @tildeathiwillwrite @mimostic @fleur-a-whump @a-n-j-a-maria

Per Tumblr's content policy, this is the non-nsfw version of Dance of Death.

For anyone following along on this story that wants the canon NSFW version of the story for free, I’m posting this story on ao3 as well, part by part! You can get the full book right away on amazon for $0.99, but I just want to make it possible for anyone to access.

#adhd whumpee #defiant whumpee #whump novel #slow burn #lady whump #whump writing #whump book #manhandling #sarcastic whumpee #humiliation whump

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