Vanity in Dust by Cheryl Low

Author:Cheryl Low [Low, Cheryl]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: fantasy, pixie dust, drug use in fantasy, decadence, queen, prince, non-medieval fantasy
Publisher: World Weaver Press
Published: 2017-08-08T06:00:00+00:00

Vaun pretended to slouch downstairs to breakfast. The fact that all of his residences, regardless of province, shared a similar floorplan allowed him to keep his eyes half-lidded. Evelet and AviSariel glanced up as he slumped into a chair.

“Good morning,” AviSariel chimed, fresh faced.

“Did Addom leave already?” Vaun smirked at Evelet. “Or shall I have coffee sent to your room?”

The Vym hesitated before picking up another pastry. By now, only the faintest shadow marked her cheek. Vaun could hardly remember the way her skin had puffed out around her eye, bulging and pressing the lids shut, or how her flesh had split along one of those finely ridged cheekbones.

“I wouldn’t know.” Evelet shrugged. “Did you have him over?”

How long had she taken up residence in his house? A few weeks? It may as well have been a year. In those first days when she was healing and heavily dusted, he had been able to get a few interesting bits of gossip out of Evelet. As it turned out, Quentan had always had quite the temper and was the sole driving force behind their family’s obsession with looking appropriate for the public. She insisted that she really had seen him at Meresin’s house but that Meresin, true to form, would not confirm any such meeting.

In those dusted days, Evelet had told him all sorts of rambling, useless stories about her family. But as soon as her skin healed and she went back to a more respectable amount of tea, she dodged all intimate questions and pretended expertly that she had only moved in with the prince because the invitation had been so tempting.

“I could swear I saw Addom here last night.” Vaun tried not to scowl as a maid set his old foe, morning coffee, before him. All of his drinks were becoming enemies. Coffee for its bitterness and tea for its dust. In an attempt to avoid the stupor of dusting or the chance of another bout of madness, Vaun had taken to sipping slowly, sometimes only for pretend, and only taking tea in the High.

Since he could get no more gossip from Evelet about her family, and wasn’t willing to send her home just yet, Vaun took to having the staff restrict her dust intake. He hadn’t told her, of course, but he was having her tea served with almost no dust and her cigarettes replaced with a lighter, cheaper, version. He was almost certain she had noticed on the first day, giving him an odd look through the veil of smoke, but she said nothing about it.

It had only been a few days now and already she was sharper, less forgetful and more aware.

If she did remember anything interesting and long since forgotten, as he had, she wasn’t sharing. Leave it to a prince to waste his experiments on tight lipped Vyms.

The raven haired woman laughed before taking a delicate spoonful of her custard and strawberry trifle, a flaky maple croissant in her other hand. “I do suspect your mind is beginning to slip.

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