22.9

Zyrdicia left Philip to go talk to Charles. The elf was crest-fallen that she would not speak any more to him about the prophecy. She waived him away and tucked the slim volume into her leather jacket before heading into the night.

The door to Charles' Lyrian flat was ajar. Slow, moody music thumped gently from inside. He was expecting her.

He had recently returned from another trip to Los Angeles, and had stopped only briefly in Karteia to see Anthony. They were presently estranged, mostly due to Anthony's jealousy that Charles had been sent home on an errand and he had not. Anthony had already developed his own life in Karteia, anyway. In addition to designing new uniforms for every imaginable classification of military personnel, he was busy creating winter outfits for Zyrdicia. He frequently took time out to pester Dirk, too.

Charles was thrilled to see Zyrdicia now. He hugged her fondly, and grinned, "Hey ya, gorgeous! You ditch Magnus tonight?"

"He's mad at me for telling off the Council."

"Well, after yesterday's newspaper, I'm sure he's not the only one who's mad. You see it?"

"I just glanced at it," she answered wearily.

"Hated the picture. Honestly. You looked way too sad in it."

He motioned for her to sit in a big, purple velvet overstuffed chair. He promptly placed a hot, lavender- infused towel over Zyrdicia's eyes as she leaned back and put her feet up on an ottoman. He put a glass of red wine in her hand before going to work massaging her scalp.

"So were they right about you dumping Dirk?"

"Uh-huh. The paper guessed right for a change. They couldn't have possibly known."

"Well, honey, he's a damned mess. He won't even leave his room."

"Did you see him?"

"Nah. I heard it from Anthony. He got kicked out of Dirk's room last night when he was dropping off some clothes. Said Dirk looked like a love-sick puppy. Totally mopey. Put that boy together with that sad face you made for the newspaper and you two will make depression fashionable. People will be jumping off bridges for no reason."

"At least there would be fewer people in the world then."

"Anthony said Dirk wanted to know if he had seen you. For all the boy's attempts to be a scary bad-ass, he just falls apart when you leave." Getting no reaction from her, Charles chattered on, "See, the thing is, nobody can figure out what you've got to be sad about. It's totally obvious that his problem is you not being there. But you got no issue that I know of. Did he do something to piss you off again, baby?"

"Yes. He said he loved me."

"Oh, he didn't!" Charles grinned happily. "He's so wrapped around your finger. I just can't believe he had the nerve to say it. Good for you, honey. So why the sad-girl thing?"

"That's just it. He wasn't supposed to ever say it. It was the rule between us. No love."

"That's just dumb. Give that man a rule, and what's he going to do except break it just to prove he can?" Charles shook his head emphatically at the stupidity of the notion. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"He just wasn't supposed to say it," she answered weakly.

"What, did you decide you're afraid of commitment after you already married the man? You don't leave him unless you're really pissed. There's got to be more to this than him just saying the L-word. Come clean."

"After he said it, we had sex. No Edict."

"OHMYGOD!" Charles shrieked in delight, clapping his hands excitedly. He jerked the towel off her eyes so that he could see her face. "Nobody has a clue! This is the biggest news in the history of news. We should have a huge party and-"

Charles paused for a half-second, remembering that she had just left Dirk. He cocked his head as an unpleasant thought occurred to him. He moved around the chair and put his hands over both of her own dramatically. He whispered sympathetically,"Oh, girl. You left him right afterward, didn't you?"

Zyrdicia nodded grimly.

"Oh, that's got to be hell on his ego. Damn, I didn't think he would be that bad. Honey, I bet he got so excited he forgot to take care of business for you, didn't he?"

"No. It wasn't like that at all. There was nothing bad about it - except when he said he loved me again. The sex itself was--"

"-Fabulous?"Charles interrupted eagerly.

"Yeah," she admitted, smiling half-heartedly.

Charles grinned and nodded, "That's my girl. Now, did you fall on your head after?"

"No. Why?"

"I don't know why else you'd have left him right then. You're a cuddle-and-fall-asleep-together kind of girl if there ever was one."

"Because I kept thinking about what he said. I couldn't even look at him, much less cuddle. It was totally awkward between us."

"Sweetie, he's been so head-over-heels in love with you for months that the boy hardly knows what day it is. To him, every day is 'Dicia day, and the whole world can be damned if they try to tell him different. A person would have to be retarded not to notice you two making goo-goo eyes at each other."

"We did not!"

"Did so. You both sit at dinner and count the minutes til you're alone again. You look at the clock, then at him. I saw it. And neither one of you pays any attention to anything anyone else says half the time."

"Because what they say is boring."

"When was the last time either of you had a conversation longer than two sentences with anyone else?"

"When we tortured Eric Greystone-"

"Doesn't count. Talking to toys isn't a conversation. I mean a real person. Anyone in Karteia?"

Unable to think of any instance, she frowned, "So what does that prove except that we prefer each other's company to anyone else's?"

"You both have it bad. At least he has the guts to admit it."

She sighed heavily, feeling defeated. First Magnus, now Charles. Her lips settled into a perfect pout as her mind drifted to the prophecy. "I don't even know what love is," she grumbled.

"HELLO?! Welcome to the fucking world of the living!" Charles lisped loudly, his hands flying up on the air. "Nobody knows what it is, baby. You can only know what it does. It's like when you get hit by lightening. You don't know what the fuck happened. All you know is that your been zapped, then someone standing nearby says something about a big bolt of light landing on you. Love works the same way. Knocks you on your ass, and by the time you figure out it's got you, it's too damned late."

"So what does it do?"

"Mm," Charles bit his lip, thinking for a minute. "It makes you crazy. Butterflies all in your stomach. You think about him all the time. Crave the feel of him, the smell of him. Can't stand to be away from him. When you are away from him, your world's all out of whack. And it tears you up all inside when things aren't good between you. But all the badness in the world seems to go away when you're together, and nothing else matters but staying right where you are. You're only happy when you're with him, even if you aren't doing anything but sitting doing nothing."

She glared at him as though he were mocking her.

"What? You don't really think you're the first person on the planet to feel all that shit, do you?"

She nodded earnestly.

"You two got a cute, little dark-and-twisted fairy tale romance thing going on. But you didn't invent all this." He grinned and kissed her cheek affectionately, then added warmly, "You're both probably a whole lot better looking than most everyone else who's ever gone there before, though."

Without giving her a chance to respond, Charles blurted out, "'Sides, sugar, it's like one more perfect opportunity to piss of your ex!"

Zyrdicia's brows shot up. She was surprised by the idea. It was true that whatever was happening made her feel a peculiar connection to her own lingering vestige of humanity. She was not sure whether it was something to be cherished or loathed. She knew she hated Azriok's effort to turn her into a Sephiroth, though. This thwarted the dark angel, as nothing else could. The prophecy was oddly accurate in that respect.

Charles babbled, "The way I heard it from you, Az' was all about 'love is the enemy blah blah blah'. He just said that so you wouldn't go find someone else. Now his sorry ass can rot in Hell all by himself. There's no better revenge for a nasty ex than for you to find someone who makes you happy and him to end up alone."

She smiled slowly. It was true that Azriok would be outraged. She murmured, "A human would be the biggest insult imaginable. A demon Azriok might forgive, but never a mortal."

Charles giggled, "I imagine it would be about the same as if you told Dirk you'd fallen in love with a goat over him."

Zyrdicia nodded, feeling better already. She imagined Azriok's fury at learning not only that his great scheme to transform her with his soul had failed. There were not many ways to hurt Azriok. Taunting him with failure would surely be one of them.

She asked slyly, "Were we really that obvious?"

Charles nodded adamantly, "With just about anyone else it would have been damned annoying."

Zyrdicia picked up yesterday's Liar with her free hand, studying it closely for the first time. She pressed her lips together angrily as she read. The paper had become shockingly bold, in her absence. The editors had been smart enough to at least leave off a byline to protect the author. She would have to kill dozens of them to even the score. She wondered cautiously, "Do you think this issue made it to Geshna?"

"Probably. They've been delivering it pretty consistently, usually a day behind."

Zyrdicia groaned. It would be a public relations disaster for this sort of gossip to circulate in Aperans. No one in Lyr took the tabloid particularly seriously, but people in Dirk's world were too naive to understand that no one in their right mind in Lyr believed everything the paper printed.

"You better go and make that right before the wrong people read that, honey," Charles counseled.

"Go call the Liar. Tell them I'll do an interview here tonight," she said, grimacing at the thought.