The Eccentric Entomologist is Now a Queen's Consort

"We are," Mikhailis breathed back, more to himself than to the script. We are behaving. See? Look at us behave.

He stared at the Anchor until his eyes watered, then counted blinks between inhale and exhale so his body would stop choosing on its own. The timing became a comfort, the way marching used to be on cold mornings before he learned to prefer out-of-step.

The formation performed a little miracle of patience. Ankles rolled and set. Backs kept their little curves. Bow hands stayed relaxed, fingers warmed against palm leather to keep sensation. No one wanted to be the noise. No one wanted to be remembered by a room for being memorable.

Thalatha weighed the air with her chin—the tiny adjustments that say up, down, now, wait. A line captain three ribs over copied the tilt in profile, like a heron borrowing a posture. Orders traveled without voice, which made them safer and, in a small way, kinder. Her mind drew a grid across the shelf and laid her people on it. Every time a square corrected itself without complaint, she updated the picture. The picture, more than the people, calmed her.

She made herself notice the little things because noticing little things keeps big things from arriving. The way the matte path darkened under bare bone feet. The smell of Slime's base—like wet clay and faint vinegar—fading to nothing as it cured. The Tangle line at her knee vibrating a whisper when a rib settled. The Hypnoveils' edges breathing with the Anchor, shadowing a cheekbone, then letting it be a cheekbone again.

A memory tried to muscle in: winter tents, cold that bites through the famous fabric, orders saved for when throats won't crack. She let the memory knock and then left it on the step. Nostalgia is just a loud way to be inattentive.

The path bent, and the spindle's inner edge opened onto a depth that tried to pull at the eyes. The Lux rind made a thin lip across the gap. A mirror-gnat cloud drifted toward that thinness like children toward a forbidden pond. Thalatha raised her fist again. The line became statues.

A shard drift shifted across the far wall, a pale smudge with intent, and she didn't like the way its shadow moved against the murals. She flicked two fingers. They flattened against the rib and let the minnows eat light and pass.

_____

Reflected glints started to swim along the wall like minnows in a dark river. It was slow at first—one, then three, then a dozen, each with a little greedy wobble as they tasted light with their tiny feet. Thalatha raised a fist. Stop.

Mirror-gnats drifted through the dim, tiny prisms with hungry legs, collecting radiant spill from the dead Seraph's shards. When they fed, their bellies took on a thin sharp shine, like fish scales made of glass. One landed on the Anchor's rind and brightened, testing the light like a fly tests soup it isn't sure it deserves. The rind held. The gnat's shine flickered in and out in time with the vault's breath.

"Mask all light except the Anchor," she breathed, throat barely moving.

Silk veiled lanterns with quick, practised wraps. Even the lich crowns dimmed to worklight—honest halos, no drama. The Anchor pulsed on inhale, then went thin as frost on exhale. The line learned the timing in a handful of breaths. They moved only when it exhaled. On inhale they were stone carvings with quiet hearts. It made them feel like thieves in a church, like people borrowing a room they intended to return without fingerprints.

Mikhailis trailed her flank at an exact distance: close enough to hand her a tool, far enough that his boot would never click her heel. He matched the exhale step with an easy, annoying grace. Twice in a row he pre-answered her hand sign before she finished it—raising a rim half a finger, nudging a spear butt into the right scuff to kill a shine. She didn't like being read, even by someone who meant her well. She also liked not having to repeat herself. The two reactions rubbed against each other under her breastbone like coins in a pocket.

Stop being two things at once, she told her chest. Her chest ignored her and did both anyway.

A shard drift shifted across the far wall, a pale smear with an opinion, and its shadow didn't match the painted murals behind it. She flicked two fingers. They flattened against the rib and let the minnows eat light and pass.

The mirror-gnats swam over their heads in a slow, lazy cloud. Up close their legs made a faint ticking, like tiny keys being tried in locks. One drifted so near Thalatha felt the cold of it slide past her cheek like a careful knife. She did not blink. A blink can be loud in a room that listens this hard.

A skull at the rear—archer, narrow jaw, polite posture—began to tip. Mikhailis's hand ghosted back and rested two fingers on the ulna. Not a push. A reminder. The skull stilled, grateful in a way that had no face.

The glints moved on, happy with the taste of Anchor and old shards. The line breathed out together, a little wind that did not dare to become relief.

The floor ahead pinched into a throat. Ribs leaned closer, their insides stained by forgotten drawings: leaf bridges, river knots, faded elvish script with gaps where someone had scraped. The scrape marks bothered Thalatha more than the dark. Scraping is a human kind of cruelty. She filed the feeling and moved on.

The first hide was a slimepot: a shallow cistern where maintenance slimes slept in cool swirls. It sat under an overhang like a waiting mouth, edges rounded by years of patient chemistry. The place smelled faintly of stone after rain and something like coin rubbed between fingers. The temperature dropped a hand's width. Breath made the air heavy, not hostile. Good enough.

She tapped the rim once. The slime's surface trembled, then settled. Not awake, only listening. Fine.

Rodion's marsh unfurled without complaint, the gel-proxy wrapping along the rim to break their silhouettes. The stuff dulled every edge it touched, turning helmet curves into soft mistakes the eye slid off. Silk stretched a breathing curtain across the front. It moved like a lung—out with the Anchor, in with the vault—never snapping, never making a sound that said look here.

Everyone pressed in by the strip. Hold, hold, bite, slide, reset. Shoulders tucked. Bows folded. Rims kissed without clink. Thalatha stepped last and fitted herself into a wedge-space that should have belonged to a single careful person. The marsh made room where there was no room. It turned her pauldron from a rock into a cushion. It did the same to Mikhailis's bracer. Shoulder to shoulder at first. Then temple to temple when the wing passed the first time and there was nowhere else to put living bone.

Resonance eels threaded past the lip, long jaws partly open to catch footsteps that weren't there. They were ribbon-thin, with teeth arranged like harp strings, invisible until the air tried to sing. As they moved, they made a bass hum that lived in the ribs more than the ears. Farther out, a Seraph wing segment ghosted along the wall, its edges throwing a fan of hard light. The beam kissed the curtain. Silk flexed as if bowing to an elder and let the light slide like water down oiled slate. The wing glided away, bored and looking for someone who liked attention.

The hiding space tightened as breath and fear tried to make them bigger than their bodies. Mikhailis eased his elbow in, then froze. Thalatha felt the slow heat of his forearm through leather. Annoying. Real. Useful because it was real.

The count held her, but not all the way. Heat pooled where armor couldn't keep ideas apart. Her mind did the thing it always did when the world got too close: it made lists. Eel count—three. Wing segment—one. Mirror-gnats—moving outward. Slime response—resting. Marsh—stable. Chair—silent. Breath—too quick; slow it.

She breathed to the strip and wanted to shove him away and wanted to keep him and wanted to think only about lanes. Her throat made a tight ache she recognized from long nights in cold tents when stillness is work.

Mikhailis's voice found the gap between inhale and exhale and slipped in like a note on the right beat. "Permission," he whispered, so low it sounded like a thought he hoped she would overhear. It wasn't a plea. It was a practice. He had collected the habit recently and was trying not to drop it.

She did not answer with words. Words make shapes in air and rooms like this eat shapes for fun. She turned her face a fraction in the space the curtain allowed and let their mouths touch once. Quiet. Dry. Steady. No show. It was nothing and not nothing. It felt like putting a hand on a warm kettle in winter—simple heat, unfairly helpful, nobody's business.

Heat moved through her chest in one clean line and laid the creature in her pulse back down. She hated that it helped. She loved that it helped. She decided to be angry later when anger wasn't a flare seen from far away.

The eel hum shifted down a note, curiosity draining away. One of them drifted so close its breath tickled the marsh curtain, then slid on, confused by a room that refused to be in step. The wing's fan receded and took its rude glint with it. The mirror-gnats, having eaten their fill, wandered off to look for bigger lies.

Thalatha moved her head back to the position the count liked. Mikhailis didn't try to follow. Don't chase, don't claim, he told himself, and felt the idea settle into his bones like a new drill. His mouth wanted to make a joke so the moment wouldn't be heavy. He let the joke starve quietly and was surprised at how much better that felt.

The eel's hum faded. They slid out by the Anchor's next breath, one by one, like notes leaving a chord.

The spindle opened into a wider run. The ribs here carried old damage—cracks filled with resin long set, patches where bone had been shaved and replaced with lacquered wood. Thalatha's eyes flicked over each repair and filed it without thinking. Someone had cared. Someone had scraped. Both were truths that could live in the same room.

Rodion's line appeared thin in Mikhailis's vision, then dimmed again at once.

<Large mass at thirty-seven degrees. Breath-phase inverted. Inhale on group exhale. Exhale on group inhale. Probability predator that hunts pauses: 0.71.>

A picture formed in Thalatha's head that she did not like: something that swallowed silence and spat out absence. Her stomach pulled tight like she'd swallowed a coin. She lifted her hand and signed with two slow cuts: No full stops. The captains passed it shoulder to shoulder down the spine of the formation.

Never pause as one animal. We will not give it a clean mouth.

She broke the line's gait into a whisper of micro-shifts. One shin moved. Then a knee three places down. Then a shoulder in the chair column. Then a ribcage half a span ahead. The formation became rush-water finding stones. Nobody held still long enough to be a single thought. The walkway groaned less when no one stood still. The noise spread thin and failed to make a shape a hunter could understand.

Predators love statues. They gave it a river instead.