#pfh d2

[aohendo]

Find the Word!

Tagged by @eccaiia a few days ago!

My words were halt, hot, hole, half (cw: gore), and hurl.

Tagging: @ahordeofwasps, @avrablake, @vacantgodling, @daisywords, @italiangothicwriteblr, and an open tag!

Your words are blow, bluster, bluff, bellow, and below.

Halt

The water gates to the palace’s bay had been left unlocked, but Kiris’ discomfort at that little factoid paled in comparison to the summer-meadow figure posted at the dock. Nazvili’s swordsman held an oil lamp, flickering yellow in the thin fog, and Kiris halted the bathtub well out of reach of the man. The swordsman had lifted him like he weighed the same as a kitten. He had controlled him with the same effort it took to draw his sword.

“Who are you?” Kiris demanded, across the water.

“Aris of Krigover, your grace.”

Hot

“Do you hear any gods here?” Batar hissed, her dagger, hot, blistering the fraud’s neck. “I see none. Your words will be in Zavorr, your songs will be in Zavorr, your thoughts will be in Zavorr. Who is your master?”

The fraud began the poem again.

Hole

Kiris looked up. Ovria and all the other Boyars were watching him as if a stage play. Nazvili wasn’t. Nazvili, more than anyone else, knew what this meant.

No more freedom.

Kiris’ breath stalled. Those stolen coins suddenly weighed the same as Miridin’s moose, and his lock pick kit could have burned a hole through his tunics. No more—

“Prince na Suem?”

Half (cw: gore)

Duvutriok Vuun drew his sickle-sword and slit the western prince from shoulder to thigh. He cut off one of their hands and caught it in an oil-cloth, then bowed to head table. Kiris couldn’t look away, half-deafened in the torrent of the western prince’s affiliation bursting from their body just as much as lifeblood and organs flopped onto the wood floor.

“Would ‘L Tuola care for a memento for the occasion?”

Hurl

N/A (first one in a while—nice!)

Fun fact instead: the previous paragraph is the reader’s first introduction to Prince Duvutriok Vuun the Curator, First Prince of Cysev. Fun guy, to say the least. He is keen to add Kiris' head to his collection, but only if he can somehow knock Kiris into Prophecy at the same time (he likes the blue of Kiris' magic and wants it to fill Kiris' eyes).

[aohendo]

Find the Word!

Tagged by @mikaharuka here (check out their lovely descriptions!).

My words were answer, wrong, doubt, foreign, and stone.

Sending this to @writingpotato07, @spuddlespud, @on-noon, @daisywords, and @theimperiumchronicles!

Your words are manage, risk, hazard, assess, and mitigate.

Answer

“Then is it not right for me to punish you, as you would a thief? Have you all become so greedy for my authority that you have neglected honor amongst yourselves?”

The princes shuffled. It was a very quiet sort of shuffle, one where they each looked to their neighbors, encouraging them to answer even though they all had the words at the tips of their tongues. Before someone dared, she continued, “Ta Ritasa.”

Wrong

“Noble,” Nazvili said, “but ultimately futile. You ought to be concerned with yourself first, Yphant; your development of your affiliation gives me right to torture and humiliate you.”

“Yes,” Kiris said, “but if you think I place my life higher than those of your people, you’re wrong.” He swallowed. “I’m selfish and condemned. But I can’t let an innocent people suffer when I can do something about it.”

Doubt

“There are two yn Musyrs in the middle,” he said, rather than voice his concerns.

“’L Tuola is only accepting one prince per principality. I doubt those two will compete, but even should they, your only concern would be their forming an alliance with Evina, Grahtzha, and their father’s other dogs.”

“And them murdering me,” Kiris said.

Nazvili smiled. “Obviously.”

Foreign

“No,” Nelovskevouk agreed. “What was so appealing about your fire, other than tales from Aris of Krigover?”

“Cards, mostly.” Kiris shrugged, the guards with Aris now flipping through a sheaf of papers. “Eskarez has a deck—a nice one, too, probably cost him a mry and a favor.”

“You expect me to believe my men would leave my side to play cards with foreigners?”

“And me,” Kiris said. “Do I count as a foreigner?”

Stone

The outer wall of Strauv’s palace was steeply vertical, an array of slots for archers, tar, and hired scholars’ magic catching the morning shadows. The gates, as he approached, were shut and brawny. Despite that, above them in three equilateral triangles was a mosaic of stained glass, intricately entwined with frigate birds and sailing ships. It would be beautiful come midday. Through the iron the shape of Martarez’s palace became clear: four stories tall and beautifully capped in onion domes painted a sparkling silver, a dark blaze on the palace’s matte white stone.

[aohendo]

Last Line Tag

Tagged by @marigoldispeculiar the other day, and another day before that! Answering with a paragraph in turn :)

There was a certain confidence inherent within the very nature of the princes of the Plateau. With some, like Prince Ysiik, this confidence was quiet and subtle, visible only in the graceful curve of her neck and delicate draping of her stole; with others it was brash, like First Prince Grahtzha of Novuyev, a former vakon and proud in the power he wore like his sword; others, still, were like Prince Thaav, so self-assured in their own might they had no need for pretense. The young woman across from Kiris fell within the latter category.

Tagging: @dumbthunder, @lola-theshowgrl, @on-noon, @fearofahumanplanet, and @saltysupercomputer!

[aohendo]

Find the Word

Tagged by @dumbthunder! Thanks!

My words were grab, taste, scent, fight, and soft.

Tagging: @the-void-writes, @aschlindartroom, @avrablake, @kyofsonder, and @fearofahumanplanet.

Your words are grant, gain, grain, gather, and guess.

Grab

“You would grant rule to a peasant?”

“There are so many of you already,” she said. “One more will not go noticed.”

“He is a criminal!” Iiriok snapped, and Kiris grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him back. It wasn’t an effective yank, but the shock of the contact worked as well as anything.

“You can’t fight her,” he whispered.

Iiriok scowled. “I will end this villainy now.”

Taste

Only the memory of hunger could make Kiris force down breakfast, and even then the rich meats and warm cakes were as tasteless as snowpack. He only had to last until the end of Truce, but not eight hours in, that next day and a half already felt impossible.

Scent

The next day, someone attempted to drug Kiris again. It was Realms-thinning this time, that sticky scent wrapping his memories and plummeting him to Toor, and it was all he could do to stumble out of the dining hall and into hiding before he broke down entirely. Someone knew. Someone knew.

Someone knew.

Fight

Kiris didn’t consider himself a brave person. Even when he existed in this awkward state of ‘now what’ he was a runner, not a fighter. Damn it, he was good at running. It was these ‘run away!’ instincts now which pressed against his brain as much as his usual headache.

Soft

Kiris drew his Empathy to the man before him and let the snapping and the popping drift over the cacophony. Slowly, slowly, like echoes in a mountain valley, the voices of fear mingled with those summer meadows and a warm fire, the gentle laughter of trust lulling him closer, back to himself, back from the Other. He slumped, catching himself on the bedspread, the blankets soft.

[aohendo]

Heads Up Seven Up

Thanks for the tag, @daisywords! Last 7ish from Prince for Hire:

Finally, ni Musyr’s gaze drifted from Nelovskevouk and deigned to light upon him. “Vakon,” she said.

“Strauv,” Kiris corrected, a faint echo of Nelovskevouk’s vehemence.

“Hm.” She straightened her papers and stacked them for delivery, smiling lightly at him. “In twenty-eight hours, I will come to your quarters, and I will kill you. What do you intend to do in the meantime?”

Tagging: @eccaiia, @on-noon, @cactusmotif, @lola-theshowgrl, and an open tag!

[aohendo]

Another 4k moved to the 'stuff I deleted' document from Prince for Hire. This time because I removed the character that entire section was supposed to introduce.

[aohendo]

Find the Word!

Tagged by @talesofsorrowandofruin. Thanks!

My words were stranger, remember, dream, music, and night. From Prince for Hire.

Tagging @marigoldispeculiar, @oh-no-another-idea, @mikaharuka, @elizaellwrites, and @ahordeofwasps!

Your words are dampen, moist, ripple, cool, and current.

Stranger

Kiris couldn’t speak, still dampened by the circlet, by the tunic and the cloak, his reflection in the mirror grabbing them and strangling his words. This was a lie. A beautiful, horrible lie.

“Prince Nazvili would not have made any stranger her heir. She consulted with me, as well as others in her trust. With a measure of care, I agreed that you could rule Strauv.” Aris smiled, and it crinkled around his eyes. “If you were not so adept at disappearing, she would have claimed you years ago.”

Remember

When Kiris fought to put on his tunics the next morning, when the sunrise was nothing but a vague idea of light, he did so with dread curdling his stomach. His sleep had been plagued in nightmare: memories, mostly, with occasional bursts of panic over failing to remember some obscure fact about Strauv or its prince. Even as he splashed cool water on his face in an attempt to rouse himself, even as he wiped the remnants of sleep seeds from olive brown eyes and tried to tame his curls of a slightly darker shade, he recited to himself everything he could recall about Prince Martarez Nazvili.

Dream

Fear woke him. Ringing bells bled from the Other and into his sleep, and Kiris flailed in the dark, lurching upright and pawing at his ears. His lungs heaved and the room was as ethereal as his dreams, awake or yet sleeping and he couldn’t tell, couldn’t discern human from Other with the bells so loud and the room reflecting his dim blue.

Music

The swordsman shook his head, turned, and he shouted something—Kiris heard it, barely. It was as if someone were speaking to him from a room flooded in people and music; he could see it, he knew they were producing sounds, and maybe if he imagined it, he could even hear the vague tone. He thought the swordsman’s voice might be warm.

Night

“There was plenty of food vakon.”

“Ah,” Nazvili said, wisely. “This wealth of food—did it ever touch the vault of your stomach?”

Kiris slumped deep into his seat.

“I imagine you tempted yourself every night and abstained from ever feasting upon it, giving it instead to those poor villeins you encountered upon your way?” She raised a thin, grey eyebrow. “Or perhaps was this food vakon a feast of the mind?”

[aohendo]

Editing update:

I have realized part of the reason I've been struggling wrangling Prince's plot into order (other than this being draft two) is that the key plot is actually the romance plot, not what I thought was the main plot (ie. the Competition, Kiris' survival, the politics, etc.).

Which, in terms of pure structure, should have been obvious far before I ever made it to the final third in this draft. Alas, I was oblivious as the lovebirds.

If anyone's got romance-writing tips and tricks (or things you hate as a reader) send them my way because this was decidedly not supposed to be a romance.