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- the one where you have a timer on your wrist that counts down to when you meet your soulmate
The number fluctuated often, and Kinsale had mostly learned to ignore it. (mostly.) She'd taken up the trend of the rest of her kind and kept her wrists covered, though if she did say so, her choices of covering were a fair bit more elegant than those of most she met. Where she elected for long, elegant gloves, or intricate gauntlets meant for the kind of proper dueling that never really happened anymore, most wicked fae stuck to a bit of old cloth wound about one or both wrists, often so dirty she wondered if they even took it off to wash it once in awhile.
She'd once met a fairy with an angry past who had somehow managed to cut up her wrist so ferociously that the scarring obscured the number. Fairies did not usually scar, not unless they desperately willed it so, and even Kinsale had not dared to pry.
She could feel the number fluctuating like an itch or a burn when she was planning a party, like her soulmate was weighing whether or not to show up by the minute. Sometimes when it was particularly irritating, she would shout "Make up your mind, why don't you!", terrifying her poor messenger birds into an explosive flight. (made her home look rather like an ostentatious wedding was occurring there, all those doves cooing and flapping about.)
In the end, she had grossly misinterpreted the evening when it happened. It was the dead of winter, during a time of unusual amity between the righteous and wicked fae, and Kinsale's home had been overflowing with happy guests. The most surprising attendee had been someone she'd been dying to meet for ages but had honestly never expected to: Mistress Zenovia of the Mountainlands was well known for being absurdly smart, absurdly talented, and absurdly mean.
She had made it clear that she did not appreciate receiving an invitation to something so frivolous as a party, but Kinsale had occasionally continued to invite her, regardless. (one could never tell whether someone really disliked parties or was simply so lonely she had forgotten what it was to feel wanted.) Kinsale had met and adored both of her younger sisters, but they, too, had espoused the extreme unlikelihood of ever convincing their eldest sibling to attend.
But they had arrived this evening, and then, suddenly, whisked through the doors by a dreadful gust of wind and snow, there she was behind them. She was positively hulking, all hard lines and muscle, and Kinsale was ever so slightly enamoured of her on sight.
Her wrist was itching furiously (make up your mind, why don't you! already half an hour late, wherever you'll be coming from...) and she'd chalked it up either to the usual fluctuation or the material of her new gloves. She'd greeted Mistress Zenovia warmly and received an attempt at politeness far icier than the storm raging outside. Zenovia did not wish to speak with her, or even to be there—she made that abundantly clear.
"I confess I'd never expected you to show up to one of my parties," Kinsale said as Zenovia afforded her a stiff bow.
"Neither did I," she responded flatly, then nodded in the direction of her younger sisters.
"Ah, of course," said Kinsale, feeling a bit at a loss. "Lovely women, both of them."
Zenovia's midnight blue eyes raked over her, from head to toe and back again, and a white-hot kind of shiver ran through Kinsale's entire body like she'd been struck by lightning. "You would say that, wouldn't you," was her response. "Thank you for inviting me, Mistress Kinsale," she continued, though there was little thanks in her tone. "I shan't trouble you long."
She'd spent the entire evening close to one or both of her sisters, and Kinsale had done her level best to forget about the encounter. Zenovia wasn't the first person to greet her less than civilly—indeed, a few of the righteous fae were far more open in their...reservations about her. Kinsale didn't know why Zenovia's distaste for her, something she could have easily anticipated, should trouble her so.
She'd spent most of the night enraptured by a young wicked fairy by the name of Minaeve. Minaeve was sharp-tongued and distrustful as any of their kind, but life had not quite managed to beat her into bitterness just yet. By comparison, she was positively warm, almost effusive. She flirted boldly and touched Kinsale's arms when she laughed (and since Kinsale was usually the initiator of such things, this approach had sent her reeling.) Kinsale had cycled through her party guests with incredible skill, but she always found herself lingering just a bit longer with Minaeve.
Once, perhaps close to midnight, Minaeve's fingertips grazed the exact spot on her wrist where her number was still giving her quite a time of it. Kinsale winced, probably imperceptibly, and for whatever reason, her gaze fell to the other side of the room, only to be met by the sight of Mistress Zenovia glowering at her.
Kinsale quirked one eyebrow at her in disbelief, and Zenovia turned away, but Kinsale could not bring herself to let the moment pass. (utter madness—how many other times had kinsale been the recipient of a disapproving look and cared nothing for it?) She finished whatever meaningless, innuendo-laden conversation she was carrying on with Minaeve and all but stalked across the grand ballroom that was the main floor of her home.
"Why, Mistress Zenovia," Kinsale cried, loud enough to draw a little too much attention, words clipped enough to indicate a challenge. "I have been an ignoble host, indeed. Such an infamous...such a well-respected fairy in my humble home at last, and I have not even asked her for a dance!"
Zenovia raised her chin and narrowed her eyes, and though there was no particular height disparity between them, Kinsale suddenly got the sense that Zenovia was looming over her, looking down. She took a slow, deliberate step forward, and were Kinsale a fraction less prepared for the challenge she had issued, she might have staggered backward at the mere suggestion of such a simple action.
"I would be a disgraceful guest to refuse you, Mistress Kinsale," said Zenovia. Where Kinsale had raised the volume of her voice to garner attention, Zenovia seemed somehow to have dimmed all the noise around her. She spoke so quietly, Kinsale should rightly have been the only person able to hear her, yet a hush had fallen over the room, and every word rang out crystal clear even in its quietness. "I wonder," Zenovia continued with a small incline of her head, "do you lead, or follow?"
The words were heavy with more subtext than Kinsale was fully certain she could grasp. (felt a bit like an insult even though Kinsale wasn't sure what insult exactly they were meant to imply.) She wished she could say she'd been able to weigh her response carefully, but in truth, she felt like she'd been left gaping and empty-headed in Zenovia's wake, even though her hesitation couldn't have lasted more than a second or two.
Kinsale smiled her sweetest smile, the one that made most people's eyes glaze over, and took her own pointed step forward—far more seduction than intimidation, but the overall effect was often the same. "Normally, I prefer to..." her fingertips grazed Zenovia's wrist, a sliver of exposed skin between simple black gauntlets and simple black robes, "...submit...to the whims of my honoured guests," she said. "But if your whim is to follow, my lady," Kinsale inclined her own head in turn, "then lead I shall."
At the time, Zenovia had curled her lip ever so slightly, and seemed utterly unmoved by her display, but her expression of unmitigated contempt had haunted Kinsale's dreams for decades to come. In retrospect, though she might well have imagined it, she could have sworn she saw Zenovia swallow hard and clench her jaw, just for an instant.
Zenovia closed the remaining distance between them with surprising finesse—a sweeping of her robes, and then one hand was on Kinsale's waist, and the other held aloft, awaiting her own hand. Kinsale could have sworn she heard the whole room gasp, but perhaps it had only been her own voice echoing in her head like the roaring of the ocean, like a woman on the brink of madness. "I have never submitted to anyone's whims but my own," said Zenovia, and Kinsale could feel Zenovia's breath against her own lips. "And I shall not begin tonight."
Caught up in the heady rush of lust, mixed with the strangely delicious knowledge that Kinsale had won—that though Zenovia so clearly despised her, she was bound enough by social protocol to dance with her, anyway—Kinsale awarded her a cheeky grin. "Perhaps another night, then."
She didn't know what she had been expecting, but the dance was...utterly breathtaking. It was a strange thought to realize that one was part of something visually beautiful, but Kinsale could see the truth of it reflected in the confused, delighted faces of her guests, the way they held their hands to their mouths and their hearts as Kinsale and Zenovia sailed by them. Zenovia's musculature suggested brute force, but in practice, her athleticism came with a sturdy, grounded kind of grace. It served as a uniquely perfect counterpoint to the way Kinsale seemed almost to disconnect from the pull of gravity when she danced.
Though scathing disgust for her still burned in Zenovia's eyes, the corners of her lips were turned up now in an arrogant smirk that set Kinsale's heart aflutter. Somehow, though Kinsale had though she held the upper hand, Zenovia had managed to regain it, and she knew it well.
The music swelled to a dramatic finale, and Zenovia led Kinsale flawlessly into a spin, then caught her by the waist and dipped her so low her hair grazed the floor. The look in her eyes could have killed, and that near-imperceptible smirk very nearly did. Kinsale felt positively weak in the knees when they parted to thunderous applause, would have gladly left her own party right then and allowed Zenovia to have her wicked way with her right then and there...if only that had been Zenovia's desire, and not merely to beat Kinsale, masterfully and ruthlessly, at her own game.
Zenovia awarded her a sweeping bow, and then somehow managed to blend into the crowd as though she'd never announced her presence at all. Kinsale was left feeling heady and lost in her own home, wandering between groups of guests with no real direction, no real interest for anything else that stretched before her for the remainder of the evening.
It was only much later in the evening, when what stretched before her was the decidedly lovely naked form of Minaeve, that she even realized her timer had at last reached zero. Lost in the heat of the moment, or perhaps deliberately misplacing herself there, Kinsale's misinterpretation had led her to a very pleasant, if ultimately unimportant few years with Minaeve, until she'd woken one morning to find that Minaeve had left her, and she had realized that she had always expected it, and did not particularly mind.
Sometimes, when she was particularly exhausted or depressed, Kinsale entertained the delusion that, perhaps, she had, indeed met her soulmate that night, in a handful of breathless moments for which she had nothing to show but haunting memories. Perhaps soulmates were as complicated for wicked fairies as was everything else. Perhaps Zenovia was Kinsale's soulmate, but Kinsale was not hers. Perhaps she was not permitted any happiness with her soulmate, for perhaps she was incapable of it, and the best she could ever hope for, the only thing that would ever truly set her soul aflame, was a worthy adversary.