Any attendant permitted to approach the Heiress-to-be's chambers would be strictly female and, if she had duties compelling her to enter Nyrkatess' dressing room, would do so discreetly. Now that her adoring grandfather had passed, everyone with the authority to knock on the door to Nyrkatess' happy place was unwelcome in it.

"Are you decent?" her father called.

"We are," Nyrkatess replied, from behind Villacqui's chair.

Villacqui stole one last glimpse of Nyrkatess in the mirror, watching as she drew herself up straight and regal, turned toward the door, and rested her left hand on the back of the chair. With the smallest of smiles, the Universe's most cherished pet adjusted her position so that her shoulder would press against Nyrkatess' fingers, then bowed her head, tucked her feet slightly beneath the chair with ankles crossed, and folded her hands in her lap.

The door swung open, silently except for a whoosh of air. Minye could not see him, with her gaze fixed on the floor, but Nyrkatess' golden-haired father was presumably also dressed in the family colors.

"Leave," the Patriarch-to-be commanded, from immediately to Villacqui's right. Thus it was confirmed that this visit would be another belittling session.

The attendants silently filed out of the room. The door whooshed shut behind them.

"The first of our guests will soon arrive. You will accompany me to greet them at the harbor."

"The timing is auspicious. We completed our finishing touches, not moments ago," Nyrkatess replied. "Well? Can there be any doubt that the incomparable divinity of Tvokess will be self-evident to all who behold us?"

'You tell him, Nyrkatess,' Minye thought. It was a struggle not to let slip a cheer or grin that would ruin Minye's own facade: compliant serenity, her owner's accessory, palate-cleansing eye candy with a side of enthralled flattery, and no will of her own nor desire to have one. If Villacqui were commanded to leave, too, Nyrkatess would be forced to endure alone, and with her grandfather no longer muzzling her father, the previous session had been especially harsh.

"I have no concerns regarding your appearance; that is the one matter you can be trusted to handle competently. What brings me here is the subject we discussed after the passing of your grandfather." What a surprise. "I do hate to repeat myself, but since you show no ambition or aptitude in anything but being pretty, I thought it prudent to reiterate my expectations."

Nyrkatess stayed silent. Minye was a softly-breathing statue of a docile pet 'goddess tainted by mundanity,' fantasizing in her chair about being quick enough to blind him before he could shield himself.

"In the same week that you reach marriageable age, you will be declared Heiress to the illustrious Tvokess lineage, before the eyes of every white god and goddess worth knowing about in the entire world. Your value will never be higher than it is presently. It is time to stop being frivolous, for once in your life, and take your duty to this lineage seriously. If you cannot be bothered to be anything but pretty, at least use that to honor your ancestors' legacy. I know you relish the extra attention that being unbetrothed brings you, but I lack your grandfather's patience for indulging your games. All suitable gods will be among our guests: choose one to be your consort, or I will choose for you."

Villacqui worked hard to conceal her relief that Nyrkatess' father still did not seem to suspect the truth. Nyrkatess did enjoy the extra attention that came from being unbetrothed--that was part of why she was excited about becoming Heiress, too--but that was not why she had no fiancé. Nyrkatess of Tvokess would never be willing to marry any god, nor produce a single heir. Of all the secrets Villacqui knew, that one was by far the most damning.

Nyrkatess was effectively afraid of the same fate that Villacqui feared, but she had no Nyrkatess to protect her from it. Not since her grandfather passed.

"You are thinking, 'What is the harm in teasing for a little longer?' The harm is multifold. First and foremost, every year you waste is an opportunity for a truly illustrious heir lost forever."

In other words, a power-marked one. Nyrkatess' parents had never forgiven her for being so close yet not quite power-marked. They intended to make the most of their near-miss.

"Second, our first rank peers already murmur that Tvokess' standing is doomed to decline because our future Matriarch, as relatively strong as she may be, is so incompetent that she will be unable to manage our affairs or nurture the next generations. Every year you delay worsens this perception, because you increase the probability that your best option for an heir will be a disappointment. No first rank lineage wants to marry its prime son to an inept Heiress who will need to get lucky because she's starting late."

Minye desperately resisted an impulse to point to the exquisite golden flower in her hair and demand for Nyrkatess' father to show that he could do better than the 'inept' Heiress who had coaxed this treasure from a seed.

"Compounding this problem, high quality candidates are claimed early. Parents will account for you losing an extra two or three years while their son finishes maturing, and they will be wary of the issues created by a large age gap."

"The Keyic Heir--" Nyrkatess finally dared to say something, and that proved to be a mistake. "Villacqui!"

Minye saw only a flash of gold before toppling to the ground, nose broken. That had been the Tvokess medallion, swinging on its chain, she realized in retrospect.

"Nyahhah!" Nyrkatess made a guttural, primal keen, and moved to kneel beside her.

"No!" Minye gurgled, through the blood. "Silenz! Stant!"

Villacqui had never given her owner a command before, but to her relief, Nyrkatess obeyed this one, remaining behind the chair, silent except for her sobs.

"Not only do you need a tainted to remind you of proper manners, your ability with shields is so pitifully childlike that you failed to protect her even with full sight of the windup. Alas, shields aren't useful for making you pretty, are they?"

He sighed.

"The Keyic Heiress, in contrast, is an unparalleled genius, the most illustrious goddess the world has ever seen, and a paragon of dutiful discipline. What are you? An exceptionally pretty face, for a few more years, but do recall that your competition is first rank white goddesses. And, you are strong, but only enough to compensate for your incompetence and the time you've already wasted; you are not power-marked."

Neither was this walking inferiority complex, nor any other Tvokess since the semi-mythical eponymous ancestor. Villacqui fumed on the ground.

"That is the full list of what you have to offer. You are not the Keyic Heiress. If you were to delay as long as she did, I would need to consider proposals from second-rank lineages, and that is a disgrace that I will not abide. Our illustrious ancestors would disown me, and I shudder to imagine what they would think of you. So, make your Villacqui pretty again, clean her blood off the floor and the tears off your face, come greet our guests, and do your duty before your value starts dropping. If you have not made a suitable choice in time for me to announce it at your investiture, I will make the choice for you."

Villacqui heard footsteps, and the whooshing of the door. Nyrkatess fell to her knees, next to her.

"I'm, so, sor-ry, Villac-qui," she bawled. "Let, me, heal, you."

Villacqui let Nyrkatess do her work. The pain went away quickly, but it took a while for her to finish.

"Alright, un. That's...that's your nose. Hhhk. It's right. Let's, guh, get you up, to the mirror." Nyrkatess was muttering half to herself. "...Get a look at you..."

Villacqui sat, and Nyrkatess stood behind the chair, poking and drumming her fingers on Villacqui's shoulders and neck--her idiosyncratic version of petting.

"...Yes...Good, that's...that's my Villacqui's nose." Villacqui could see Nyrkatess nodding to herself, in the mirror. "Mmf. Yes, that's your nose. Good...Good. It's perfect...I got it right..."

Nyrkatess had cleaned the blood off Villacqui while she was healing her, but her own face was still tear-stained. Thus, the Minye in the mirror was the same one that had made herself shed a tear of awe earlier, except this one was full of indignation, and the Nyrkatess behind her was far from blissful.

"Thank you," Minye said, eerily calm. "Your blessings worked perfectly. Your Villacqui wants to see you all cleaned up, before you fuss over me any further."

"I'm so sorry," Nyrkatess repeated, but began cleaning herself.

"You did nothing wrong," Minye assured her.

Minye had been fuming for a while, and now the memory of that blissful moment before the rapping on the door had returned with a vengeance. What she wanted to say as a result was quite possibly the worst conceivable thing to utter aloud if anyone but Nyrkatess heard it, but she was not in a hold-her-tongue mood. She stood, and moved to murmur in Nyrkatess' ear.

"I beg your forgiveness, but I must say something that is brazenly impertinent for someone of my station."

"Stop that, my Villacqui," Nyrkatess murmured back. "If you are tainted, then taint is beautiful. It seems that father does not plan to send the attendants back. If it is your wish to tell me one of your secrets, for a change, then it would please me to hear it."

Villacqui's heart was already racing from standing this close to a supernatural beauty, and hearing that with breath tickling her neck did not help.

Bluh.

She took a leap of faith.

"Your father is insecure. He sees you as evidence of his own inadequacy, because you were born a year after the first power-marked red god, of all things. In his mind, your birth showed the whole world, with humiliating timing, that the best he and his precious genes could manage was a nearly power-marked white goddess. He searches for any faults he can find, so that he can justify transferring to you the scorn that he invented for himself. It is impossible for you to please him, and he does not deserve the satisfaction of you trying. But I see what he intentionally fails to notice."

Minye was the best sycophant alive because everything she said was sincere.

"The blessings I receive multiple times every day are the work of a genius who cherishes me. The clothing and jewelry and flowers I wear are gifts from a genius who cherishes me. That your talents and passion lie in glamour does not diminish their value, least of all to me. If wanting to spend all day every day striving to be as captivating as possible and savoring every involuntary gasp is bad, then I am unspeakably naughty. If you opened the door and told me that I am free to leave, I would sit in my favorite chair and wait for you to come to your senses. Whatever you decide to do about your father's ultimatum, your Villacqui wants you to know that I am with you to the end, because I want to be. You cannot cherish a pet as thoroughly as you have cherished me, and expect any other outcome. Finally, do remember that the same grandfather who gave me to you is, in fact, one of those illustrious ancestors, and we both know his thoughts on whether you were worthy of wearing that medallion. Please forgive my impertinence, Heiress."

Minye had reservations. Nyrkatess had never once asked what her original name was or shown any interest at all in who Villacqui had been before she became Villacqui. She seemed totally blind to the unfairness of how people without vessels were treated, the cruelty of it all, even though Villacqui's 'tainted' vessel was negligible, and anyone who treated her poorly on that account earned Nyrkatess' unfading malice. She did not seem to care or ever consider, not even in passing, what exactly funded these necklaces and gowns and bracelets and all the opulence; she had a considerable allowance and never ran out of luxuries she wanted to spend it on. Someday, when they had more time and Minye felt safe enough to dare, they would need to have a long talk before she could fully let go of her guilt. Nevertheless, everything she just said to Nyrkatess was the unadulterated truth.

Wordlessly, Nyrkatess' fingertips turned Villacqui around and guided her back to the chair. Villacqui's heart did its best to explode, when she saw in the mirror that the blissful smile was back. The only difference between this version of the scene and the one before the rapping on the door was the absence of attendants.

"Okay," Nyrkatess breathed. "Okay, my cherished Villacqui...That did please me to hear."

She leaned over, to murmur from Villacqui's shoulder.

"So. What I would like to do about father's ultimatum is follow him and spit on his coercion in public--announce for all the world to hear that I categorically refuse ever to say any vows--but I cannot. He knows how to hurt me most."

Villacqui nodded. She had a vested interest in taking all of Nyrkatess' damning secrets to the grave.

"You cannot possibly intend to do as he commands?"

"Never," Nyrkatess confirmed. "I will never be pregnant for a single second, never mind churn out candidate heirs continuously for two decades, even if I could be knocked out for the conceptions. The whole affair is thoroughly revolting, beginning to end."

She mimed gagging over Villacqui's shoulder.

"Alright. We don't have much time before we are expected," Villacqui reminded her. "When we walk out the door, what are we doing? I don't think you and I are capable of surviving life outside the palace, if we could even find our own way out, unnoticed. That our experience with the outdoors is limited to strolls through walled flower gardens under parasols does not fill me with confidence."

Nyrkatess stopped drumming the fingers of one hand so she could giggle behind it.

"Akeet akeet akeet! My cherished Villacqui truly meant that she will go anywhere with me!"

Minye nodded to Nyrkatess, in the mirror. Even if she didn't want to stay with her, what other option would she have? Starving with Nyrkatess on the run in the wilderness was more appealing than facing what awaited her in the palace if her safety tried to flee alone.

Nyrkatess nodded back.

"I'm not that naive!" she asserted, in the same cheerful tone as she had when offering the necklaces. "Living outside the palace is so unthinkable that it didn't occur to me. What would we wear?" She put a finger to her lips, pondering. "I'm not sure I would even want to survive outdoors. If I need to choose between a husband and living with the creepy-crawlies, just kill me."

"Mmm," Villacqui agreed. The first time she saw a creature with any number of legs except two or four and couldn't call an attendant, she would die on the spot.

Nyrkatess' hair and shoulders and earrings glinted in the light as she shrugged.

"So, what I plan to do for now, is captivate our guests, while waiting for the Keyics to arrive." More glinting, as she swung a dismissive arm at the door, and huffed. "It's not Suri's fault that he twists her excellence to his own purposes. She's marvelous."

Nyrkatess had a two-step process for deciding how much she liked people: How well did the description 'glamorous goddess' fit them, and how kind were they to Villacqui? The Keyic Heiress was her favorite person in the world who was not currently in the room. Naturally, Nyrkatess inferred that the Heiress' motives for wanting to delay marriage were similar to her own, and Villacqui could find no reason to dispute it--the Zyzz Heir was pretty, for a 'god.'

So, after her grandfather died, the Tvokess Heiress-to-be had sent a desperate letter to the Keyic Heiress, which asked, first, how she had managed to convince her parents to let her wait so long before marrying, and second, how she had convinced them to let her make an unconventional choice, of someone who quite clearly didn't disgust her, and had been so kind to Villacqui, just like she was. The answer had been, more-or-less, 'Such a delicate matter should be discussed face-to-face. We will attend your investiture.'

It was a feeble ray of hope, with no reason to expect it should lead anywhere, especially with so little time remaining.

"You will ask for asylum?" Villacqui murmured. "Even if they are sympathetic, it would be difficult for them to smuggle us out, and it might start a war if your father ever learned where we were."

Nyrkatess raised her arms a little in a confession of uncertainty.

"I don't know," she admitted. "It's pathetic, but placing all of my trust in the Keyics is the only plan I have. They've always treated you so well, and Suri's brilliant. In any case, I shall save my despair for after they say there's nothing they nor I can do."

Villacqui had no better ideas.

"Alright!" she sang softly, trying to keep Nyrkatess' spirits from falling. "If we delay much longer, a certain insecure prick may return to mock you for taking too long to fix my nose, and clean. Ready?"

Nyrkatess' finger-tapping accelerated for a few seconds, before cutting off abruptly.

"Mhm!" she chirped, circling to the front of the chair and offering an exquisitely manicured ivory hand. "Come, my captivating Villacqui. It's time for us to be naughty and savor some involuntary gasps."

'Someday...' Minye thought to herself, as she swallowed a flutter, and took Nyrkatess' hand with her own mirror of it. 'Someday, if she sees the world outside this gilded ivory cage, and realizes what's wrong with everything, if she acknowledges that Minye existed and is the same person as Villacqui the 'goddess tainted by mundanity,' and if she repents, then you can stop tormenting yourself, and completely be her Villacqui, and live happily ever after. But not yet.'