Terrible Praise

by Lara Hayes

  His lips smooth back into a genuine smile, the smile he reserves for me, and I have not seen it in ages. My chest brims with familiar affection for him as he turns back toward the hatch. But just before he can leave me I remember myself, and without a single thought to how fortunate I am to receive such mercy, I find I have one more question. If he turns and destroys me where I stand, so be it.

  “My Lord. The girl…”

  He throws his head straight back, staring up at the ceiling as frustration chisels his jaw.

  “Stela, do I not always give you that which you desire?”

  He twists his head over his shoulder. He is weary of me, he is weary of this conversation. And then his lips spread in a pitying smile.

  “All these months you hid her from me. And you hid yourself away from me. But I have never been your enemy, and I am not your obstacle in this matter.”

  “Of what obstacle do you speak, my Lord?”

  “You were once a gifted warrior.” Fane grows serious. “Matters of the heart are as bloody as any battlefield, my dove. You must remain stalwart and merciless, until the very last foe. If you cannot see my meaning you must ask yourself: what separates you from absolute victory?”

  I close my eyes, and permit his words to sink in. I stand in a field with Fane by my side, blood dripping from my sword. My Lord’s hand curls around my shoulder, he whispers his encouragement. James’s exsanguinated body twitches and convulses at my feet. The boy cries out for quick death. But against the dark horizon Elizabeth stands unattended. A lone, windswept figure at the edge of the frame. A slip of a woman nearly hidden from sight, blotted out by the top of her mother’s silver head.

  “Claire…”

  My fingers curl into claws and violence floods me from toe to top.

  When I open my eyes the hatch has closed, and My Lord has vanished as though he was never there.

  Of course, with a general’s eye, he is right.

  * * *

  Elizabeth has gone to unsurprising lengths to ensure her mother is adequately cared for while she “recovers.” The exterior doors of the care facility are protected by cameras and no one can enter or leave without buzzing the visitor’s desk. More a system to keep patients inside than to keep others out. I would have preferred to stroll gallantly into the first floor, instead of slinking through a rust-sealed basement window, dust and grit nesting in my hair. Needs must, I suppose.

  Though the common rooms are closely monitored, the hallways are not. Many of the lights have been dimmed, so moving unseen is no issue. The nurse will not make her rounds for another fifteen minutes. Plenty of time.

  The building reeks of decay. The plaster walls sing with the low buzz of electrical currents, sockets powering machines powering people. The hollow light above Claire’s bed is on, as though it matters to her whether it be day or night. Elizabeth’s discarded shoes are tucked beneath a vacant chair. Her scent is strong in the room, but she is visiting with Helen in the lounge.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Dumas.”

  I lean against the doorframe. Claire’s eyes are still as stone beneath sealed, wrinkled lids. Her chest belabors under a mass of immaculately tucked quilts Elizabeth has brought from home. Aside from the whisper of her breath, the room is silent. Claire was taken off the ventilator after her surgery, so the only equipment of concern is the baby monitor Elizabeth keeps on the nightstand when she leaves the room. I switch the radio off and set it back on the nightstand. “Now we can speak in private.”

  I take a seat on the edge of the bed and Claire’s body slides toward mine. “I was certain that Elizabeth’s nightmare was a subconscious enactment of her murderous intentions. Wish fulfillment. I see now where I was mistaken. The nightmare was a wish, yes. But it was also a cry for help.”

  I crane my neck, my face close to Claire’s ear. “Does that surprise you?”

  Claire’s face remains immune to provocation, wearing only the usual amount of irritation she so often exhibited in daily life. Apart from the feeding tube, she looks very much herself.

  “Unlike yourself, Claire, I am moved by her desires. However, buried they may be.”

  I cup the back of her neck in my hand and slide the pillow from under her head, which is soured by sweat. Laying her down gently, I stand beside the body, clutching the pillow tightly between my fists.

  “I see no reason you should suffer any longer.” A rush of panic, swift and decimating, sweeps over me as I seal the fabric over Claire’s accepting face. But the panic is not mine.

  My name rings clear as a bell through Elizabeth’s mind. A second later I hear her rushed footsteps climb the hall. I release the pillow and conceal myself in the shadows along the wall, infected with Elizabeth’s fear and rendered impotent by her outrage.

  Elizabeth hurls herself inside the room and with a sock-clad skid, she crashes against the side of the bed. She flips the pillow from her mother’s face like an insect she cannot bring herself to handle with bare hands. Unseen, I slip outside the room and flatten myself against the wall.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, though not to me.

  Elizabeth stifles a muffled sob with the palm of her hand, and tucks the quilts down the length of her mother’s body. This is not the reaction I anticipated. I should leave this place. Immediately.

  But emotions, contorted and atomic, spill from the room in neon plumes. There is a violet anger vibrating around Elizabeth, sharper than usual. Warily, I stand in the doorway, bracing myself for whatever explosion awaits. Elizabeth’s spine straightens, and her hands grip the pillow she has retrieved from the floor. She is so still, so impossibly silent that I can barely make out the rise and fall of her chest. Her mother’s corpse seems more animated.

  “Is this a game to you?” she asks, curiously composed. “Am I a trophy? A pet?”

  The quick snap of her neck sends curling chestnut waves spilling over her shoulders. Her face remains fixed straight ahead and menacingly fragmented in the far window’s reflection. I cannot read her eyes, which I suspect is her intention. She does not want to be read, or soothed. Neither—I realize too late—does she want to be rescued.

  If my jealously were an ocean it would drown me. This is her choice, not mine. Not even Fane’s. And she had already chosen Claire, but it did not suit me to believe it.

  “I lied to you.” Elizabeth knots the pillowcase in her hands. “I asked you what you were called before Fane named you Stela.” She holds the pillow over her mother’s head. “I told you I heard your mother say the name Ruxandra in my dream.” Elizabeth rests the pillow on Claire’s chest, smoothing the hair back from her sweaty face with careful hands. She lifts Claire by the shoulders, by the cradle of her skull. “You asked me what else I heard. What else she said.” She slides the pillow back, laying Claire softly back down. Elizabeth falls silent.

  I take a step into the darkened room. Elizabeth raises her head, but she will not turn around. She stares down at her mother. “Your mother did say something else,” she interjects, quite suddenly. “It was in Romanian. I had to look it up. I said it was nothing because I didn’t know what to think of it. Such an odd thing for a mother to say when her child is being taken from her…” Elizabeth strokes her mother’s wrinkled cheek. Only the thin edge of one eyebrow and the tip of her nose are visible. “Mulţumesc. Mulţumesc Domnului meu.”

  The words, so long forgotten, transport me. I can feel the cool breeze rolling off the mountains, stinging my tear-tracked cheeks. The soft prickle of new spring grass beneath my toes. Fane’s firm hand around my wrist. I see my mother’s face clearly for the first time in centuries, and hear her voice quivering beneath the force of her broken sobs. I step back out of the room, and Elizabeth turns back to the window. Her calculating eyes scrutinize my reaction in our shared reflection.

  “I’m sure I butchered the pronunciation,” she says with a disinterested shrug. “I looked it up the second I woke up that morning, before I’d even dressed. This small skinny child, ripped from the arms
of her grief-stricken mother. And her mother just kept repeating those words over, and over again. Thank you. Thank you, my Lord.”

  Elizabeth reaches beside her mother’s head and turns the dial up on the baby monitor. “It’s no wonder you can’t understand a daughter’s love for her mother, Stela. Your own mother didn’t want you.”

  I have never wanted so dearly to inflict horrific physical pain on her. I have never regretted so completely having saved her in that alley the night she was shot. I clench my jaw as my blood surges for action, for recompense, and my fangs descend—their pointed tips making a bloody bed of my bottom gums.

  “You’re not wanted here either,” she whispers, as though she has not made herself perfectly clear. “Leave us alone.”

  My body, coiled tightly, prepared to spring. I know that Elizabeth can sense every inch of me as easily as I can see her in the shadows hung around the room, but even her pulse is steady, pointedly slow. She does not turn to acknowledge my reaction, she does not bristle with alarm. She has no plans to fend me off, or fight. There is neither welcome nor fear. Just the clear, cool air of perfect resignation rising between us, as insurmountable as a wall of ice.

  I turn around and thunder down the hall. The bleached linoleum cracks underfoot, and a frightened nurse rounds the corner only to stumble backward when sees the murderous expression on my face. She appears to be the only witness and she does not give chase. I exit through the basement more violently than I entered.

  I deliberate on the sidewalk that runs the length of the facility, radiating with fury and embarrassment, sincerely considering whether or not to rip the main door from its hinges and paint the walls with both their blood. Cameras be damned. Then I hear it: soft and low, a lullaby. Not a song at all. Just a hushed and tranquil tune whispered in hums between her gasping breaths. Elizabeth’s overwhelming sadness follows me outside and sits at my feet like a broken-winged bird waiting to be crushed.

  Every inch of my body tightens in response. How can she say such things to me, and then immediately wallow in despair? Inexplicably, an apology has already begun to shape in my throat, catching against the back of my tongue like thorn-covered vines. I turn my face to the night breeze and let it stroke my lashes with its chilled breath. I take in the air with its soot-covered hands as it drags me away from her by the lapels.

  No more.

  I step out into the dark embrace of the vacant street, a wounded animal ready to retreat and lick my wounds. What her venomous words have touched was so deeply buried that I had forgotten it entirely until tonight.

  There is only one place for me. I had nearly convinced myself otherwise.

  * * *

  The lights of his chamber are low, the door shut firmly against intrusion, but not bolted. He has company this evening, which is common of late. Far more so than when I held the mantel of favorite. I wonder if these increasingly regular visits are at her urging, or his, though it hardly matters. The arrangement appears beneficial to both parties.

  My entrance is registered immediately. Fane’s answering snarl disappears as quickly as it came, his blood-smeared mouth spread into a welcoming smile. Lydia arches up on her elbows from beneath his wide chest. Her thick black hair in tangles down her back.

  “Stela. What an unexpected surprise,” Fane says. “And where is your Elizabeth?”

  I throw the bolt on the door, but I do not answer him. He is not asking out of concern or politeness. He already knows. When I look upon them again, their entwined bodies casting abstract shadows on the floor, Lydia slides out from beneath him. Fane groans from the loss of her and rests with his head in his hand on his side, expectant and intrigued.

  Lydia takes careful steps toward me, her body aglow in the flickering flames from the gas torches along the walls that suit Fane’s antiquated tastes. She stands before me, black eyes bright with insight. There is a softness in her features I usually see only when she looks at Fane. She takes my face in her hands as though she has touched me this way a million times, as though she did not betray my kindness by sharing stolen memories of Elizabeth with Fane. I reach up and hold her left hand in place against my cheek.

  “She refused you.” There is no mockery, no teasing. Only Lydia’s mild amazement, and a hint of pity. She states the obvious so that I do not have to utter the words out loud. It might be the most considerate thing she has ever done. But more than anything, I suspect she knows how desperately I wanted Elizabeth. When she shared my blood, she felt my affection as though it were her own. I turn away from her, from the weight of my failure.

  Lydia’s hands slide down my face and neck. She takes hold of the bottom of my shirt. It is not the first time this has happened, the three of us sequestered in Fane’s sizeable suite. But it is the first time she greets me with something other than rivalry. She lifts my sweater over my head, and Fane raises himself up on his arm. Lydia does not rush back to him.

  With open eyes she places a soft, chaste kiss to my lips, and runs her fingers through my hair—Fane’s blood drying fast on her chin in salty flakes. She has no reason to fight or fear me as she takes me by the hand and leads me to the bed. She has everything she has ever wanted waiting for her there—his favor for the first time in her life. She was intended for Bård, but never took to him. No matter what my brother gave her, no matter how much blood they shared their relationship remained complicated at best. I never understood why. I have never been close enough to Lydia to ask and it seemed indelicate to put the question to Bård.

  Fane pulls Lydia to him, greedily and doting in his own way. They are quite a sight. His florid pallor in stark contrast to her miraculously golden skin. She kept the gleam of good health even after she was reborn. I think if I were him, I should have favored her from the start. One tiny glittering statue in a hoard of porcelain dolls.

  “Come,” he says, holding out his hand. Lydia grabs me by the wrist, delicately ushering me down beside her.

  Deep in my bones I sense the sun rising on the horizon. The impending heat of it makes my limbs heavy, my movements sluggish despite having gorged myself on my own kind for hours. The obliterating euphoria of Fane’s superior blood buzzes through me, brightening the darkened bedroom as though daylight is already upon me. I extricate my limbs and stand beneath the mirrored skylight in Fane’s vaulted ceiling. I see only the reflection of a young sky in the slanted mirrors that carry the sunrise down into his quarters. A mauve morning, puffed with pink clouds.

  I have spent many mornings just like this in Fane’s bed, watching him gaze up at the same sight. I felt such sorrow for him, banished from a world that should be his. A self-mandated exile to protect his children from his obvious otherness, when it became clear that though the myths of our existence remained, all our human allies were dead. A fresh start in the colonies, he said, but in the new world, he was immediately recognized, his inhumanity impossible to mask. The puritanical peasants fled their native lands in search of a new start too, only to find familiar fiends on foreign shores.

  With burning eyes, I take a seat on the leather sofa and watch the sky swell overhead. Fane, permanently alert, stirs and stretches his limbs. He never misses first light. It is the only chance he gets to bathe his translucent skin in the warmth of the sun.

  Fane runs his hand down Lydia’s exposed torso and procures his emerald robe from the foot of his massive bed. His ever-watchful glare roams over my face as he secures the tie around his waist.

  “Perhaps it is better this way, my dove.”

  “I was just entertaining the thought, my Lord.”

  The first flickering streams of golden light ignite the crown of his head, and though it pains me, I hold his gaze. A witness to his strength, and a testament to my own that I can bear it.

  “This world is not welcoming,” he says, deep in thought. “It is ever changing, shrinking if such a thing is possible. These humans know nothing of the past. They have no respect for their own history. They rewrite what does not suit them, and deliberately
forget what they cannot tailor.”

  I have said it all to myself. And would Elizabeth—turned—be a delicate evening primrose like Lydia? Spreading her petals only at dusk? Could I knowingly lead someone I value into eternal night, and steal her beauty away? A secret only for my eyes? One last beautiful image for her victims? Would forever be worth the pain?

  “Of course, you are right, my Lord.” And he is.

  The sun streaks across the sky and pulls the final rays of dawn up over Fane’s brow, disappearing completely from our sight. The blistering heat lingers in the resumed dark. Fane releases a longing sigh, dredged from the depths of his being. “Whether she submits to you or not, Stela, I have given you the gift of my blessing. I have offered her a place at my side, with you.”

  “You have, my Lord. I am forever in your debt.”

  Fane rises and cupping my chin in his hand. “It gladdens my heart to hear you say that, because from this day forward I expect nothing but your gratitude, Stela. Your unquestioning loyalty.” Though his words are ironclad his hold on me remains soft. “Exactly as life was, so shall it be again. Am I quite clear?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  He holds my face a moment longer, running his thumb tenderly across my jaw. “Get to bed, my dove.”

  I leave my clothes scattered on the floor and slip out the door before he can list any further requirements. The impenetrable black of the corridor engulfs me. My muscles remember the way. I climb up the ladder built into the divide and crawl through the raised and narrow corridor that houses my siblings. My hand finds the hatch above my dormitory, the light above my chamber snuffed out hours earlier. I do not rush inside those familiar walls. I sit with my back pressed to the cold and unforgiving ironwood wall, letting the darkness permeate every fiber of my being.

  Exactly as it was, so shall it be again.