by Jean Lee
Liam takes a deep breath, blinks. He wipes his hands together. “As you wish, Mother Dearest.” He gives them all the most cursory of glances when he walks out of Charlotte’s rooms and back into his own. “I need a new suit.” He vanishes out of eyeline with a slam! of a door somewhere inside.
Two grey hairs fall loose from Lady Artair’s carefully pinned bun before she floats in after him.
40
Debate
Arlen guides Charlotte back into her quarters and closes the locks the door. Charlotte storms around, illegible curses frothing in her mouth. She kicks the bed so hard the frame cracks.
“Got what they came for, the Dapper Liam Zombie Puppet, those…fucking…”
Arlen’s hands gently grab Charlotte’s shoulders and turn her towards him. “It’s not over yet,” he says quietly as he inspects her hands. “Some of the best-laid plans have been toppled in less time.” He goes into the bathroom and soaks a towel.
Charlotte’s tears add to the mosaic of blood and glass on the floor. “Probably celebrating downstairs in that stupid dining room…” she grumbles.
The room directly under your own, you mean, The Voice seems to tug her chin downward and gives her a nudge.
Oh… “Hey House, can you help us spy the dining room below? See and hear without being, you know, seen or heard.”
Rugs roll and floorboards fold, taking all the shards and blood along with them. Arlen nearly slips on all the magical machinations, and when all’s said and done he’s standing atop a one-way mirror ceiling of the dining room. “By Aether…” he murmurs mouth agape.
“You’re making a grave mistake.” Keller speaks with crossed arms in the doorway to the library. He wears a fitted black suit, his ivory shirt’s top button undone. A full wine glass dangles precariously from his fingertips. “Killing the human Charlotte now will only leave more questions than answers.”
“Bastards!” Charlotte falls to her knees, hands raised to break the glass, but Arlen holds her back. “They weren’t even going to try and keep their promise.”
“Did you hear Treasa promise?” Arlen’s eyes flash into Charlotte’s. “I didn’t.”
“But she said…” What did she say? “Know your request is heard.” Damn.
Charlotte bites her tongue and promises to stay still while Arlen fetches the shredded lavender.
“That bitch has cost me your mother’s wrath and your brother’s face,” Lord Artair says with a vengeful clank of the carafe upon the glass. The hole from whatever tooth Arlen yanked out of his mouth in the Pits isn’t visible, but his ring hand’s got some wicked tremors, and for all the veli Big Bad Bernie’s probably had, his one eye’s still totally bloodshot. “I want to see some punishment.”
“Then let the girl come along,” Darra purrs into her own glass. She sits alone on one side of the table with her chair angled away to promise the best view of her bombshell legs, wrapped tightly in centurion stilettos up to her knees. Red silk spills out on either side of her chair, hardly covering her lap or much else as it loops up and over one breast, around the neck, and back down over the other. “Perhaps she’d ease Liam’s transition into married life. Besides,” she says with a smile at her servants fussing over the long rose centerpiece upon the table, “I think spouses should be open about their playmates, don’t you?”
Silence. Lord Aleron and Vincent sit on one side of the table opposite Darra, and for a moment, they are a united front of hateful looks upon Lord Artair seated at the head of the table.
Arlen whistles. “That girl’s playing a dangerous game.” He sprinkles the lavender all over the towel, then guides Charlotte to place her hands there. With the towel wrapped around her hands, he begins to whisper his Gaelic, and feeling tickles the tips of Charlotte’s fingers.
“Good for us,” Charlotte says. And she’s got to hand it to Big Bad Bernie—the man doesn’t flinch, not once, beneath their stares. He only looks over at Keller, who carries himself like this is some sort of board meeting, not an engagement dinner.
Vincent snaps his fingers, and the humans vanish through the red arch. He plucks one of the roses free of the centerpiece and proceeds to pluck its petals one by one. “I could mind her for you, sister dear. I’m curious how much she can handle before—” He snaps the rose’s stem in two.
“No, no, no.” Keller walks briskly around the table, checks the reception hall, then says, “None of you are seeing the big picture. We have a human who carries no scent. Rose House follows her every whim to the point it will protect her from a threat.” He leans in, checks the arch, and adds quietly. “And I know even the great Lady Artair’s not been able to read the girl’s desires.”
Darra’s polished pointer finger travels round and round the rim of her glass. “So I’m not the only one.”
Keller shakes his head. “You want your plan to run smoothly, you’ll keep Charlotte here and out of the Rockies. I’ll pry some family history out of her, work up a genetic background. She could be the start of something new in humanity, or…” He slumps into his chair next to Vincent, his focus suddenly a thousand miles off.
Lord Aleron coughs politely. “Or what?”
Keller’s eyes remain fixed on the distance as he says, “Or something else entirely.”
Lord Artair ho ho ho’s the idea aside. “Really, Keller, laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you?”
Darra lifts her glass to swirl its contents. A few wisps of lavender escape the crimson liquid.
“Do you guys normally add veli to wine?” Charlotte asks.
Arlen finishes the spell and unwraps the towel. His fingers are sandpaper-coarse against Charlotte’s, BUT she can feel again, wiggle again. Play piano again, if she lives through all this.
“That’s not wine,” He says.
BLOOD. Fucking ay, they’re drinking blood. If she lives is right.
“All the more reason for her to join us in the west, then,” says Darra. “You know Treasa must decipher all puzzles before everybody else.”
Keller laughs bitterly. “Liam might be a good little listener at first, but his heart’s fire will never wholly submit with Charlotte around. And you know it.”
A shrieking note slaps Keller’s face so hard he nearly tips the chair back and onto the floor. Lady Artair stands in the crimson archway, ringed hand held high. “Remember. Your. Place.”
41
Engagement Dinner
Liam slams the closet door and welcomes the darkness.
“Liam?” The click of his mother’s heels paces just outside the door. Ar son Dé, there is no peace from this woman, from any of them. “Listen to your mother, and hurry along. Your bride and family are waiting.”
Your mother.
The words weigh upon his mind, heavier with every echo. He kneels, hands gripping his blood dagger’s harness—
—the harness that Charlotte once wore, her skin against his leather. She stood so proudly in it, the warrior queen.
A true warrior queen, defeater of bloody days.
Bloody days.
Your mother. Your mother. Your mother.
“Liam!” The door handle twists.
“I know.” Liam undoes the harness and finds the blood dagger glowing inside its sheath. When had it done that before? When he pulls the blade free, he can see every feather alight with the dimmest of magic. Light ebbs and flows up and down the blade like the sea along the shores of Cairine. “I know.” He tears the infernal shoes and everything else off and stands there a moment, naked to the embers of his own heart’s fire forged into the blood dagger.
The heart’s fire only Charlotte could touch without dying.
Before he was struck down into a living decay, he had considered River Vine a lonely place. The bitterness against Arlen for vanishing had been so bloody strong Liam could hardly bear speaking to the man, let alone see him. Orna had made Liam feel good about himself for a while, but then she wanted, demanded commitment he never intended to give. And the commoners? He treated t
hem like commoners, and they abhorred him in return.
“Your mother needs you out of there, Liam.”
Each your mother finds a single piece of bone in Liam’s back to twist. “Another minute, please.”
He would never see Charlotte again, never feel her breath on his skin, never watch her eyes light up like fires in a forest, never hear her laugh.
With shaking hand, he picks up his blood dagger, the first piece of himself he shared with Charlotte. Even without magic, she defied a Lord and Lady among princeborns. She maddened them with such glee that both used their stone rings on her within minutes of her acquaintance.
Liam smiles at that.
The embers grow brighter.
“Liam!” His mother snaps his name like a whip. “Your mother needs you out here NOW.”
Your mother drags its talons across Liam’s mind, pulling him towards the clothes. The embers on his blood dagger flicker and dim.
But do not die completely.
Liam holds the blade close to his face. This part of him, it still burns to live. It has not given up hope, just as Charlotte held him and told him…told him…
Your mother your mother your mother
Told him to FIGHT BACK
Liam swings the closet door open and emerges in a simple black suitcoat, silver shirt, and black trousers. His mother ceases pacing and smiles primly.
“Shall we?” he asks, gesturing to the exit with one hand, his harness in the other.
Lady Artair bows her head and floats out the door to the stairs. Liam pads noiselessly after her, stroking the hilt of his dagger one last time with his thumb as he passes Charlotte’s door.
A single flame sneaks free of the blade and kisses his thumb.
Liam contains his smile just long enough to pass the staircase and hear the conversation below, which piques his mother’s interest. Someone’s clanking about in the kitchen—Arlen? No, Darra’s human pets. They’ve broken into the butler’s pantry for gilded china plates and matching dish covers. The chest Vincent had been so pleased about sits open beneath the green arch, smoking with cold air on this summer night.
“All the more reason for her to join us in the west, then,” Darra’s voice carries into the reception hall. “You know Treasa must decipher all puzzles before everybody else.”
Mother’s step quickens. Liam’s slows. He must don his harness, after all.
“Liam might be a good little listener at first, but his heart’s fire will never wholly submit with Charlotte around. And you know it.”
Mother cracks her ringed hand like a whip, and the ring-song strikes Keller in the face. “Remember. Your. Place.”
Keller rights his head. A deep purple bruise blossoms on his cheek. Yet he stares Mother down, and speaks with words passionless and deliberate: “Why do you think I’m sitting here?”
“I think there have been enough familial injuries for one day,” Liam says as he seats himself in the chair nearest the arch. “Wouldn’t you say, Mother Dearest?”
Lord Aleron slurps his wine, sweat beading upon his balding head. Father coughs and stammers to Mother about the dinner. She floats out.
Darra’s eyes have yet to leave Liam’s face. Her fingertips press harder and harder onto the wineglass. “Maybe…you should rest tonight, darling,” she says with forced smile. “Give yourself time to heal more before tomorrow. Tomorrow is what matters, after all.”
Liam waves a hand about his face. “Oh, this is as good as it’s gonna get.” By Aether’s fire, Darra is positively seething. Hmm, I do like this slapdash modern vernacular. “Careful, you’ll snap your glass. Can’t have Vincent licking blood and smearing the pretty ol’ table like he did back in Rome after that…hmm. What was the bastard’s name? Dom Tomato, Tomahto, some such thing.”
Vincent tosses his head back and laughs. “Oh right, mate, Dom…damn, Dom Tonallitino. Yeah, his wife was trying to stiff us outta…what was it...” He grabs the carafe and slops some more bloody veli into his glass.
Keller firmly snatches the carafe away but fails to grab Vincent’s glass before he downs the lot. “A white tree grew on the edge of their vineyard, the only one in that province. You know you’d remember more if you drank less.”
“Pfft. You’ve got the iron memory, mate. And now you look a right side better than your brother, doesn’t he, sister?” he winks at Darra. She says nothing. Her eyes on Keller’s easy features speak enough.
“Here we are.” Mother floats in with smiling grace to seat herself between Darra and Father. “So sorry for the delay, but you know how Brutus prefers his to be stewed.” Darra’s servants follow after, filling the table with covered plates, silverware, napkins, and more carafes of bloody veli. With table settings in place, they proceed to pour bloody veli into every glass.
“Beautiful, my dear,” Father chimes and kisses Mother’s hand, “Simply beautiful. You and Darra have exquisite taste.” They share a sweet smile, those two, betraying the gap left by the tooth Arlen had ripped out. Both ignore the sullen eyes of one Lord Brutus Aleron. Surely, he does not want this union. Or at the very least, Keller has always been Vincent’s favorite, and Vincent is the future Head of House. Keller could easily fulfill the Artair needs for creating a new generation, being the more obedient of us. Sow the seeds of objection among them, pluck the string of Darra’s loathing, and…
“Erm, darling,” Darra shifts her body, hiding her supple legs beneath the table. “Forgetting something?”
Liam looks down and taps his sockless, shoeless, feet. “Nope.” He grins so impishly Darra scoffs and downs her bloody veli in one deep gulp. One servant immediately refills it while the other dabs her lip with a napkin before shuffling out the door.
Father taps his glass with a knife and stands. “Artairs and Alerons, I am so very thankful this day has come at last, this eve of union between our mighty Houses. Darkness has chased our kind into the caved corners of the world like wild animals. No more! May today mark the beginning of a new age, when the Velidevour take their rightful place upon this world as the superior breed, the ruling breed. We may be princeborns today, but when we stand victorious over humanity, Stellaqui, and yes, even the Celestine, we will claim Aether’s fire for our own and become kingborns once more.”
Vincent pounds the table with his fist, rattling all the plate covers. “Hear hear!” So many polite smiles around that table, smiles and nods like this is all for certain. It is both a relief and a surprise to see Keller sits as still as Liam, resting his head on his hand. Those ice-blue eyes dart from Father to Liam. One eyebrow raises, but he says nothing. What gears are turning inside you, brother?
Father lifts his glass, signaling the others to do the same. The blood’s warmth leaches through the glass and into Liam’s fingertips, its rich scarlet color so like a Cardinal’s robe…
“To my son, Liam, and the beautiful Darra. May your union bring wealth to our houses and our breed’s future.”
Liam’s hand shakes as he clinks glasses with Darra. Her glass is empty before Liam can even set his own down, untouched.
Keller speaks after a civil sip. “Something wrong, brother?”
Liam forces a quick smile. “I cannot stomach another drop.” A truth even the great Lady Treasa Artair could not debate. She attempted to force no less than two flasks of pure veli down his gullet, and he coughed nearly all of it right back up. Arlen saved some and used an entire third flask upon Liam’s body, setting aside the final flask for his own healing. Liam just…couldn’t…the veli tasted like all the fluids one sends into the sewer, nothing like Arlen’s brews or baking. How many humans were drained of life to stock this table?
“You will get used to it, my son,” Lady Artair says, and lifts her plate cover. “Nothing warms the heart’s fire like dinner with the family.”
In the middle of the plate sits a human heart, blood cross-drizzling the plate like some sort of syrup. Lavender wisps of veli dance within the blood and above it.
The servants com
e around, plucking all the plate covers. Liam’s heart looks bigger than the others, bloodier. Bloody as the man in Mother’s torture chamber, the threads of his torn arms hanging loose from his torso…
“Come now, boy, eat up,” says Father with a mouthful of muscle balled up inside his cheek. “You need your heart’s fire burning its brightest for tomorrow.”
They’re all eating these hearts with such, such normalcy, the knife-cutting, the poking, the chewing. Lord Aleron’s heart is smaller and squishier than the rest, small as a child’s. A a child like that border girl Jennifer Blair, the girl Charlotte was ready to die for. Oh Charlotte, what are these gods?
Liam slowly pushes the plate away. “Just tea for me, thanks.”
“Don’t be silly, darling.” Darra slides it right back, almost into his lap. “Velifol’s good enough for commoners, but not princeborns. Perhaps a little flesh in you could help…” she waves her fork at his face. “…you know.”
Howling.
The whole room falls into silence.
A furry shadow bursts through the window and lands on top of the carefully crafted rose centerpiece, crushing the flowers and spilling the carafes’ contents over hearts and laps alike. The eye of blue laughs as loud as the green. With a burst of dust and black fire Dorjan emerges, grinning from ear to ear. “Hellooooo! How’s this for ‘later’?”
Liam could swear the ceiling itself roars with laughter.
Vincent fumbles with his blood dagger and nearly tips over onto his father. “Get outta here, ya mongrel bastard!” He swings the blade so wildly he slices a carafe into pieces. Keller grabs Vincent by the neck and arm and slams him on the table. “Knock it off!” He hisses into his ear.
Dorjan hops backwards onto the floor and brushes himself off. “What a fantastic party! Cuzzy K, you didn’t mention anything when I saw you earlier.” He grabs a free chair from the wall and plops himself down. “Well.” He looks at Liam and pauses. Liam could be mistaken, but Dorjan’s blue eye looks ready to cry while the green burns nastily bright. “Here I am, the prodigal nephew. You don’t mind, do you? I’m festive,” he says with a flourish towards his Rose Bowl tshirt.