by Renee Peters
“Angelica. Leave. I’ll not tell Lian if you go now.”
“Joanna?” Delilah’s voice was groggy and the movement of shifting blankets sounded from the bed. “Is something the matter?”
The queen in red curtsied, her voice sweet as honey. “Nothing at all, sweet. Only that Joanna does not believe me capable of being companionable. I am actually quite good for a talk, and you and I have much to discuss.”
“I’m afraid I do not understand. It seems you know Joanna… But what business could you have with me?”
Joanna felt Delilah’s gaze at her back, but dared not turn around to assure the woman.
“I only thought to give you the same kindness I did for my little sister, darling.” Angelica’s smile parted, revealing fangs that had not distended — yet. She stepped nearer, and Joanna reached out to stop her.
“Leave her alone, Angelica. Lian is protecting her. Just go.”
“Pro-tect-ing,” Angelica sang each syllable of the word. “For now.” Her eyes were trained on Delilah. Twisting a grip on Joanna’s arm, the queen dragged her sister toward the bed.
“Please….” Deliah whispered. “Do not be so rough with Jo. She is gently bred.”
“Gently bred?” Angelica giggled and Joanna could feel the venom coursing through the music in her song as she was pulled down to a sit. The queen’s fingers remained clamped on Joanna’s wrists to keep her still, her nails breaking into the skin. “Who said that? Dorian? This girl was pulled out of a pile of shite. She’s a vagrant, Huguenot frog —” She glanced Joanna’s way. “Aren’t you, sweet?”
Joanna paled, concern twisting through her features and music. She had been down this path with Angelica before. There were only fangs and darkness that awaited the end of the queen’s cruelty. Her gaze softened as it found Delilah. “Lilette, you know I find you dear, oui? Like a sister.”
Her bonded sister scoffed and finally, Angelica released Joanna’s wrists to fold her hands on her lap. “Oh, do be quiet,” she snapped at the Frenchwoman before turning her attention on Delilah again. “In any case, Joanna is sturdier than she looks. No doubt a little roughness is the better for her. One wouldn’t want her to grow accustomed to a life she will not sustain, yes?”
It was only for a season. A pretend wedding.
Joanna’s music wrenched, and Dorian’s was there as if to steady her on the tether he had not let her complete.
“Is it true, Jo?” Delilah’s voice broke through the rising knots Joanna felt tangling in her chest. “Is she your sister? You are… not a Lady? But the Conde — Speak plainly.”
Angelica lifted her fingers to stroke Joanna’s curls, and the French queen pulled her head back. “The Conde is our brother, and he has rather plucked Joanna from her basement hole for a season.” Her smile disappeared and her chin trembled with a grimace that rippled to the surface of her expression. “It’s the funniest thing.”
The queen’s fingers left Joanna’s hair to press against the ruby choker she wore, and Joanna could feel a darker ripple in her sister’s music. “I have spent the better part of the year believing she was so stupid. We can all hear her croaking out a mating call that Dori has no intention of returning. A calf’s love song. As if she’s forgotten she is only a passing amusement. Or an effort at making amends for some wrong he’s managed in the past.”
Joanna flinched and felt her music dropping even more quickly than she had felt herself plummet. She grabbed a fistful of her nightgown at her stomach, clutching it as if it would keep her aloft. He wanted to see her shine. He had called her a star. His. And she was not an amusement. Dorian Vaughn would not have held her so through the nights if she was only an amusement.
She was his wife. And Dorian kept all his promises.
And he had promised to repay a debt.
He had never promised to catch her if she fell.
Angelica’s laugh was bitter where it cut through her thoughts. “It turns out, I am just as large a fool as she.”
Joanna lifted her head. “Angelica, stop.”
She felt the queen’s notes like a rock that skipped across the surface of the water with no intention of stopping. Angelica laced her fingers over her knee, speaking cheerfully to Delilah.
“You see in our world there is eternity and there are toys. If Joanna were eternity, she would have had her Conde when she was still covered in shite. If you were eternity, Lian would have already gifted it to you.” Her smile was beautiful, confident and sweet as honey, all in conflict with the chill in her eyes. “And so we are — we three — just toys my dear.”
Joanna barely heard her. She spoke of the eternal bond, that which was most precious and most sought after in the world of darkness she had been stolen into. It was almost impossible to know if the bond between two souls was meant to be forever until they shared blood. Or until one heard the other singing beyond the bond of the coven.
Dorian had never heard her, and she had remained alone for over a century before his guilt had pulled her from her darkness. The bond that he had not let her complete felt limp between them. He was not forever. He had not even wanted a moment in eternity.
That had not been their arrangement.
Angelica was still speaking, saying something of Delilah and their warden, and Joanna had to drag herself from the mud that threatened to suck her down.
“Angelica, mon dieu! Ça suffit!” She began to crawl over the mattress, kneeling before Delilah. A glare shot backwards over her shoulder to touch on Angelica. “Lichieres pautonnier —” she hissed.
“Ribbit, ribbit,” Angelica replied.
“Lilette,” Joanna began, lowering her hands to take Delilah’s. The girl’s eyes were shimmering with her Fae-blood and her distress. “She is my sister. We are from the same family. Though she is the worst of it.”
Angelica was fangs and darkness and venom.
“Sil vous plaît,” the Frenchwoman continued. “Lian was to explain it when you were out of bed.”
“Oh, do say it, Joanna,” her sister murmured. “Or I will.”
The Condesa felt a rise of desperation. Fangs. Red eyes. She remembered when she was mortal. When Angelica had done her the kindness of a warning. She brought Delilah’s hands to her lips to kiss. There was no way to soften what would come, but she could try.
“We are not… the same as you. Not… human. Oui. We are Immortals. You call it… vampire now. What we are. Only it is not the same as your stories, you see. Lian and Dorian and myself… and Angelica. Je suis désolée, Lilette.”
“Now who sounds insane?” Angelica laughed and clapped her hands.
Delilah stared at Joanna with widening eyes that seemed to glow in the semi-gloom of the room. “Get out,” she husked, ripping her hands back. She screamed, “Get. Out!”
Joanna anchored her hands on the woman’s shoulders and softened her voice. “Lilette. S'il vous plaît. I know it does not make sense. I have given you so much of myself. My Marjolaine. These are not things I would speak to someone I ever intended to harm in the finish. None of us meant you harm.”
Footsteps thundered through the house, and Delilah did not answer. Tears began to fall freely from the woman’s Fae eyes as she wrapped her arms around herself.
Then Samuel was there, flinging the door open and standing in his night shift with a pistol in hand.
Angelica lifted her hand to wave. “Oh, hello, Sam darling. We were just having a family meeting. She did not take terribly well to the fact that you’ve been entirely dishonest.”
“My… Lady….” Samuel’s voice seemed to struggle to pass his lips. “What did you tell her?”
Joanna answered him softly, “I did not want her to scare Lilette, Samuel. I told her the truth, but she is not… Well, it sounds like utter madness, doesn’t it? She’s in shock.”
Her gaze flitted back to Delilah, and she heard the soft clatter of metal falling on wood and the heaviness of Samuel’s footsteps as he approached the bedside.
“Could
you both, just… give us a moment, m’Ladies.” The warden’s shadow fell over the bed, and Joanna straightened to give him access to his belle. “Delilah Flowers….” he said gently.
“Don’t….” the woman whispered.
Angelica tsked. “Well, I suppose the fun had to come to an end sooner than later.” Her music pitched sharply, threatening mischief; though it elided into all the gentleness of a mother. “Look at me, pet. Look, and I shall leave. It’s a game.”
Delilah’s gaze drifted over Joanna’s shoulder, and even without looking behind her, the French queen could read what the dawning horror in the girl’s expression meant. At her back she heard a growl, low and feral, and then Delilah screamed… and screamed.
Her friend’s eyes rolled back and Delilah Flowers went limp in Joanna’s arms.
Samuel wrapped his own around the girl, and Joanna flung herself off the bed as Angelica laughed. The queen’s eyes had already faded to a deceivingly soft brown, but her fangs were yet distended as she covered her lips.
“Well, do have a good night,” Angelica offered.
She had not made it a step out the door before Joanna followed, her own music soaring wildly.
Chapter 25
“How dare you!” Joanna’s voice was husky as she followed the queen into the hall, and she reached out to take a hold of Angelica’s arm. “Non, Angelica. Non. You will stay. You will wait for Li —”
Suddenly, she was on the ground, her vision white and her face lit with fire.
She tasted blood, could feel the heat of it rolling down her nose and over her upper lip, and she could not think of what had just happened. Her hand tried to move to her face, only for her to find that Angelica held her fast.
Dazed, Joanna lifted her gaze to Angelica, where the woman’s eyes burned red like fresh blood as she examined the ring on the Condesa’s finger.
Joanna’s fingers jumped closed into a tight fist, and she pulled back against Angelica’s hold. The queen did not relinquish her grip, but instead crouched down before Joanna to touch her free hand almost too gently to her chin.
The red stare lowered and so did her touch, then Joanna felt the coolness of the queen’s fingers curling against the skin of her throat; beneath Marjolaine’s —
She tore back her hand to no avail, and grabbed at Angelica’s wrist. “Non! S'il vous —”
The ribbon tightened around Joanna’s neck and then it snapped free and into Angelica’s possession.
Angelica released her, walking rapidly down the hall and trotting down the stairs. Crying out, the French queen followed, but by the time she reached Angelica, the woman already stood by the fireplace.
“Do you think me unkind, Joanna?” Angelica asked, dangling the ribbon over the crackling flames. “I am. But I have never been dishonest. Not like Lian. Not like Dorian. Not like you.”
“Angelica, please. S'il vous plaît.” The tears were threatening a rise. “It is Marjolaine’s ribbon. It is all I have of my little girl. Please. Please give it back. I am so sorry.” Her hands folded before her face and she chanced a step forward.
Angelica lowered her hand, and the fraying ends of the ribbon began to curl in the heat.
“Angelica… I am begging you.”
“Is that begging?” Angelica tilted her head. “Your daughter is dead. She doesn’t exist anymore. Does a scrap of fabric make her any more real now than that pretty gold ring makes your marriage to Dorian real?”
The queen in red extended her opposite hand. “He does not love you. You think we cannot hear that bond he made? Something half-formed like an errant thought. If he loved you he would not have hesitated to seal your claim as well as his own. In fifty years when this marriage is done, you will be in your basement again, and Dorian will go back to writing names on paper and forget those nights you squealed in his arms.”
“Why? Why does it matter? Please. Marjolaine’s ribbon. Please.”
“Give me the ring. One sham for another, froggie.”
Joanna’s fingers closed around the ring. It was only a ring.
With this ring I thee wed.
He had not promised to be there to catch her. She was the one to break their arrangement for her selfishness.
With all my worldly goods, I thee endow.
There were other rings. Other rings that would have as much meaning to their promise as the one she wore. It had only been meant to last her fifty years in her eternity.
With my body I thee worship.
He said she was his. He never promised to be hers.
“Hurry up, Froggie. I haven’t all night —”
“Prends le!” Joanna cried out, tearing the ring from her finger to press it down into Angelica’s palm. Her fingers only barely brushed the threads of the ribbon before the other queen hurled it into the flames. A hoarse screech erupted from Joanna’s throat, and she barely heard Angelica passing her by as she pried the fire grate out of the way.
The flames snapped at her, and in their burn, she felt the fires from decades ago. Sobbing, Joanna reached as deep into the fire as she could but as the flames scorched her skin she felt a familiar, sick feeling wending its way up her throat.
Marjolaine’s ribbon was charred and black, falling apart across the logs.
Falling apart like the fragility of the hope she had clung to on the thin thread that bound her to her husband.
Where he stood on the precipice above her, his comfort felt far away.
Chapter 26
He should never have let her be removed from his protection.
It was the single, consuming thought that filled Dorian Vaughn’s mind and weighed his music as he guided his wife into the shadows of their carriage. It rumbled forward, and his Condesa remained tucked against the window as Redmond Manor sunk away behind them.
Their journey was accomplished in near total silence as they made their way to his estate. It had been as much for his need to control the fury and frustration that warred in his soul as for Joanna’s seeming preference to keep her peace.
He couldn’t blame her, really. It had only been the stony discipline of an Elder that had preserved any semblance of a man’s control over his beast when he had first arrived at Lian’s residence in the pre-dawn hours. It had not helped that the air and Joanna’s body had been laced with the scent of his wife’s blood — or that her music had been singing an elegy of mourning along their bond that had lifted the hairs of his neck for the power of its lament.
He would almost rather have found her yet singing the shrieks and starts that had first ripped across the coven’s symphony and disturbed his hunt with their Arch Lord. He had never had less patience for the need to drive the horses carefully than in the half hour it had taken to cover the distance to the source of the woman’s distress.
His music flowed darker.
That Angelica had dared, dared to lay a hand on Joanna while she was under his protection — much less target a mortal their Sovereign had likewise covered, was telling of his sister’s unstable state.
He let his gaze rest on his wife, searching over her person as if it might reveal the damage that had been done. Despite the lightening of the dawn beyond the carriage windows, its heavy black curtains had been drawn against its light. He only had his preternatural sight and the dimmer glow of the spill of the carriage lamps through the cloth to make out her person.
She had washed the blood from her wrist and face and changed into a red day dress. The evidence remained otherwise, mingled with her scent and in the locks of curls that had fallen out of her braid. Her head rested against the window, and Joanna kept her eyes closed, still singing quietly of a loss she had not shared.
“You are quiet, my lady,” he said into the gloom. “We may remain so, if it is your wish. I would not impose on your recovery though it is my wish to see to your comfort.”
“I burned my hands in the fireplace.” Her fingers stretched out in her lap; the skin pristine and empty.
Empty.
H
e searched her fingers, but her voice dragged his focus back to her face.
“Marjolaine’s ribbon is gone. I tried to recover it, but I am yet too much a coward for fire.” Joanna’s eyes opened. She did not look his way. “And my ring. Je suis tellement désolée, Dorian. I was bolder than I should have been. It is my own fault for their loss.”
His eyes fell to her hands again and the nakedness of the digit that had worn the seal of his claim — the claim made before mortals, then lifted to the clean line of her throat. Empathy warred with rage and regret in a brief storm that rent his music, and it was a few moments before he trusted himself to speak.
“I am sorry for the loss of your ribbon, Cherie,” he managed quietly. “And for your pain. It is no more your fault now, than it was your fault that Angelica has tormented you since the moment of your arrival.” His voice grew colder, despite his attempt to shelter her from his anger. “I had hoped your removal from the castle would spare you her fangs. It is I who am sorry for failing you.”
He did not speak to the ring.
“Non,” she said, and her music slurred into a lower octave, quieting. “You have kept every promise. You should not apologize. She hurt me, and I knew as I have known that if I leave her be and endure, it is all she will do. I followed her into the hall. I grabbed her arm to keep her until Lian could arrive.”
Her hand lifted to press against her face and a sound like a sniff escaped her, but there were no tears when she removed her palm to her lap. “It was only fabric. It would not have lasted another decade or two for how I handled it. And the ring.”
She quieted again, her music quivering, and her arms wrapped around herself. For a moment, she seemed more the fledgling he had pulled from the shadows than his Condesa, but she finally turned to look at him.
“I am not a child. I knew how to please and be pleased without surrendering my heart. I still know.”
Dorian stilled in place at her words, the prickle of dark premonition layering tension into his frame.