Battles of Salt and Sighs (Rise of the Death Fae Book 1)

by Val Saintcrowe

  “No one has worn such voluminous skirts in five years in the capital, my dear,” said her aunt. “Your wardrobe is hopelessly out of date. My nieces will not be the laughingstock of the aristocracy.”

  And then Onivia had looked. She had gazed out windows and observed women on the street or getting in and out of chariots, and she had realized that her aunt was right, that all of them wore slimmer skirts, without petticoats beneath, skirts that were much easier to move in and sit in, that showed off tantalizing hints of the shapes of their legs beneath, that did not make a woman’s form look like a bell.

  She was hotly embarrassed.

  At the first dinner they all attended with her aunt, there was gentle discussion of her accent and of Magdalia’s, of the provincial way she pronounced her vowels.

  Soon enough, she trained herself to adopt the clipped, slightly harsher pronunciation favored by speakers in the capital. Magdalia’s accent faded as well, in time, but seemingly without any intention upon Magdalia’s part, because her sister was paying no attention to fashion or blending in, so consumed was she with the study of magic.

  Magdalia had never had anything to occupy her before, and she’d never been good at anything, but she took to the idea of being special and Favored rather easily, not that Onivia should have been surprised. Her sister was occupied with her magister all day long, and she was soon gallivanting about the house, making plants bloom in pots and healing the scrapes and cuts of everyone in the household, even the servants.

  Her sister’s temperament was better when she was occupied. She was less likely to rant and complain about various slights and discomforts.

  But Onivia felt a bit lost, for she had been sent here because of Magdalia, and her sister didn’t need her.

  Her aunt seemed to notice this, and she spoke to Onivia about attending her own tutoring. Onivia went to a woman’s house with other girls her age and learned about the etiquette required in pouring tea for guests and about how to converse cordially on polite subjects. She learned the way to flick her fan in front of her face if she wanted to appear alluring and mysterious to strangers. She learned various new dances that they did not do in the country, scandalous dances that required men and women to stand very close and for men to place their hands on women’s waists or backs as they whirled them about the room.

  And when this was done, she was permitted to indulge herself in various womanly pursuits. Her aunt suggested she take up drawing or painting or music or embroidery. But Onivia preferred to learn languages, and so her aunt sent her first to a tutor to learn the ancient language of Gressan and then—when Onivia begged for something a bit more practical—to learn Emmessian.

  “It’s not fashionable to speak Emmessian, not since we are at war with them,” said her aunt. “But we are always and forever at war with Emmessia, and that war is sometimes peppered with decades of peace if the csaer and the Emmessian emperor get it in their heads to get along and cooperate. In which case, knowing Emmessian will be quite fashionable again.”

  After this, Onivia began to seek out information herself. She would go to the library in the midst of the capital, where they had books in all sorts of languages, written by people conquered by the Vostrian Empire, and she would attempt to teach herself other languages. She even found a book in the lost language of the fae, something that had been stamped out years ago because of the fear the cunning, evil fae would use it against their humans who guarded against their villainy.

  The fae language was strange, unlike any of the human languages she’d read. It had other characters in it, letters she’d never seen before, and that she could not pronounce. And she could not determine its grammar. It puzzled her, but she found it intriguing and beautiful nonetheless.

  Even though Onivia was supposed to use her knowledge of languages to translate ancient poetry, she found herself reading other sorts of things instead, like preserved political tracts arguing against imperial expansion or accounts of imperial legatem as they conquered various aspects of the empire.

  Long ago, it seemed, this land was all fractured, many different kingdoms, all with their own languages and folklore and even religions. There were many who seemed to have worshiped gods, and they had odd origin stories of the gods creating humans out of water or grass.

  But the empire was strong, and it had prevailed. It had brought roads and civilization to the land. Emmessia had done so as well, because the two nations had always been competing in their expansion, fighting one another for various bits of land here and there.

  She had lost herself to language and learning, and she’d been content.

  And then, of course, there had been Albus.

  She’d met him at one of the dances that she’d begun attending when she was seventeen, and she’d officially debuted into society, a woman of marriageable age. Then she’d had time to practice all that etiquette she’d learned, all those dances she’d learned.

  But it was only Albus who’d ever seemed interested in any of the other things she’d learned, or who could converse fluently with her in other languages. He knew more languages than her, even. He said that he always took the time to learn a language before he was sent to invade. It was better to conduct negotiations in the native language of the people. Not that there were a lot of negotiations, because the empire tended to swoop in and crush any opposition, but just after a crushing defeat was a time that people needed soothing, and knowing their language tended to accomplish that.

  Naxus Albus.

  Younger brother to a senator. Dashing, with his brown hair and brown eyes and dimpled chin. Mouth full of straight, white teeth, which were on display when he smiled, and he was often smiling. Older than her. He had been twenty-three, and she had been seventeen.

  It wasn’t an insurmountable age difference. Men often took wives quite a bit younger than themselves. It was nothing compared to the age difference between her and the man she’d actually married.

  Their first meeting hadn’t been very memorable, she didn’t think, at least it couldn’t have been for him, because she had been overtaken by girlish infatuation at the sight of him, and when he’d asked for her to dance, she’d barely managed to make her mouth work to get out an affirmative.

  During the dance itself, he made polite conversation about the weather and the wine punch, and she had mostly nodded and agreed and tried to make herself think of witty things to say. She’d been too dazzled by him to manage it, however.

  No, it was later that she thought she first made an impression on him, when he came upon her in the library. She was squinting, turning her head sideways to attempt to read the spine of a book on a shelf, because it was very old and faded and also written in another language besides.

  “Dominissa Cyria?” came a voice, interrupting her. If she’d been in the company of her sister, she’d have been Prima Dominissa Cyria. Magdalia would be Secunda Dominissa Cyria. Such were the formal ways of address, and he was, of course, the pinnacle of propriety.

  She looked up. “Legatus Naxus.”

  “Oh, you remember me?” He flashed her that white-toothed smile of his. “You danced with everyone in the room that night. I assumed that I would have faded into obscurity in your mind.”

  “Oh, no, of course not.” Then she flushed, for that pronunciation had laid affections bare to him, surely, and she was mortified.

  “I must admit that I would not expect to see a girl of your age in the library in the middle of the afternoon.”

  “Oh, I do have a chaperone…” She looked about. “Somewhere.” Her maid could not truly be termed a chaperone, perhaps, and since she’d left the girl to sit on the steps of the library and talk to the flower seller that set up there, who had become her maid’s friend since she was always accompanying Onivia to the library, the maid wasn’t doing a lot of chaperoning at the moment.

  But it was the library. It was a public place, and there was little danger here.

  The unrest in the city was growing, of course, and
it wasn’t likely safe at that point on the streets, but the incident with Magdalia and Cassus and the revolutionaries was nearly a year off at that point.

  His smile widened. “Oh, don’t worry. I am not here to catch you out. I am instead looking for books on language.”

  “Truly?” She beamed. “It is one of my favorite subjects. I can speak and write Gressan and Emmessian. I have a bit of ability to translate a few other languages, but I’m not yet proficient enough to converse in them.”

  “What an accomplished young lady you are,” he said, but he said it in Emmessian.

  She laughed, delighted. “You are too kind, sirra,” she replied in Emmessian, using the proper form of address for an Emmessian gentleman.

  “And you are quite well-versed in the social strata of the culture in Emmessia, I see.” He had switched to ancient Gressan.

  “I don’t know about well-versed,” she responded in Gressan, a bit haltingly, because it was no longer spoken aloud anywhere, and so it was difficult to know the pronunciations precisely. “But I have made a bit of study. My aunt says we could be at peace with Emmessia at the drop of a pin, and I am prepared for such a thing.”

  “Ah, peace with those dogs?” He shook his head, and he was speaking Vostrian again. “I have been killing them my whole life, dominissa, and they have been trying to kill me. I don’t know if I could bear it.”

  “Your whole life? Surely not. Were you given the post of legatus when you were still crawling?”

  He chuckled. “Nearly that, truly. I was young. I am still considered young for the post, but my record stands for itself.” He stepped closer, pulling the book she had been considering out of the shelf. “Is it this book you were scrutinizing?”

  She nodded. “Yes, that.”

  He turned it over, examining the spine, opening it, and then he handed it over to her. “I will not take up any more of your time, dominissa, but I do wonder if you will be in attendance at the dance and dinner this weekend held at the Domus Cadmus?”

  “I do think my aunt has planned for us to attend.”

  “Excellent. If no one has spoken for your first dance?”

  She flushed again, this time in pleasure. “Of course not.”

  “Then, if I may?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, and she gazed at him in adoration. He was perfect.

  What would have happened if that information about his brother hadn’t come to light? What would have happened if her aunt hadn’t interfered? What would have happened if she had married him?

  Then, the fae could not have attacked her wedding and they could not have taken Magdalia.

  But they would have taken Magdalia anyway. Onivia would have been far off, on the Villa Naxa on Prima Island, because no one was left in the capital, and Albus was off fighting. By now, she might have one of his children, or at least be with child, Albus’s seed growing within her, making her belly swell.

  No, she would be useless to Magdalia if that had all come to pass. The fae would have swooped in and stolen her sister away and killed her father and brothers, and Onivia would not have even been there. By the time she had discovered it even happened, Magdalia would have been in the hands of the Croith.

  Onivia would have no chance of getting to her if she owed her allegiance to her own child. Or worst of all, she could have died in childbirth, like her mother, like she had always feared. Even if she had not been with child, her reputation as Domina Naxa would mean that she could not go running off after her sister. She would have had to maintain propriety.

  But there was no semblance of propriety about her now.

  No, all of that, all of the glittering promise of the capital, years ago, when she had thought herself so grown up and when she had been so knowledgeable about her silly pursuits, all of it was gone.

  The capital was not safe. Fortune save them, the capital was overrun.

  And she herself, well, she was a cracked and weakened vessel, about to give herself over entirely to the pleasure of some fae centurion.

  What would Albus think of her now?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AFTER DINNER THAT night, Larent brought a bottle of wine back with them and he put it on the side table next to the couch where she usually slept. He nodded at it and told her to drink.

  Onivia considered refusing, because she didn’t like being ordered around. But she knew that the fact he was offering her alcohol meant they were about to do the exploring he’d spoken of, and she decided it might be better to be a little impaired for that.

  So, she seized the bottle and upended it into her mouth.

  Larent stopped her. “Enough,” he said, taking it from her, drinking deeply from it, and then setting it down again. He was standing over her.

  She was seated on the couch. The wine was going to her head. She felt a little dizzy, a little dim. It was welcome.

  He sat down next to her, but he didn’t look at her.

  For some time, neither spoke. The wine worked its way through her and she relaxed into the pillows on the couch, closing her eyes.

  He cleared his throat.

  She opened her eyes.

  “I’m going to touch you now,” he said. “I don’t know why I’m delaying.”

  She tensed. “Fine.”

  He screwed up his face, turning towards her.

  She wondered if he wanted her to sit up. She decided she didn’t care and lay there, unmoving. She decided not to even look at him, and she picked a spot on the wall above his head to focus on. She blinked at it, wine coursing through her, feeling loose, free of the tight anxiety that had hitherto gripped her about this.

  The wine had been a gift from Fortune. Thank Fortune for the wine indeed.

  His hand suddenly closed over one of her breasts.

  It stunned her, and she lost focus on the spot on the wall, lost focus on everything except the sensation. She stopped breathing.

  No one had ever touched her here, not purposefully. She’d touched herself there—oddly, she’d done it right here on this couch, in the dead of night. She would have thought that she was far too gone to pleasure herself in this place, but somehow, in the darkness, it only seemed like comfort, like one shred of normalcy, and she would take whatever pleasure she could. No one knew about it, anyway, so it was her secret. She could pretend it had never happened.

  He drew in a breath and then put his other hand on her other breast.

  She let out all the air in her lungs in a noisy whoosh.

  He was staring at her, and she was looking back. His hands there were gentle, just cupping her. He gave them both an experimental squeeze.

  And that was when she remembered it wasn’t true that they’d never been touched, because when she’d been sorted, to… to give to him, the fae militem had squeezed her here, and why had she forgotten that?

  She felt like crying, and she reached over, blindly, for the wine bottle.

  “Careful.” He was not touching her anymore. He was reaching over to stop the bottle from toppling.

  She put both hands on it and brought the bottle in to her chest. Clutching it, she took another long, deep drink.

  “Did I hurt you?” His voice was soft.

  She shook her head. She set the wine bottle back down.

  “But you didn’t enjoy that?”

  “I can’t enjoy—”

  “You can.”

  “But I don’t want to do this.”

  “Your physical body does not care about that, domina.” He reached up to begin working at the buttons of her dress.

  She shut her eyes again, and she didn’t open them, even when she felt the air of the room on her uncovered skin. He stuck a finger underneath her corset, but not in any attempt to caress her, only to hold it in place as he undid the first set of hook-and-eye catches.

  This accomplished, he continued, opening the corset from top to bottom.

  She kept her eyes closed.

  When he had the garment open, he parted it, exposing her breasts and be
lly to the air and to his gaze.

  Still, she kept her eyes closed. The wine was churning a bit in her stomach now. Perhaps drinking more of it had been a bad idea.

  He sighed.

  She waited.

  Nothing.

  Finally, she opened her eyes. “Well?”

  He was looking at her breasts, not at her, and the expression on his face was a determined mask.

  “Is there something wrong?”

  “Perhaps you’re not… I’ve heard it said that some women are not particularly sensitive here. My own experience precludes this, but if you have some… knowledge of your own body, perhaps we could just skip this part.”

  Was he asking her if she touched herself? She gaped at him. “It’s none of your business if I have… knowledge.”

  He sighed again.

  “I don’t see why we’re doing this, anyway.”

  “Yes, I’m beginning to wonder that myself.”

  “Why did you want to do it?” She glared at him. “Are you enjoying this?”

  “Not exactly, no. This is… confusing.” He sniffed. “I’m doing this for you.”

  “I don’t want you to—”

  He touched her breast again, his hand on her bare skin. He weighed it in his hand, and then his thumb curved up and brushed her nipple.

  The sensation went through her like cannon fire.

  She gasped.

  “Well, then,” he said. “Sensitive.”

  Her nipple puckered against her flesh and they both looked at it.

  He closed his thumb and forefinger around it—too gentle to rightly be termed a pinch, more a fluttering pluck.

  She couldn’t suppress another noise.

  “How much pressure do you like?” His voice was husky now.

  She bit down on her bottom lip.

  “Can I do it harder?”

  She nodded.

  He did. This was a pinch, but it wasn’t very forceful either. “That’s all right? Can you take it harder than that?” He demonstrated.

  She winced.

  He let go.

  The after-sensation of the pinch was far more gratifying than she would have guessed. She made another noise.