“You would be the Queen of a New World, a world without death.”
I couldn’t speak. He had finally revealed everything and it was too much.
I shook my head, unable to come to a conclusion. There were no clear thoughts for my King to read, there were only flashes of images. All the wars and the deaths that could be prevented, my mother and my dead daughter—they could have lived. With one decision I could prevent the death of my loved ones.
Immortality.
I glanced down at my sister kneeling beside me now, looking like a creature I didn’t recognize, mesmerized by this mighty sangsue.
“I love you, Mary,” the King said, trying to guide my thoughts with his. “And I have been waiting for you for hundreds of years—”
“I love you!” John cried out behind me.
I pulled Allegra closer, her flesh warm against mine, every part of her alive and real and desperately vulnerable. But I didn’t want her to turn into one of those phantom children who appeared and disappeared at the King’s bidding, their bodies thin and emaciated, their faces forever trapped in a sorrowful expression. I wanted this child to have joy and love and to be able to choose her own master, whether it be husband or God or some other thing I couldn’t imagine.
Loss of freedom was the price for this kingdom without death. And it was too great a price.
“You are not my King.” I lifted my chin, no longer afraid to look upon his dark beauty. “You may kill me, on this day or another, but you will never command my heart or take this child. Not while I am alive.”
“Now!” Hannah cried behind me. The crowd she had brought with her let out a wild battle cry, for they had been drawing nearer and nearer until they were all around us. There were more of them than I realized. They began to crawl out of the boats onto the shore and out of the nearby buildings, brandishing clubs and long knives and weapons made of human bone.
Byron lifted me from my kneeling position, and began to drag me away. We sheltered the child between us and in our haste to get away I lost sight of my sister. Weapons swung in the shadowed streets, reflecting dim sunlight, striking gray sangsue flesh and spraying a mist of dark blood in the air. Thuds and screams began to echo around us as human and sangsue and vache all began to fight one another.
“Run, Mary!” John cried from somewhere in the crowded street behind me. I stopped to search for him, but all I could see were arms flailing and heads ducking and blades cutting. Clouds of sangsue ash mixed with the unending spray of blood—until the air hung thick and nauseating. I covered Allegra’s mouth and nose with her blanket, not wanting her to inhale the noxious air.
“You may not leave me!” the King bellowed, still standing tall despite the melee that sought to engulf him. “It is near mid-day and your answer will decide your destiny!”
He remained in place, protected by the children, who held hands and formed a circle around him, a sentinel of guards that even Hannah’s followers were loathe to strike. These were their own children, stolen from the mountain villages. Some had been missing for mere days and some for centuries, yet they all carried the visage of the local mountain folk. Here a brow, there a smile, over there the color of yellow hair or violet eyes: all reminders of their ancestors.
It is unnatural to strike down your own children.
Only the cruelest of warriors have learned this truth and used it against their enemies.
While Hannah’s army paused, bewildered and uncertain, the King’s fiercest henchmen strode boldly into position. With oily skin and thick muscles and black teeth, they formed yet another circle around the King, swelling over the nearest dock and along the riverbank. They clawed and bit and ripped the flesh of their attackers. Then they did something so horrible, I didn’t believe it possible—they ripped their own flesh and poured their own blood into their victims’ mouths, drawing their prey into their dark kingdom.
The first feed, given unwillingly.
Hannah’s army was being turned into sangsue, one by one.
I gasped.
“To the boat,” Byron said.
We skirted the fighting crowds as best as we could, me swinging the knife I had tucked in my boot, him bashing skulls with the butt of his rifle. At one point, I thought we had broken free. We would make it to freedom.
Then I stumbled past a sangsue, prone on the ground and almost hidden. His clawed hands latched out, grasped onto my ankles, and I couldn’t run. It was like being trapped in a swamp, every move felt like I was knee deep in mud. My knees threatened to give way, I turned to see his sangsue teeth ready to clamp down on my leg and a loud cry rose from my chest, my body twisting, my knife swinging low. It would only take one bite and I’d be lost forever.
My life became a fleeting rush of images—
The home I would never see again—
The children I would never give birth to—
The true love I would never experience—
And then, I heard the firing of a gun, saw the exploding face of the sangsue who held me, watched as the creature’s body turned to ash. All while a familiar voice rang out from across the mass of warring bodies—
“Mary, run!”
John stood far away, right arm stretched taut, that dueling pistol aimed at the dying beast, his gaze lifted to mine, a mixture of both sadness and joy in his eyes.
He had saved me. He had used his only bone-and-iron bullet for me.
Byron’s arm circled my waist and he pulled me away, down the dock, then down into a rocking, bobbing boat. A moment, not even a heartbeat later, and we were set adrift, caught up in the Rhone’s current.
I saw the King focus his gaze on John, then back at me. The King grinned, then used inhuman strength to push the children and his henchmen aside, swiping humans and sending them tumbling away like toys.
No.
I shook my head.
Please, no.
He headed toward John, both of them too far away for me to do anything. He grabbed John by the shoulder and nothing could stop him, not all the angels in heaven or all the demons in hell. Only me.
I was the only one who could save him.
The King bent low, widening his jaws and swiveling both his body and John’s so they were able to look full upon me one last time.
“No,” I said, standing in the boat.
“Mary, stop!” Byron cried. He tried to pull me down, to put his hand over my mouth. But would that have mattered? Didn’t the King know how to read my thoughts? Couldn’t I do this in the silence of my own mind? Yet I didn’t. I needed this to be a public declaration.
“Stop!” I cried. And in that instant, I allowed all those images of the King, my King, to come flooding back into my mind. How he said he had waited for centuries for me, and how my heart had quickened at that declaration. I needed to give him a gift, something sweet and precious.
I lowered my head and gave Allegra a savage kiss, one that drew blood and made her cry, before flinging her into Byron’s arms. I faced the dock, the babe’s blood on my lips and in my mouth and I dove into the water, careful not to wash the blood away. With strong strokes, I swam to the river’s edge and pulled myself up, only one thing on my mind.
The King.
The savage, brutal beauty of him.
The promise of a mortal eternity together, images of a year-long wedding supper where we would dine on blood this sweet.
I ran to him, pushing people and sangsue aside, leaping over bodies and weaving amongst the throng, unsure whether I should kneel at his feet or fall into his arms, but when I got there he made the decision for me.
He tossed John aside, then threw his own arms open wide for me.
I grinned, more than ready for his kiss.
He wrapped me hungrily in his embrace, his cape shielding me from the rest of the world, from the sun and the moon and every created thing, both high and low. His lips were on mine, his body pressed against me and I could feel him sigh into me, his life flowing into mine, making me more than I was.
His tongue swept my lips and I opened my mouth, offering him the babe’s blood inside—
And more.
For one moment, the kiss was everything, heaven, hell, a burning fire that would never be quenched and I almost regretted what I had done for I felt the certainty of his love, more than any love I’d ever known—it left me cold knowing what would happen next.
He found it, hidden beneath my tongue, and before he could pull away, I shoved it into his mouth and down his throat.
A kiss of death.
I had bitten the bone cross off the chain that draped around baby Allegra’s neck; in the process, her blood had filled my mouth and I had carried it, along with the cross—
And now that cross lodged in the King’s throat.
He coughed, a trickle of blood oozing from the corner of his lip, and one hand pushed me away from him. His eyes widened as he stared at me, perhaps wondering how I’d kept this horrid thing secret from him.
“I thought only of you,” I confessed in a low whisper. “I pushed every other thought aside and thought only of you. My beloved.”
All around us, reality seemed to waver, as if the stars and sun couldn’t bear what was going to happen next.
A tiny hole began to form at the base of his throat and his mighty warriors turned, as one, to gaze back at him. The color of his lips faded from red to white to gray and when he opened his mouth to speak, all that came out was a thick plume of ash.
Cries began to circle around us, voices like birds that flew through the air, wings brushing our skin, beaks sharp as weapons.
“My King!”
“What has she done to you?”
“My Lord—”
“My god—”
Yet, their words couldn’t stop what was happening. There was no cure for this—for the human bone carved in the likeness of my true King, my thorn-crowned savior, my One True God.
The sangsue King stumbled, still clutching his throat, and all around us, his army stumbled too, knee to the ground, head to the heavens.
“What is happening?” they cried in one voice, their gray skin losing its glisten and turning dull.
“You are dying,” I said, wishing there had been another way. “You should have let me go,” I told him fighting the tears that exposed the emotion in my heart. “I might have come back to you one day, but not like this. Not when you threatened those I love.” My words faltered at the end. “Though, I did want to see your kingdom,” I confessed.
I was a woman torn between two worlds and would always be, claimed by both light and darkness, hungry for both. Perhaps he’d given me a taste of his own blood in our kiss. I would never know. He wouldn’t be here to tell me.
I sank to my knees beside him, taking his head in my hands. It was hard to distinguish his features now, the color of his skin had darkened and his beauty was gone. He was a beast, only pretending to be human, and yet I still loved him.
“Forgive me,” I said.
He shuddered, dust and ash molting off his fingers and feet, his eyes closing, his head lowering into my lap. I rested my hand on his forehead, wondering what great and horrible secrets rested there, centuries of torment and pain, knowing all of it would be lost soon.
I couldn’t watch.
I closed my eyes too.
The wind rose and sighed around me, flowing cold down from the mountains. It circled me, just like the sangsue voices had a few moments earlier, and I felt it grow coarse, knowing it now carried ash and bits of bone in its wake. It flowed over me, scratching my skin, leaving thin bloody stripes behind where my flesh had been scuffed raw.
He was gone and yet I couldn’t bear to open my eyes.
“Mary?”
I refused to look toward the human voices that called me. Were these my kindred? I no longer understood my place in this world.
“Mother?”
A single plaintive voice rose above the others—for there were many others and I’d been blocking them all out, but now they rose in a loud crescendo, a violent crashing of discordant music.
I was afraid to look.
A tiny hand took mine.
“Mother? Are you all right?”
My eyes opened, though I didn’t want to see. Clouds of black ash hung in the air, making faces and shapes unfamiliar. There were oily stains on the ground, all that was left of the sangsue army. Hordes of people wandered about, looking lost, as if unsure how they’d gotten here—slaves who’d been set free. I saw Elsie in their midst, absently scratching the bites on her arms as if she didn’t know how they had gotten there or what had bitten her.
My King was gone, of course. At first, there was nothing more than a pile of fine, dark ash in my lap that stirred and rose as I glanced down. And then, every bit of him was gone.
Except for one.
The child with red-gold hair and violet eyes gazed down upon me, a frightened look on her face. She no longer looked like a wraith with sunken cheeks or emaciated flesh. She had been restored.
She should have been Hannah’s age, older than me, wizened with age and wrinkled.
Instead, she was still a child and she knelt beside me, looking as though she longed to crawl into my lap but was unsure.
“Mother?” she asked again, the delicate lines of her face catching a stray beam of sunlight that broke through. She blinked, raising her hand to shield her eyes from the sun, but her skin didn’t hiss or steam. Whatever she was, ghost or human, she wasn’t a sangsue. Maybe the King had been telling me the truth. Maybe he had never claimed these children as part of his kingdom. He had kept them alive, somehow, perhaps hoping that one day they could be restored.
Like she was now.
I smiled and opened my arms wide.
Inviting her in.
Nineteen
I barely remember the journey home. The tossing of the seas, the jostle of the carriage rides, the fragrance of the open fields and the oil stench of the cities—it all blurs in my mind. I only remember being cold, always cold. I fear I will never be warm again, not since he has gone.
Once I saw the cobbled streets and spires of London, I almost felt relief. After all, I was finally home. Surely, now I would be myself again. I would regain control of my emotions, I would be able to make plans and visit friends and go to tea. My father would forgive me for running off with Percy—
But there were so many lies upon our arrival. Furtive glances we would cast upon one another whenever one of us got halfway into a sentence, realizing we simply cannot speak of what had happened.
My first lie was that Percy and I had gotten married, and that the babe Allegra was mine.
This one was believed. There were gifts and crying, for my beloved husband was dead. I said that he had drowned in the turbulent Lake Geneva one stormy afternoon, sailing alone when he had been warned not to go. It was easy for me to cry whenever I told that story, for I remembered that it was my own blade that had killed him.
After the first round of lies, there came an endless parade of doctors. I knew there was hope for me. My clouds would clear and I already had purpose, a reason for going on. Claire, however, would never be the same. She would stand before a window and stare outside, mumbling to herself, fingers scratching at the glass as if it were a concept too advanced for her to understand. I never left her alone with Allegra. Ever. There were always nurses or nannies if I had to go out, and locked doors behind which Claire resided.
It was horrible and I couldn’t bear her affliction, so I was glad when my father and stepmother finally decided to care for Claire in their home. It was better than sending her to an asylum, which was what all the doctors wanted.
Byron returned with our company, though we never told anyone who he really was and no one suspected him. I worried that Claire would give his secret away and he would be thrown back into exile, but she never spoke to him. She was afraid of him and cowered whenever he came into the room, saying things like, unclean or vermin or usurper, all things that made little sense
to anyone but us.
We told everyone that we found Byron by the side of the road and that he was a nobleman who had been badly injured during a carriage accident. Our story continued that John had done his best to mend this stranger—now called Lord Ruthven when in the company of others—although those attempts had been a poor substitute for true healing.
Byron adored his daughter, Allegra, and spent as much time with her as he could, something that occasionally caused gossip. Things like, “I can’t believe Mary allows that monster to touch her child,” or “She seems to have lost all sense after the death of her husband,” were overhead whenever people passed us on the street.
Byron and I would pass a conspiratorial grin to one another and, when she was old enough to understand, Allegra would chuckle along with us. She never once feared her true father. Rather, just like the sangsue children, she would trace his stitches lovingly, making up stories about them. She loved to make up stories.
Just like I do.
My healing didn’t come from doctors, though they tried with their sharp tools and bright lights, or from folk magic, though Hannah regularly sent me dark bottles filled with potions that were supposed to cleanse me. It didn’t come from love, though John pursued me in a sweet, winsome manner and I did eventually discover that I loved him, deeply and passionately. Enough to marry him, when the proper amount of time had passed.
But my healing came from somewhere else, somewhere unexpected. At least, unexpected by me.
It came through my writing.
Of course, I could never tell the true story of what had happened. Instead, I went back to my original story, the one I began back in that Swiss villa, when surrounded by my writing companions, on that night when we challenged one another to write a story filled with horror.
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