The smile vanished from his face, replaced by a look I knew far too well. He was disappointed in me. Clutching my fist in a hand the size of my skull, he shook his head.
“Sorry,” I mumbled and relaxed my arm. He dropped my fist. We faced each other in silence, the only sound coming from the forest around us.
Then, still silent, he efficiently began picking the splinters from my face. He made no effort to be gentle, which would have been out of character anyway. I gritted my teeth against the pain. Why was it these tiny, insignificant injuries often hurt more than sword hacks or ax blows?
He finished, wiped his bloody fingers on his cloak, then turned and walked away. I followed.
He was mad at me, but by tomorrow, he’d be over it. Little disrupted Andraste’s mischievous and generally jovial nature for long. Still, it bothered me that I was the cause of his current foul mood. Deep down, I craved his approval just as I did my adopted father’s. I’d never admit it to either of them of course. And they’d never believe it.
More to the point, I had to know how he’d found me. I’d used all the skills he’d trained into me to find a hiding place inside a hollow log far from any trail and yet he’d still discovered me. What had I done wrong?
Finally, I softly said, “Andre?”
He did not slow down, but an almost imperceptible nod gave me the courage to continue.
“Was it my scent, my trail, or my thoughts that you were able to track?”
Without looking back at me, he said, “All of them.”
“All of them?” I yelled.
Andraste stopped and faced me. There was a raw edge to his voice that I’d seldom heard before. “You are in training to guard the king. The king, Aella. The man, the human, who will rise to power upon his majority and rule all the humans in Ilan. You are the last Reaper who has a real task. The rest of us are simply marking time. Our wars are over, and we exist now only as symbols of the past.” He didn’t sound bitter, only sad and tired.
He looked down from his great height and gave me a glare that might’ve dissolved a mortal where she stood. “You are supposed to be the youngest, fastest, and strongest of all the Reapers, the last of us born and thus the one who will outlive us all. And yet you did nothing to disguise your scent, nothing to throw me off the trail. You ran, and you hid. That’s how a child plays a game, Aella, not how a Reaper perfects her skills.”
I sniffed my underarms. Was my odor that strong? I didn’t smell anything, but then Andre’s sense of smell was Demon-like in its strength and precision. Anyway, who wants to guard some entitled, whining man-brat who gets offended by a girl’s normal odors? I certainly didn’t apply for the job. Maybe my smell will chase him away, make him choose someone else to guard him.
Andraste rolled his eyes. “It’s your hair, Aella.” He grabbed a strand and pulled it, hard. “It smells of musk and rain. When you run, the wind catches the scent and leaves a trail so clear a noseless child could sniff you out.”
“My hair?” I pulled a lock of it to my nose. He was right. How embarrassing.
Fortunately, we emerged from the forest into the clearing around the Castle Raggenborg before he could criticize me further. As we strode across the lawn toward the drawbridge, around the old pit traps built during the Thousand Year War, the kitchen bells began to toll.
Oh, crap. Dinner time. I hate dinner. Dinner is the current bane of my existence.
“Nobody hates dinner, Aella,” Andre sighed as if he’d read my thoughts. “Now go clean up, or at least do what passes for ‘cleaning up’ for you. I’ll expect you reasonably on time.”
I mumbled something that might’ve been yes sir but could’ve also been shug off. Either way, he ignored it and sauntered toward the Great Hall, where all the other Reapers would be gathering. Dinner was the only meal we ate together. Actually, dinner was the only meal we ate, and we probably didn’t even need to eat that. But it showed the humans that we were, superficially at least, just like them.
Missing dinner was considered extremely bad form, and for a warrior race, form is everything. Well, form and weaponry. But still, a Reaper’s word is her bond: If that wasn’t true and true every single time, then the humans would fear and hate us as much as they do the Demons. After all, Reapers, like Demons, are inhuman, practically invulnerable, and skilled in the arts of death. But you could tell a Demon on sight. Reapers, unless you saw us in action or with our armored spines exposed, looked just like humans. And nothing is more terrifying than a monster hiding in plain sight.
So, as utterly painful as it was, I would go to dinner because it was expected. But I would not like it. Nor would I pretend to like it. Which was fine because no one there would pretend to like me.
#
I climbed the stairs toward my quarters, all ninety-nine of them. Why couldn’t it be an even hundred? I wondered for the billionth time. I’m told my Reaper grandfather built this castle a thousand years ago: my grandfather, Gilicus the Grim, his two brothers (all true half-bloods, like me), and my great-great-great-great-grandmother (humans age faster than Reapers, remember?), that era’s Teller Witch. It took them fourteen days. And technically, he wasn’t really my grandfather but my adopted father’s father, but how could I not claim ancestry from a reaper known as “the Grim?”
Nothing in all of Ilan was as grand as Castle Raggenborg. It rose majestically into the sky as though the three brothers expected the Creator himself to pay a visit and didn’t want Him to make too much of a step down. At the north and south ends, regal towers looked out over the whole peninsula during times of war. Now, abandoned in peacetime, they provided ample nesting for thousands of the local birds.
Many of the Reapers had quarters in the barracks, but because of my special situation—my Teller Witch blood, my status as king’s-bodyguard-in-training, and the general suspicion with which everyone regarded me—I had private quarters. They were so private that no one but me even used the stairwell that led to them.
This part of the castle used to be a jail for captured Demons back when the Thousand Year War still raged. Demon prisoners were “read” by Reapers with telepathic powers or studied by trackers like Andre and then set loose to lead the Reapers to ambush sites and Demon hideouts. After the war ended, the cells held human prisoners: basically anyone who opposed the budding monarchy while the new king was in his infancy.
I’d visited the now-abandoned cells on occasion out of boredom or homework for Eldrid’s history lessons. They were more sad than scary after all this time; the scratches and bloodstains spoke of fear, not battle rage. Whatever the Demons had done, the Reapers had more than matched them in savagery. But it had been necessary, I knew. And it was something the humans could never, ever have done.
For the last twenty years or so, the Reapers had been assisting the humans in becoming a self-ruling society. Soon, we would be nothing but guards. The most cunning, lethal, and courageous guards imaginable, but still guards. And after that…only memories and legends.
I glanced out one of the stairwell windows and saw from the position of the sun that I was going to be late. I ran the rest of the way, past the door to my quarters, and straight to the roof. I lowered myself through the bars of the sky light (one advantage to being smaller), swung my body out, and flipped once in midair. I landed feet-first, with a bounce, on my fuzzy bed.
The pretty blonde girl standing over my clothes shrieked as I scared her.
“Aella!” she scolded. “Don’t do that!”
“Sorry,” I said and stepped down off the bed.
Vikki, the human assigned to make me presentable for social occasions—and, I suspected, serve as an example of how a well-behaved young lady was supposed to act), said, “You’re going to be impossibly late for dinner, you know.”
“I know,” I said, and I unceremoniously stripped off the now dirty and possibly smelly leather corset, careful not to let it get caught on my protruding ribs. There are no words to describe the feeling of relief after a snug
corset removal. It’s like re-experiencing breath for the first time. My lungs could fully expand, and there was room for all my other organs once again. “Yaaaah!” I cried with satisfaction. My voice echoed off the stone around me.
“You can certainly carry a tune,” Vikki said dryly, taking the corset with her thumb and one finger. She tossed it into the basket with my other dirty clothes. “I’ll step out while you…” And she was gone. Vikki knew the routine. With the exception of that incident in the woods so many years ago, no human has seen me disrobed, not even partially. And none ever will.
As I undressed the rest of the way, I discovered she’d arranged a bowl of clean water, a sponge, and a bottle with an atomizer. Then I quickly washed my pits. “And put on a lot of perfume,” she called from behind the door that only she used. “Okay,” I called back, uncomfortable with even a mere conversation with a human in this state of undress.
This was one of the stranger aspects of my future role as king’s bodyguard. In order to both fit in and understand the king’s daily life, I had a servant, just as he would. But I never thought of her that way. If anything, I felt like her servant. Always watched. Never alone. Apparently, during the war, Reapers had issues with the lower-caste humans, unable to truly comprehend their function. After all, a warrior race bred from rape by their greatest enemies couldn’t help but have a skewed world view. But the Reapers and the humans had been living together in reasonable peace for a long time now—well, most of us anyway—and we understood each other much better. Still, the Reapers in power were worried that old animosities might surface, so they gave me a lady in waiting.
She would have washed me herself, as others of her kind did for their human masters. But I couldn’t bear it. After my years as a Demon plaything, any sort of touch was unbearable. So she stood quietly, outside the door, while I did it myself.
I surveyed the mess that my quarters seemed to always be. There were my clothes strewn about my room. Some weapons lay on the floor; some hung on the walls. A dead flower drooped in a small, crystal vase, left there by Vikki on a previous visit. Little Gray, the mouse that occasionally visited me, had chewed through a parchment Eldrid gave me to memorize. I giggled as I thought of standing before him and reciting, “Nom-nom-nom, burp!”
“And what is so funny?” Vikki demanded through the door as I wiped dirt from my face.
“Nothing,” I said seriously.
“You will one day be the guardian of our king,” she said, peeking through the crack. She knew how long it took me to wash and redress. “You can’t afford to be tardy then. Assassins and rivals will find openings if you’re not there. We have waited so long for our king, a full-blooded human king. Should anything happen to him, there would be riots in the streets, looting and mayhem the likes of which Ilan has never seen! The streets would turn red with blood, the sun would go black, Demons would rule again…” She was still talking, but I was lost in another thought even with the amused smile on my face.
Our king. Did she mean her and me or her and the other humans? I didn’t want to ask because I truly didn’t want to know. I liked Vikki and her company and appreciated the care she took of me when so many others around me seemed cautious and afraid. Vikki was probably afraid too, but she did a good job of hiding it. “You sound like Adonis,” I said finally, interrupting one of her infamous monologues.
“Adonis is a great Reaper,” Vikki replied as she handed me a brush. “He understands what the world must become as he has guided us all to this juncture. I wish he could be a bigger part of it, but the world is for humans now.”
That made me a little angry. “We exist in it too, you know.”
“Oh, Aella, you know what I meant. Obviously, if…”
“Yeah,” I agreed quickly but sullenly. “I know.”
When my hair was, if not tamed, at least cowed, Vikki quickly spritzed me with the perfume then attempted to straighten out the wrinkles in my gown. I examined myself for any ripped seams or unsightly exposed flesh. The bones of my spine could often snag and tear the fragile formalwear I was expected to don.
In the warm crimson of the evening light that streamed through the window, my skin and hair looked the same color. I was called the Red Reaper, and at this moment, the name fit me perfectly. But it also made me look like a normal, human girl, demure and delicate, capable of things like tending a baby, arranging flowers, or giving a delicate kiss to the man I loved.
“There,” she said. “Beautiful.”
“Presentable,” I corrected.
Vikki didn’t look at me when she asked, “Do you think Andre will be there at dinner?”
“I’m sure he will be.” All the girls, human or Reaper, liked Andre. He was handsome and an incorrigible flirt. He was quick to compliment a new hairstyle or fetching gown, and you could always find him in the castle by following the giggles. That he was firmly fasted to, and desperately in love with, the beautiful Reaper Freya did not affect him, her, or the human girls around him. They all seemed to delight in the game.
Vikki twirled one strand of hair around her finger. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“I understand that Reaper men…that their…well, you know…has the same sort of…well, spikes as their spines. Is that true?”
I turned to look at her. I suppose it should’ve been obvious that I was still a virgin, just as I imagined she was, but you could never be sure what humans thought of us. “Why do you think I would even know that?”
“Well, I mean, you…you’re…oh, I just assumed you talked or learned about it from Eldrid.”
“Eldrid!” I laughed. My teacher was old, prim, and so tightly-wound I couldn’t imagine her ever having a lustful thought in her life. I’d heard stories about her battle prowess during the Thousand Year War, but I had a hard time imagining the woman once being such a warrior. “We haven’t really covered much anatomy. Just history and philosophy. And mathematics,” I added with a scowl. I was really good at math, but I’d learned that saying so made people avoid me even more.
“Oh, well,” she said, and turned away. She looked disappointed. She turned back to me. “It’s just, well, I wanted to know…” If I let her continue, I’d never make it to dinner.
“Okay, I’ll tell you what I do know!” I sighed. “The spikes on our spine, ribs, and other protruding body parts—those are bone. It comes from our Demon fathers. Because they’ve been alive for so long, their bones have hardened and begun to protrude. It’s their tough skin that keeps the bones from protruding even more. This same tendency is passed down to Reapers.”
“Along with the Demon skin?”
“Yes, exactly. We have patches of Demon skin, usually covering the protruding bones. Not all Reapers have the same patches in the same place or the same amount of ‘spikes,’ as you call them. It all depends on how old the Reaper is and how much Demon blood they have.” Wow. I actually did learn something during the world’s most boring lecture. I mentally patted myself on the spikes.
Reaper men were exactly like human men in that particular department, I knew, but it was better for Vikki not to know that. Probably better for Andre that she didn’t know as well.
Then I left my room the same the way I entered it: out through the sky light. Vikki called after me, “Don’t tangle your hair!”
CHAPTER THREE
The great hall, as its name implies, was enormous. At one point, during and right after the Thousand Year War, it teemed with so many Reaper warriors that the servants had to eat crammed in a separate antechamber that had once been a large cupboard. Now, though, our numbers were so few that we pretty much ate wherever we wanted, with whomever we wanted. As long as we got there before the dinner bell rang.
When I reached the door to the dining hall, I found Jensa on guard. She wore formal armor and held a short spear at her side. She made no move to step aside and allow me in.
“Come on, Jensa,” I said.
She said, “You’re late, Re
d.”
“No, I’m not.”
The evening bell began to toll. Jensa smiled. “Now you are.”
During the waning days of the war, Jensa had defended a hilltop position all alone against a dozen Demon warriors, preventing them from flanking Adonis and the main force. She was known as the Defender because of this, or Lady D more casually. She also hated me because she felt her rightful place was guarding the new king. Most days, I agreed with her; she certainly needed no additional training. But she wore her contempt for me on her sleeve, and that had begun to seriously grate on my nerves. I said, “Jensa, get out of my damn way.”
Jensa smiled. Although she was considerably older than me, she not only looked about the same age but acted like a human five-year-old most of the time. “Make me.”
“I would except I don’t want to mess up my dress. Does this make you feel powerful? You know, I have a wooden wedge that I use to block my door open when the weather’s nice. It does the same job as you do, but it’s better company.” With that, I turned on my heel and walked away.
“You don’t deserve your life!” she called after me. “You don’t deserve it! You couldn’t even fight your way out of the Demon’s realm. You had to be rescued, remember?”
I stopped and looked at her. It was no secret that I was still a child when the Demons took me. It was no secret what transpired while I was there. Demon torture is common knowledge amongst Reapers, even these, who weren’t raised by Demons like their half-breed parents. Jensa knew what pain, humiliation, and degradation I experienced at the hands of the Demons. And she mocked me.
“You’re cute when you’re angry,” she said.
“Keep it up, and I’ll be downright gorgeous.” I finished turning on my heel and marched around a corner in the corridor until I reached a servant’s entrance hidden behind a tapestry. I slipped through and emerged into the dining hall with no one, including Jensa, the wiser.
I took a moment to get the lay of the land. Andre, my recent tormentor, now sat at a table beside Freya. Keefe, another Reaper, was surrounded by a half-dozen human girls, all dressed in proper dinner attire. He was, as usual, in the middle of a joke.
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