Among Aniels

by Quinn Blackbird

  A grunt chokes in my throat as I push myself further up. I gaze up at those around me. Mayor West’s family. My own. And two other Daemons who have found their way over to us. Their hooded faces are turned down at me—they study me from the darkness of their shadows.

  “This girl is my mate.”

  I hear the venom in the Daemon’s tone, the sharp edge of his cutting words. He’s as ill about this as I am. He’s as unwilling as I am.

  So maybe there is hope. Maybe he will let me run if I can summon the energy to stand.

  The sounds of talk above me warps into something alien. Faintly, I hear Father’s voice, the trill of Olivia’s weeping, the choppy breaths of Mikhael’s panic. My family might despise me, but this fate—the fate of a Daemon’s mate—is unlike any wish they ever had for me.

  But I care only about my own distress.

  Finally, I manage to push myself up.

  I stagger on the spot, the world bending and writhing around me. I stumble, but gentle hands catch me.

  I glance up at Olivia’s wet, twisted face and I feel my own agony in the way she looks at me. That one expression shatters the only courage holding me together, and I break.

  A horrid sob splits me in two.

  I crumble against her, my face buried in the nook of her neck, and the cries wrack my body.

  Father and the Daemons pay me no mind. They speak about me as though I am not right here beside them.

  “We will have to come to terms,” my father insists, his voice shaking much like my body. “Negotiations, terms of the groom’s dowry, her release from the family unit—”

  “I care none about your mortal terms,” the Daemons responds, his voice sharper than a blacksmith’s workshop. “The girl is mine.”

  “She is poorly,” my father almost pleads. “Without the proper care, she will die. These matters must be discussed.”

  There’s a thick pause. A silence so suffocating that even my sobs break for a moment.

  “Then let us discuss,” the Daemons concedes.

  “Yes.” My father grapples to compose himself. “Yes, let us say, tomorrow? Midday? I will have all the paperwork prepared.”

  Paperwork.

  The Daemon means to mate me, not marry me. And even still, my father ... he is allowing this. I thought, just for a foolish moment, he might fight for me.

  I’m on my own.

  I push away from Olivia. My tear-streaked face suddenly draws all the unwanted attention. The Daemons look at me, Father looks my way but can’t seem to meet my watery gaze. Olivia holds out her hands unsurely, as if she aches to steady me, comfort me, but hesitation bites at her.

  “Tomorrow,” I say, my voice slick with choked-back tears. “We will meet tomorrow.”

  Mikhael’s face slackens with shock. Olivia shakes her head, part in disbelief I think.

  But I don’t let them in on what I’m doing. Like I said, I am on my own.

  Father nods, then turns back to the Daemon who watches me too closely.

  “I’m poorly,” I add, and the Daemon’s mouth twists. “I ... I need to rest.”

  Olivia steps closer and reaches out for me again. “I will take you home.”

  No one stops us.

  The Daemon simply watches as I’m escorted out of the clearing and into the shadows of the treeline. Before the darkness swallows us up, I look back and see everyone watching me. Everyone but one.

  Silver.

  He watches the Daemon who has claimed me, and his face is stony, like a furious man magicked into a statue by a malis God.

  Olivia takes me to the carriages.

  She doesn't speak the whole way there, and it’s only when the carriage rolls up to the front of our pink-faced home that she finally shatters the silence between us.

  “You’re going to run, aren't you?” Her voice is small.

  I stare out the window, waiting for the carriage driver to open the door for me and let me out into the still night.

  “I don’t know. I might.”

  I glance down at my fingers, entwined. I need time to figure out what I’m going to do, what I should do.

  “Wouldn’t you?” I mutter.

  She is quiet for a beat. “I would. So I won’t stop you if you do.”

  I look at her, see her through the watery glaze of my eyes. “But you will tell Father?”

  Her mouth pinches. Then, she shakes her head. “No. I will tell him I put you to bed, then returned to my own bedchamber. If you are gone in the morning, I know nothing.”

  “Why?”

  The door whips open, and the cool breeze hits us.

  As the carriage driver holds out his hand for me, Olivia says, “Because you are my sister—and yours is a fate I would not wish on my worst of enemies.”

  She says nothing more as we go into the house.

  We do not embrace, nor share our (maybe) last words.

  We part ways in silence.

  3.

  To run or not to run, that is the doubt that gnaws at me all through the night.

  More times than I can count, I pull out my beaten-up leather suitcase, throw some ribbons and undergarments into it, empty it out on the floor, then kick the suitcase back under the wardrobe. It’s into the early hours of the morning when I admit defeat and flop onto my bed.

  How can I run with few coins or notes or jewels to my name?

  And most of all, where can I run to?

  I have no sanctuaries awaiting me out there. No lover to take me away on the waves, no friends to hide me in their chambers. Simply put, I have nowhere else to go. And besides that, I’m almost all out of remedy already. I’ve gone through too much of it tonight, downed phial after phial in my misery.

  A Daemon thinks I am his mate.

  He must be wrong. He must be. I’m just a sickly girl lost in the sea of the Capital’s vilas. There is nothing remarkable about me. I have no talents to speak of, my face is an ordinary-pretty, my sickness makes me weak, my education doesn’t span university studies.

  What, in a person, makes them a Daemon’s mate?

  Is it my blood that calls out to him? Are our souls bound eternally?

  And, most importantly, can it be severed?

  The question strikes a bolt of urgency through me.

  Can it be severed?

  Magic is abound. It is the Gods, the aniels, the Daemons, the seas, the Wild Woods—magic is everything and everywhere. Even my remedy is fuelled by the power of this world. So, surely, there must be a magic for this. There must be some way to sever whatever bond this Daemon imagines we have. There must be, because a life with a Daemon is not one I will embrace. I rather my sickness take me before he does.

  A knock at the door jolts me from my thoughts.

  I stare at the door for a beat, blink, then slowly peel myself off the bed.

  “Who is it?” My voice quakes like freshly spawned earth.

  The Daemon flashes in my mind. His haunting beauty, the cruelty of his pitch-black eyes. Come to collect me. Come to steal me away from the life I know.

  In a twisted way, isn’t that what I always dreamed of? To be whisked away from my family, my mundane life, and off into some fanciful adventure that shatters everything I think I know. How many nights of my life that I’ve begged for someone to come for me, care for me in my sickness. And now that wish has come to be, and I am terrified.

  Daemons are never what I had in mind for my future or fantasies. Daemons are the ultimate monsters. The ultimate predators. The ultimate evil.

  Eyes on the door, I hold my breath as the brassy knob turns. Slowly, it creeps open and, with all the air trapped in my chest, I watch as an early-morning shadow slips into my room.

  I loosen the breath within me.

  It’s only Nikah, the servant.

  My shoulders slump as a relieved ribbon unwinds through me. I slink back onto the edge of the bed.

  “Miss Keela,” she greets, and the early hour clings to her hoarse voice.

  She must
have just awoken, some moments ago. The hour is too early for her to tend to me, my chamber pot, or my breakfast. The sun has yet to peak on the horizon, and my room is drenched in a dusty light, mostly illuminated by dim gas lanterns propped up on some dressers and bedside-tables.

  “Packages have come for you,” she tells me and, improperly, rubs her swollen eye with the ball of her palm. Her mouth clenches as she fights back a yawn. It’s a contagious thing, and I find myself yawning before she can.

  “Packages?” I eye her suspiciously. “From who?”

  “Bartel’s Boutique, Miss.”

  Ah.

  Bartel’s Boutique and the dozens of boxes I’m expecting from them. It takes me off-guard, since I wasn’t expecting them to come so soon, and I as sure as the Underworld had forgotten all about the delivery. All wrapped up in my fears of Daemons and my uncertain fate.

  “Bring them in,” I mutter and fall back on the bed.

  As Nikah steals out of the room to collect my packages—that I imagine she left in the lobby—I stare up at the ceiling. Above me, the crystal chandelier has turned ashen with age, and the candle-stick holders wear the sunset-orange signs of rust.

  The aged, neglected chandelier makes me think of myself. No proper care given to it over its life, abandoned to rot, and still, wanted by some. In my case, only wanted by a bloodthirsty Daemon who dragged me over the Wood floor. Little care, little of what I wished in a potential husband.

  And as far as I know, Daemons don’t marry. That’s a vilas thing, marriage.

  I mean, it wouldn’t be so bad if the stories weren’t so awful. If being a mate meant I would be cherished and cared for and kept alive and healthy, then I wouldn’t fight it. I would embrace. My gut would not be watery, my heart would not attack my chest with violent punches, I would not feel queasy enough to spare a few glances at my chamber pot in case I’m ill.

  But the stories are awful.

  In the Temple of Prince Poison, Daemons are not often discussed. Most of what I know about the creatures comes from talk around town. But what I do know from the temple, I know are facts.

  Daemons are the villains of our world. And to be a Daemon’s mate is a dreadful, wretched fate.

  I once heard the tale of Iliza. Decades ago, Iliza, who was a peasant widow with two children, lived in a small, cheap apartment in the Lost Square. She was older, well into her fortieth year, and still, when the Daemons came to the Capital, she was spotted by one of them. She’d been making the trip to the Shadow Quarter to her work, a brothel-house cleaner. The street was mere minutes from the haunted black mansion that houses the Daemons when they are in town. And she walked too close that morning—she walked right into the line of sight of a Daemon.

  He claimed her. He tore into her skin with his teeth, cementing the bond between Daemon and mate. And he dragged her away to the black mansion.

  When the Daemon learned she had children ... he slaughtered them.

  Out of jealousy, rage, or cruelty? I don't know. All I know is a poor peasant woman lost her two children to the wrath of a Daemon who believed he had some claim over her.

  Iliza was never seen again in the Capital.

  It’s said, in the story, that she was dragged to the Underworld and—for the ‘crime’ of birthing another’s children—thrown into a black-iron cage near the River of Souls. Her Daemon visits to strengthen their bond—biting her under the fullest moon on the starriest night—and to inflict his evil on her.

  So you see, even in my near-death state, without much to live for if anything at all, I cannot willingly give myself over to a Daemon. I cannot, because that would be throwing myself into torture. A lifetime of it.

  Once that bond is complete between the Daemon and the mate, it’s eternal. Once in the Underworld, the mate won’t age or die, and that truly is the definition of ‘a lifetime of suffering’.

  My lifetime of suffering oughtn’t be eternal. My sickness is meant to be the only pain that cripples me.

  On the other side of the door, the staircases creak. I look up as the door is pushed all the way open, and in-steps Nikah with boxes balanced on her shoulders, head, and stacked up on her crossed arms. She carries at least a dozen sky-blue packages, all with white glimmering ribbons wrapped around them.

  She deposits them on the foot of the bed. Nikah tries to be delicate about it, but some of the packages—the smaller ones mostly—fall tumbling to the carpet. She scoops them up and sets them gently with the others.

  “Thank you,” I mutter and eye the boxes with much less enthusiasm than they deserve. But unless one of those boxes holds the secrets to my predicament, I can’t summon any excitement for them.

  “I’ll bring up breakfast tea,” Nikah says and straightens her discoloured apron.

  “No need,” I tell her. “I’ll be in the dining hall for breakfast this morning.”

  I need to corner Father before the Daemon arrives at midday. I need to fight for any chance I might have at getting out of this hell.

  Nikah closes the door behind her gently—it’s still too early for much noise to fill the house and stir the others from their sleep. And since my bedroom is closest to mother’s just upstairs, I always try to be as quiet as possible.

  With nothing else to do but wallow in my sorrow, I lazily drag some boxes closer to me. I shift to sit cross-legged on the blankets and pick through the smaller parcels. Each holds some small, beautiful accessory. Bracelets, hair clasps, lace and silk gloves.

  My face slackens into something crestfallen as I run my fingertips over a stunning ivory-silk choker with a ruby stamped onto its middle. It will fetch some pretty coins down in the Lost Square.

  A breath chokes in my chest. I blink at the choker, the dazzling ruby that gleams like freshly spilled blood, and my mouth shapes an ‘o’.

  I can sell the choker. I can pawn the silk gloves and silver hair clasps and extravagant white-gold bracelet. If I steal some more gems from mother’s room, and with all I received from the boutique, I could easily fund an escape from the Capital.

  But then, my heart sinks to my bum.

  Daemons are assassins, and predators, and hunters, and otherworldly creatures that move between this world and the shadow one. How can I escape him? If I managed such a feat, it would not be for very long, that’s for sure. And I’m certain the punishment for fleeing would be more dire than I can ever imagine.

  To distract myself from the hollow pit opening inside of me, I top up my phial-pendant, down some remedy straight from the bottle, then rip apart the ribbons on the parcels. Eight dresses, all in different materials and shades, greet me. Dresses that would have had me weak at the knees just yesterday morning. But today is different, because today my life is not the same. And it never will be.

  I’ve made quite a mess in my room when I’m near-done with the parcels. Ribbons and blue paper and box-lids are strewn about the carpet, and on my bed are piles and stacks of gowns and dresses and accessories and boots and slippers.

  My favourite of the lot is a lily-petal-blue dress, whose bodice holds without whale-bone, and with no corset to restrict my breathing. Flattened crystals are sewn along the hem and sweetheart neckline, like severed butterfly wings ready to flutter to the ground should the wind push too hard. With the dress, comes a headband to match, with blue crystal-like embellishments and silver threading.

  In the last parcel, I find a peculiar surprise. Instinctively, I arch my brows and delicately lift the edges of the garments up from the box. It’s a parcel of four pieces. Ivory breeches, a white blouse, a fitted black vest that looks to be as tight as a bodiced-corset, and a pair of suede black boots that reach above the knees.

  Men’s clothes. But made for women.

  I’ve seen attire like this before. Some widows in the Lost Square and sailors and pirates at the Port wear things like this—though, not nearly as nice. Gently, I take a silver button stitched into the vest and rub it between my fingers. Smooth like butter.

  Then, I’m ripp
ing off my own dress in a hurry. Today, the Daemon will come for me. And today, I will dress, not in pretty gowns or ribbons, but strong and confident attire that declares my independence. I will dress the way a man does not wish to see a woman.

  Unlike with my regular clothes, I don’t need any help getting ready. The breeches fit like gloves, the boots hug my legs perfectly up to my thighs, and the blouse and vest embrace my body with the whisperings of a corset. My phial-necklace fits down my cleavage with ease, and I fit a switch-blade in the hem of a boot snugly and another in my pocket.

  I look in the mirror that stands by the window. And as I take myself in, in this alien attire, I decide I like it very much. Too much, perhaps.

  Using my fingers, I comb back my hair into a black ribbon and let it fall in a simple pony tail. I give myself another once-over.

  I look like a pirate or a sailor, or even a well-to-do woman who disguised herself as a man to walk the Capital streets at night.

  I feel strong in this.

  And if I feel strong, perhaps I can be strong.

  4.

  It has been so long since I’ve eaten breakfast in the dining hall that I forget what time it starts. Thankfully, Nikah comes to my room to tell me that the meal is about to be served.

  In my new get-up—that raises a few of the servants’ eyebrows as I pass by them—I rush through the house to the dining hall.

  When mother was well, it’s said that the dining hall was once grand and cared for. She used to call it the ‘heart of the home’, where family came together and bonded over meals. The ceiling, once painted in lively shades of blue and sea-foam white, is now faded and peeling at the edges. The mahogany arches above are mostly eaten away by termites, and even the long running dining table wears more chips and scratches than a plate of armour.

  I spot Father at the head of the table, his head bowed as he pores over the folded-over morning paper. In his other hand, he lazily clutches his fork, though I don’t see him take a bite.

  He doesn’t look up as I come in.

  I wander over to him and sit myself on the seat to his left. Olivia normally sits on his right, but she isn't here this morning. Sleeping in, perhaps, to give herself an alibi if I flee.