by Karin Cox
“He grew to be a father to her, of sorts, but it was Daneo who watched out for her. Perhaps he felt guilty. Or he saw in her your mother’s beauty. When she came of age to nest, he bade Samea to falsify the Swan, to bind their names together; that was how corrupt it had become. So you see, when I tell you Silvenhall was once happy, how unhappiness spread like a cancer among us after your mother’s exile.”
I nodded, still processing her words and angered by the Council’s superiority. These were the Cruxim that had judged me.
“More Cruxim lost faith after Jania left, fewer joined the Sibylim and more fled to Milandor, and even more remained childless. What could the Council say about it? Daneo and Jiordano were complicit. They were Proxim with a seat at the Council table, yet both had falsified the Swan. If Councilors could tinker so easily with the Sibylim’s oracles, erase them, create new unions, why shouldn’t others ignore them and flee to Milandor where they might drink Haemil, love whom they liked, and never hunt? Many, like Jania, chose the love of their own kind, some so they might never lose their lover to childbirth, others for love alone. Within centuries, Milandor was the strongest of the Crèches.”
“If one decides to clip the Swan’s wings, to join Milandor, or to join the Sibylim, what happens to their intended?”
“The betrothal is dissolved. Both intendeds remain unwed.”
“Neither is betrothed again.”
Skylar shook her head. “No. Not until Daneo and Jiordano anyway. Sometimes, the jilted party leaves the Crèche for another, out of shame. Some secretly hate the intended for eternity. Some secretly love them anyway but remain chaste, such as Shintaro and Eresia. Some take a vow themselves and remain celibate in the service of the Sibylim or the Aspis—the vanguard of our strongest warriors. But most remain alone—or did, until Jiordano and Daneo.”
“That is what I am,” I said. “One destined to be alone.”
I felt her hand on my arm, the warmth of it. “No, Ame. It is as He says: ‘You are never alone.’” She prized open my clenched fists to place the parchment on my palms. “Read it,” she whispered.
The whisper of the pages filled the space where Skylar’s voice had been. All I saw was a line of images, wedge-shaped and all running together. The tiny illustrations seemed to dance upon the page, scribed in red ink or blood—I could not tell.
“I cannot read it,” I confessed.
“It is cuneiform.” She stroked a slender finger across the page. “We are taught to read it in Cascadia.” She took my hand nearest to her and gripped it firmly. “Do not read it with your eyes. Read it with your mind.” She drew my fingers down the page.
I felt a charge, like a buzz or a bolt of lightning from the page, and my dark eyes met her pale ones.
They were blank.
“Or with your heart,” she said, and broke my gaze. She guided my hand, steadying it until a voice in my head began to read.
It was a jumble of Cruxim names, first and last, and only those of the Crèches were repeated at each marriage of names. The Crèche names spilled through my mind as I searched for names more familiar: Silvenhall, Luminil, Milandor, Argentil, Palindil, Selindor, Hiltenhall, Kindamor, Dusindel, Willendel.
When I came to the words “Skylar Emmanuel, Silvenhall — Amedeo Aeternus,” I stopped.
“You are my betrothed,” she whispered.
A shock passed through me, and then a nervous laugh sprang from my throat. “It must be wrong.”
“You are not the only one who thinks that. That is why the Council tried to destroy it. Except that...”
“What is it?” I wrenched my hands away.
Skylar took her hands into her lap, examining the neat nails, the perfect slender whiteness of the fingers. “The Swan was never wrong. Not until your mother...”
I scanned the list above and below. “Aeternus,” I ran the word over my tongue. “Is there another Crèche?” My thoughts lingered on the plaques I had seen above the chairs in the council chambers, searching for memory of the Crèche.
I caught a flash of some thought, unspoken behind her eyes.
“Read it again,” her mind said. “But first there is more you must know.”
“Your sister belongs to Silvenhall,” Skylar explained, “because so did your mother before she was banished. Male Cruxim fledge in the Crèche of their departed father, females in the Crèche of their mother.”
“If my Crèche is Aeternus, then take me there.”
She hung her head. “There is no Aeternus.”
My thoughts were confused. “To which Crèche do I belong then?”
Sympathy made her voice catch a little. “To none, Amedeo. Male Cruxim belong to their father’s Crèche.”
It took me a minute to understand her words.
“Your father, Lorluno Aeternus had no Crèche.”
“My father was not a Cruxim...?” I felt dizzy. Sick.
Skylar eyes remained on her own hands, twisting in her lap.
“My father was a mortal?”
“He is a long time dead, Amedeo.”
“Nothing but mortal dust,” I said bitterly. I ground the words out through a clenched jaw as I pushed the chair back from the table.
Skylar’s eyelashes were wet with tears. “Do not think yourself alone.” She put her hands on my arm. “You have me, should you want me.”
I was still trying to process her words, and I shook her off. “The parchment is wrong.” My hands trembled where I folded them across my chest.
At that moment, I longed to be free of the place. If I had no Crèche, then let me be free to follow my regrets. If Skylar wanted my heart, let her find it in the ocean’s depths ... or in a crumble of ash. In a silver cross ... or in a golden tomb.
“The oracles were never wrong, Amedeo,” she said. “Never in a thousand moons was a Sibyl wrong until your mother met your father. All others who were betrothed before her were betrothed for life.”
“Life!” I sprang to my feet. “What life? A life shared until another life usurps it—and that the life of a child. There can be no happy ending when a child kills its own parent, when a son does not know the love of his father, or a daughter the love of her own mother. That is not eternal love. That is not Cruxim lore. That is cruelty.”
Her hands knotted together in her lap. “Yes. It is our Crux: our cross to bear.” I could hear hurt in her whisper. “But do not fear it. I will not bid you nest with me if you do not wish to.”
“That is courteous of you.” My tone was cruel; I hated myself for it.
Rain threatened in her eyes, and her tears were salt rubbed into the raw wounds of my past. Sabine’s face sprang to my mind: her fair curls tumbling around me and her tail extended, her breath warm with lust while I denied her, too, the consummation of our love.
“This is wrong,” I said again, pacing at the front of the hall. “A lie!” I snatched the parchment off the table and threw it to the floor. “I will bear no sons,” the words came hard from my mouth, “nor daughters. My only offspring is death.”
I tore at my shirt, revealing the wickerwork of scars that crossed my chest. “Keep your Crux. My cross was put there by disbelievers, by Gandler and Beltran, and by others who would torture me with their humanity.”
When she spoke again, the undercurrent of hurt had swept away her calm. “There is a debt we owe, Cruor. While Vampires still live to remind us of our wrongdoings, we will suffer the burden of childbirth, and our immortality will suffer with it.” Her tone grew strident. “Don’t you see, Amedeo? They must all die if we are ever to live happily, you and I. And only one among us can defeat them without fear of death. Only one among us can survive the Haemacra. And that one is you, Cruor.” She bowed her head to me.
My laugh was a gurgle. “That is what this is: to be free of your own pain, you would turn me away from mine.”
“No!” she cried. “Keep your pain if it pleases you so. I only offer you my love!”
But I had already turned away from her toward
the obscurity of night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The tree at my back was uncomfortable; its bark scraped my wings, but I made no effort to move away.
This was what they had whispered about, Kisana and Skylar. This was why Skylar had followed me. No doubt it was also why she had made no move to help Joslyn or Sabine and why Daneo had warned her that I was not for her. I ran rough hands through my dark curls and over the planes of my face—the high cheekbones, the jut of jaw, the lips that had kissed Joslyn and Sabine, that had sucked the life from Danette and had drawn blood from Evedra. It was as if it were a stranger’s face.
Skylar had offered me her love and had asked for mine, but it was too late. I loved her already, what little good it did me. Or her. My love would kill her, as assuredly as it had killed Joslyn, as certainly as it had destroyed Sabine. If we loved, loved truly, then I knew that I would give Skylar what she wanted—a child—and in doing so, I would lose her, or lose myself.
“We always lose ourselves in love.”
I searched for Skylar, or for Kisana or for another Cruxim who might have intercepted my thoughts, but none was there.
The Maker? I wondered. A breeze through the angel trumpets set the flowers nodding in agreement.
“Why burden me with such pain, and Sabine also, if my love for her was not real?” I asked him. “If you knew I would betray her heart?”
“Many loves exist. Many things are real and many false.”
“Tell me then, is it true—the Swan, Skylar? How should I know?”
But all I heard was the whisper of the wind. All I saw were the nodding white petals.
He was gone.
I longed to ask Sabine what she thought of all of this herself—Crèche and creed and fate—but even if she had been there, I could not. It would have destroyed her. I had seen the jade glare of her jealousy. And now that I had betrayed her, what friendship could I count on? I knew what my betrayal meant: I did not deserve Sabine or her love.
Nor did I deserve Skylar’s.
The thought stole into my mind that I should leave Silvenhall forever; however, I was yet to discover the riddle I sought, and doing so would force Skylar’s exile as well.
I could not hurt her.
I had already hurt her.
I had hurt them both.
Many things are real and many false.
The glow I had emitted in Skylar’s arms had been real, undeniably. And the feeling of longing—or was it belonging?—real also. I put my head in my hands again, all anger faded to despair.
Skylar had not spoken out of self-interest but out of truth. The Swan. The light. The hammering of my heart.
But if all were true, why would the Council and the Sibylim have tried to keep us apart? Why exile me for my mother’s crimes, why falsify records if it meant going against their own beliefs and against a union their own holy book and priestesses had sanctioned? Simply to punish my mother? Had they hated her that much?
I watched a procession of mountain deer wind down the path towards me, their dappled hides rippling in the sunshine. The orphan tagged along at the back. I remembered Skylar’s gentleness with it, and with me, and her tears on my arm as I had held her, glowing head to toe with love for her. I would have stayed in her arms forever in that moment, at the expense of all else, and I knew it. My heart seemed no longer a place apart, a cold country, but a hearth that warmed a nest here in Silvenhall.
I had to apologize, but what could I say to Skylar after my actions in the hall? I had been a fool.
“Sorry—it is always enough.”
“Skylar!” I started.
“I cannot leave you. The Council bound me to watch you, remember.” She came and settled beside me. Her wet eyelashes glittered in the moonlight, a crescent of stars.
“They all know, don’t they—the Council, the other Crèches.” I reached for her hand. “They all know what I am to you.”
“The Councilors know, yes. The congregation likely suspects. Your mother predicted many things. Her oracles told of the formation of Milandor too, and of things that are perhaps still to come.”
“Yet she never predicted my father.”
Skylar closed her eyes for a second and gripped my hand. “No one predicted that.”
“If the Swan is right, if the Maker is watching, how is any of this able to happen? How could it go so wrong?”
“The Maker is mysterious, or we are fallible. I do not know.” She laid her head on my shoulder. “I know only what I feel in my heart.”
I squeezed her hand. “And I in mine. Yet what can my heart offer you? You are light and peace where I am darkness and shame. My heart will be too heavy for you to carry until I have freed Sabine. Until I have killed Beltran.”
Her lips quivered, as if she were biting back words, then she nodded almost imperceptibly. “That is what love is, Ame. A light through the darkness and a hand to lift a lover’s burden. I have seen you love. Perhaps there is more light in you than you know?”
I thought of my incandescence at her touch, but still I shook my head. “I cannot risk you.” I kissed her brow. “I must do this alone.”
“I understand your...” Her breath caught a little. “Your ... obligation to Sabine ... or is it love?”
“It is both,” I admitted. “What I felt with you...” I shook my head. “I have felt nothing like it before. But to ask you to help me, to wait for me—both would be unfair. I cannot ask you to revive Sabine, loving her as I do, growing to love you as I have.” As the words left my mouth, I knew that there was no growing. I loved her. I knew it as surely as the wind knew every inch of the glade we sat in. I loved her with a wild terror that warned me I had never truly loved before her, and I would never love again after her. It was undeniable. Only my mind would deny it to spare the dishonor admitting such a love would bring.
Her eyes looked too large for her face, twin sorrowful moons each with a private lunar sea to drown me in.
“I will wait for you, Amedeo. I must. It is fated.”
I could not reply; my voice would not come.
“Let me help you,” she pleaded again. “Our path is the same. I, too, wish to see Sabine saved. The Cruximus speaks of the Sphinx as an ally in ridding the Earth of Vampires forever. If that is true, we might live in peace, Amedeo. We might bear children and live to raise them together.” She took up my hand again, and I watched as she brought it, brown and trembling, up against the paleness of her cheek. She rubbed her lips against my palm and kissed each knuckle tenderly, but her sadness had not passed.
Her dream called to me: a place at peace, free from all pain.
“You have loved Sabine well,” she whispered. “Fate is your only crime. Even if you love her still, you were made for me and I for you. This is the Swan. This is what it is, Ame. It brings us to love so suddenly, so completely, as if on wings, that we may soar together for a lifetime.”
I bent my head, my hand firm as I returned her grasp. “I cannot soar with you, Skylar,” I murmured. “Not yet. I can only sink until I awaken Sabine.”
We sat there in silence for hours, she and I, our hands entwined, our bodies aglow with love, until the poplars and Cypresses and firs on the hillside were burnished by the approach of dawn. When the night finally set upon our love, we made our way back to the Eyrie.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“You should bathe,” Skylar suggested as we entered the cave. My new knowledge of the Swan had set a barrier between us, a gravitas that found us both grateful for activity—anything to keep our minds off the luminescence we had shared in the glade.
Upon entering the Eyrie, my gaze had lingered on the nest for an instant, as had hers, before we both turned away, embarrassed. I had never felt so awkward here, so out of place.
She left the room as I undressed, and once I had stepped into the pool, she returned with a bowl of dried fruit, flowers, and nuts.
Hungry as I was, it was not fruit I craved but blood. The urge to hunt was cresting like a w
ave inside me. While the light had emanated from me, I had thought I might never hunger again. Thought I would never want for anything but her. Now that the light had faded, I thirsted for blood with an ache that dried my throat and sapped my veins.
“Haemil?” I enquired hoarsely, but she shook her head.
“Only for Crèche rites. It will be many weeks before the Feast of Remembrance.” She stared at me intently for a minute, as if thinking.
“Here,” she said. Turning her back, she slipped out of her clothes.
I looked away from her nudity, but almost immediately the water displaced as she slid into the pool beside me, so close that the water seemed to tingle around me. I wondered if we might both shine again and the pool glow translucently with us.
She moved closer, close enough for the terror of my passion to return. If I could have, I might have leaped back, but the wall was already at my back. I felt the softness of her breasts where they met my chest, but she did not touch me otherwise except to lay her head on my shoulder, her neck close to my lips.
“I am yours, Ame,” she murmured, not seductively but truthfully—as she always spoke. “I have always been yours. Drink from me.”
“Skylar!” This time, it was not her nearness that scared me, nor even her words, but the thought of the act itself. “Haemil is forbidden. Surely such a thing is a crime.”
She looked surprised, a half-smile on her lips. “This is not forbidden. It is a gift Cruxim may offer only to their betrothed.” She raised herself on her tiptoes and pressed her neck to my lips. “Drink.”
Never had it occurred to me that I might do so, not in all the long hours with my body curled around hers and her skin on my lips. Something in it felt like sin.
"It is offered freely.” She seemed wounded. Memories of Joslyn—the intensity of her blood coursing through my veins, the force needed to make myself stop, to resist—made me pause.
I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth ... The angel of the Lord encampeth about them that fear him, and deliver them. Danette’s prayer whispered in my brain, followed by the sweet memory of her blood, turned sour. I had been unable to stop. Even if Danette had suddenly begged me to, I knew I would not have. The lure of her blood had been too strong.