“Lady Haidren, I trust you’re having a lovely day,” a cheerful voice interjected. “I was wondering if I might share a portion of it?”
Luscia shot up in bed, dragging the blanket higher to cover her thin shift as Alora flew to the handle. Opening the door with poise, Alora revealed the Orynthian prince, who was carrying a thorny, flowering shrub. At Dmitri’s side stood the visibly displeased captaen, although Marek’s expression softened when he realized Luscia had awoken.
“Your Highness.” Alora’s hand braced her middle. “Meh’fyreon. I apologize, we mistook you for our determined Captaen Bailefore. Boleava, do come in.”
Marek made to follow the prince, only to have Alora swiftly shut the door in his face.
“Your protective services are sufficient from the common room, Captaen Bailefore,” she added, aware he would listen even from a distance.
“Lady Haidren, it’s so good to see you,” Dmitri said, nodding respectfully to Alora. He glanced about the room before gesturing to the chair by Luscia’s bedside. “May I?”
“Wem! Boleava,” Luscia blurted, realizing she’d spoken in her native tongue rather than his own. “Yes. Yes, please do.”
“Tadöm.” Dmitri grinned as he sat down, summoning the dimple in his right cheek with his surprising use of Boreali. “I’m learning.”
His face caught the afternoon light while he scanned her quarters. Again, Luscia noticed the improved vitality of his skin. Warm, mossy eyes bounced between the furs across the foot of her bed to the jars lining the edge of her open window. The incoming breeze disturbed his hair, freeing it from where it curled around his ears.
“I hope you find your apartments satisfactory. I held them specifically for your party, since there are so few facing northward,” he commented, pointing to the bay below.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” Luscia said earnestly. “Our view of Thoarne Bay is quite captivating. I enjoy watching the drifting bazaar transform throughout the day. It’s quite eclectic.”
“Yes, I suppose there’s that.” He chuckled. “Mainly, I thought you’d appreciate the ability to look toward home whenever you find yourself missing it.”
Angling his head, the prince smiled sympathetically. His irises looked greener in the daylight against the contrast of his darker lashes. A spark of hope sprung forth that Dmitri Thoarne might indeed become the partner Boreal needed.
“That is incredibly thoughtful, Your Highness.”
“Oh! That reminds me. This is for you,” he said, clumsily handing the shrub he held to Luscia. “It’s called a Noculoma-Anastasis. They’re quite rare! You see, the buds bloom only after dark during nights with little to no moonlight. I had it uprooted from the royal gardens to keep you company while you recover from your ailment.”
Traces of dirt showed beneath the trimmed edges of his fingernails. The prince must have repotted it himself. Luscia found herself unexpectedly touched at the gift.
“It’s beautiful. I promise to keep Aksel from consuming it,” Luscia jested, setting the plant on her night table.
Alora pulled another chair around to the opposite side of Luscia’s bed and set a long, wooden box across her lap. Carved from fallen timber on the Isle of Viridis, viridi wood was prized for its deep amber striation and seldom traded with outsiders.
“Your Highness, I am deeply remorseful for my absence during Luscia’s reception,” Alora prefaced, placing the viridi box between them. “Unfortunately, that also meant I was delayed in bringing you what is rightfully yours.”
Her small hands opened the case to reveal a brilliant luxiron sword, set in a lush bed of embroidered linsilk. The sword’s core emitted the same luminosity as Luscia’s confiscated kuerre, but didn’t curve as conventional Najjani blades did. Built with an untraditional hilt, their luxsmiths had crafted the metal to resemble a dozen interlocking, golden antlers.
“The Stag Age commenced with your father, but it is our hope that under your stewardship, it will thrive,” Luscia explained her design. “This is hardly as historic as I envisioned, but I’m proud to reveal Boreal’s true offering—your Sword of Thoarne.”
Dmitri’s fingers brushed his lips in awe as he studied the blade’s intricacy. “I can’t help but feel there’s a great disparity between us,” Dmitri said in a melancholy voice, carefully holding the case open. “You’ve given me this sword when Bastiion has taken your own, though at least your mother’s dagger may remain in your care. Despite the commander’s rather…aggressive…objections, I managed to convince my father to consider it an exception to Gregor’s newest piece of legislation.”
“A kindness indeed, Your Highness,” Luscia managed to say.
“Its name?”
“Communion. The state of things so held.”
Hesitantly, his thumb ran the length of it in a reverent caress. “This is truly magnificent. Luscia, I have no words.”
He didn’t get an opportunity to form them, either, due to a loud crash from the common room. Multiple languages rang out in what sounded like a heated disagreement.
“Where is he? I demand you open that door!” a man shouted, emphasized by a compilation of what she presumed were Andwele obscenities.
Rising from the chair, Dmitri carefully latched the case and picked it up, along with his cane. “This has been a delightful visit, if cut short,” he said with a sigh, glowering at Luscia’s door. “I’ll forgive you your watchdog, if you’d be so gracious as to forgive me mine.”
“Of course, Your Highness,” Alora assured him.
Meeting Luscia’s eyes once again, Dmitri added, “Truly, the sword…” He nodded to the box in his hand. “It will be cherished.”
“Just as we’d hoped,” Luscia told him with a heartfelt smile.
Reluctantly opening the door to her domed common room, the prince said farewell and quietly closed it behind him.
Too exhausted to protest the Darakaian intrusion, Luscia flipped on her side and admired Dmitri’s Noculoma-Anastasis upon her nightstand, for once content to let her guard protest it for her.
THIRTEEN
Perched over the roof slats of a grand storehouse, the figure waited for the congregation of men to scatter once they came to a consensus about what to do with the butchered body at their feet.
He’d heard a woman scream an hour earlier while trudging in the forest just outside Arune, a grand estate in the Province of Wendylle. Rushing in the direction of her cry, the figure had arrived to find a grouping of nobility huddled around a gutted corpse, near the perimeter of a Unitarian estate. Though he’d never intended to travel this far from the crown city, Alora had ordered he leave Bastiion after Amaranth relayed the rumors he’d overhead of another cross-caste victim outside the Proper, concerning a merchant caravan making progress through the provinces. Convinced her niece was safe in her care, Alora had commanded him to go.
The Pilarese hawk preened her unusual, violet-hued feathers on the other side of the rooftop. Amaranth would travel with him until he drafted his return message to Alora. Sharper than previous candidates, Amaranth had proved an integral asset in their operation many times over. Use of the war-tainted bird was the least he could offer the fair woman he’d once betrayed, though there was no degree of servitude that could ever repay her clemency for his wickedness.
Amaranth twisted in her grooming to consider him, as if she sensed the damning shift of his thoughts. Perhaps she could—she had been his sole companion over the past decade of darkness and decay.
Motionless, the figure listened while the nobles debated ways to handle what they clearly considered to be an inconvenience. Having another function to attend, the body of a dead Boreali cross-caste wouldn’t keep them occupied for much longer. He was unaware that the Peerage of Nobility had planned to gather that night in the residence of their Haidren and Minister, Gregor Hastings. Below, each councilman stood in the customary robes f
or such an occasion.
“Where is she now, that servant girl who found it?” A greying noble glanced around at the rest of the men.
“The maid’s been taken to my wife, Pias. She won’t raise further alarm,” Gregor answered, clearly disinclined to bring attention to the death as well. “The girl’s no help, anyway. She only tripped over it on her way to fetch more wine from my storehouse.”
“If you’ve some rabid animal roaming your lands, any injury to my livestock is your concern, Gregor,” the youngest councilman sputtered, crossing his arms. “I’ll have you know, I spent an entire aurus on that gelding and five dromas for the mare!”
“If there’s a rabid animal on the loose, your horses are the least of my concern, Nathune. I’m the man who lost property tonight,” the Haidren tersely replied, nudging the corpse’s arm with the toe of his freshly buffed leather boot. “This cross-caste cost me a fortune off a trader two years ago. It’s criminal how much they charge for the young ones.”
Loose pebbles fell from the stone ledge when the figure tightened his grip violently at their laughter. He grimaced as the rocks clattered down the side of the storehouse. Nearly all the men jumped as Amaranth shot from her post and circled the area to distract them from his concealed presence. Her instincts grew more impressive by the day.
The Houses were notorious for their mistreatment of cross-castes, but the Unitarian high nobility had evolved into the worst offenders over the last decade. Grown fat and greedy, they’d taken their era of peace and contorted it into an era of privileged indulgence. And while some cross-castes were still considered “employed” by province manors, most had been sold as slaves for a handsome fee.
It was sickening. Even to a monster like himself.
The rarer the genetic mixing, the steeper the price. And as the House of Boreal remained the most segregated of all, a northern cross-caste would cost someone like Gregor Hastings very much, indeed.
“Just bury it, Gregor. Or burn it, I don’t care. The Peerage is waiting. But the members of your still-breathing staff need to hunt down the animal by morning,” the eldest of them coughed into the dirt, impatient to return to the boisterous event inside the manor. “My wife dragged her two best cross-castes with us this time, and you can’t afford to replace them.”
“Fine. I’ll have someone fetch you a drink, Larkstead, for the trouble,” Gregor conceded, patting the hunched man on the back. “Kuudhà, rally the boys and get rid of this thing. Don’t leave any trace of it, either—I don’t want my guests questioning the quality of Hastings wine.”
A Darkaian cross-caste, standing beyond the circle of lords, nodded silently and scurried off to enlist more servants for disposal. The nobles also dispersed, abandoning the cold, lifeless body crumpled in the grass. The Haidren to Bastiion led the councilmen toward his home to rejoin their comrades, joking as if the impromptu meeting had been nothing more than a lost bet.
Gripping his weatherworn cloak, the figure vaulted from the overhang and landed swiftly in a crouch. Soundlessly, he padded forward and knelt to inspect the injuries the child had endured. He didn’t have much time.
The length of the dull, muddied hair wasn’t evidence of gender, but the pink and coral ribbons tied throughout certainly sufficed. By the length of her torso and limbs, the young woman hadn’t yet reached Ascension age, not that it would have brought her freedom if she had. Patches of cream-colored skin were visible under the light of the moon, though her flesh was smeared with blood from innumerable lacerations. Without a doubt, she fit the recent pattern the figure had begun tracing throughout the Unitarian plains.
As the other bodies had been reported to authorities or found in areas of traffic, this was the first opportunity that offered the necessary seclusion to use his unnatural talents. Slowly, he brought his scabbed nostrils near what was left of her face and inhaled deeply.
The figure reared back from the young woman’s corpse, alarmed by the disturbing evidence collected in his blackened lungs. With shaking hands, he lifted her arms where larger gashes had been made, aware that Gregor’s manservant would return any moment. Again, breathing in, the figure was struck with an even stronger bouquet of rot, charred flesh, and an intimate, unmistakable scent not even Alora could wash away.
Bloodthirst.
This had been no animal attack.
Horrified, the figure careened into the shadows in a ceaseless sprint. Propelled by a speed not his own, but gifted from his mistress, he ran through the night under the steady watch of Amaranth overhead.
Whether he ran to Alora or from the defiled corpse, the figure did not know. The only truth guiding his inhuman legs toward Bastiion Proper was one he could not comprehend, for it was impossible.
The killer smelled just like him.
FOURTEEN
Zaethan
“This better be good, Kumo, after making me wait three days for a single report,” Zaethan warned his cousin in a low voice, having already woken in a foul mood that morning.
“Owàamo to you too, Ahoté,” Kumo hailed as he approached. “Owàa met you with a vengeance today.”
“My temper has nothing to do with the sun or how he greets me. It does, however, have something to do with being incapable of providing the commander with an explanation for the Haidren to Boreal’s delay. Report. Now.”
“Uni, Alpha Zà,” the beta acknowledged, lowering his chin as he wisely shifted to formal Darakaian address. “Zahra assigned Jabari to the guard rotation outside both the Haidren and al’Haidren apartments, hoping he’d pick up some information, but they speak mostly witch-tongue in passing. So, I had Takoda sweet-talk that southern yaya in the kitchens, you know the one with the—”
“I don’t give two shtàkas how you acquired the information, Kumo, I just want to know what it entails.” Zaethan scratched the stubble along his jaw impatiently as he glowered at the brass doors ahead, which led to the Quadrennal chambers he was late entering.
“Apologies,” Kumo said hurriedly. “Jabari says the Haidren’s party stopped in a port town…Tadeas, I think. Looked into some disappearance. The Najjan found another corpse like we’ve seen here in the Proper. Neither he nor Takoda caught much more, except the boy was butchered, not drained. I don’t know what the y’siti did with the body. Probably served it in a stew, yeah?” Kumo crinkled his nose. “Should we keep investigating?”
“Ano.” Zaethan shook his head. They’d already wasted enough time on the matter, and his father wouldn’t be pleased if he kept investigating the dead cross-castes against orders.
“Uni, Alpha Zà.” Kumo struck his right fist against his chest and retreated to relay the order to the pryde.
“Wait,” Zaethan called after him, reconsidering. “Keep Takoda posted near the younger witch. Just in case.”
His beta twisted mid-step and nodded once.
“Shàla’maiamo, Ahoté.”
“Shàla’maiamo,” Zaethan uttered the Andwele farewell, requesting the moon watch over his cousin in turn.
He waited until Kumo rounded the corner before he gripped the byrnnzite door handles and heaved them open with authority. Zaethan had quickly learned from his time at court that one rarely needed to apologize for tardiness, when one arrived unapologetically. Besides, after he’d finally gathered the missing information to bring his father, Zaethan didn’t plan to make excuses for being late to the political version of a tea party.
“Zaethan, there you are! Come, come!” Dmitri exclaimed, eagerly waving him over.
“Why, Lord Darakai, how considerate of you to finally show up,” Sayuri droned from where she lounged next to their prince at the head of the immense pentagonal table. “Your belatedness was a gift, really. It offered the two of us some time to catch up. Our Prince Dmitri has been in high demand as of late.”
Sayuri’s dark, vulpine eyes flashed accusingly at the impassive y’siti seated across fro
m her. The al’Haidren to Boreal remained unruffled in her modest layers of crisp linen and linsilk. Their dissimilarity was tangible, when one compared her pallid, spectral manner against the vivid, serpentine woman who’d one day serve as a conduit for Pilar’s ever-evolving agenda. By the way Sayuri eased her ruby lips into a coy smirk, her personal agenda to position herself at Dmitri’s side had not changed.
Not that the House of Darakai would ever permit such a union, nor would the Ethnicam’s other elite. The only reason Zaethan’s House bowed before the line of Thoarne was the simple fact that a drop of ancient, Darakaian blood pulsed within Dmitri’s mixed, Unitarian veins. A blood which somehow contained everything Zaethan was, and yet everything he was not.
“My duties as Alpha Zà are more pressing than your list of social obligations, Lady Pilar,” Zaethan said with a sneer as he crossed the room and came to stand behind Ira Hastings, who’d seated himself to Dmitri’s right. “You’re in Darakai’s seat, Ira, or did you get lost on your way from the tavern this morning?”
“Ah, right you are.” The slightly disheveled al’Haidren picked up his wine and moved to Bastiion’s seat beside the y’siti. “Hello, gosling, care for a drink?”
Ira reached to refill her untouched glass, only to find it was already full.
“I’ll be more inclined to converse with you, Lord Bastiion, if you refrain from using these crass monikers,” she corrected him, lifting a stiff, arrogant chin. “You may address me as Lady Luscia or, if you prefer, Lady Boreal, as is your right.”
“Well, I do apologize, Lady Gosling.” Ira rakishly tipped his drink to salute her. “Boreali women have my utmost admiration, I assure you.”
“And here I always considered you an elitist, Ira.” Sayuri lifted a brow. “My, how your palate has changed.”
Zaethan couldn’t fathom why his friend insisted they convene. Restrictions were still in place around Dmitri’s power, and this juvenile bickering was the only foreseeable outcome of their assembly. Already annoyed, Zaethan watched the y’siti control her breathing, slowly inhaling and exhaling, as the other two al’Haidrens exchanged words about her. She draped a pale arm over the side of her chair to methodically stroke the muzzle of her uncommonly large wolx, though to keep which of them calm, Zaethan couldn’t tell.
House of Bastiion (The Haidren Legacy, Book 1) Page 13