“I did not Fall.” She straightened, forcing herself to regain some semblance of composure.
“All evidence to the contrary.” Soapy water poured from the rag he dragged over his lean frame, running down muscles hardened by a lifetime of labor and combat, dragging free the grime to leave his skin clear and clean.
She shook her head and refocused herself—she did not need to be admiring a hedge knight’s body in her current predicament.
Sir Moreau took a deep breath.
“I did not!” She stamped her foot, then stared at it. She had not stamped her foot since she was a child. Flushing, she returned her attention to Sir Moreau. “I did not Fall. I was cursed. My sister, she and Lorenz Gage cast some sort of spell upon me.” A thought occurred to her. “You were in my head this morning, when you…harvested me. You saw what happened.”
Sir Moreau shook his head. “I saw from your eyes, your father’s face glaring down at you. I shared the moments following your Fall before your mind became Rampant. Nothing else of your life before.”
Something in her chest warmed. It was familiar and comforting and realizing that made her recoil because the sensation was, in truth, neither. Sir Moreau was doing something to the piece of her that now resided within him, sending feelings of comfort and stability back into her through their connection.
“You are no longer whoever you were. You are a beast. And you are mine.” He tilted his head as he looked her up and down. “You moved very well on the road. We were watching you through the carriage window. If your features weren’t so decidedly mammalian, I might think your bestia seed something avian.”
The sudden change in topic was disorienting. Almost as much as that continuing sensation behind her sternum. It was as if he were absently caressing her soul while his dark eyes appraised her. Eyes too dark to belong to a diamond souled descendant. His mother or grandmother had been a beast. She felt herself recoil at the thought, reminded once again of their intimate setting, and his belief that he now possessed her. If she truly had Fallen, then, of course she would belong to him. She had not Fallen. She had been bespelled. She could not belong to him or to anyone else. She had to make him realize this.
“Your orbis seed most definitely is not an energy type, or else you’d have drawn on it during your exchanges with Rodriquez’s menagerie,” he continued, tone musing.
She blinked, realization dawning. “You were watching that! The whole way to Saunet?” He’d told them to stop after the Rampant beast had attacked them. If he had known they were disobeying him, then why hadn’t he stepped in again?
“Of course,” he said. “If I hadn’t, they would have ripped you to pieces. You really pissed them off.”
“How? They’re beasts! What on earth could I have done to them?”
“For starters, you nearly killed the conde’s niece.”
“I did not!”
He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t recall running over the rainbow haired girl with a horse?”
Girl? Disgusting, the beast was an it, not a she. Loretta frowned, pushing past that thought to consider his question. Surely, he couldn’t be referring to the hunt. It seemed so long ago. “Perhaps.”
“And you were a right little savage after you Fell. All Rampant beasts are dangerous, of course, without a keeper to harvest their animas and root their seeds in order to preserve their sanity, but you were especially aggressive. And considering how physical your seeds have made you, quite dangerous.” He grinned at her. “I’m sure that will be useful.”
“I have already graduated from the Academy,” Loretta said, biting off each word. “I am more than simply useful. I am well versed in history, politics, economics, mathematics, and dance. More so than you could hope to be.”
“I’m certain those too will be advantageous,” he said after a moment. “You may want to mind your tone though. I don’t really care, but plenty of others will. Especially the diamond souled. Are you going to get in the water?”
Her face went crimson. Getting in the water was why she was here, wasn’t it? She had not forgotten his threat to send her out to the barn where the other beasts awaited her. “Don’t look at me.”
He made a sound that might have been construed as a chuckle, but turned around. She divested herself of the disgusting borrowed clothes and wrapped a bathing towel about her torso. The water seemed to grow hotter as she approached, as if eager to cook her. Loretta grimaced. Beasts bathed in this spring. It was sacred, even if it was ugly, meant to power the whole of Kerkenhal.
Bracing herself for the feeling of revulsion, she slipped one foot into the liquid heat.
Relief such as she had never known flooded through her. It started in her foot and ended at her ankle, soothing aches and pains she had not even realized she’d been feeling until they were gone. Loretta all but threw herself into the spring.
It was as if she were made anew. All of the rawness earned and accumulated throughout the day cleansed from her all the way down to her marrow. She glanced at herself and noted the blood washing free of several cuts, leaving behind unmarred flesh. The spring had healed her.
“Extraordinary,” she said, holding up her hand and watching a bruise on her forearm faded away. It was like witnessing a flower bloom in reverse.
This was among one of the best feelings that she had ever experienced. It even seemed to be cleansing her internally, freeing her of a taint she hadn’t recognized, left behind by the vizcondesa. She let out a long sigh and sank into the water. This was what it meant to be cleansed.
She glanced over to discover Sir Moreau watching her from where he leaned against the edge of the hot spring.
“You never learned about the effects the hot springs have upon beasts?” he asked.
“I knew the springs healed them,” she said, too relaxed to be defensive. “But such vulgar topics were never a focus of study. I learned the necessities and focused upon the more practical application of the springs’ powers.” She sighed again. “The only way this might be better is if we had some music.”
Sir Moreau pulled himself free of the water, and soaking wet, crossed back to where he had stored his clothing.
“You are finished, sir?” she asked. She hoped not. If he was then she would have to be as well, and she never wanted this feeling to end.
Moreau shook his head and drew out a silver flute from his belongings. He turned and brought it to his lips. Music echoed through the cavern. Music too sweet to have come from some dirty fishmonger who claimed to be a knight.
Sir Sigmund Moreau could play as well as any minstrel who had ever graced the halls of the Maradona Chateau.
The stillness that had finally settled upon Loretta evaporated. The music called to her. Compelled her. She flew from the water, heedless of her nudity as the towel fell away or the wetness of the floor. She had to move. The music set something within her free, something that refused to be smothered or shut away any longer.
Moreau played his flute and Loretta danced to the music with a grace no human woman could have ever hoped to match.
The music ended. Loretta found herself breathing hard. “Keep playing,” she said, voice barely above a whisper. She would not plead for it. She would not.
Moreau tapped a finger thoughtfully upon the flute. “I think we may have discovered the nature of your second seed,” he mused aloud.
The release Loretta had just experienced shattered. Everything came crashing back upon her at once. Her sister had betrayed her. Her mother thought she was dead. Her father hated her. She had been cursed into this beast, her humanity stripped from her, and the most wondrous thing she had experienced had all been because of this theft. This absence of her humanity. Even her own anima betrayed her now.
“My name,” she said, voice quaking with so many broken emotions she could not have begun identifying them all. “Is Loretta Maradona. I am diamond souled. I am noble. I am the future Duquesa Maradona.”
“No,
” Sir Moreau said, voice soft but firm. “You are not. I will give you a new name.”
Loretta’s newfound serenity shattered. She screamed. Screamed with every ounce of rage and impotency that had been thrust upon her. She launched herself across the hot spring, fangs bared, claws extended. She did not crave Moreau’s flesh—she simply wanted to hurt him and make him hurt half as much as she did.
She was almost to him when he raised an eyebrow and she froze in place. The piece of her that was inside of him, that allowed him to command her, would not allow her to keep going forward. Whether by their bond or by his will, she could not tell and in that moment it did not matter. She screamed again, lashed out with everything she had.
Her feet went out from under her and she found herself writhing on the floor, kicking, clawing, biting. Hoping that something might draw close enough for her to destroy it. Nothing did. She was like a child caught in a tantrum, held in place by nothing more than her keeper’s will and her own inability to defy it.
She screamed and thrashed until she could do neither and lay gasping up at him, face red, teeth bared. Her keeper looked upon her with equal parts disgust and pity. Something inside of her withered up and died as her rage was replaced with creeping shame.
Sir Moreau stood over her, the pity in his eyes making her scream and thrash all the more wildly. “Your new name is Sauvage.”
Chapter Five
Exercise
It was nice not to smell of fish.
Sigmund had not truly felt clean in over a year. A large part of that was thanks to his isolated and self-destructive lifestyle. Fishing and tinkering without guests or regular interaction had caused him to quit caring about his appearance or maintaining himself beyond the basest of necessities. A greater part, however, had come from the sense of loss and failure he had wallowed in, drifting without purpose through life as the days stretched and the weeks flew. It seemed he had not truly been alive since before arriving at his cabin and building the graves that rested there.
A change had come over him. A part of him was still raw and hollow, as it always would be, but the rest of him had seized upon the upheaval of his non-life with relish. Once again, he had purpose. A mission. Even though he was starting from the bottommost rung of the ladder, it was a first step from which he could once again begin his climb.
The raw wound within him snarled that he would slip and fall again, just like he had the time before and the time before that. He accepted this warning as a possibility and moved on. It was not gone—not by a long shot. It was, however, mitigated. Rodriquez, the manipulative bastard, and Sauvage gave him hope.
He wondered if, in her current, silently furious state, she could remember the feeling of unmitigated joy that had come over her when he had played his flute. The music had vibrated into her and through the roots of their connection, carrying the of bliss of serenity and purpose. That feeling had been even more beautiful than the sight of her dancing around the spring.
He suspected that Sauvage’s silence since last night’s tantrum was unusual for her. She did not seem like she had been the sort of woman used to not getting her way before her Fall. Nor the kind who would willingly keep silent when she believed herself in the right. Admirable qualities, both. Recovering after the Fall was never easy for a beast, but it was worse for those who had no notion that it had even been a possibility for them. Sauvage had probably expected a life of luxury and ease, where her most difficult decision would be how to redecorate her dining hall, or how best to screw over one of her rivals.
He wanted to be sympathetic, to ease her into her new life. In the end, that path would do more harm than good. The sooner he brought her to accepting her new place in the world and her role in it, the sooner she could accept what she had become and, by extension, herself. Purpose was the greatest gift man, woman, or beast could hope to receive.
Instead of giving her platitudes or false hopes, he’d allowed her to sleep in his new chambers rather than the beast’s barracks in the barn, and had permitted her to spend the night in a sulk. It was the best balm he could offer before thrusting her into her new role. One that would see her either broken or re-forged.
The morning had not found Sauvage sulking. He could feel her quiet fury seeping through their roots mixed with a burning determination.
Given that her orbis seed was that of dance, it made sense that she would struggle to be still. Whatever her bestia seed was, he suspected it was not a creature prone to stillness either. Which made the calm she was projecting and lack of fidgeting moderately disturbing as they sat in the pews of the church, listening to the deaconess in their borrowed finery.
Sir Sigmund Moreau knew enough about predators to sense when one was waiting in ambush. The question was, what kind of ambush did Sauvage expect she could deliver?
“Today,” the deaconess said, spreading her arms wide, flaring the wide sleeves of her white robe like wings, “I wish to speak with you about the Great Fall.”
Beside Sigmund, Sauvage’s tail shot straight up. The spike of complicated feelings that rushed through her was so strong that it momentarily drowned out the other feelings she’d been projecting through their roots all morning. There were too many intertwining emotions to make proper sense of them all before they faded away like sand sifting through his fingers. It was hardly surprising that this would be a sensitive subject for her. It was a sensitive subject for any newly Fallen.
She glanced at him, glared really, and, with a visible effort of will, pulled her tail back down. It was kind of adorable really, though he suspected she would despise hearing that. He settled respectfully into his pew and listened as the deaconess continued.
“I know, I know,” she said, holding up her hands as if to ward off protest. “The Great Fall. Aren’t we all familiar enough with it by now? We have, after all, lived with its consequences for generations upon generations.”
Sigmund could appreciate the affectation, even if no one would ever be brave enough, or stupid enough, to protest a deaconess’s choice of sermon. A priestess perhaps, but never a deaconess.
“The daughters of the House of Gloria snuck past the guards in the Garden of Creation to the Tree of Origins with the help of a lovestruck guard. There they feasted upon the tree’s forbidden fruit, setting loose the seeds of creation that paired off in the chaos and settled into the spirits of every woman. Save for those of the Houses of Castitas, Integritas, and Virtus, whose descendants became the diamond souled, giving rise to our own Freutsche, as well as the queendoms of Nordhlig and Romalia while all other woman Fell into bestial violence and feasted upon the flesh of humankind.”
The gravitas in her voice should have undermined the casual tone the deaconess was trying to affect. It did not. A quick glance around revealed to Sigmund that many of the congregation were nodding. Including Sauvage. Interesting.
The deaconess let out a long sigh. “We have gone over, at length, the fault of the sisters of Gloria and the nameless guard who was seduced into betraying his brethren and duties. Their flaws and failings are so well known that I fear if I am made to recite them again, I may put you to sleep.”
That earned an uncomfortable laugh from the congregation. This was far more frankness than anyone was used to of a clergywoman upon the dais. The church was a place of large words and ornamentation, meant to inspire and demand respect of the people. People who relied upon the clergy for their safety just as surely as the diamond souled and her majesty. Any town lacking skilled keepers would not survive the Rampant beasts for very long, and, without the diamond souled, many keepers would turn brigand and despot.
Such thoughts made Sigmund reach instinctively for his shot-pistol. Naturally, it wasn’t at his side. One did not bring a firearm to church. Not even if one intended to stay in town after to run errands. His old cutlass would have to be sufficient comfort for now.
“Today, I wish to speak to the failings of the three founders of our great peoples,” the
deaconess said.
A hush fell over the crowd. Sauvage’s tail shot up again, and this time she didn’t seem to have realized it. She was leaning forward in her seat, nostrils flared. She looked ready to leap up and rip the deaconess’s throat out. Sigmund readied himself to grab her anima with his own if she was idiotic enough to try such a thing. He hoped she would not. It would make them both look bad in front of The Company of Golden Swords and he’d be lucky if he could stay the executioner’s blade from taking Sauvage’s head.
Fortunately, it did not seem that anyone else had noticed that she had poised herself to attack. Mostly because everyone in the building seemed ready to leap from their pews and begin protesting. To criticize the diamond souled was an unpopular thing to do, at best. To criticize the ancestry of the great queens was borderline blasphemy. This deaconess must be very certain of her power and position to risk such a sermon.
“I see the protests on each of your lips,” the deaconess said, not unkindly. “It is a credit to your character, faith, and patriotism that you ready yourselves so to defend your queen.” She shook her head slowly. “But we must acknowledge our humanity, and to be human is to be flawed. Even the diamond souled.”
Sauvage positively quivered beside him. Her fury was such that he almost struggled to keep it from becoming his own. That was always a danger as a keeper. Keeping one’s own identity distinct from that of his beasts. The greater the size of one’s menagerie and the more passionate one’s beasts, the greater the effort.
“Easy,” Sigmund murmured, sending calm back through the roots.
Sauvage’s tail dropped and she eased back into her seat, only to turn a glare on him. Fresh fury flared through their roots. She did not care for his direction. She would have to get over it. Eventually he’d be forced to give her proper commands.
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