5. Cirri
Chapter 5
Cirri
I opened sore, gritty eyes in an unfamiliar bed, the weight of the previous day falling on me like a sack of boulders as I blinked at the room.
Yesterday I had woken up as a maid in the Silver Cathedral. Today, I was a wife and the Lady of the Rift.
But the room, the dress, the soft bed… everything around me disproved the notion as a bad dream.
There was no sign of my husband. No sign that he had ever come back—not that I had expected him to. What could he possibly want with me? The journey to fetch me from Argent alone was more of a burden than a mute servant warranted.
He must have been terribly disappointed to discover the poisoned gift hidden in the Eldest Sister’s selection. The growl in his voice as he’d left… I hadn’t been able to stop myself from shrinking away from it.
I rubbed my eyes, already dreading opening the door, and made myself strip the linens from the bed and remake it with the fresh ones in the wardrobe to put off the inevitable.
Only when that was done, and I’d run out of things to tidy, had I seen the things on the desk.
My heart jumped into my throat at the sight of the journal. Paper… and not the rough, pulpy handmade paper used for common writing. This was bond paper, satin-smooth under my fingertips.
And hundreds of pages’ worth. My hand shook as I opened the cover, touching with careful fingers as though my skin alone might smudge the pristine pages with dirt.
I closed it reverently and found a metal pen, already filled for use. A spare well of ink. And finally, a package wrapped in plain dark paper.
That one made me hesitate, but I finally opened it and found one of the popular romance novels that had been spreading like wildfire through Argent over the summer.
It was about a vampire—beautiful as the setting sun, deadly as the blade of a knife—carrying off a human peasant girl. Kora, one of the longtime maids of the Silver Cathedral, had pooled a secret fund with the other servant women to afford a single copy to be passed among them.
All of us united had kept it hidden from the Eldest Sister’s eyes, under pain of never being allowed to join a secret book fund again if it was found in our possession.
What little I’d managed to read of it, after bribing Kora with hard candy to get my turn early, had involved a lot of heaving bosoms and throbbing appendages nearly from the first page.
I’d only been on chapter three. Kora had probably already retrieved the book from under the loose baseboards in the maid’s quarters, knowing now that I would never be returning for it.
Just looking at the cover made my face heat up. I was no stranger to sex, but none of what I’d experienced had been remotely like the things described in those passages.
I considered if Bane was trying to send me a message with this particular book. That he knew I was a scullery maid—hardly more than a peasant myself?
Not that it would matter. The deed was done, and the vampires had not specified in the Blood Accords that the bride must be highborn.
So if not that, then perhaps… I swallowed hard, dropping the book like a hot coal.
Perhaps he was stating that he, like the handsome vampire, was a sexual being. That whatever the knight did in the book… he would want to do the same.
To me.
I pressed my hands to my cheeks, trying to tamp down the heat of my blush. It was one thing to imagine a vampire with glass-chiseled cheekbones and the physique of a Serissan god.
That was understandable. The popularity of the novel itself proved it.
It was another thing entirely to imagine Bane—the craggy contours of his face, the long, pointed ears, not to mention the rack of flesh-shredding teeth—arched over me in a bed.
Not with the breadth of his muscled body, hands large enough to crush skulls planted on either side of my head…
The blush was not fading. If anything, it grew worse, my skin always willing to show every flush of emotion.
How was it possible that I’d be blushing over that mental image? He was a fiend. The fangs alone sent chills down my spine. Every cell in my body recoiled at the thought of stepping into his embrace.
But his hand had been surprisingly soft and warm. He’d held mine like it was made of porcelain, although I’d pulled it from his grasp before he could feel the calluses on my fingers.
I exhaled, staring at the cover.
Sometimes a book was merely a book. It didn’t have to mean anything, except that my new husband was trying to show me kindness—which was far more than anything I could have hoped for. Or worse, more than I deserved after I’d shut him out last night.
Perhaps… we could be friends, at the very least. It would not be a dissatisfying life, to appreciate my husband’s company. Plenty of women married to human men didn’t have even that.
I rewrapped the novel, trying to hide it under the journal before I left my room in search of a place to wash my face.
Olwyn was outside, her hand raised to knock. She blinked at the sight of me, taken aback. “Sweet ancestors, Cirrien, your face. Are you feverish?”
Before I could shake my head, she pressed the back of her cool hand to my forehead, then took it away, frowning.
“No fever. Do you feel ill?”
I shook my head, and quickly mimed washing my face to try to head off more questions.
Olwyn looked at me doubtfully, but brought me to a washroom. The porcelain stand had already been filled, and I gratefully leaned over it, filling my hands and pressing icy water to my face.
Several minutes of hasty ablutions dissipated the worst of the flush. There was no mirror in here to check myself, so I combed my fingers through my hair and braided it neatly, feeling naked without the plain wimple of a scullery maid to hide it.
When I emerged, Olwyn was waiting in my room, sitting with her legs primly crossed at the desk. I prayed she hadn’t touched the wrapped book and seen what was inside.
“Your maid did not come to attend to you,” she noted, in such a neutral tone that I was immediately alarmed.
She is not used to acting as a lady’s maid , I signed. Then I touched my hair and patted my chest, hoping I was clear: I can handle this myself.
Olwyn watched me, expressionless. “You are lovely, but your hands are as rough as a dockworker’s. When you rose, you made your bed with fresh linens and pulled the corners so tight I couldn’t slip a fingernail between them. I also noticed that you swept the floor in here while you were wallowing in self-pity last night. A nobleborn woman would have been accustomed to the idea of an arranged marriage. You may have a lai in your name, but you were not raised by nobility, were you?”
I sank onto the bed and shook my head.
“Indentured servant?” she guessed shrewdly.
I gave her a wry look, my hands twisting. Was it that obvious?
“I suppose I can infer what you just said.” Olwyn patted the journal, and I had to physically hold myself back from lunging at her and pulling it out of her reach. Bane had given it to me. That was my paper now. “I would like a general account of your life, if you please. To be frank, I don’t give a damn what you were before. You suit all the criteria that ensure the preservation of the Accords, and in the end that is all that matters to me. But for Bane’s sake, I would know more about you.”
I nodded, my hands fisted in my lap.
“To you, he is a fiend. A monster. A creature whose visage will keep you awake at night.” Olwyn laughed softly, shaking her head. “To us, he is a hero. A noble soul, who sacrificed himself for our people. He gave up his face. His freedom. His happiness. His choice of a wife.”
My body remained frozen in place, the tiny hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up. I could not forget that she was a predator, despite her fastidious appearance and manners.
“I would very much like for us to be friends, Cirrien. Truly. But you will understand this: he is Bane the Lifegiver. He gave up the life he had, willingly, for yours. For every soul in the Rift. For every Veladari, human and vampire. And I will not tolerate disrespect towards him. If you must cry again, do it where he won’t see or hear you.”
She stood up, already moving towards the door, but I rose and stopped her, holding out a hand. Olwyn tilted her head, watching me curiously.
I could write out my thoughts, but I didn’t want to stain the first page of that beautiful journal with anger.
I did not cry because he is a monster , I signed. I cried because I was given away. Because my dreams are gone, and I didn’t get a say.
With every word, my motions grew sharper, more punctuated. The anger couldn’t be held back, burning in me like a fire.
I was terrified to be among strangers who don’t understand me. I woke up this morning with no idea that I’d be getting married. But now I see that there’s more to him than meets the eye.
I stared into her eyes as my hands went still. The bloodwitch gave no sign that she had found any sense in my movements.
But she smiled, the ice melting from her eyes. “Oh, that truly upset you, didn’t it?”
I didn’t bother to nod. She had upset me. Was I not permitted one night to come to terms with the fact that I was chattel? I had not cried over Bane, but over the books that were now lost to me. The position I had strived to prove myself worthy of. The knowledge that had been worth twenty-five years of indentured servitude.
“No, I don’t think we’ll need the poppy at all.” She searched my eyes, and stepped around me. “Bring your things, Cirrien. We’re loading the carriage now and nearly behind schedule. A bite to eat and we’ll be on the way.”
Poppy? The only poppy I knew of was the syrup kept under tight lock and key by the alchemists, worth its weight in gold these days.
Then I understood, my fingers clenching.
I did not need to be drugged like an animal. All of Veladar required this arrangement to work.
And Bane had left me paper. A pen. Even a book.
No, I did not need poppy to withstand his presence.
But as I climbed into the carriage, clutching my book and journal, there was no sign of my husband at all.
Olwyn tucked her trunk beneath the seat, and Ellena sat across from us, her dark hair obscured by the wimple and her hands folded in her lap.
Her lips seemed permanently downturned at the corners; I couldn’t entirely blame her. She too had been shipped away from her home without warning.
As the bloodwitch lowered the bar on the door, locking us in, I motioned to get her attention. Where is Lord Bane?
Olwyn surprised me with her intuitive understanding at times. “We’re in the Rift now. He will travel outside and keep watch for warg-sign. If we’re attacked, he and Eryan are the first line of defense. I am the second line. If they make it through me, give your prayers to your ancestors that the end is quick.”
There was a grim set to her mouth. No blitheness to her tone.
“It is unlikely you will see him again before your vows are made,” she added gently. “But we travel by day, and the Rift has been heavily fortified for this day. The odds of the wargs risking a breach are… lower than usual.”
Ellena had gone as pale as milk during this little speech.
I simply nodded, settling back in my seat and tucking the novel beside my leg. There was nothing to be done for it.
I’d examined the strange sigils Olwyn had left on the windows and door last night, delicately inked in what looked like blood. Though they were of no language I recognized, I felt the power in them, tingling against my fingertips when I tried to touch them.
One of those sigils gleamed on the carriage ceiling, its scarlet glow drowned out by the light of day.
If Olwyn trusted in her witchcraft enough to let me sleep unaccompanied, I would trust in it enough to keep us safe in the Rift.
There was no other choice. I couldn’t fly to Ravenscry on wings.
Instead, I watched out the window as Eryan guided the carriage out of the town and back onto the road that led into the heart of the Rift. Last night I hadn’t been able to see our surroundings as the sun set.
Now I saw that we were in the mountains. They rose around us, the towering, thickly-forested heights stealing my breath.
I knew from maps that the Rift itself was the land between the mountains: a long, wide valley cleaving between the ranges from north to south. It was the first line of defense against Foria, and as such, the most dangerous hold in Veladar.
As the next hour passed and we entered the wide, shallow bowl of the valley itself, with the road leading almost straight north, the view was obscured. Mist first appeared as creeping fingers around the bases of trees, and then became curtains, the pines reduced to tall shadows.
An hour later, the sound of the horses’ hooves were muffled. The view outside the window was a wall of roiling, ghostly white. It reminded me of mother-of-pearl, almost luminescent.
I gave up on watching the unbroken wall of fog, not a single sight of Bane to be had, and opened my journal. Ellena was staring out the window, and Olwyn was making notations of her own on a densely-worded sheet of paper.
The capped pen rested in my hand. The paper was too lovely to destroy. I might actually cry again if we hit a bump in the road and my first line was smeared or uneven, and then Olwyn might follow through on her threat of poppy.
Yesterday, I’d had my list of achievements composed. I’d been planning to write them on a scrap of the rough, gritty paper the Sisters had access to.
Now my mind was blank.
This journal would be the first chronicle of my thoughts made with ink, and I didn’t want to begin it like… like I was auditioning to be considered valuable as a human being.
I thought it over, occasionally looking out the window for a glimpse of our guardian. If he was out there, it was impossible to see him.
Finally, I forced myself to uncap the pen and applied it to the pristine page, almost cringing at the desecration.
My name is Cirrien, but I would like it if you called me Cirri. I am twenty-five years old.
There were no bumps in the road; my writing was flawless, a single line stretching across the ivory expanse.
You seem to already know that I love books. Did you read my mind?
The pen itself had to have cost almost as much as the journal, if not more. The Library of the Sisterhood used charcoal sticks. Only the Eldest Sister had access to a more elegant writing utensil, a Serissan glass quill. No one dared touch it.
I have so many questions for you, but as you are not here, I will ask them later.
For now, I will tell you about myself.
I speak only one language, but I read in six. Those of us left at the Sisterhood’s mercy are fortunate enough to receive an education until the age of eighteen. I suppose I could’ve found my way elsewhere, but their Library is so grand that I couldn’t bear to leave. The Sisters were kind enough to allow me to continue my studies.
This was not entirely true. Until yesterday, I had owed them another twenty-five years of servitude in exchange for said education, as well as the cost of feeding and clothing me. Kindness did not factor into it; most of their serving staff were aspiring scholars. Those of us who owed them worked in shifts, splitting our time between labor and studies.
I am now fluent in Veladari, Forian, Serissan, and Low-Country Nord. I’ve also learned to decipher the early Nord wyrd-runes, and have begun my studies in the High Tongue of the Red Epoch, though there are very few documents remaining from that era in the Sisters’ library. Much of the language remains a mystery.
I paused, and when the pause went on for too long, I recapped the pen.
There was a strong possibility I had just insulted my husband, but I couldn’t stand the idea of ripping the page out.
Of course there were almost no documents from the Red Epoch. That was when the humans had risen up against Empress Liliach and burned her keeps, along with as many of her kind as possible, before driving the remaining vampires belowground. The High Tongue, once reserved only for the most powerful ranks of vampires and their bloodwitches, had been lost to the world.
With that in mind, I closed the journal.
The rest of the journey was mind-numbing. The urge to unwrap the book and pick up where I’d left off clawed at me, but I couldn’t abide the thought of reading in this tiny space with Olwyn and Ellena.
Not when I might find Bane superimposed over the beautiful vampire knight in my head. That shouldn’t have happened, and yet, now that I’d entertained the notion… I found that it wouldn’t quite leave, but not in a welcome or pleasurable way.
I pictured him once more, those fangs tearing at my skin, and shuddered.
By the third hour, Ellena had fallen asleep, curled up on the bench where Bane had sat the previous day. Olwyn had moved on to a list that was making her mutter to herself under her breath.
In hour five, I thought I saw a shadow outside the window and sat up straight, wanting to thank Bane for the gift. It was a pine tree, close to the road, claw marks scored across its trunk—higher than any wolf or cougar would be able to reach from the ground.
In hour six, I gave up and slept.
The next thing I knew, a hand was firmly gripping my shoulder.
“Wake up, Cirrien. We’re home.”
Olwyn released me as I stretched, and the sight outside my window was astonishing: the carriage was traveling upwards over a paved path.
We emerged on higher ground, above the sea of mist; the mountains were visible once more. But my eyes went first to the castle looming before me, the keep of Ravenscry.
It was a fortress, built from dark stone. A fairy tale castle in the middle of the forest, but the fairy tale it’d emerged from was a dark one, a tale of claws and bones and blood.
It was a castle built by vampire hands in the days of the Red Epoch. Each of the four keeps—Ravenscry, Wolfspaw, Stagpoint, and Owlhorn—had been made by vampires, captured by rebel humans, and had once more been given into the hands of their original masters. Their art was evident in the pointed arch windows and doorways, the flying buttresses, the ornate embellishments, both delicate yet brutal, inlaid in every surface.
The gates had opened to allow us through to the interior bailey. Eryan halted the carriage, and Wyn unbarred the door with unabashed relief.
She was home… and I was walking into a world outside my purview.
I emerged just after her, stepping onto scrubbed paving stones and clutching my precious books to my chest—and from the high walls, a figure dropped and landed gracefully before me.
The vampire straightened, fangs flashing white against poreless, light brown skin. She wore her dark hair in a tight braid, and bright blue eyes flashed like a cat’s. Her armor was leather, reinforced with dull and pitted iron plating.
“Welcome to Ravenscry, my lady.” The vampire swept a deep bow, no easy feat considering that she bristled with weapons. Her voice was warm, deeply accented with the cheerful, drawn-out vowels of a native easterner. “And as for you, my love… welcome home.”
She grabbed Olwyn, moving faster than my eye could catch, and tipped her back for a deep kiss.
Olwyn was flushed when the vampire released her. She gestured to the woman, one hand around her waist. “Cirrien, this is Commander Visca, the head of Lord Bane’s legions and my wife. She is responsible for your protection; so long as she is in residence, her orders take precedence above all others, save Lord Bane’s.”
I gave Visca an awkward curtsy, holding out my skirts, and quickly signed to her: It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I’m sure I’ll be no trouble at all.
After all, I wasn’t going to go tempt fate in the forest. Olwyn’s own dread at the prospect of a warg had made it quite clear that death could wander in on silent paws at any moment.
The commander was watching me with the same speculative look I’d come to expect from Bane and Olwyn. “Was the ride comfortable?”
As comfortable as it could be, given the threat of wolf-men wanting to rip my throat out and roll around in my guts.
“Huh. I haven’t the faintest clue what you’re saying, but we’ll rectify that shortly. More to the point, you seem to be of stronger constitution than we were given to expect.”
It was really beginning to sink in—these vampires had genuinely all expected hysterics, if not a full-on mental break.
As terrible as I felt for Antonetta, it was probably for the best that she was not the one standing here right now. I only wished she had chosen another way to extricate herself.
I will do what I must for Veladar’s sake , I signed, meeting Visca’s eyes.
“Dear, we really don’t have time for niceties.” Olwyn’s voice was strained, and she held a list in an iron grip. “They must make the vows by midnight or our contract is in error, and she cannot wear that dress.”
Visca’s cocky smile faded and she nodded to the bloodwitch. “Do what you must. I’ll be off to find a certain absent groom and make sure he’s at the altar.”
With another open demonstration of her predatory grace, she scaled the keep’s wall once more, swarming up the stone using only her sharp nails.
I’d barely managed to sign a farewell before Olwyn hurried me through an iron-fortified door. While there were obviously no silver bells or rowan here, they’d hung braided garlands of wolfsbane over every door and window, the purple blossoms drooping in thick swathes.
“Come now, my lady. We must prepare you for your true wedding.”