Chapter 1 #2
I switch tactics. “There’s warm bread in the kitchen. With cinnamon. Possibly even butter if Callen hasn’t braided it into someone’s hair again.”
Still nothing. I sigh and adjust my grip on the ribbon-wrapped broom tucked under my arm, the teacup wobbling in one hand, the stub of a beeswax candle in the other. An absolutely useless combination of items.
“They’ll thrive with love and music,” I had told Margot just yesterday.
That was before the letter.
It rests now behind me on the tea table—sealed in black wax, penned in the calligraphy of someone who has never once laughed at a joke they did not tell. It even smells disapproving, somehow.
The Court of Eldermire, it seems, has only just discovered who the children are. And where they came from. How, I’m not sure—though I have my suspicions.
It wasn’t Margot. She wouldn’t breathe a word even if the High Chancellor himself came calling with a truth tonic and a tray of bribes.
But Ruthen? He left in a hurry. Muttering about his bitten wrist and his fraying nerves. “I’m not fond of children, Baroness. You may recall that was a hiring clause.” And he did always linger a little too long at the market stalls, nursing gossip like wine.
Perhaps it was him. Perhaps someone else. Perhaps the moment they saw me open my manor to six little bats with no family papers, it was only a matter of time.
It hardly matters.
What matters is this: the Court has concerns.
They are monitoring the situation.
They are, in their own tasteful, devastatingly civil way… scandalized.
I considered burning the letter. Their judgment, reduced to ash and nothing. Symbolism matters.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I folded it. Once. Twice. Again.
And then, quite precisely, I tucked it beneath the sugar bowl.
If I must carry their disapproval, I’ll do it with cream and honey.
***
The next day comes softly to Bloomhill. Too softly, almost. The kind of hush that makes even the dust feel reverent in the early morning light.
The children had been living on a strictly nocturnal schedule, their rhythms shaped by moonlit prayers and midnight rites. But Eldermire is a human court. And born vampires, such as myself and the children, can thrive in both sunlight and moonlight. It's only the turned who blister without wards.
Perhaps a bit of sunlight is exactly what the girls need.
I tiptoe down the west corridor with a tray of scones so charred they look like they might bite back.
The scent wafts up—half-burned sugar, half-defeat—and I wince.
There’s that aching sense again, low in my chest, the one that says I’ve forgotten something.
Napkins? No, folded under my arm like a hopeful afterthought.
Bloodfruit jam? Already splattered across the hem of my night-robe like a crime scene. Dignity?
Long gone. Possibly fled with my staff.
I should’ve paid attention when Eddy, my cook, still worked here.
I’m the cook now. And the governess. And the butler.
Me and my silk slippers and my absurd, pitiful optimism.
I ease the nursery door open with my hip.
The curtains are still drawn, but pale light slips through the edges—enough to touch the corners of the shared beds. Six of them, pushed together by small hands that refused to sleep apart.
None of them wanted separate rooms, let alone separate beds. I didn’t blame them. I still don’t.
“Good morning, my little bats,” I say softly, setting the tray down on the bedside table with all the reverence of an offering. “This morning, we dine like queens.”
No one stirs.
Callen has one hand curled around a stuffed raven. Imara is tucked precisely, as always, but her braid has come undone, ribbons trailing across her pillow. Siven is hidden away under a mountain of blankets. Liri is halfway off her bed, one foot dangling, her fingers tangled in Yla’s hair.
And Vess—my littlest bat—is snoring gently in her crib.
No one wakes, so I sing.
Quietly, a little out of tune, a foolish verse I half-invent as I go: something about spoons and starfire and how crumbs aren’t comets, no matter how much they scatter. It’s a joke for no one. Or maybe… maybe just for me.
And then—
Callen snorts, nose crinkling before she buries it deeper into her pillow.
Yla, still half-asleep, hums along. Not quite the right notes. Not quite wrong either.
Something inside me gives. A tight knot loosens, low in my ribs. That place where fear lives. The part of me that’s been holding my breath since the night they arrived. Since the first whispered nightmare. Since the first silent supper.
It unravels slowly, gently.
Hope, I think, might sound a bit like off-key rhymes and sleepy laughter.
And if it doesn’t…
I’ll sing anyway.
***
Later, Margot enters my chambers without knocking.
“Milady,” she says, voice brisk, “we should think about hiring some help.”
I don’t look up from where I’m seated at my vanity, gently plucking at the strings of a small lap harp that’s far more decorative than useful. The melody I’m attempting has collapsed into something mournful and mildly insulting to the composer.
“You mean beyond your charming self?” I murmur, adjusting the tuning peg and wincing at the sour note that follows.
Her sigh could polish silver. “You’ve got jam on your sleeve again.”
I glance down. Bloodfruit. Of course.
“I wrestled the stain out of your rose brocade,” Margot adds, holding up the gown with all the reverence of a battle flag. “Your favorite. The one with the blush piping.”
That gets my attention. For a moment I forget how to breathe. I’d written that dress off as lost: surrendered it to the ruin. The sight of it, jam-free, sends a sharp little ache through my chest.
“Margot, you miracle.”
She hums, crosses to me, and sets the dress on the chaise. Then, after a moment, “Have you eaten?”
“I had tea.”
“That’s not blood.”
“It was bloodfruit-infused.”
She doesn’t dignify that with a response.
Bloodfruit doesn’t contain real blood. It’s simply named that way because its juice runs red and thick, staining everything it touches.
It’s tart beneath the sweetness, with flesh like crimson velvet.
It makes excellent candied treats—a favorite of my late Aunt Florencia’s, who claimed it cured melancholy and kept the soul “gloriously sharp.”
Instead, Margot steps behind me, lifts my hair, takes the brush, and begins brushing with patient, practiced strokes. I close my eyes, just for a moment, and let the rhythm of it settle behind my ribs.
“You’re molting,” she mutters. “Stress.”
“Am I a songbird now?”
“Songbirds don’t bite ambassadors.”
“That was one time, and I was four.”
“Twice, actually,” she corrects gently, and I swear I hear affection in it.
When I open my eyes, I meet myself in the mirror—strawberry blond waves softened by Margot’s touch. Bright green eyes staring back at me. I look… cared for. It feels both unfamiliar and unbearably tender.
“Do you think I made a mistake?”
“No,” she says simply. “You made a choice.”
She brushes silently for a while, and I let the hush stretch, until it drifts toward memory.
“You know,” I say softly, “today was the anniversary of when they buried Aunt Florencia… I forgot until after the children went to bed.”
Margot makes a small sound—acknowledgment, not interruption.
“I still remember it perfectly. The mausoleum was so quiet. Not a single sob.” I catch her gaze in the mirror. “Vampires don’t weep, you know. Not in public. We host. We hover. We fillet each other’s reputations like meat.”
“I remember,” she says. “I sewed the lining in your gloves beforehand.”
I smile faintly. “Everyone thought I’d sell the manor.”
Margot sets the brush down on the vanity. “Even you did.”
“Yes.” I reach for the ribbon and begin tying my hair back. “Bloomhill was a scandal, not an inheritance. A political jab at my mother’s side of the family. And I was the softest target.”
“Still are,” she says, but her voice is softer than her words.
“I thought I’d sell it, take the coin, then vanish into some rose-trellised villa within the clan’s borders.”
Margot folds her arms. “And instead you refurbished the drapes and filled the halls with flowers.”
“My mother hated flowers,” I murmur, fingers pausing at the knot.
“Said they wilted too easily, made a house look tired. But don’t you think—” I glance around the chamber, the vases, the blooms spilling over— “flowers make it feel like a home? I tried to believe I could make something new here. Not a legacy. Not a power base. Just… a home.”
I inhale. Exhale. My chest feels like it might float up and burst.
“I never wanted children,” I murmur, quietly. “Not really. Not in the way people mean when they say that. But the night they came to my gates…”
She waits.
“They were so small,” I whisper.
Margot doesn’t reply right away. She just squeezes my shoulder, steady and sure.
“I didn’t say yes because I knew what to do,” I murmur. “I said yes because they needed someone and… I remembered how it felt to be… not chosen. I didn’t want them to feel that way, Margot…”
Silence.
Then, Margot sniffs and turns away, too fast.
“I’ll fetch some blood,” she says, too loudly. “Proper blood. With iron, not fruit.”
And I smile softly.
Because despite the Court of Eldermire’s disapproval, despite their whispers about impropriety and recklessness, I hope—no, I believe—I am doing the right thing.
How could it not be right, when it feels like this? When the weight I carry feels, for once, like something I chose?
***
The next day, the second letter arrives.
The pounding of hooves shivers through the flagstones before I see him—a rider bearing the Eldermire crest. Margot is in the nursery with the children, and the hall is otherwise empty, which means the duty falls to me.
He dismounts, brisk and impersonal, and crosses the courtyard. No bow. No courtesy. Just the sharp lift of a sealed missive.