Chapter 7 Marienne #2
“That,” I say, breathlessly, “was graceful. And terrifying.”
Tamsin’s eyes lift to mine.
For a moment, she doesn’t reply.
Just looks at me.
Long and unreadable, like she’s searching for something behind my smile.
The sunlight catches in her lashes. Her brow furrows slightly.
A flush crawls up my throat, hot and betraying.
She nods once.
“Thank you,” she says. But it sounds like a question.
Tamsin sheathes the blade with the kind of care that speaks volumes. Not reverent, exactly, but respectful.
The children are silent, still caught in the awe of movement. Even Yla, who rarely stops squirming, is watching with wide, unblinking eyes.
Tamsin straightens. “If you’d like,” she says slowly, addressing the little semicircle of young vampires, “I can teach you.”
Callen tilts her head. “Teach us what?”
Tamsin’s gaze sweeps across them—not unkindly, but measured. “Swordplay. Stance. Focus. Not just how to fight, but how to think before you move. How to control yourselves and your fear.”
“Why?” Imara asks, crossing her arms. Her tone isn’t hostile. Just wary.
“Because discipline,” Tamsin says, steady as the sword in her hand, “isn’t about rules. It’s about learning to be steady when everything else isn’t.”
There’s a long pause.
The children glance at one another, then at me.
I smile, soft and encouraging, even though I feel like a slightly winded wren in a ballgown.
“Only if you’d like,” I say, brushing Vess’s curls back from her face. “But I think it might be good. Useful. And she does look rather impressive, doesn’t she?”
Siven speaks first.
“Yes,” she says simply. Her voice is quiet, but her eyes are clear. “I want to learn.”
Tamsin blinks.
I see something flicker across her face, surprise, maybe. Or... softness?
Then Callen nods. “Me too.”
Liri jumps up. “And me!”
Imara hesitates, then lifts her chin. “If they’re doing it, I’m not letting them get ahead of me.”
Yla spins once on the spot, then says, “Only if I get to name my sword.”
Tamsin gives her the barest ghost of a smirk. “Deal.”
Vess says nothing. Just growls at a flower and latches harder onto my shoulder.
I kiss the top of her head. “You can decide later, darling.”
Tamsin nods once, businesslike. “We’ll start tomorrow. After breakfast.”
And just like that, the future shifts, like a blade turned to catch the light.
***
By midafternoon, the grand experiment is unraveling like a hem caught on bramble.
Imara and Yla vanish. Margot reports their absence with a raised brow and a muttered, “If they’ve touched the heirloom drapes again, I’ll scream.” They’re eventually discovered in the attic, one draped in cobwebbed lace and the other declaring herself Empress of Dust.
Liri curls up behind my favorite velvet chair and promptly falls into a sugar-induced coma—her little fists clutching a fistful of crumbled candied bloodfruit.
Callen has disappeared to the tower room.
Siven is whispering solemnly to the sugar bowl again. I decide not to intervene.
Vess is the only one accounted for the entire time, and simply because she fell asleep in Margot’s arms.
The household, I fear, is held together by pink ribbon, dried petals, and pure willpower.
I find Tamsin in the kitchen, half-hidden behind the pantry door, inspecting jars of jam like they’ve personally offended her. There’s a ledger open on the counter. Margot’s handwriting, looping and precise, fills half a page. Tamsin’s neater. Sharper.
She doesn’t look up as I enter, but I hear the sigh.
I step beside her and lean one elbow against the counter, adopting my most dramatic expression of thoughtful concern.
“Well?” I say. “How do you think we did?”
Tamsin spares me a glance.
“It wasn’t a terrible first attempt,” she says.
Not unkind. Just… honest.
I press a hand to my chest. “High praise from the Iron Oak herself.”
Her head turns, sharp. For a heartbeat, her eyes narrow, as though she’s weighing whether to deny it. “You’ve heard that.”
“Of course I have.” I laugh lightly. “The court loves its epithets.”
Her mouth presses thin. She doesn’t answer.
I lean closer, conspiratorial. “They have one for me too, you know. Marienne of the Bloom. Makes it sound like I drift about in my own little realm of roses and ribbons.” I tilt my head, smiling.
“I’ve taken quite a liking to it. Far more interesting than Baroness Marienne Solmere of Bloomhill Manor, don’t you think? ”
Her mouth twitches. Almost a smile.
I tilt my head, watching her in the golden light that spills in from the high window. She doesn’t meet my gaze, but I don’t miss the way her shoulders loosen, just a little.
Outside, I hear someone shriek with laughter—probably Yla, victorious in some imaginary battle as Empress of Dust.
Inside, there is calm. There is Tamsin. There is the faintest beginning of something I don’t yet have a name for.
“Tomorrow,” I say lightly, “we’ll do even better.”
Tamsin nods, returning to the ledger. “Tomorrow, there will be rules.”
I hum. “And tea.”
She sighs again.
And for some reason, it makes me smile.