Chapter Two #9
“Is this what daemons do?” his question startled her. Surely, daemons were allowed to love, and there was so much love she craved to give him. “Is it required of a maker to bed their fledgling?” Silvio added without moving. The candlelight flickered across his stern face.
“Yes,” Dulior nodded, her eagerness rising.
She had taught him that word—fledgling; a word to describe how he had come to be. A hatchling of her blood. Dulior was going to teach him so much more than words now. She would fashion him into the perfect groom, a daemon worthy of the night, until he stood as her equal.
How would it feel, she wondered. She had bedded many a man but never one such as him. Daemons could love, she was sure of it, and Silvio’s making was a testament of that. She was deliciously frightened of what it would feel like to lie with a daemon. With the one forged especially for her.
She stood up a little and gestured for him to give her the candle so he could undress. Silvio took a step back. His eyes never falling from hers, never straying to the rest of her.
“Then I shall attend to my fledgling, if this is what my mistress’ teachings dictate,” he bowed, his entire frame stiff. It was the indifference in his voice that struck her.
Silvio left the room he had hardly entered, taking all the light with him.
DULIOR, 1790
Dulior unfurled her fan and closed it again as she looked out of the carriage window.
There was no sign of Silvio after she kicked him out.
The outpost was silent, few of its windows lit at this hour.
She could hear the horses snort and grunt, struggling with the straps and reins, eager to move.
Across from her, on the other bench, Emerick was reading a book.
His long legs were crossed; she saw the mud on the soles of his boots.
He was still wearing the blood-stained shirt from earlier.
They had grown so accustomed to tolerating each other’s existence that they relied upon it, leaning in to that mutual dislike.
It was almost comforting. Dulior narrowed her eyes, studying him and the booklet he was holding.
There was something oddly familiar about it.
It took her a minute to recognize it as one of her own.
He’s been in my room! The thought filled her with disgust.
She wanted to hurt him, to take away the joy of doing something as simple as sitting there and reading, of having that moment of peace and quiet.
“How can you debase yourself like this?” the words came spitting out of her mouth, the bile burned her tongue. “Playing the servant all these centuries.”
“Have you not put me in this role, Madame?” Emerick replied without looking at her. His eyes scanned the printed page slowly, from right to left, like a human would. The fingers of his right hand made to turn the page, running down the paper and back cover eagerly.
“This is not what I intended for you, and you know it.”
Emerick closed the book and put it on his lap.
He appeared to be thinking, his gaze cast downward, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
There were still specks of blood under his chin and on his collar, places that Silvio had not managed to lick dry.
Slowly, he raised his gaze and Dulior felt the full weight of his black eyes.
“You had meant for me to die. To be fed upon by your newly made child. For him to suckle on me and then clutch at your breast and beg for more.”
Suddenly the air in the carriage felt like it was forced out of her lungs, invisible fingers pulled at her clothes and at her head, turning her to face him, unable to look away.
Emerick’s fingers tapped on the cover of the book and an echo of that tap reverberated inside her skull, slowly piercing through the bone.
“Oh, how it must eat at you to have given us this life and not be allowed to partake in it. You are Silvio’s wife but that is all you are.
And me—the servant, the footman, the valet de chamber, the majordomo,” he was spitting the words.
“At least I have played my role well and to your liking, while you, Madame, have not been satisfactory in any of yours—neither as wife, nor as mother.”
The phantom fingers prying on her head pushed down, making her gasp and drop the fan.
The pressure oozed down her whole body, it felt like he was touching her everywhere all at once.
Her lips trembled with the effort not to gag, the blood drained from her face.
The presence disappeared with the same force it had engulfed her as if it had never been there.
But her body remembered, her arms were covered in gooseflesh.
Her mind was desperately trying to put up walls and guard itself but it was too late. He had seen inside her.
Emerick turned his head away, returning to the booklet. He licked at his thumb, and flipped through the pages, searching for the place where he left off, already having forgotten her.
A voice called out to the driver and the carriage jolted, the horses finally given leave to move.
The door opened and Silvio stepped in. His face was flushed from warmth and drink, his breath reeking of alcohol.
Stumbling forward he sat next to Emerick and pressed against him, excruciatingly close and made to say something but stopped.
Instead, he leaned back and closed his eyes, his whole body slowly relaxed, allowing the carriage’s rhythm to lull him into slumber.
The Coven will make things right, she thought, eager to reach Berlin.
Dulior watched the two men and the chasm that had opened between her and them only grew wider.
If she bent forward and reached out, she might brush Silvio’s hair, or smack her fan across Emerick’s smug face.
Yet she did not belong in the same space as them.
She could smell and taste them, painfully familiar with the sounds and movements of their bodies.
Bodies bound by the same blood. No longer hers, but theirs.