Chapter Eleven
SILVIO HAD BECOME UNRECOGNISABLE.
He looked wrong. As if someone had broken him into pieces and attempted to put him back together, and because the man himself could not be remade, he turned to the mansion instead.
He cleared out all of Ingenuar’s belongings, gathered and arranged for them to be taken away.
He replaced the paintings hanging in the great hall and the ballrooms. Vases that had previously stood empty—the China so fragile the servants scarcely dared to dust too profusely—now overflowed with flowers and trailing vines: lilies, lilacs, irises and roses, eucalyptus, rosemary and freesias, everlasting pea and Italian clematis.
Plants in beautiful clay and terracotta pots were arranged in the corners of rooms and hallways where the light pooled during the day; Birds of Paradise and small palms, eager to grow.
Sculptures and busts were brought out and arranged in the garden, benches were placed by newly made flower beds, and off to the side a greenhouse was being built.
Scarlett had seen the plans for it, the enormous pool it would have at its centre full of water lilies, and the glass of the structure rose up in pointed angles like the rooftop of a church.
Silvio had the Coven’s ceilings repainted to resemble an old nautical chart, a siren sprayed above the doorway, greeting those he allowed to peruse the leather-bound tomes and dictionaries he filled the bookshelves with.
The only thing he left untouched was the velvet Rococo chaise, the so-called throne.
Whether he did not dare destroy it for fear of what his court would say, or because he liked the sight of the thing, Scarlett never asked.
Silvio seemed to enjoy occupying the seat even when there was no one to witness him.
He spent hours there, poring over his correspondence or talking to the servants.
The servants, he also changed, the butler was made to retire, replaced by one of the footmen. Kyrillos was his name: a charming youth whose sudden rise through the chain of command left him flustered, though he quickly rose to the occasion.
The master bedroom Silvio left to Scarlett, keeping instead to the smaller chambers assigned to him as Marquis.
“They will still be used by the Marquis.” Silvio smiled at the words. There was such fondness in them, as though he expected Emerick to arrive any moment now…as though Emerick had not been gone for years.
Scarlett watched Silvio descend into a kind of mania, lighting candles before mirrors, arranging them as if in offering. There were days when only Kyrillos had seen or spoken to the Master. Scarlett had noticed the signs of blood loss in the young man but she did not say a word.
“He is asking about Emerick,” the butler said, talking more to himself than to Scarlett.
As if he, too, had followed into his master’s madness.
“I have been trying to do as the master commands, but it is not easy. I’m meeting with his lawyers…
there is something going on with the bank accounts…
that is the only trace the Marquis has left behind. There is nothing else to track him by.”
Scarlett nodded in understanding, lacking the strength, or perhaps the will, to explain to this mortal that the words held no meaning for her.
Kyrillos raked his hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead, which was damp with sweat.
He looked so young, so small and out of place in this mansion. His lowered gaze was thoughtful.
He reminded her of the former Comte. They looked alike save for the birdlike quality of Kyrillos’s gestures and the way he moved.
Emerick possessed a predatory, feline grace.
He enjoyed being the centre of attention, drinking in both the desire and the scorn that oozed from those who observed him.
Like a true vampire, Emerick fed on everything a person could give him and asked for more.
Kyrillos…Kyrillos would make a beautiful addition to their Coven, if Silvio intended to turn him.
Had it been any other vampire, Scarlett would have tried to listen for Emerick’s thoughts, to scan mortals’ eyes for a glimpse of a long-haired spectre roaming their streets.
But Emerick’s mind had always been a tricky thing, hollow even when he was a fledgling.
It was so tightly locked, a dam threatening to burst and drown them all.
Scarlett remembered meeting him for the first time, back when she was the All Mother.
A mind locked not out of fear that its secrets might be unlatched, but because it had discarded the memories of mortality, rewriting them as a playwright on a winding stage of lunacy.
All three had been mad—Dulior mad with rage, Silvio with lust, and Emerick with fear.
They ruined one another and those around them, and now one of them had taken a bite of the Coven too big for the Council to swallow.
After ascending, Silvio revealed a side of his character Scarlett had never imagined he possessed, a side that not even the All Father had seemed to predict before making him a Regent.
All vampires were greedy and peculiar creatures, but Silvio’s hunger went beyond that of his kin.
Did you really not foresee this, Mein Liebling? Or is it because of it that you chose him? Scarlett thought, regretting never questioning how Ingenuar selected his Regents; if there had been a grander scheme behind it or if he had simply been drawn by their charms and their youth in the Blood.
Of course she missed Ingenuar, and mourned him.
Not how a child missed their parent or as a parent burying their offspring.
Ingenuar had given her a part of himself, guided her back into the land of the living, led her like a prophet of the damned, and she—his undying Eurydice—had followed.
Scarlett was the one who never looked back, never wondered what had become of her human daughter and human mother, of her father and brother.
Perhaps Silvio had done her a kindness, throwing away Ingenuar’s belongings and clothes, leaving nothing for Scarlett to cling to that might possess her.
No coats or shirts bearing his fading scent.
No journals or ledgers scrawled in letters none of them knew.
The few portraits bearing his likeness had been rammed into the room of antiques, chipped busts and daguerreotypes.
Scarlett watched as the new Master descended further into his obsessions, starved.
Kyrillos was a temporary replacement for Emerick, who, between feeding his master, arranged and cared for the mansion, the other servants, and the vampires.
He delivered correspondence and somehow managed to keep in contact with another human in Béziers who oversaw the Marquis’ vineyard.
The way Kyrillos lost himself in his tasks reminded Scarlett of Mihaela, her inquisitive stepdaughter and blood-sister.
Mihaela had not waited for Silvio’s ascension: she had taken what little she possessed, and her demon, and travelled back to the East. To the Sultana and the Emir.
Into the desert queendom of the damned. Mihaela had confided in Scarlett that she was searching for the myth of their origin, the reason for their malady and their thirst, what had brought about the creation of vampires and the need for them.
Scarlett feigned understanding, her mind reeling at the memory of the first of them, so easily destroyed, crumbling into ash and soot. Whatever had made Ingenuar had not made him strong enough.
“Watch over her. Antalya is not like the Coven,” Scarlett had warned Astra. “Betül may have already written to her mistress about what transpired here.”
The demon nodded. Scarlett could not read her mind, but she supposed Astra was vexed by the vampire politics. There would be none in Antalya. No one opposed the Sultana: her rule was indisputable, eternal—timeless.
“Whatever you see or hear in the Sultana’s presence will not leave her walls. If you need to reach me, send Astra,” Scarlett instructed Mihaela. “You were invited to the sultanate, but once you enter it you may only leave at its mistress’s pleasure.”
“What about Betül?” Mihaela recalled the former Council member. “She is allowed to come and go, and to speak of the Sultana.”
Scarlett smiled. She already ached for this child of Blood and her riddled mind.
“Betül was one of us because her mistress wished so. She might have sat in our Council of shadows, but she never served Ingenuar’s interests. Nor did she name Silvio as successor.”
And I am sure everyone who voted against the Sultana found their names diligently committed to paper, the All Mother thought.
“Do you think the Sultana is superstitious?” Mihaela asked offhandedly.
The question unsettled Scarlett: superstitions never served vampires.
“Ingenuar died not long after I joined the Coven. I have been to the French coven, as well, and the Marquis is now gone. What if my visits make me a harbinger of death to the immortals?”
Astra laughed, a loud, pleasing sound. She reached out and ruffled the girl’s hair. “You went to the Basilissa in Athens too. A number of times. Unless you want to take credit for the financial crisis in Greece, I think the Sultana has nothing to fear.”
Mihaela bristled at the demon’s words, her mighty status as an omen crumbled to dust.
“Whether you do or you don’t, come back to me,” Scarlett whispered, taking Mihaela’s hand. She cupped it between her palms, pressing tightly. “You are the only thing left of him.”
I see why Ingenuar made you. There is so much of him in you, child.
Scarlett kept those thoughts to herself, fearing that if she voiced them, Silvio would hear and burn Mihaela, adding her to the pyre of her maker’s legacy.
All that remained of Ingenuar in the Coven were the few vampires he had sired himself.
DULIOR, 2019