Chapter 2 #2
“No one is coming for me, my love. I’m the only healer in town. People want their coughs treated and their babies delivered safely.” Her eyes flashed. “And if they try to come for you, they’ll have to get through me first.”
The steel in her voice raised the hair on my arms, and a familiar awe spread through me.
My mother was a small woman, but she radiated uncanny strength.
She was only a touch past forty and routinely passed for half that.
If our looks had been similar, people might have mistaken us for sisters.
But Mama was my opposite in nearly every way.
Where I was tall and lean, she was short and curved in all the places that turned men’s heads.
With her platinum hair and angelic blue eyes, most people expected her to be as gentle as she appeared.
If they were smart, they only made that mistake once.
I’d seen her back a man twice her size into the corner of a tavern after he groped himself and asked if she’d like another child.
He’d drawn a sharp breath, and the apologies that spilled from his lips had sounded like a squeaky wheel on a wagon.
Later, when I asked my mother what she said to subdue him, she gave me a mild look.
I thanked him for his offer. With a flick of her wrist, she produced the small, forged sickle she used for harvesting herbs. But I declined.
“The peddler sold faulty goods,” she said now, releasing me and unlacing her sleeve.
“With a word from me, the folk of Derryton will chase him from town for distributing dangerous merchandise.” She gave a single nod as if her statement settled the matter.
Which, considering what I knew of my mother, it probably did.
She’d declared that no one in town would believe Cyprio Kormaz, and that was that.
Even so, a vision of the peddler’s wide, frightened eyes swam in my mind. As Mama was fond of saying, fear was the spark for the flames of hate. So how could she dismiss Cyprio so easily?
“You’ll feed from me,” she said, offering her wrist.
I knew my surprise showed on my face. Mama almost never gave me her vein. On the rare occasions I needed human blood, she dosed me from a vial, her blood mixed with herbs.
“Quickly now,” she said. “We don’t know how much silver was in that tiara. If it spreads through your blood, you’ll grow ill. Remember the hairbrush?”
A shudder passed through me. When I was eight, a troupe of actors had visited a neighboring village.
After enduring days of my begging, Mama had relented and paid the blacksmith to take us in his wagon.
I’d been over the moon when one of the actresses invited us to visit her tent.
Clearly aware of my excitement, the actress had been attentive, showing me her costumes and brushing my hair.
But she had used a silver hairbrush she’d received from an admirer.
Mama spent three days nursing me while I hovered between life and death. All creatures from Nocta were vulnerable to silver. Vampires weren’t as sensitive as some, but as a child, I’d been more susceptible to the toxins.
The stroke of a hairbrush wouldn’t knock me out now, but an open wound was different. Dangerous.
I took my mother’s wrist.
Then I let the monster that lived inside me off its leash.
Needle-sharp fangs punched through my gums. A wild, potent energy coursed through me, the rush like a river bursting over a dam.
I struck with a hiss, sinking my fangs deep.
Blood filled my mouth, the taste like the sweetest nectar.
I groaned and swallowed convulsively as my heart synced to the pulse of blood pumping down my throat.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
My fingertips itched fiercely, like a dozen fire ants crawling under my skin as the lacerations closed. The discomfort faded swiftly, replaced with a euphoria that danced in my veins like the sparkling wine the tavern keeper served on King Hubert’s birthday.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Strength flooded my limbs, the river becoming a torrent.
My vision sharpened, the pattern on the quilt leaping from the bed.
Somewhere outside, an animal scurried over the forest floor.
Blood flowed, the taste more divine than any food that had ever passed my lips.
I didn’t need to feed often. Most of the time, a few sips of animal blood sufficed.
But it was a pale imitation of the dark wine that pumped through human veins.
Mama’s chest rose and fell steadily as she stared at a spot on the floor. Then her gaze drifted to the dress I still clutched under my arm.
Boom…Ba-boom.
I wrenched my mouth away. The monster inside me revolted, slamming against the edges of my mind as it screeched for more blood.
But I was ready for it. When other children were learning how to read and do sums, I’d sat with Mama while she dropped tiny beads of blood onto my tongue and then talked me through the worst impulses of the thirst .
With the monster hissing in my mind, I swiped my tongue over the puncture wounds in my mother’s wrist. They healed instantly, and I released her and stepped back.
“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice deeper than usual. My fangs retracted. Denied the carnage it craved, the monster faded, taking the thirst with it.
My mother rolled down her sleeve, her movements brisk and matter-of-fact. “That gown should never see the light of day, Corinthe.”
“I know.” Unable to stop myself, I fingered the skirt’s silky material. It wasn’t silk. I didn’t know what it was. A mystery—just like everything else about my mother’s time in Nocta.
She lifted her wrist to her mouth and used her teeth to tie her laces. “Put it back where it belongs,” she said around the strip of linen.
Out of habit, I moved to obey. Then I stopped.
Mama stopped, too, her gaze locked with mine.
And something inside me shook loose. Crumbled and broke apart.
“Why won’t you tell me about him?” I demanded. My heart thumped hard as a tangle of curiosity and resentment rushed up and put more words on my tongue. “He was my father. I deserve to know.”
For a moment, my mother seemed frozen, her sleeve to her lips and her blue eyes wide above her hand. Slowly, she lowered her arm. I braced myself for the usual. She didn’t remember. She couldn’t recall.
“You’re right,” she said.
My heart pounded harder. Questions spun through my mind as I waited for her to speak. Who was my father? Had she loved him? Was he alive? Had he cared for her?
He must have. He’d given her the dress.
My mother clasped her hands in front of her.
“I was sixteen years old when I was arrested for stealing. My innocence didn’t matter to the magistrate.
My family was poorer than dirt, and someone had been taking bread from the baker’s cooling racks for weeks.
” Mama lifted her chin. “They were going to hang me.”
A protest caught in my throat.
“I crossed the Feyline, as criminals sometimes do.” She looked past me, her gaze on the window over my shoulder. “Nocta is a place of wild, unrestrained magic. Its inhabitants are the same. I was…hunted.”
“By the werewolves?” I asked, goose bumps prickling on my arms. Everyone in Ghedda knew the stories of the wild hunts. Each autumn, without fail, a group of young men in Derryton lured friends into the woods and scared them senseless by howling and staging a chase.
Mama looked at me. “By your father.”
My chest tightened, and regret washed over my need for answers. But I’d opened the door. It was too late to close it. “Did he—?”
“He didn’t hurt me,” she said at once, her tone as firm as it had been when I’d refused vegetables or tried to delay bedtime as a child. “I did what I had to do, and it never came to that.”
The unsaid part hung in the air. My mother didn’t believe in ignorance.
She’d told me in straightforward detail what happened between men and women when they shared a bed.
I didn’t have to ask what she’d done to appease my father.
But appeasement only went so far if an aggressor enjoyed inflicting pain.
I swallowed. “Would he have hurt you eventually?”
Her gaze was steady. “Does the ocean mean to batter the cliffs? On its own, magic isn’t good or evil. Like nature, it simply… is . And like nature, it will harm you if you get in its way. A wise woman builds her house away from the cliff’s edge.”
Unbidden, Cyprio’s words rose in my mind. No one is good or bad. They’re a hundred other things. Impatient. Charming. Violent.
Curious…like me.
A knot formed in my throat and it made my voice hoarse as I asked, “Did he know about me?”
My mother stepped forward, the black dress between us.
She cupped her hands around my face and spoke in a low, fierce voice.
“No, and he never can. Do you hear me? Dhampirs don’t come along often.
Your ability to tolerate the sun is a unique power, and the vampires value power above everything.
If you cross the Feyline, they’ll find you and use your gift to their benefit. ”
It was the same warning she’d impressed upon me since I was a child. “Is my father still alive?”
She lowered her hands. “I don’t know, but I have no reason to think otherwise. He was a powerful nobleman in King Rasimir’s court.”
The vampire king’s name sent apprehension scrabbling down my spine.
The young men of Derryton told one another tales of the werewolves’ hunts while they sat around campfires with ale in their hands and nervous laughter on their lips.
But no one spoke of Rasimir in jest. The ruler of Nocta was known for his brutality.
“Thank the gods for the sun” was a common saying in Ghedda, since the light kept Rasimir from taking over the human realm as he had Nocta.
But I was a daywalker. I could move between the two realms with ease.
On the other hand, I was only one dhampir. What use could Rasimir have for me?
Mama looked at the dress. “We should burn it.”