Chapter 1 #2
Lara’s eyes were reddened from grief and exhaustion.
Her green ball gown was torn and spattered with blood, and her wavy black hair was tangled.
She swayed, then visibly pulled herself together, spine straightening as she looked at the entrance with determination.
“So long as there’s a bed in there, I don’t care.
” She shifted Anya into my hold, then walked forward, took a deep breath, and stuck her hand out as if testing whether the door would slam shut on it.
When it didn’t, she let out an audible sigh of relief.
Anya looked nearly asleep on her feet. “Let’s get you inside,” I whispered.
The entrance loomed, silent and dark. Whatever lurked inside couldn’t be worse than what filled the rest of Mistei, and there would at least be a bed to fall into. The thought of that made me want to cry.
So I urged Anya forward, Lara fell into step beside us, and we made our way into Blood House together.
The door slid shut behind us with an echoing clang. It was pitch black. Everything was still and silent except for a distant trickling sound.
“It’s dark,” Lara said unnecessarily.
“Maybe I can find a torch.”
A vibration went through the floor. A faint red glow sparked in the distance, followed by another. A line of torches came alight one by one, outlining the borders of a vast room.
The house was waking up.
Once the torches on the ground floor were burning, more swelled to life a level above, their fire unusually red.
The light sparked up and up, revealing six stories in all.
Each level was lined with silver-railed walkways that overlooked the central space, with spiraling staircases anchoring the corners of the room.
It had the same layout as Earth House’s main hall, but the decor was startlingly different.
Earth House was bright and verdant, with a floor of packed soil dotted with flowers and trees.
Blood House was paved with gray marble that sparkled in the torchlight, and the garnet-hued walls were coated with silver filigree.
The courtyard was anchored by a tiered fountain.
The liquid in the fountain was running red.
“Oh,” Lara said, sounding dismayed.
“Oh,” I echoed, feeling something more akin to awe.
A deep sense of comfort and safety filled the room—the same comfort I’d once felt as a servant in Earth House.
The house’s magic was wrapping us in a soothing blanket of welcome, letting us know we were home.
The couches against the walls looked plush and inviting, as if they wanted us to rest. But the fountain was spilling blood, and the filigree wasn’t the only shining ornamentation in the room—axes, swords, pikes, and spears rested in wooden racks and hung from brackets over the couches, as if the faeries of Blood House had never relaxed without a weapon close to hand.
A mix of softness and violence, beauty and death.
I brought Anya to a settee tucked beneath the curve of a staircase. It was upholstered in burgundy velvet, and a sword hung from the wall beside it. Dust puffed up as the couch took her weight, and she curled up on her side, closing her eyes.
Lara was exploring the room, trailing her fingers over the walls and furniture. She wrapped her hand around the haft of an axe, stared at it contemplatively for a few moments, then let go.
The weapons deserved investigation, but the liquid music of the fountain drew my attention.
I crossed to it and sat on the dust-rimed edge, watching the fall of blood.
The air was spiced with the coppery rich scent, and I didn’t find it nearly as disgusting as I ought to.
Whose blood is this? I asked Caedo silently.
The first princess began it with the blood of her enemies. You can add some from your next kill.
A cold shiver raced down my spine. I was a murderer now, and the dagger expected me to kill again.
Worse, I expected myself to kill again. Illusion and Light House would be regrouping after the battle in the throne room.
There would be violence as Mistei grappled with the question of who would rule next.
Ash-gray eyes filled my mind. Copper hair, a smile that flickered like flame, hands that had burned. A voice that had whispered promises in the dark and cruelties in the light.
I didn’t want to think about Prince Drustan of Fire House, so I shoved the vision away.
The first princess had morbid taste , I told Caedo.
The dagger seemed amused as it pulsed against my skin.
You will learn to appreciate blood. It slid down my arm like liquid, circling my wrist. I watched, fascinated, as it stretched narrow tendrils over my hand, mapping the spread of tendons before sending shoots over my fingers.
It looked like a separate skeleton laid atop mine.
Those metal bones were anchored in place with rings between each knuckle, and the tips sharpened into claws.
I dipped one claw into the eddying blood. Tiny ripples spread from that point of contact, and I felt Caedo sipping lightly, absorbing the liquid. The bond between us had strengthened with my new magic, and the dagger’s thoughts and thirst lay alongside mine.
You make a fine monster , Caedo said.
I pulled my hand away from the fountain abruptly. When I looked up, Lara stood a few feet away, watching me nervously. “Kenna, what is that?”
The reddish torchlight winked off the metal bones and sank into the dark crimson jewel that had settled over the back of my hand.
“My dagger,” I said, willing it to take that shape, and the metal instantly re-formed.
The unfaceted gem capped the hilt, and the blade was silvery bright.
“It belonged to Princess Cordelia.” The last Blood princess.
As a human, I shouldn’t have been able to wield Caedo, but it had been starving and without a mistress when I’d found it in the bog before my terrified flight to Mistei.
The first taste of my blood had bonded us, and now I didn’t know if—or how—we would ever be parted.
It was alive but not animal, a piece of magic so old it had taken physical form.
It existed to drink and to serve—and now it served me.
“That’s what you used to kill Garrick during the Earth trial,” Lara said, staring at it.
I nodded, feeling slightly nauseated at the memory of plunging the dagger into his gut. Not just at what I had done, but at how much I had enjoyed it.
“And Osric?”
“Yes.” That had been even more gratifying than killing Garrick, but I wouldn’t feel guilty about that pleasure, not after what Osric had done to Anya and everyone else in Mistei who had suffered under eight hundred years of tyrannical rule. “It drinks blood.”
Lara looked ill at the thought. “Where did you even find it?”
During the immortality trials, I’d told Lara I’d found it in Mistei, but she’d been so absorbed by the trials she hadn’t pushed for more details. “In the bog,” I admitted. “Back when I still lived in Tumbledown.”
Her jaw sagged. “You had a magic dagger all along and didn’t tell me?”
Her hurt expression made my stomach twist. “I’m sorry. I didn’t tell anyone. I was too afraid of losing it.”
She looked away. “I think I’m just tired,” she said, rubbing her forehead.
It was long past midnight. “Me, too.” At the words, Caedo liquefied and crawled back up my sleeve to curl around my bicep. “Will you stay with Anya while I find the bedrooms? I don’t want to leave her alone.”
After a pause where it looked like she wanted to argue with me, Lara nodded.
I moved quickly, ducking into corridors on each floor of the house to get a sense of the layout, though I didn’t explore past the first few doors.
The torches struggled to life in front of me, but even with that illumination, there was an eeriness to the empty halls that gave me goose bumps.
Definitely a place to explore during the day, when the ceiling crystals would reflect the light of the sky far above.
The house appeared to be laid out in a similar manner to Earth House, which meant the ground floor would hold kitchens, dining rooms, bathing chambers, libraries, salons, laundry facilities, and other public spaces.
The next floors would hold more gathering spaces before sprawling away towards the far reaches of the house where Underfae and less prominent Noble Fae lived.
The upper three floors of this central area would contain bedrooms and gathering spaces for the most prominent members of the house, with a corridor on the top floor reserved for members of the ruling family.
I jogged up the spiraling stairs towards the top level, running my hand along the silver railing before realizing how dirty my palm was getting. The staircase was beautiful under the dust, with a banister that looked like swirling liquid and balusters shaped like swords.
The flooring on the upper level was black marble veined with red, topped with a garnet-hued carpet runner.
Candles burned in alcoves behind stained glass, scattering light across the hallway in crimson shards.
While the wooden doors of Earth House had been carved to depict natural scenes, the silver doors of Blood House were engraved with scenes of battle, healing, and revelry.
I peered at one depicting a ballroom full of Fae, Underfae, and Nasties.
Their positions were ecstatic and wild, and when I looked closer, I saw figures twined together carnally at the edges.
A jolt went through me. Blood House wasn’t just the house of warriors and healers, was it? It was the Fae’s house of the flesh. And though Fire House might claim hedonism as their preferred virtue, pleasure was sacred to all the Fae.
I didn’t want to think about pleasure or Fire House, so I turned to a door that showed a vast battle and opened that one instead. The torches were sluggish to spark, but soon they were blazing brightly, casting a more natural golden light than the flames in the entrance hall.
The red carpet was soft beneath my feet, and the walls were white marble veined with silver and gold.
Like Lara’s room back at Earth House, there was a main living space with a desk, vanity, wardrobe, fireplace, and sitting area, then a folding screen that sectioned off a sleeping area.
The black lacquer screen was patterned with crimson swords, and the large four-poster bed behind it had a plush red comforter beneath a gauzy drapery.
Even covered in a layer of grime, the room was beautiful.
The bed was large enough for the three of us, and tomorrow we could clean out more rooms. I stripped the blanket and shook it out, sneezing as dust puffed up.
It was amazing the fabric hadn’t rotted, but the house’s magic probably had something to do with the generally decent state of things.
The torches still burned, the fountain still flowed, and overall the place looked as if it had only been locked up for a few years, rather than five centuries.
Once the bed was remade, I returned downstairs. Lara leaned against a wall, looking close to passing out, but she nodded when I told her I’d prepared a room. The sound of my voice startled Anya awake, and she sat bolt upright.
“It’s all right,” I soothed. “We’re going somewhere more comfortable.”
She actually met my eyes, and relief fluttered in my chest, mingling with the worry. She looked so tired.
“You’ll be safe,” I promised. “It’s just the three of us. No one else can get in.”
Her chin dipped the tiniest amount.
Once we’d gotten Anya settled on a couch upstairs, I opened the wardrobe and was relieved to see an array of dresses and nightgowns. Like Earth’s enchanted wardrobes, it knew what was needed. Lara took a voluminous white nightgown, I took a red one, and we slid a gray one over Anya’s head.
Then the three of us settled into bed together, side by side like sisters. The torches extinguished, responding to our needs. The darkness left behind was heavy but not frightening. With spice and dust in my nostrils and the soft breathing of my friends in my ears, I fell into a deep sleep.