Chapter 27 Roles Review
Bad Blood
A little more than eight years ago…
Rosaline braced her hands on the counter, her head dropping to her chest as she battled back the bile that burned the back of her throat. Despite the chill of the wintry air that blustered into her tavern as the door opened and closed, sweat beaded along her hairline.
“This food poisoning is really getting the best of you, hey?” Liam’s worried voice sounded out beside her as he placed an empty crate back under the counter at her feet. He had just returned from delivering their empty bottles to the distillery to get them refilled.
“Gods… Was it the tuna stew we had last month?” Rosaline managed between deep breaths.
A cup of water was placed in front of her.
She gulped it down thankfully, only for her stomach to roil in retaliation for being disturbed.
“Liam! Another ale! And Rosie, mind getting us more—oh, hey now. That food poisoning has to be finished with you!” Daryl, one of their regular customers, called out in surprise.
“I tell you, I’m tempted to see a physician.” Rosalie pushed herself to stand back straight. “This bloody sickness has me exhausted and I have a business to run.”
Liam grimaced as he eyed his sister sympathetically. “I’ve been telling you to go for a month.”
“Ugh.” Rosalie attempted to take a smaller sip of water. “I’ll step out back for a breath. I probably just overdid it with the winter solstice stress is all. I’ll give it another week to see if it wraps up.”
Liam sighed and shook his head at her, but she wasn’t in the mood for his quips.
Smiling at her customers as she passed them on her way to the back of the tavern, she grabbed her thick pink shawl from the back hook—it’d been a gift from her last paramour—and exited into the snowy street.
Tilting her face up to the inky sky that was sending down thick, wet flakes, she let out a heavy breath and relished the quiet.
Sidling over to a nearby stack of pallets that the ale delivery man would take next time he showed up, she sat down with a moan. Her lower back was throbbing.
Gods… I know I don’t bleed often, but this course feels like it is going to be a nightmare.
A funny sensation seized her then. It was like her mind had brushed past a very obvious thing.
She stilled.
She cast her thoughts back to the last time she saw her former paramour.
The young man with long black hair who hid in corners.
He was quiet. Smoked cigars. He had had a soft, low, smooth voice that Rosaline had loved to listen to.
The way he’d talk about books he’d read, or about the stars, it always lulled her into a state of relaxation.
She’d lay her head down on the table in front of her after the tavern had closed, and she’d simply listen to him talk.
More than once, she had fallen asleep there, and he had gallantly woken her and offered to carry her to bed.
He was younger than her, but he was attractive. Sweet. Unassuming. A nice dalliance.
They’d ended as things did when they acknowledged they were simply too different for it to continue in any more meaningful way.
He was most likely from some kind of influential family, given the quality of clothes he had always worn, and Rosaline had no interest in getting tangled up in power struggles.
At present, she swallowed as panic and suspicion rose.
That can’t be it. I can’t be pregnant. I was told it would be highly unlikely to happen. I gave up on that idea ages ago.
But that funny inkling had sunk its teeth into her mind. So the very next morning, she forced herself to roll out of bed far earlier than she wanted to and made her way down the road to the physician’s home where local patients were tended to.
The physician was a woman, which at first made Rosaline feel a lot better, but after a series of questions and tests, she informed Rosaline that without a doubt, she was indeed pregnant.
Rosaline’s ears rang. It felt like all the blood in her body had drained out of her.
The physician kept talking, saying something about taking care of herself, then something about options if she needed help…
Rosaline had risen, thanked the woman, and left. She’d returned to work and finished the evening in a daze.
Her brother had asked where she’d gone earlier. She had lied and said something to the effect of talking to a vendor about a better price for eggs.
By the time the dinner rush had slowed down, Liam had shooed her off to bed again, claiming she looked ready to drop.
It was there in her bed, lying across the quilt her mother had left her when she’d died, that she’d stared up at the ceiling and finally willed her brain to come back to life.
I should probably try to tell him. He doesn’t live in Rollom, but he says he runs messages to different brothels. I could probably go to the brothel and tell them he has an unpaid tab here, and they’d let him know. He’d get the message and come…
But then what?
Another voice, one more harsh but reasonable, echoed in her head.
You don’t want this. You were disappointed at first when you thought you couldn’t have children, but then you found your dream of owning the tavern.
And here you are! You did it! You’ll probably lose customers if they think you are wanton.
Just deal with this now, and nothing will change.
Rosaline sat up, a little uneasy, but settled on her decision. It really was the most logical one to make.
The next morning, she got up early once again and asked the physician for the herbs to end her pregnancy.
She’d been told to return in three days; they would be ready then.
With that complete, Rosaline was starting to feel marginally better. Nothing was going to change. Everything was taken care of.
Then she’d entered the tavern that was not open yet, and he was there.
A black-haired man with the most disturbing eyes she’d ever seen. They were an aqua blue that would have been exquisitely beautiful were it not for the three pupils that spun slowly around in each eye.
Her throat felt dry.
The hair on her arms rose up.
This man was dangerous.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, already wondering if she should start screaming, “but the tavern isn’t open yet.”
The man tilted his head, his eyes roving over her body.
Rosaline backed up a step.
“It is as I thought. Good. This is easier.” He nodded to himself, seeming satisfied.
“Sir, my brother is upstairs. I would hate to have to get him involved in—” The world spun. In a whirl of water and snow Rosaline was rendered speechless as her tavern vanished. After this alarming magical display, she doubled over and vomited on snowy ground.
“Apologies for the sudden travel. However, this is a delicate matter.”
Rosaline stumbled, and a large, strong hand grasped her elbow as she tried to make sense of her surroundings once more.
She was standing on a cliff’s edge. Before her lay the inky, frothing tempest that was the Alcide Sea; the cloudy sky above her spanned endlessly off toward the horizon.
“You are carrying an Ashowan child?”
Jolted from her shocked observations, Rosaline backed away from the creature she now knew without a doubt was not human.
He sighed. “We were worried we’d have to do this with the Ashowan daughter, so this is exceptional news. I must confess I was starting to doubt if my tampering was enough to make this successful, but it looks like I’ve finally had some good fortune.”
“What do you want?” Rosaline continued backing away from the creature. Now that he wasn’t seated, she discovered he was incredibly tall. At least seven feet.
The creature pulled out a vial filled with what looked like ash. “I want you to bake this and eat it. Oh. And add a few drops of blood, too.”
Rosaline felt like she would be sick again. “No! Why would I—”
“You have a brother you care for, yes? The one back at your tavern?” The creature raised his eyebrows expectantly.
Rosaline felt tears well up in her eyes as they moved to the vial in his hand. This was a threat. But why? Why her? “What does that do?”
“This will be the advantage my master needs. We have never tried it before, and we only have one other vial left. There isn’t much time, either.”
“No! Enough cryptic shit!” Rosaline shrieked, as she trembled. “What is it? What does it do? What does it matter if I’m pregnant or not?”
The creature stared at her, the three pupils in each of his eyes turning slowly. “Do you really want to know?”
He glided closer, moving at such a liquid speed she didn’t have a chance to back away again.
“These are the ashes the devil can be reborn from. My master has suffered for eons, and his sister has disposed of his allies one by one through the years. Even I cannot protect myself from her for long. So I am ensuring he will be placed in the safest vessel possible. The safest bloodline available. We have never tried this, as I said. My master did not believe it a just thing to do, but desperate times make rules of stone crumble under its grind.”
“That… That will make my baby the devil?”
“It will. Only it will also be perfectly human. A human of the Ashowan bloodline. As well as the devil. He will be unlike anything he has been before, and in turn, this may change his fate.”
“I don’t want this. I won’t do it,” Rosaline whispered, her throat tightening. “I didn’t even want this baby to begin with.”
The creature sighed. “You will be compensated, and I do not expect you to keep the child for long once it is born. Just be sure not to name him if you wish him gone from your life later. Naming a creature creates a connection of fate between you. I would also recommend waiting some time before sending him off to the Ashowan family so that suspicions are lowered. Perhaps seven years?”
“You keep saying the child would be of the Ashowan bloodline…”
The creature pressed the vial into her hand. Rosaline tried to yank herself free from his grasp, but his hold turned to iron.
“That young man you bedded and who has fathered your unborn is the Ashowan heir.”