51. Henry
HENRY
I cy is an understatement for Harlow’s demeanor in the morning. Whatever heat was between us last night has given way to her frigid contempt. It’s the first time I have ever seen even a hint of her parents in her.
She’s been primping in front of the vanity in her room for more than an hour. I’m pretty sure it’s just an excuse to avoid looking at me. She studies her eyebrows with hawk-like focus and ignores me standing behind her in the mirror’s reflection.
Kyrin is curled up at her feet. He blinks one sleepy eye open to look at me as I set a small glass of liquid beside Harlow and back away.
“What is it?” she asks.
“It’s a blood builder. There’s a unique mix of herbs and it’s infused with some of Elvodeen’s healing magic to help with recovery.”
She lifts the glass and sips it. “This is the same thing they serve with breakfast in the morning. Have you been planning to do that to me since I got here?”
“No, I—” I run a hand over my face. “I like you.”
I have never sounded more idiotic in my life.
She scoffs, takes a long sip of the juice, and rifles through the makeup laid out on the vanity in front of her .
“I liked you right away, and you smell amazing,” I say.
“So I’m just special.” Her voice is laden with sarcasm, but she doesn’t look away from the delicate work of lining her eyes with kohl.
“I wasn’t supposed to do it.”
She arches a perfectly shaped brow. “Fuck me in front of your people a second time?”
“ Claim you. There’s something about the way you challenged me that made me want to. I’m not prone to being possessive. I’ve never had that impulse before.”
She doesn’t say anything, but she takes another sip of the drink. She’s naked except for a pair of dark lace underwear that make her ass look spectacular.
I study the scarred skin on her lower back.
I was aware of it last night when I was fucking her and felt it beneath my palms, but it’s different in daylight.
When I first saw it, I was so incensed by the fact that she had been branded that I didn’t take a good look.
But the intricacy of the delicate design is impressive.
Someone must have held a brand there for a long time to get something that detailed.
When I look up, she’s watching my reflection. “It’s not polite to stare.”
“I didn’t get to look before. Why stars?”
She pauses with the brush halfway down her hair. “Aidia used to say that stars were a nightly reminder to wish for better. Stellaria refused to be humbled, even by her father. I think Aidia related to that.”
“Is that why he branded you with them? To take that from her and you?”
I’m pushing too hard. I wait for her to remind me I’m not entitled to her past, but she sighs and sets the hairbrush down on the vanity.
“My father didn’t brand me. Aidia did.” She is so deathly calm when she says it that it takes a moment for her words to register.
I stare at her in mute shock. “But I thought?—”
I wait for her to say more, but she only offers me the silence to realize I’ve put my foot in my mouth, and there’s no way out of the awkwardness.
Harrick didn’t brand her. Ever since I first saw the scar, I’ve been constructing a specific narrative in my head about it. It’s humbling to see how wrong I’ve been .
“I can’t imagine subjecting myself to that kind of pain,” I say softly.
She turns and gives me a look that burns right through me. “Can’t you?”
I feel her picking me apart, death scar by death scar. I expected her to rage at me. To throw things. To try to escape as soon as she woke up. But she’s dressed and so eerily calm, and that is somehow worse.
“If I’ve satisfied your curiosity, I have some questions of my own,” she says.
I’m tempted to tell her she hasn’t satisfied my curiosity at all. She’s actually piqued it once again. Every answer I get breeds even more questions. I wave a hand to encourage her to continue because I am completely at a loss for words.
“How does this work now that I’m claimed?” she asks.
“Nothing changes. Most men of the fort will probably steer clear of you. It’s really meant to be protection.”
“From you? Because you’re a Drained?”
I sigh. “I’m not a Drained. When I died the first time, my mother prayed to Asher. Both he and Stellaria answered. But I am not the same as the beasts in the wood. I am?—”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Deathless. Like the story.”
“Yes,” I say. “You weren’t supposed to hear that particular story. That’s why I was going to pick a night to take you to the storytelling bars and curate your experience.”
She ignores me. “So you crave blood, but you’re not mindlessly driven to it.”
“And my diet is primarily normal food. I have a full serving of blood once or twice a week, depending on how active I am and if I’ve been injured. With you, it might be a little different, though.”
Her eyes narrow in suspicion. “Why?”
“Because I claimed you and you’re mine.”
She bristles. “I belong to no man.”
“I know that, Harlow. I’m answering your question.
Because I claimed you as someone I want to belong to me, no one else will be appealing now.
It’s not that I couldn’t feed from someone in the recovery room.
It’s not as if I don’t have plenty of offers.
” I relish the hint of jealousy in the glare she levels at me.
“But I wouldn’t enjoy it. It would be like wanting a gourmet dinner and only ever having stale bread and jerky.
Technically, I would survive, but it wouldn’t be enjoyable. ”
She purses her lips.
I can’t help the impulse to taunt her just to try to get back the dynamic we had before. “What’s the most frightening part? That you enjoyed it, or that you want to do it again?”
Harlow shivers, and it’s a relief to know the memory of last night is as potent for her as it is for me. It’s taking an enormous amount of self-control to not bend her over the vanity and fuck her right now.
“What happens if I don’t let you drink?”
I lick my lips, thinking about how my wife tastes like iron and wine and cherries. “I had quite a lot last night, so I’ll be fine for a while. But eventually I would need to find someone else willing.”
“Would you also fuck them while you do it?”
“No. I’ll only fuck you.”
“Oh, I think you’ve already done a pretty thorough job in every sense of the word,” she says, her voice laden with sarcasm.
There’s no way she’s going to be amenable to this plan now. “I know you’re angry,” I say.
She holds up a hand to stop me. “You pulled one over on me. I knew your aura was different. It made sense after you explained that your mother used Asher’s magic to bring you back, but I never imagined you were Deathless.
Truth be told, I’d never even heard of the term Deathless until story time the other night. ”
I cock my head to the side. “But they’re in the story of Stellaria.”
She shakes her head. “Not in Lunameade.”
I frown. “So, in your version of the story, the man who retrieves Asher just devolves into a Drained?”
She nods. “Because he was divided—neither alive nor dead, and they believe that made him mad enough that he stopped sipping blood from willing people and started drinking them dry—that’s why they call them the Drained.”
That’s an interesting deviation from the original writings and word-of-mouth stories, but I wonder why and how it happened.
Oral storytelling comes with variances, but to omit that what really created the Drained was a desire for more power seems an intentional choice.
It wasn’t a random adaptation that brought about the strange sickness and reanimation among those the original Deathless fed on.
It was drinking well water to try to claim more magic that doomed him.
By the time he realized, there were too many Drained and they were too hungry to contain. Their numbers just kept growing.
I wonder when exactly the version of the story changed in Lunameade, and why no one who remembers the old stories challenges it.
I think back to the last Dark Star Festival I attended in the city.
I’d heard their version of the story and thought it unusual, but I’d assumed that the story changed based on who was playing the part of Stellaria each year.
Harlow sits straighter, her face a mask of indifference. This is somehow worse than if she were raging against me. It makes me wonder how she will react to Gaven’s death.
“You brought me here,” she says, her voice devoid of emotion. “You talked around what you are and you used me for my blood. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed it. But I’m pretty sure you knew how this piece of information would land, or you would have told me sooner.”
I shift, searching for a way to defend myself. “I kept it a secret because I needed you to go through with the marriage so that we can get the resources your family promised. I didn’t bring you here to use you for your blood.”
She glares at me in the mirror. “Whatever you need to tell yourself. I’m not surprised you used me. Truthfully, I’m shocked that I still have the capacity to believe someone would want anything but to use me. Everyone is out for blood. You just happen to be more literal about it.”
I expected her reaction to sting, but I did not imagine that her apathy—that likening me to everyone else in her life—would cut so deep.
I want to argue—to tell her I’m different—that I’m not like her family.
Except I am. I am using her. I did trick her, and I’ll continue to do it as long as I need to. I’m even counting on her sister’s well-being as motivation for her to follow through.
From the first moment my parents hatched this plan, I was fine with any collateral damage to a woman I had never met.
I projected my judgment of her family onto her, and I didn’t once consider that a family that would sacrifice the people of the fort wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to their daughters.