Chapter 9 Inside a Poem #2
“You’re so different from what I thought vampire princes would be.”
“Bet you pictured white frilly shirts open to our navels, huh?” Zane grinned with an eyebrow waggle. “I can arrange that.”
“No.” A blush stained her neck, and I wanted to kiss it away, to trace the faint blue veins with my tongue until she made that little gasping sound I’d discovered the other night. I shifted on the blanket, grateful for the looseness of my cargo pants.
“It’s just, everything I ever read described vampires as emotionless and above things like picnics and walks in the woods and playing with wolf pups.”
“Tell that to Father when he loses at chess.” Cas snarked. “He once threw a rook through a century-old stained glass window.”
I remembered that day. The delicate tinkling of colored glass falling like rain, Lucian’s thunderous expression, the cold silence afterwards as servants swept up the shards.
Our father did not take losing well.
And certainly not to one of his bastard sons.
“But you, um, served him, didn’t you?” Seri’s brows pinched together, creating that little furrow.
The air shifted. A cloud passed over the sun, throwing us into momentary shadow. My fingers strayed to the hilt of my ankle dagger, wanting the comfort. Cas stared at the forgotten blueberry in Seri’s fingers. Even Z stilled, his humor retreating like a tide from shore.
“There’s serving,” I said, “and there’s surviving.”
They looked at me, Zane startled and Cas wary. We didn’t talk about this, not even among ourselves. Our father was a wound we’d learned to live with, but Seri’s gray eyes held no judgment, only that quiet hunger to understand us, and that coaxed my words loose.
“When we were boys, Lucian saw loyalty as a cage.” I stared at the pickle pot rather than meet anyone’s gaze. “Everything was a test. Fail, and the punishment followed. Succeed, and the expectations tightened.”
The memory of those years weighed on me like stones.
Each mission, each kill, each perfect bow while blood still crusted my fingernails.
I’d been thirteen the first time. A minor noble who’d spoken against King Isaac.
I still remembered how his eyes had widened in disbelief when he saw who Lucian had sent.
“Try being the son who failed Latin and fencing,” Zane smirked, saving me from my thoughts.
“Yet you live to annoy another day,” I snorted, grateful for his intervention.
“Keep expectations low, little brother,” he sassed, popping a grape into his mouth with exaggerated carelessness. “Disappoint less people.”
The air lightened, but Seri’s head tilted in that way that meant she was seeing deeper than any of us were comfortable with.
“And you, Simmy? What did failing look like for you?”
His jaw worked. For a heartbeat, I thought he’d deflect. Then, “Perfection. Bury every weakness, every mistake, until even you can’t find them.”
He didn’t add the rest. How he’d been the template against which Zane and I were measured. How he’d beg Lucian to teach him the lesson, not us. How he still woke some nights, rigid and damp with sweat, from dreams he wouldn’t discuss.
Brummy whined, nosing Cas’ wrist. The dire wolf pup had an uncanny sense for emotional undercurrents.
“Then why stay?” she asked a question we’d never allowed ourselves.
“Darling, where else would we go?” Zane’s grin turned razor-thin. “After Lucian became king, the Ro?u name turned into a collar. And he holds the leash.”
A chill skittered down my spine despite the afternoon sun. The truth of it settled in my stomach like lead. For all our strength, all our skills, we’d never had a life beyond Lucian’s reach. The boundaries of our world had always been drawn by his hand, no matter how much we tried to change that.
Seri opened her mouth, to ask more or to offer comfort, but Cas spoke first.
“Not anymore, he doesn’t. Those days are over.”
I nodded, remembering our old vow to build something that was ours alone. Something that even Lucian couldn’t touch. Then Seri happened, and it actually became possible.
“I reminded him of that while he was here,” she said out of the blue. “Did Sebastian tell you that?”
All our eyes fixed on her as the world seemed to tilt sideways.
“You what, now?” Zane asked weakly, Brumous liberating the slice of salami he held forgotten in his hand.
“I reminded him that you are his sons, not his weapons.” She shrugged. Shrugged. Blithely, even. As if she hadn’t just confessed to challenging the most powerful vampire in North America.
My lungs forgot how to work. My mind filled with images of Lucian’s silver eyes flashing with rage, his hand around Seri’s throat, her fragile body broken before any of us could intervene.
“And what did he say?” Cas’ hand dropped to rest over his heart, as if physically bracing himself for her answer.
“He’s so silly!” Seri giggled, then dropped her voice in a horrible imitation of Lucian’s. “ ‘I could have you executed for that tone.’ ”
She laughed, oblivious to the horror on our faces. Or maybe laughing because of it.
“Oh, stop, you three! He was teasing.”
“You believe that he was teasing?” I checked.
“Yes!” she insisted, naive little rabbit that she was. “Besides, Sebastian says—”
“Sebastian says, Sebastian says,” Zane mocked, voice pitched high. “Our eldest brother said a lot.”
“Explain, wife,” Cas demanded.
Dutifully, she repeated her conversation with our father from the day he ‘babysat’ her while we hunted down Claudio, and I traded raised eyebrows with my brothers.
“And then Sebastian warned him that you’d carve his tongue out through his throat, Koko, when you learned he threatened me.” Seri chuckled again.
“Did you really call him Papa-in-law?” I breathed in awe, my eyes unblinking as I stared at her.
“Yes!” She pushed on my shoulders until I lay down, then crawled on top of me to rest her elbows on my chest and prop her face in her fists.
Her weight was slight, but it anchored me to the reality that she was still here, still whole, still ours.
“I’m so happy he is my papa-in-law. I love him already.
Sebastian, too. I didn’t tell them, though, because they aren’t ready to know it. ”
I glanced at my brothers. Zane’s jaw was hanging open and Cas looked torn between wanting to shred something and wanting to kiss our wife senseless.
None of us knew how to process this. Our father, who had trained us to kill before we could drive, had apparently been charmed by our guileless beloved.
“Oh, and guess what?”
In her burst of excitement, Seri pushed herself up and straddled my waist, seeming not to notice how our groins were now only separated by her jeans and my cargo pants.
My body noticed and responded instantly, and I gritted my teeth, trying to focus on her words as I bracketed her waist with my hands.
“Sebastian told me about how you chose your last name! About the ancient Cimmerian people. He said you made something powerful out of the name, something that belongs to you, and now it belongs to me, too.”
Her smile hit me like a physical blow. In the years after her death, my mother had become a story Lucian rarely told, a gentle human who had loved books and history, who had taught us about ancient civilizations before bedtime.
The Cimmerians, a warrior people shrouded in mystery, had been her favorite tale.
Taking that name had been our biggest act of unified defiance and a huge step toward our autonomy.
“I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s lovely. It sounds like home when I say Serafina Cimmerian.” She looked down at me, her curls falling forward to frame her face. “I like being a Cimmerian.”
“We like you being a Cimmerian, too,” I choked out, my throat tight around unshed tears.
Then Casimir surged to his feet, lifting her high against his chest, and her startled yelp dissolved into a sigh.
“Simmy,” she whispered, fingers combing through his coming-undone bun. “Your heart’s galloping.”
He buried his face in her throat, a choked sound escaping, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. My brother, who had been a statue for as long as I could remember, held her like she was the last solid thing in a drowning world.
My hand found Zane’s shoulder, our silent pact to pretend we didn’t notice his shaking shoulders.
Instead, we smiled at each other, genuine smiles without the usual edge of competition or sarcasm.
She was our home, now and forever.
Then Brummy whined at the indignity of abandoned belly rubs. He came over and plopped heavily on my stomach. As I let out a quiet huff, Z threw himself on the pile with a war cry, and soon we were wrestling around, Brumous’ tail whipping back and forth like a furry windshield wiper.
Cas finally set Seri down and turned his back so we couldn’t see him wiping his face as he gruffly told us to stop overstimulating the wolf.
With a peal of laughter, Seri bellyflopped on Zane, and he pretended she had knocked the wind out of him to earn a kiss of apology. Giggling, she pressed her lips to his forehead, then his nose, then finally his mouth in a series of playful pecks that had him reaching for her like a man possessed.
I lay back in the grass, watching clouds drift across the late afternoon sky, Brummy curled against my side.
The wolf’s breathing had slowed, his eyelids drooping as the excitement caught up with him.
In the corner of my vision, I saw Cas repacking the picnic basket, more relaxed than ever.
Seri and Zane were tangled together on the blanket, his chuckles and her laughter punctuating the air like music.
For the first time in many years, I remembered what peace felt like. Not just the absence of danger, but the presence of a precious treasure, one we loved with all the ferocity burning within us, a bond that we would defend with every ounce of our strength.