Chapter 14 Put Down Roots #3
Deciding my presence was needed, I pushed the door open and strolled in.
“What does ‘cruor’ mean, anyway?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe with what I hoped was nonchalance.
Three heads whipped toward me faster than Brumous inhaled stolen cookies. Koa’s expression morphed from anger to amusement in the blink of an eye. Zane’s mouth dropped open in what looked like horror mingled with delight. And Casimir actually flushed.
I’d been making a concentrated effort to learn the language and customs of my three husbands.
So far, I’d decided that ‘moon-damned’ and ‘fang-rotted’ were adjectives.
‘Dark take it,’ ‘bat’s bones,’ ‘bleeding night, and ‘night’s teeth’ were interjections.
Oh, and Casimir’s favorite, ‘damnation.’ There were some Latin phrases, too, but I hadn’t made the effort yet to translate any of them.
‘Cruor,’ however, was one they all used in nearly any situation. I’d even heard their eldest brother, Prince Sebastian, say it.
“Seri.” Clearing his throat, Casimir straightened his shoulders and fidgeted with his cuffs. “I didn’t realize you were there.”
“Clearly,” I said, fighting a smile. “So. Cruor?”
Zane collapsed into the nearest chair, spinning it to face me with a wicked grin.
“Oh, this should be good. Cas, you want to field this one? Since you’re the vocabulary expert and all.”
Casimir’s eyes shot daggers at his brother, but he turned to me with his usual composure.
“It’s a clinical term,” he began, his tone shifting into what I’d come to think of as his Professor Voice.
And yes, with capital letters. “It specifically refers to coagulated blood or blood clots. In medical contexts, it describes the process of hemostasis, which is the stoppage of bleeding, where platelets aggregate with fibrin to form a semi-solid mass that—”
“By the eternal night!” Zane literally melted off of his chair onto the floor in theatrical agony. “He’s killing her with science!”
I blinked, trying to keep up with Casimir’s explanation as it spiraled into increasingly specific details about blood viscosity and something called “von Willebrand factor.”
“—which is distinct from serum in that cruor contains the cellular components that have—”
“Okay, okay,” Zane jumped to his feet, waving his hands frantically. “Ignore Dr. Morbid over there. It’s basically what happens when a vamp tries to drink a bloodshake and—”
“Bloodshake is not a word,” Casimir interrupted, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“—and there’s a clot,” Zane continued, undeterred. “A chunky bit. Like when you’re enjoying a milkshake and a piece of fruit gets stuck halfway up the straw.”
“What?” I felt my face scrunch in disgust.
“You have to either suck harder or give up entirely, right?” Zane mimed the action, making a horrible slurping noise as his cheeks suctioned inward. “You’re trying to get it through, but it won’t budge.”
“I hate you.” Casimir rubbed his temples as Koa’s mouth quivered.
“Imagine sinking your fangs in and happily sucking away when BAM! Half a cherry blocks the pipeline,” Zane went on, clearly enjoying himself. “Only in this case, it’s a blood clot. Stuck in your fang. Instant migraine.”
Koa lost it. He doubled over, shoulders shaking with silent laughter that quickly evolved into full-blown howls.
“Why would you joke about something painful?” I stared at Zane in wide-eyed horror, my brain conjuring images I desperately wished I could unsee.
Casimir sighed deeply, the sound of a man who had endured this conversation far too many times.
“He said it at court, Seri!” Koa managed between gasps of laughter, wiping tears from his eyes.
“Wow. I said words. Truly, my crimes are heinous!” Zane examined his nails with feigned boredom.
“You said ‘cruor’ in front of the elders, you cretin!” Casimir snapped. “The most sacrilegious term in their lexicon, and you threw it out like a casual ‘fuck you.’ ”
“Okay, wait.” I held up one hand. “I can see how a blood clot wouldn’t be fun, but I don’t understand how it’s sacrilegious. I mean, you guys say it all the time. ‘Blood clot, I’m starving.’ ‘Blood clot, you’re gorgeous.’ ‘Blood clot, shut up.’ ‘Blood clot, this is fun.’ What’s wrong with that?”
As Zane snickered and Koa laughed helplessly, Casimir resumed lecturing.
“In historical context, the original phrase stems from virgineus cruor, means ‘by the virgin’s blood’ and—”
“The virgin? As in the Virgin Mary? As in the Holy Mother of Jesus?” My eyebrows shot up.
“Time has obscured the root of the expression, but I doubt it refers to that. Vampires and Holy anything don’t go together.
It most likely refers to the ancient belief that a virgin’s blood is the purest. A sort of Holy Grail, if you will.
Among younger vampires, cruor is now only a crude expletive, but among the elders—”
“It’s blasphemy,” Koa choked out.
“What?” My brain stuttered.
“You should’ve seen their faces.” Zane’s smirk committed some kind of sin, I was sure of it. “Like someone pissed in their morning bloodshake.”
A horrible thought dawned on me.
“Okay, so to make sure I’m understanding this, when you say cruor, it’s like you’re saying, ‘Jesus Christ,’ correct? Only it’s Vampire Jesus Christ?”
“No, Zane, don’t—” Casimir warned, but it was too late.
“Vampire. Jesus. Christ.” Zane’s smirk turned demonic.
Before I could blink, Casimir lunged, tackling Zane with enough force to send them both crashing to the floor. Papers went flying, a chair toppled over, and suddenly my two husbands were wrestling like overgrown kids, a tangle of limbs and curses.
“Should we stop them?” I asked Koa, who had collapsed against the wall, tears streaming down his face.
“No,” he howled, sliding down until he was sitting on the floor. “It’s… hahaha… therapeutic… hahaha… for them.”
I looked at the wrestling match again. Zane was laughing even as Casimir pinned him to the floor with a knee in his chest.
“Simmy, don’t hurt my Zoodle. I kind of like him alive, even if he does have the worst analogies in history.”
Casimir froze, his head swiveling toward me. His eyes softened, although his grip on Zane didn’t loosen.
“See? She likes me,” Zane crowed from beneath him, cackles punctuating his words. “I’m her Zoooooodle!”
“I will end you, firecrotch!”
“Simmy?” I tried again. “Please?”
With a deep, put-upon sigh, he released Zane and stood, dusting himself off with exaggerated dignity. His blond hair had partially escaped its neat ponytail, giving him a disheveled appearance that was both endearing and slightly alarming.
“If you ever say that at court again,” he said, glaring down at Zane, “I will personally send you to the sun.”
“Noted.” Zane climbed to his feet with a grin that said he was going to do it again the first chance he got.
With a strangled sound, Casimir stormed out of the room, muttering under his breath. The door slammed behind him, the sound echoing through the suddenly quiet room.
“So,” I said after a moment, looking between Koa, still hiccupping with laughter on the floor, and Zane, straightening his rumpled “Due to personal reasons, I’m evil now” t-shirt. “Um, what were you guys actually arguing about?”
Zane and Koa exchanged a look.
“Nothing important,” Zane said a bit too quickly.
“Yeah.” Koa nodded a bit too vigorously. “Just brother stuff.”
“You know I don’t believe that for a second, right?” I narrowed my eyes.
“Oh, would you look at the time?” Zane made a show of checking a watch he wasn’t wearing. “I promised to help Brum-Brum with his… wolf… things.”
“Brummy’s with Addison right now. They’re playing tag in the orchard—”
Before I could finish, he darted out of the room, leaving me alone with Koa, who was suddenly very interested in reorganizing the papers scattered across the floor.
“Koko?” I prompted, raising an eyebrow.
He looked up at me with an expression of such exaggerated innocence that I almost laughed.
“Yes, beloved?”
“You’re hiding something from me.”
“We’re dhampirs, sweet girl. We hide many things. It’s kind of our brand.”
I sighed, letting that one go because I had more pressing questions now.
“So,” I said, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside him, “are there other vampire swear words I should know about? You know, so I don’t accidentally commit blasphemy at the next family dinner?”
Koa’s answering grin was mischievous and slightly terrifying.
“Oh, Serafina, you have no idea what you’re asking for.”
I didn’t, but as he began explaining vampire profanities with gleeful enthusiasm, I realized I wouldn’t trade this life, or my three ridiculous monsters, for anything in the world.