Chapter 4
The rules did not allow us to end our shift early, but I’d already broken much bigger ones than that, so why not finish strong?
A few minutes later, I was climbing the stairs to the concubine quarters above the brothel where Landry and I lived. It was a single dwelling intended for one person that was so decrepit, it felt like it was held together by eroded nails and good intentions.
Especially now, when it’d been raining for so long that the bucket we used to catch the leak from the ceiling was overflowing every two hours, and the balcony, or rather the rusted metal basket attached to our window could no longer support the weight of a person.
The door creaked when I pushed it open, hauling a small bag of potatoes from the market.
Landry startled, shooting up from where he’d been lying in the bed. “Feloré, um. Shit.”
I halted cold, my heart staggering in my chest. That was because he was not alone.
“Who’s that?” asked the vultus beside him, wiping his mouth like he’d been fucking using it.
No. NO. This wasn’t happening. My eyes could simply not be trusted, because my little brother wouldn’t be in bed. With one of them.
“It’s my brother,” Landry said, scrambling to pull up his pants, shoving the demon with an elbow. “You should go.”
“Wait, what? But why?” the vultus asked. He was so clearly confused. With his youth and his stupid handsome face and chiseled bare torso. “Can’t he come back later? We were just getting started—”
“Oh, no. I think you heard him,” I said, my voice a deep and hollow timbre. “When he said you should fucking go.”
The demon gave me the most affronted look, like he couldn’t believe I’d dare to say such a thing. In his defense, he likely wasn’t accustomed to humans talking to him that way.
I should’ve been scared as he rose from the bed to eye me down.
Even a nobody vultus could beat me senseless and not face a single consequence.
All he had to claim was that he felt disrespected.
It was an official law. Humans were required to conduct themselves with the utmost homage at all times. It was why my cheek currently throbbed.
“All is well,” Landry said, hobbling up to a stand, which was a struggle without his cane. He gripped the demon’s face and twisted it to him. “Shh, he doesn’t mean disrespect. He’s just tired, that’s all. Been working all day.”
The demon twitched, suddenly lost in my little brother as he dragged his fingertips down his arms.
Anger swelled in my chest. I took a breath and shouted, “Out!”
The vultus whirled his head to me, his long hair fanning his face.
“Feloré,” Landry hissed, his eyes flaring wide. “He’s leaving, okay? Give him a damn second.”
The demon’s teeth scraped over his lower lip as his irises flashed red. On the receiving end of their temper was a dangerous place to be.
But sometimes it was impossible to balance my regard for their hierarchy in the food chain against how deeply I hated them. Especially now. I fucking hated them.
“Corbyn, look at me, handsome,” Landry said, redirecting his face back to him. “You like kissing me, yes?”
Corbyn hesitated, still sorting through his grievances. But then he nodded, because of course, he did. Gaze falling to Landry’s mouth.
“Kiss me before you go. Take one more drink for the road.”
I forced my attention to the floor as they kissed. As the vilest creature on the planet fed on my little brother.
“I’ll be around tomorrow,” Landry said, leaning back to break the kiss as he gently nudged him toward the door. But not before offering him a wink. “Feel free to find me.”
Corbyn’s face split into a hopeful grin that made my blood burn hotter. With one last sidelong glance at me, he left, and all I could do was shut the door and lock it with an exaggerated click in hopes that he heard it and knew it was for him.
“What was that?” Landry asked. “Have you gone completely mad?”
I scraped my nails through my hair. Yes, possibly.
“You can be shocked, upset, whatever, but what were you thinking speaking to him that way? You could’ve gotten yourself hurt, Feloré.”
My piercing clinked as I skimmed my tongue over my teeth. “Oh, I could’ve? I could’ve gotten myself hurt just now?”
“Clearly.”
“And yet, you’re willingly giving your body to a creature who would hurt me for telling him to leave my home. Do I have that correct?”
He glowered.
“Do I have that correct, Landry?” I repeated, only louder.
“That’s not fair. You give your body to those same creatures every day.”
“Yes, but I do that so you don’t have to.” I jabbed a finger toward him. “I do that so you can have a life that exists outside of them. Do you have any idea how insulting it is to come home and see you with one of them? Again.”
His jaw tightened, a muscle in it dancing in the dim fire light. “What I do with my body has nothing to do with you.”
“Nothing to do?—you’re free, Landry. Because of the choices I’ve made. You’re not a whore. You’re not a field worker. You’re free to be with a human.”
A tense inhale expanded his chest. “Am I free?”
Dear gods. I rolled my eyes shut, because this argument was as tired as it was pointless.
“Because it’s not as if I get to do as I wish. Shouldn’t a free person get to live their own life?”
I shifted my attention to the wooden bucket collecting the rainwater from the ceiling. He couldn’t lift it; didn’t have the strength.
“Living your life would be finding a partner, Landry,” I said, grunting as I hoisted the bucket up by its wire handle to walk it to the balcony. “Starting a fucking family. You could be with a human being, and you goddamn squander it, just so you can be with a piece-of-shit vultus.”
Someone shouted obscenities from the sidewalk below when I tossed the water over the rail of our balcony.
“You know what they’d do if they caught me with another human?” I slammed the bucket onto the floor where it lived. “They’d pluck an eye from my skull.”
It was true. Concubines were the only humans strictly prohibited from engaging in relationships with other humans. That meant no courting. No marriage. No falling in love—not that I believed in love.
I’d never been with another human. They claimed it was to prevent us from spreading disease amongst ourselves, potentially killing ourselves off as the vultae were incapable of contracting sickness and therefore, naturally clean.
But I had a theory it was just another way to control us.
“That’s who he is.” I pointed a finger toward the door where his lover just left. “A barbarian. A murderer.”
Landry rolled his gaze skyward, dropping his head back. “It’s not that simple, and you know it. To call him a murderer—to call any of them a murderer—is only half the truth.”
My chuckle was as dark as I felt. “Is that the half where the one you fooled around with just now has fucked someone to death?”
He didn’t have a rebuttal for that because there was nothing to argue. It was a fact. He knew it was a fact. Everyone knew it.
A vultus killed the first human they bedded. There had never been an exception.
I’d heard it compared to a baby rattlesnake. While a seasoned demon could take what they needed from a human, leaving them blissfully groggy, a virgin took and took, sucking the lifeforce from their prey until it was too late.
We called it the point of no return. It was those last crucial moments of a feeding that made the difference between a deep sleep for a human and never waking up. A vultus who’d done it even once before could control himself and stop before his human’s heart gave out.
May the gods have mercy on the poor soul who found themselves in the bed of a virgin. It would be their last.
“If you must know,” Landry said, “his first had typhus fever. They were in so much pain they were begging to go. He did them a mercy.”
My head jolted back an inch. “You asked him about his first?”
“Yes. Unlike you, I don’t immediately treat them all like they’re monsters. They can’t help the way they are. It’s their nature. It’s in their blood the same as a wolf or a bear. And people give themselves willingly.”
It took everything I had not to shake him. Yes, people gave themselves to the vultae willingly, sacrificed themselves of their own free will. And yes, sometimes it was a terminally ill person who was ready to go, but most of the time, it wasn’t.
Most of the time, it was a person doing it in exchange for wiping clean their family’s debt.
A debt they put us in. The crown. The kingdom.
A debt we would never be able to reconcile otherwise, leaving our children more impoverished, born into generational poverty that could be forgiven with one very noble sacrifice.
The people who offered themselves, did it to give their children a fighting chance. So, how much of a choice was it really?
“I’m just—” He squeezed his fists, fighting with his own words. “I’m just so tired of pretending like I don’t love it. Like it’s not the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Look at me, Feloré.”
My nostrils flared as I averted my gaze to the floor.
“No, look at my body.” He swung his arms out, flopping them at his sides. “Tell me what you see.”
I didn’t want to. Not because he wasn’t beautiful. Gods, he was so beautiful. But because he knew I didn’t have an argument.
He’d been born with two nearly unworkable legs. It was what had drawn me to him from the second he’d been escorted into my orphanage as a tiny, ill-fed boy.
I’d felt obligated to take care of him since the moment I laid eyes on him, like someone had secured a cord from my heart to his and said, Here. He’s your responsibility. Don’t let anything happen to him.
He was the thing I lived and fought for. My purpose.
“They don’t look at me and see anything wrong,” he said. “The vultae don’t say, What’s wrong with your legs? Why don’t they work? Is it because you’re sick? They look at me and simply see someone who’s fun and sexy. They notice my smile and my eyes. Do you have any idea what that’s like for me?”