11. Chapter 11 #3
What? I mouthed at him, while his niece went on and on and on like a broken rotator about some girl in her class who’d accidentally bitten her teacher’s ankle.
I didn’t know how anyone did that accidentally, and I had in fact argued against it.
So, she was now telling me all the ankle biting logistics using building blocks terminology.
His lips pursed as he shook his head. Nothing.
“You aren’t listening!” Piper said, smacking her hands on her stiff white tutu that had eaten more than half of the seat.
Logan lifted her up and plopped her down in his lap. His voice was so much softer with her. “You’re nervous, Bunny. I know.”
“Am not,” she said, nearly in tears.
His thumb moved back and forth over her fat cheek. “You’re going to do so well, sweetheart. And even if you don’t, I am so proud of you for trying. What have I told you?”
Her head was lowered as she nodded. “Only people who try have the opportunity to fail.”
I almost snorted.
Of course he’d quoted principles of war to his little girl.
She sucked in one deep, courageous breath as she raised her head to look up at her uncle. “I don’t want to do dance, Bear. I want to do bones.”
He blinked slowly as his eyes lifted to me. I winced. “She wanted to know about my hyoid collection and one thing led to another and next thing you know we were patella deep into talking about tarsals.”
I flashed him a big grin, shrinking back in my seat a little.
He pressed a kiss to her forehead, but his attention had pinned me in place. “Like your aunt?”
She nodded. “Like Boo.”
It was a bit hard to explain the swelling in my chest. It took me by surprise. Why would anyone want to be like me? Wretched and alone.
The theatre was right in the middle of 11 Blackwood Alley, the most popular street in Mortdale, next to the city hall and only a few lanes away from the parliament.
An old grey stone building with a massive pediment carved with some Old Language letters, slate ornate corbels and cornices, and many tall finials prodding at the belly of the thunder-filled skies.
The carriage rolled in front of the carpeted entrance, and Logan hopped off, carrying Piper in his arms.
“What happened to Arthur’s eye?” I asked Liam as he helped me out of the carriage.
The theatre’s red carpeted and curtained lobby was already packed with parents and their buzzing, restless children running around. And though I’d worn every single garment required, I felt entirely too naked when every eye in the room turned in my direction.
“Did you come out in just a nightgown last night or was that just a rumour made up by Rupert because your rat bit him?”
“It was a chemise.”
He shook his head, astonished. “You really do hate him.”
“You’re making it seem like it was my fault somehow.”
He scoffed. “Logan probably punched both of them because they saw you half naked, crazy lady.”
I glanced at Logan, who’d brought a shy Piper next to another dance student wearing a colourful tutu similar to hers. Surely, he wouldn’t do something like that to his friends. And for something that was my fault.
Moving Piper to his other arm, he extended a hand in my direction, and I took it.
He threaded his fingers through mine as we passed by the crowd of people filling the gilded lobby.
People didn’t stop us, but they all turned to stare at us, the halls growing quieter the deeper into the theatre we went.
From the way their faces morphed as they took notice of him, I realised maybe what they said about him was true.
Maybe he’d deserved the name they’d given him in the Eastern Continent.
The Blood Reaper, who was now my husband.
Thankfully, we were seated in a balcony booth as expected for a fancy duke like my husband. Henry and Arthur were already there, both sporting signs of violence on their faces. While Arthur’s eye was bruised, Henry had a big gash on his forehead.
“I thought vampires healed fast,” I whispered to Henry as I sat down.
He was smirking to himself as he read the playbill. “He gave these to us during the training drill, right before we came here. And he didn’t let us feed, which helps us heal.”
“And you just let him?”
“Kind of hard to move away from a punch when he’s got you pinned.”
Piper raised her arms above her head, blocking my way to her unnecessarily violent uncle. “Bug, look!” she called out to Arthur, and then she did a spin.
All three of us clapped while she hopped about, beaming with joy. Logan caught my glare, and even dared raise a brow at me.
“What’s wrong with you?” I whispered to him.
His response was only a slow rake of his eyes all over my face and down my body.
Piper’s teacher came to our booth, and Logan went down to his knees, inspecting his niece. He smoothed back her near-bald head of hair, making sure to tuck any flyaways into the tight chignon. After carefully inspecting and straightening her tutu, he kissed her brow and stood.
She waved us goodbye as her teacher led her away, and Logan came down to sit on the chair next to me, breathing funny and obviously in some type of distress.
“What got your knickers in a twist now, husband of mine?”
He loosened his tie, lit a cigarette, removed his jacket, and folded his sleeves.
“She never fixed that last spin in practice. She’s going to take someone down with her.
Out of all the things she could have inherited from her father, it had to be his two left feet,” he muttered to himself, unbuttoning the top of his shirt.
“I warned Cassandra he was going to ruin her chances at having any talented off-spring.”
No matter how much I tried to pinch myself, bite my tongue, and press my mouth shut, I couldn’t stop shaking from laughter.
“I’m glad you find it funny.” He finally relaxed back in his chair, breathing out a slow sigh. “You look good, wife of mine.”
I was fanning myself so hard I could have started a squall.
“You should reward me properly. I have about a dozen garments under this dress. If someone paid me to get undressed, I’d be a ridiculously rich woman.
Luckily, only you can probably afford me.
” My teeth sank into my tongue. What the Hell did I just say?
The lights dimmed as the curtains pulled back, and a wave of claps ricocheted off the heavily-painted walls of golds and reds and many other bright colours. Despite how impossibly dark it was, I was acutely aware that he was looking at me.
“Powder room,” I murmured in his ear, dragging a cloud of bergamot and vetiver with me as I stood, trying to escape his attention before I’d say or do something stupid.
Liam peeled off the wall, following me across the hall to the powder room.
The buzzing bulbs overhead flickered when I opened the door. Another woman stood in front of the delicate sink mirror, dabbing a red-stained finger to her lips. “Do not look at me like that. Do you think all those women out there are rosy and flushed by nature? A man doesn’t know any better.”
She was an older witch, one I could easily recognise. A red maiden married some time ago now, way before Agnes had come into succession as Holy Mother.
I grabbed her by the elbow, stopping her from leaving the powder room. It hadn’t taken her long to zone in on the fact that I was a witch, too. “You don’t look like a red maiden. How did you ever end up in this predicament?”
“You’re Sybil Fortuna. Your portrait is in the halls of Crimson Weaver.” Not to mention that she was one of the most famous red maidens to have graduated. A woman of medical sciences—a surgeon. Someone whose papers I’d referenced many times.
She huffed. “Strange, I remember setting that entire hall on fire just before I was sold to my vampire keeper.”
Her bitterness was hard on the tongue. “Agnes sent me here.”
“Do not say another word,” she hissed, shoving the door behind me shut. “And do not mention that wretched woman to me again.”
I stepped in front of her again. “It’s about the sisters that are dying in the hands of the vampires.
Word must circulate. You have to know about Harriet Derby, who married just a little over a year ago.
She’s now dead. Like so many other red maidens.
I searched the papers and there’s no word or mention of her, of them, of anyone anywhere.
No obituaries, nothing. Most if not all of them were married to powerful men, and they should have been in the papers at the very least. Mortdale seems to have wiped their whole existence off this earth. ”
Boredom oozed off her face. Her features were flaccid as if I’d been reading her a housekeeping column in some old age newspaper. She looked annoyed at best. “And?
And?
“How long has it been going on? Why was Meridian never made aware of it?”
“You’re the duke’s wife, aren’t you?” She turned to the mirror, running her fingers through the blond curls. “Do you love your husband?”
“What?” I shook my head. “I don’t have time for this.”