Chapter 5 | Sephania
Sephania
The day passes in a dreamless slumber. As suspected, I sleep like the dead once I make contact with a bed. When my eyes crack open, the side of my face is sticky from a pool of drool.
I cringe and lift my head as footsteps pad down the hallway outside. My heart leaps to my throat, hoping it’s one of my men coming to ravage me.
A small, freckled face pokes into my room, beady eyes trained on me. Her pale lips slip into a smile.
Confused, I sit up and swing my legs off the bed. “Sister Lyroan? What’s going on?”
I hardly know the Sister. All she’s ever done is glower at me because I “stole” her “dashing prince,” Vallan Stellos. Of course, I never had the choice to steal anyone. My connection with Vall is simply too frenetic and heated for there to be any other outcome.
Standing with some trepidation, I wonder if the short, stout half-blood has come to attempt something dastardly while the evening meal is cooking downstairs.
I’d like to see her try, I think, towering over the girl and bunching my hands into fists.
Sure enough, she enters the room holding a pair of swords—a longsword and shorter blade. She holds them like a bundle of sticks, clearly unaccustomed to using them.
I bump back against my cot but then recognize the weapons. “What’s this?”
She shuffles into the room. “I went to your eastern hideaway to bring you these. They’re yours, aren’t they?” Her eyes are hopeful, as if the grayskin is looking for approval for doing something kind.
“Erm, yes, they are. You went out in the sunlight for my swords? Why?”
“Figured you’d need them since you’re back, Lady Lock. Besides, your mother is busy training the Sisters downstairs. I thought you might want to partake.”
Training? When she says the words, I hear the sounds for the first time: high-pitched grunting, growling, even yelling, and the battering of wood smacking against wood.
What in all the True are you doing, Mother?
“Well, thank you?” I’m still confused and groggy from sleep.
Lyroan takes a step forward, lifting her chin. Her eyes are dewy. Her freckles disappear in a bloom of pink and she bows her head. “I, um, was also hoping you might . . . talk to me.”
“About?” I take the swords from her and strap them onto my waist where they belong.
It feels nice having my blades on me again after so long without them.
They’re like old friends, my weapons of choice ever since my time in the Firehold with the Grimsons and .
. . I can’t think about Lukain. Not now. That chapter of my life is over.
“How to win back my prince,” she says.
I blink. “Vallan?”
Lyroan nods diligently and sits on the side of the bed. She kicks her feet. “Rather than hating you, I think it’s a better idea to see how you do it. Yes?”
I’ll always take fewer people hating me over the alternative, but I’m at a loss how to help this obsessed dhampiress. She wants to steal back one of the men I adore? Does she not see how I have a conflict of interest in the matter?
“How I do it, Sister? I’m not sure what—”
“Well, you don’t need all those lovely men, right?
I understand you’re pretty and strong, which draws them to your flame like moths.
” She taps her knees, spilling out more words in a flurry, staring at the floor the whole time.
“I’m also pretty, right? Maybe you could just, you know, give him up.
I love him.” She lifts her chin to stare at me, a flicker of something like frustration behind her eyes.
“Don’t you see it pains me to see you with Vallan?
I thought he’d forget you after you were gone so long. ”
Her blunt speech makes me realize something.
This girl, with her grayish skin and soft freckles, is no human.
She doesn’t see things how we do. She sees nothing wrong with the questions she’s asking me, and I can’t loathe her for asking them.
The grayskin Sister is curious and inexperienced in matters of love.
I almost scoff, wondering when I became the analyst for healthy relationships.
I’ve hated most men longer than you’ve probably been alive!
My mouth opens and closes. “. . . Give him up?” The idea is the furthest thing from my mind. In fact, now that it’s nearly nighttime, I know just who I’d like to see first.
“Yes,” Lyroan says, dipping her chin in embarrassment or shame.
“No.”
Her head whips up, lips snarling suddenly. “But why?!” she cries out. “Why are you doing this to me, Lady Lock?!”
As the girl sniffles, I crouch in front of her. She looks around eighteen winters, born a dhampir half-blood who will never know what it means to be truly, wholly human.
My hand falls on her knee. “Sister Lyroan, you don’t want Vallan Stellos.”
“How do you—yes I—”
I squeeze her knee lightly through her gray robe, offering a small smile.
“You want someone who sees your freckles like they’re the stars in the night sky.
Someone who smiles at the sight of your cheery face, not rolls his eyes.
A man who is surly when you’re not around, due to your absence—not a man who is just surly, always.
You’re right, lass, you are pretty. You can do so much better than Vallan Stellos, because you can find someone who is worthy of you and respects you. That big oak tree is neither.”
Lyroan stays silent after I’m done. Spirits and deities, where the fuck did that come from? I muse. Where were those words when I needed them, when interacting with someone like Master Lukain? Or any of the three cutthroats I’m now addicted to?
Her chin trembles. “That . . . sounds nice.”
I smile fondly. “It is. Once you find it, you’ll know.”
Lyroan nods to herself, brow furrowing. Then she stands abruptly with a heavy sigh and pats my head while I’m still crouching. “I suppose I’ll just have to keep hating you then. Thank you, Lady Lock.”
She leaves the room before I can reply, a retort dying on my lips. I stand and scratch the back of my neck. “That’s, uh, not the response I was hoping for,” I mumble.
At least I tried.
Downstairs, the dwelling of the Chained Sisters is in a state of upheaval.
In the large room, my mother sits below her nude painting, directing traffic.
Girls are lined up in rows, going through sword patterns with wooden blades.
A few of the youngest ones are running around swinging wildly, earning scowls and reprimands from the older women who get their shins knocked.
My eyes widen. Less than a single day and Jinneth already has them training like militiamen? Truehearts fuck me, what have I unleashed by freeing her?
“Not like that, Sister Tecca!” Jinneth yells across the room.
I watch as the diminutive half-blood in question, the door-greeter named Tecca, awkwardly swings her wooden sword at the body of a woman facing away from her. When she makes contact, the woman stiffens, turns, and cuffs Tecca on the side of the head with a fist.
Tecca bares her fangs, the dhampir’s pale flesh seeming to darken in a way that gives the half-bloods the “grayskin” name.
She’s just about to charge the older woman again, or bite her, when Jinneth’s voice rings out.
“Tecca! Are you listening? Practice with Sister Aleth. Look. She’s waiting for you. ”
Sister Aleth is a big-talking little girl. In fact, she and Tecca are both around fourteen summers, but Aleth likes to jab at her Sisters.
Tecca approaches her with bloodlust in her eyes, a cruel smile splayed on her dollish face.
Aleth whimpers. She’s a human, whereas Tecca is not, and I can already see this isn’t going to end well.
“But . . . she’s dangerous,” Aleth croaks. “She’ll hurt me, Mother Jinneth.”
Mother Jinneth? I think, shaking my head.
Standing in the frame of the large room, I cross my arms and continue watching. A warm body shuffles up next to me. Iron Sister Keffa sighs, slurping soup from a wooden bowl in her hand.
“Looks like you’ve been usurped,” I mutter. My eyes dart at the chaotic room and flailing girls. “They’re already calling her ‘Mother.’”
“Aye. I heard.” Keffa’s voice is resigned.
“I liked it better when you had the girls quietly reading and studying.”
“So did I.”
“You can’t do anything to stop her bloodthirsty conquest?”
“Tecca, no! Don’t bite your Sister!” Jinneth screeches, standing from her chair. “Don’t make me come over there!”
Keffa winces. “Any suggestions how to rein her in?”
I unfold my arms and clap the older woman lightly on the shoulder. “Afraid not, Iron Sister. You’re on your own here.”
I turn to leave the room, making it three steps before Keffa’s voice stops me. “The things we do for love, eh, Lady Lock?”
A smile flashes over my shoulder. “Quite true, Iron Sister. Quite true. If you’ll excuse me, I have some love of my own to hunt down.”
Her lips curl with a mischievous look, wrinkles forming near her mouth. “I’m sorry for what I said last night, Madame Lock. About you not rescuing Jinneth had I told you who you’d be finding.”
“No, you were right, Keffa. I’m happy my mother’s back with us. Back with you.”
“Go find your love, Sister.”
I hesitate. Despite the Iron Sister’s obvious tiredness and caution about what to do in this newfound terrain, there’s a glow in her face with my mother’s return.
It makes rescuing my mad mother all worth it.
As night falls, I head to a nearby river for a much-needed bath. I’m there for an hour, lazily soaking naked in the stream where I used to “walk” with my imaginary friend Jinneth.
Once I’m clean, I throw my clothes on and travel north, past the Chained Sisters’ house. I’m alone, and I know I shouldn’t be, but I’m hoping Skar was right when he said we have some time before Alacine strikes again.