Chapter 2 #2
“So many years unmarked and unmourned,” Kajarin whispered. “I wonder if her bones still rot in that midden…but you’ll never know which one, will you?”
A hard knot clenched my throat with tight fingers. She’d grinned broadly at the expression on my face, the awful realization and the horror of my mistaken assumptions.
“Go now, you filthy beast. Search for her. Find what remains of her, if you can. And send for Matthias; I’d rather spend my last—”
Kajarin had coughed, clutching at her chest, and her fingers began to tremble. She looked at me with wild eyes, burning between terror of death and the white-hot hatred she’d always felt for me.
I waited, watching patiently as the trembles became convulsions. The knot in my throat gradually loosened as she clutched at the sheets, thrashing, silently begging for help, no emotion left in her eyes but horror of the end…and I refused to lift a finger.
Kajarin sucked in a final whistling breath, eyes bulging like marbles, still locked on my face. The convulsions finally stilled, her heartbeat slowing, and dying out.
When she was silent, I got up and ordered her buried, in a plain wooden box in an unmarked plot.
I would allow her sons to leave flowers, but there would be no monuments, no headstone. The erasure of Kajarin’s memory began the moment the night-diggers began shoveling dirt on her grave.
With a shake of my mane, I sat up on the chaise, sloughing the memory. I didn’t want to think of Kajarin’s final, terrible blow, the horrible emptiness that had welled inside me once I understood what she’d done, how much she was willing to take.
“Tell me something, Bram.”
The bloodwitch hopefully raised his face from his hands. “I’ll tell you whatever you want, as long as you promise to go see the girl downstairs.”
“Fine.” I waved a clawed hand magnanimously. “Could you have cured Kajarin when she first fell ill? Could you have saved her?”
Bram stared at me without moving, his face utterly expressionless. Only his eyes flickered, hard, merciless blue jewels.
Not a speck of remorse to be seen.
“I see.” I rose from the chaise with a smile. “How fortunate I am to have vampires like you at my side.”
“Indeed, my Lord,” he murmured with relief as he followed me from the room.
The bride-to-be awaited us in the receiving room, and the moment my eyes landed on her I paused, almost recoiling in shock.
For a disorienting moment, I thought I’d walked back in time. The glow of strawberry-blonde curls, pale blue eyes that cut like razors—a young Kajarin in the flesh.
But this woman wore her hair in stiff round curls, pinned up beneath a small, frilly hat. Her bodice buttoned all the way up her throat, each gold button inlaid with aquamarines. She carried a Forian lace parasol, and her spine was as straight as a board.
Behind her a feminine golem waited demurely; a horrific thing, shimmering with the velvet radiance of a thousand colors.
Its entire being was composed of butterfly wings, as fresh as the day they were ripped from the insects’ bodies.
Here and there a wing flapped upright, flashing brilliant bejeweled colors before settling against the smooth, humanoid body.
Golems were popular with the noble ladies, silent and beautiful creations that functioned as accessories as well as servants.
Wyn had made a fortune selling her formula for life-like animation to other sanguimancers; somehow, the hypocrisy of paying bloodwitches for vampire-created fashion statements eluded the lais of my hold.
But the wealthier the customer, the more intensely they competed to make their golems of the most outlandish material; I still remembered a golem belonging to an older noblewoman, its body entirely made of glittering jewels.
Another woven of ribbons and lace. A golem of spring wildflowers that would never wilt, and one made of spiderwebs and shadows.
But never had I seen one created with such wanton cruelty.
She rose, raising her chin and offering her hand as though conferring a great favor. “Lord Wroth. I am Esteri lai Auvray, here on behalf of my father, Nathanael lai Auvray.”
I hovered my lips in the air above her hand, and she pulled it away with the slightest curl of her lip.
“My pleasure,” I rumbled, staring into her eyes and daring her to back down.
She wouldn’t. Nathanael lai Auvray had been waiting for Kajarin to die from the moment his daughter was born, expecting to one day be the father-in-law to the Lady of the Rivers.
A plan years in the making, lai Auvray had not been quiet about his ambitions, and no other families had come forward with a suitable candidate.
They all feared the retribution of lai Auvray, who controlled many of the trade routes throughout the hold, and the entire council of noblemen had almost unanimously cleaved to his plans.
So here she was. My future wife. What joy.
Esteri forced a smile and launched into a wooden monologue. “I am young and healthy, and well-trained in comportment. I am also of pure Veladari descent through two lines; on my father’s instructions, I’ve brought the lai Auvray genealogy for your consideration. Delicata!”
She snapped her fingers, and the butterfly-winged golem carried forth a massive, ancient book, the leather cover tooled with the family name in gilt.
Delicata flipped it open carefully, pointing to the relevant page.
“I see. Yes. Very…pure.” Although it looked suspiciously like a mother and uncle had grown a little close somewhere in those tangled branches—
Esteri reached out and tapped my arm with a lady’s fan. “There is little time. We will need to place an order with the Pharosene merchants for the pearls, sooner rather than later. It’s quite the journey this time of year, with the late spring storms.”
“Pearls?” I blinked at her. Her audacity was almost awe-inspiring.
“Yes. Pearls, for the wedding gown’s bodice.
” Esteri raised a delicate eyebrow, as though I were a fool.
“I have the silk, of course, but you will provide the pearls as part of my dowry, as well as the tiara. Delicata, bring the plans. The tiara was designed by my mother, and we are of the mind that diamonds will offset the pearls quite splendidly…”
The golem laid several sheets of vellum over the open genealogy. The wedding gown design was…opulent. Gaudy.
It was downright hideous, in my humble opinion.
And there, hidden in the shape of the gown…a spear. The point of the spear would be woven in cloth of gold over the bodice, the haft descending in a single line down the floor on the front of the skirt. It was subtle, but once seen, it was impossible to ignore.
She turned the page, and tapped the curling script with a perfectly manicured nail.
“For the flowers, you must import Serissan moon lotuses, and of course we will require the services of a professional chef, so you may as well send for both at once. The highest of lais will be in attendance, and I cannot abide a poorly-hosted wedding.”
To everyone’s surprise, including my own, a rumbling chuckle escaped me.
Would it ever end, this constant parade of derision and greed? These damn people. What had I signed the Blood Accords for, if not to fight for the lives of those who treated me with such contempt?
If my pride didn’t demand otherwise, I would abdicate, and never take one of them as my wife again, but my people would not forgive me for abandoning them to the mercy of the human loyalists.
On the other hand…the noblemen might be cowed by the lai Auvrays, but there was nothing in the Accords demanding that the bride have a lai in her name. Were I to find a pure-blooded woman in a fishing village, she could give Esteri a run for her money, and would have every right to do so.
Esteri looked up impatiently, her blue eyes wide. “Do you not like the plan?”
“Not in the slightest. In fact, I’m amazed by your presumption.
You are not the only woman eligible for the title of Lady of the Rivers, and here you stand before me, planning our wedding as though I might jump with joy at the opportunity to drain my coffers for such a grasping woman.
” I glanced at Bram with a wide grin. “And you tell me these women aren’t all covetous whores. ”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, muttering to himself under his breath. “Don’t you dare, Wroth. Lai Auvray controls trade from the River Melusine to the Liuva. Our stability depends on this.”
A hint of embarrassed pink tinged Esteri’s powdered cheeks, but she lifted her chin again, spine almost painfully straight. To give her some small token of credit, she glossed over the insult with an aplomb Kajarin never could’ve managed.
“Precisely. Do you think women are lining up outside your doors for this chance?” she asked coolly. “No. And if they were, they’d be here for gold, for prestige, the same as myself. This is merely a trade agreement like any other. Do you think any of them truly want you?”
“I don’t know. Let us check together.”
I gripped her arm—not hard, but not too gently either—and hauled her to the heavy doors of Owlhorn. Carved of pale ash, they both bore their namesake, the horned owl of the Rivers, glimmering stones and shells from the Five Sisters set in whorls around the spread wings.
“Unhand me, you brute bastard!” Esteri hissed, clawing at my arm, and I laughed again. Perhaps counterintuitively, she’d put me in a rather grand mood.
“Let’s see…here it is, your competition!”
I threw the doors open, fully intending to shove both Esteri and her hideous golem out into the empty evening. She could make her own way home. No doubt she had a carriage woven from the hides of skinned kittens or some such nonsense.
But the gates to Owlhorn stood wide open, my knights gazing at our abrupt emergence in surprise. I hid my own surprise at the sight that awaited us.
On the crushed-shell path leading to the castle doors walked a noblewoman streaked with sweat, her hair a wild tangle, wearing both sword and pistol rather than fan and parasol. She trudged toward us with a blown horse in tow.
She looked up, her brown eyes magnified to epic proportions behind her round spectacles, then whipped one imperious finger at me and bellowed.
“You! Don’t you shut that door!”
The gods often laugh at you, but sometimes they laugh with you.
I grinned at Esteri, who had gone stiff with outrage, her mouth hanging open. “Me. Imagine that.”