Chapter 9
Jesamin
Without sunlight or moonlight, time lost all meaning. I curled in my bedroll before my lonely campfire, Talos standing guard behind me, and watched as Wroth spoke quietly to the knights and his niece, moving between their campfires and heavily partaking of the bloodpowder tea himself.
My body was exhausted, but my brain was alight. If only I’d had just a thin sliver of moonlight, I could convince myself to sleep, but my muscles refused to relax.
Perhaps it wasn’t the lack of light. Perhaps it was the knowledge that everything in this damn place wanted us dead, and that just below me, the Below delved into depths that even the vampires feared to tread.
I felt vaguely guilty for pushing Wroth to show me the maps—as though they’d make a difference! They were utterly indecipherable, unlike any map I’d seen before, almost like a fever dream of color and strange symbols put to paper.
And it drove home just how far out of my depth I was. The vampires had heightened senses to rely upon; if I were lost, I might as well curl up and wait to die.
Unless I stay with Wroth, I reminded myself, watching his broad back shift, the firelight painting his white fur gold.
His moment of open honesty had surprised me.
Everyone knew what the Lady of the Rivers had been. Perhaps it wasn’t spoken of in polite conversation, but in the right parlor, at the right time, and with the right company, one might hear the truth of things spoken in hushed and scandalous whispers.
But Wroth had forever; barring war or murder, vampires would not die. Somehow, it had not occurred to me that a single woman could damage him quite so terribly. He was the Lord of the Rivers, was he not? Everything was at his command.
And now I realized the error of my assumptions.
Like myself, once protected by a noble name and a noble father, with a small fortune in my coffers, and yet Renaud’s treachery had ruined me in the eyes of the Rivers noblemen.
My name did not protect me from the common knowledge that I’d been known by a man, in a hold where carnal purity was a good woman’s greatest virtue.
At times, I considered moving on to the Rift or Moor, where sleeping with a man outside wedlock was not a moral crime.
But at least Renaud had freed me from his selfish desires. Wroth had spent many long decades entangled in the web of a venomous spider. Just because he was immortal did not make those years negligible, as forever had not happened for him yet.
I knew him to be close to two hundred years old; fifty years was no small slice of that pie.
And now honesty was a foreign land for him. Women as a whole must seem a poisonous species, something to be avoided or crushed at all costs before he could feel their sting.
I blinked as he moved, talking quietly to Marrion just out of my earshot. My lids felt heavy as lead, even as my mind circled over and over to Wroth’s words: you have defied my expectations.
Me? He was the one who had upended my presumptions. I might never like vampires, or their casual claim to forever and all the faithlessness that entailed, but his pain had been so raw, a still-bleeding wound that he had allowed me to see but briefly…
Something touched my shoulder. I blinked sleep from my eyes, my entire body stiff and sore, and found Talos leaning over me. He tapped the pocket watch around my neck, and I lifted it, peering at blearily in the dying firelight.
Seven hours of rest. I didn’t remember falling asleep.
Some of the knights were stretched out on bedrolls, and Marrion was curled on a bedroll on the opposite side of my fire, surrounded by a circle of glistening blood drops, her breathing even and slow.
I felt strangely honored that she had chosen to rest in my corner of the bastion.
I sat up, my blanket falling away, and froze.
Wroth sat against the wall behind me, close enough that I could reach out and touch him. His head was tipped backwards, eyes closed, one knee drawn up, but from the deep rumble of his breathing, I knew he was asleep.
I feared making the slightest noise. Of all of us, he needed to be well-rested and ready. He was our sword and shield.
He looked so peaceful, the scowl smoothed from his face.
I examined him as he slept, looking for humanity there and finding little.
Perhaps in his eyes, and certainly in his body, but his purely feline face—with the broad nose, wide cheekbones, and the split upper lip of his muzzle, all covered in that downy coating of fine fur—obscured the man he had once been.
His long tail touched my bedroll, and I had to force my hands to remain where they were, rather than stroking the long, silky strands of the tuft.
My eyes finally lit on his fangs, pressing into his dark lower lip.
I’d never given much thought to being fed upon.
No lai or fel of the Rivers would ever be caught dead in a blood-shop.
When Renaud had come to my home, with me unaware that was the last time he would ever darken my doorway, I’d offered myself and my blood in a bout of madness; anything to keep the man I thought I loved.
And when he told me outright that his immortality meant more to him than a life with me, that he’d rather sample all the flesh available to him than chain himself to a single woman who could not even do as he asked…my hatred had crystallized.
I knew I was being unfair. I’d simply transposed my anger at Renaud to all vampires, seeing them all as faithless, wanton bastards rather than individuals.
Had Wroth ever fed from Lady Kajarin? Had she submitted herself to those sharp needles, luxuriated in the pain, the ecstasy that was spoken of in breathless whispers by those who had experienced it?
I thought not.
Imagining them piercing my flesh…it was alarming, but also strangely exciting. I thought of Wroth’s rumbling voice, his warm breath on my throat, those massive hands holding me close, and goosebumps erupted all over my body.
Then I realized his eyes had cracked open, and he was staring back at me.
A strangled wheeze erupted from my lungs.
“Did you sleep well?” He shifted, stretching and arching his spine, the runes on his belt tinkling. He kept his voice low so as not to wake the others, but still I felt the reverberations in my bones.
“As well as I could in enemy territory.” I tried a smile, my heart racing fast enough that he could surely hear it. Could he guess at what I had thought of? “And you?”
Wroth shrugged a massive shoulder, twitching his tail away from my bedroll. “As long as I’m not thirsty, I don’t need much sleep.”
“Didn’t you bring a bedroll? The cold stone can’t feel pleasant.”
His tail twitched again, and his icy eyes landed on my face before skittering away again. “Better to embrace the discomfort than be caught out in a moment of softness.”
A blush mounted in my face. Ah. So he must think of me as a soft, coddled noblewoman, complaining at the lack of feather mattresses and luxury.
He opened his mouth as though to say something else, then scowled and huffed out an irritated breath. “Never mind. I’ll wake the others.”
I stared after him for a moment, dismayed at the sudden return of his bad temper. Didn’t we agree to be friends? Or perhaps I was drunk on tiredness and the stress of entering the Below, and simply dreamed the whole thing.
The entire camp was soon a flurry of quiet activity, packing bedrolls, putting on armor, loading the kettles on the wagons.
I checked the oilcloth bundles in my pack, buckled my bedroll on top, and rebraided my hair before wolfing down a breakfast of venison jerky and bread.
Wroth, always in the corner of my eye, issued orders to the knights.
Marrion stood at my side, yawning as I straightened the sword and pistol in my belt before slinging my pack over my shoulders. “Today will be worse,” she commented softly. “That was merely the entry, and now we’ve secured the first bastion. The second is quite a long way from here.”
“You said you’ve never been Below.” I tucked my pocket watch into my blouse and took off my spectacles to polish the lenses on my sleeve. “Are you following Wroth’s maps, or—?”
“In a way.” She smiled faintly. “My aunt, the one who last infiltrated Liuridar—her legion was responsible for many of the more recent maps, and they’re highly detailed compared to past versions.
I had to memorize them as part of my training, just in case.
She’s a firm believer in being prepared for any and every potentiality. ”
I would not have thought the word ‘detailed’ a proper description for the squiggles of color and shapes Wroth had shown me, but perhaps vampires had a different thought process regarding such things.
“The main entrance to the city itself was sealed off—Aunt Wyn and her wife brought the entrance down with blasting powder, which was…well, less refined than the product you use today.” Marrion nodded to the wagon loaded with barrels of black powder.
“But it did what it needed to do. She intended to return one day and bring me with her. But I am of the first generation of my kind who has never been forced to live Below, so this is all as new to me as it is to you. I can tell you that my people lived on these levels—you saw the color-coding, yes?”
I nodded, replacing my spectacles on my face and pushing them up my nose.