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Chapter 5 Cirri
Iopened sore, gritty eyes in an unfamiliar bed, the weight of the previous day falling on me like a sack of boulders as I blinked at the room.
Yesterday I had woken up as a maid in the Silver Cathedral. Today, I was a wife and the Lady of the Rift.
But the room, the dress, the soft bed… everything around me disproved the notion as a bad dream.
There was no sign of my husband. No sign that he had ever come back—not that I had expected him to. What could he possibly want with me? The journey to fetch me from Argent alone was more of a burden than a mute servant warranted.
He must have been terribly disappointed to discover the poisoned gift hidden in the Eldest Sister’s selection. The growl in his voice as he’d left… I hadn’t been able to stop myself from shrinking away from it.
I rubbed my eyes, already dreading opening the door, and made myself strip the linens from the bed and remake it with the fresh ones in the wardrobe to put off the inevitable.
Only when that was done, and I’d run out of things to tidy, had I seen the things on the desk.
My heart jumped into my throat at the sight of the journal. Paper… and not the rough, pulpy handmade paper used for common writing. This was bond paper, satin-smooth under my fingertips.
And hundreds of pages’ worth. My hand shook as I opened the cover, touching with careful fingers as though my skin alone might smudge the pristine pages with dirt.
I closed it reverently and found a metal pen, already filled for use. A spare well of ink. And finally, a package wrapped in plain dark paper.
That one made me hesitate, but I finally opened it and found one of the popular romance novels that had been spreading like wildfire through Argent over the summer.
It was about a vampire—beautiful as the setting sun, deadly as the blade of a knife—carrying off a human peasant girl. Kora, one of the longtime maids of the Silver Cathedral, had pooled a secret fund with the other servant women to afford a single copy to be passed among them.
All of us united had kept it hidden from the Eldest Sister’s eyes, under pain of never being allowed to join a secret book fund again if it was found in our possession.
What little I’d managed to read of it, after bribing Kora with hard candy to get my turn early, had involved a lot of heaving bosoms and throbbing appendages nearly from the first page.
I’d only been on chapter three. Kora had probably already retrieved the book from under the loose baseboards in the maid’s quarters, knowing now that I would never be returning for it.
Just looking at the cover made my face heat up. I was no stranger to sex, but none of what I’d experienced had been remotely like the things described in those passages.
I considered if Bane was trying to send me a message with this particular book. That he knew I was a scullery maid—hardly more than a peasant myself?
Not that it would matter. The deed was done, and the vampires had not specified in the Blood Accords that the bride must be highborn.
So if not that, then perhaps… I swallowed hard, dropping the book like a hot coal.
Perhaps he was stating that he, like the handsome vampire, was a sexual being. That whatever the knight did in the book… he would want to do the same.
To me.
I pressed my hands to my cheeks, trying to tamp down the heat of my blush. It was one thing to imagine a vampire with glass-chiseled cheekbones and the physique of a Serissan god.
That was understandable. The popularity of the novel itself proved it.
It was another thing entirely to imagine Bane—the craggy contours of his face, the long, pointed ears, not to mention the rack of flesh-shredding teeth—arched over me in a bed.
Not with the breadth of his muscled body, hands large enough to crush skulls planted on either side of my head…
The blush was not fading. If anything, it grew worse, my skin always willing to show every flush of emotion.
How was it possible that I’d be blushing over that mental image? He was a fiend. The fangs alone sent chills down my spine. Every cell in my body recoiled at the thought of stepping into his embrace.
But his hand had been surprisingly soft and warm. He’d held mine like it was made of porcelain, although I’d pulled it from his grasp before he could feel the calluses on my fingers.
I exhaled, staring at the cover.
Sometimes a book was merely a book. It didn’t have to mean anything, except that my new husband was trying to show me kindness—which was far more than anything I could have hoped for. Or worse, more than I deserved after I’d shut him out last night.
Perhaps… we could be friends, at the very least. It would not be a dissatisfying life, to appreciate my husband’s company. Plenty of women married to human men didn’t have even that.
I rewrapped the novel, trying to hide it under the journal before I left my room in search of a place to wash my face.
Olwyn was outside, her hand raised to knock. She blinked at the sight of me, taken aback. “Sweet ancestors, Cirrien, your face. Are you feverish?”
Before I could shake my head, she pressed the back of her cool hand to my forehead, then took it away, frowning.
“No fever. Do you feel ill?”
I shook my head, and quickly mimed washing my face to try to head off more questions.
Olwyn looked at me doubtfully, but brought me to a washroom. The porcelain stand had already been filled, and I gratefully leaned over it, filling my hands and pressing icy water to my face.
Several minutes of hasty ablutions dissipated the worst of the flush. There was no mirror in here to check myself, so I combed my fingers through my hair and braided it neatly, feeling naked without the plain wimple of a scullery maid to hide it.
When I emerged, Olwyn was waiting in my room, sitting with her legs primly crossed at the desk. I prayed she hadn’t touched the wrapped book and seen what was inside.
“Your maid did not come to attend to you,” she noted, in such a neutral tone that I was immediately alarmed.
She is not used to acting as a lady’s maid, I signed. Then I touched my hair and patted my chest, hoping I was clear: I can handle this myself.
Olwyn watched me, expressionless. “You are lovely, but your hands are as rough as a dockworker’s. When you rose, you made your bed with fresh linens and pulled the corners so tight I couldn’t slip a fingernail between them. I also noticed that you swept the floor in here while you were wallowing in self-pity last night. A nobleborn woman would have been accustomed to the idea of an arranged marriage. You may have a lai in your name, but you were not raised by nobility, were you?”
I sank onto the bed and shook my head.
“Indentured servant?” she guessed shrewdly.
I gave her a wry look, my hands twisting. Was it that obvious?
“I suppose I can infer what you just said.” Olwyn patted the journal, and I had to physically hold myself back from lunging at her and pulling it out of her reach. Bane had given it to me. That was my paper now. “I would like a general account of your life, if you please. To be frank, I don’t give a damn what you were before. You suit all the criteria that ensure the preservation of the Accords, and in the end that is all that matters to me. But for Bane’s sake, I would know more about you.”
I nodded, my hands fisted in my lap.
“To you, he is a fiend. A monster. A creature whose visage will keep you awake at night.” Olwyn laughed softly, shaking her head. “To us, he is a hero. A noble soul, who sacrificed himself for our people. He gave up his face. His freedom. His happiness. His choice of a wife.”
My body remained frozen in place, the tiny hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up. I could not forget that she was a predator, despite her fastidious appearance and ma
“I would very much like for us to be friends, Cirrien. Truly. But you will understand this: he is Bane the Lifegiver. He gave up the life he had, willingly, for yours. For every soul in the Rift. For every Veladari, human and vampire. And I will not tolerate disrespect towards him. If you must cry again, do it where he won’t see or hear you.”
She stood up, already moving towards the door, but I rose and stopped her, holding out a hand. Olwyn tilted her head, watching me curiously.
I could write out my thoughts, but I didn’t want to stain the first page of that beautiful journal with anger.
I did not cry because he is a monster, I signed. I cried because I was given away. Because my dreams are gone, and I didn’t get a say.
With every word, my motions grew sharper, more punctuated. The anger couldn’t be held back, burning in me like a fire.
I was terrified to be among strangers who don’t understand me. I woke up this morning with no idea that I’d be getting married. But now I see that there’s more to him than meets the eye.
I stared into her eyes as my hands went still. The bloodwitch gave no sign that she had found any sense in my movements.
But she smiled, the ice melting from her eyes. “Oh, that truly upset you, didn’t it?”
I didn’t bother to nod. She had upset me. Was I not permitted one night to come to terms with the fact that I was chattel? I had not cried over Bane, but over the books that were now lost to me. The position I had strived to prove myself worthy of. The knowledge that had been worth twenty-five years of indentured servitude.
“No, I don’t think we’ll need the poppy at all.” She searched my eyes, and stepped around me. “Bring your things, Cirrien. We’re loading the carriage now and nearly behind schedule. A bite to eat and we’ll be on the way.”
Poppy? The only poppy I knew of was the syrup kept under tight lock and key by the alchemists, worth its weight in gold these days.
Then I understood, my fingers clenching.
I did not need to be drugged like an animal. All of Veladar required this arrangement to work.
And Bane had left me paper. A pen. Even a book.
No, I did not need poppy to withstand his presence.
But as I climbed into the carriage, clutching my book and journal, there was no sign of my husband at all.
Olwyn tucked her trunk beneath the seat, and Ellena sat across from us, her dark hair obscured by the wimple and her hands folded in her lap.
Her lips seemed permanently downturned at the corners; I couldn’t entirely blame her. She too had been shipped away from her home without warning.
As the bloodwitch lowered the bar on the door, locking us in, I motioned to get her attention. Where is Lord Bane?