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“So… think about it. Why would they take a servant?” Kajarin’s eyes widened. “Because your blood is all that matters. You’re a pureblood. That’s your sole worth, Cirrien. You fit the qualification, and now here you are.”
That requirement was demanded by the human Lords, I wrote.
She ignored it entirely. “So, you were born to the wrong bloodline, and you performed their quaint little ceremony. That’s it! Now we’re both trapped forever, married to those… those things.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. She had guest-right, and I couldn’t haul off and slap her.
Bane is not a thing or a freak of nature. My pen tore through the paper a little from the force of my writing.
“You poor girl. You still don’t see it.” She gestured to my books. “He’s given you make-work to make you feel important, to blind you. That feeling of pride you’re indulging in right now? It’s so you don’t run off and leave him thirsty. At the end of the day, all you are to him is a warm meal—and a warm hole, if you’ll let him go that far. You’re just a name he needs on paper.”
A name that ensures our people are protected against wargs. A meal that keeps him prepared to defend us.
Kajarin gave me a falsely sympathetic smile. “Oh, no. You’ve swallowed the bait.”
Are you delusional? I asked. Weren’t you around for the Forian War, when wargs were slaughtering entire villages in an hour? We heard the bells at least once a night in Argent, and that was the most defended city in Veladar. If our marriage is necessary to keep the vampires on our side and ready to fight for us, then it was entirely worth it to me.
I didn’t add that I would marry Bane all over again just for the sake of himself; she didn’t deserve that level of trust. Not with the way she treated Wroth.
“They could have helped without taking the titles, and without marrying us!” she hissed. “These castles belonged to humans! How can you not see this? You were part of the Sisterhood.”
Prices must be paid in times of war. The cost was the four thrones. Why cry about it now, when they’ve done nothing but rebuild our prosperity together? I thought it over, and added: All four keeps were built by vampires, so they belonged to them first, in fact. If anything, the Blood Accords have granted equilibrium between our kinds. Both humans and vampires rule them now.
“Equi—?” Kajarin sputtered. She stopped herself, taking a breath and closing her eyes. “Cirrien. I am trying to help you.”
I don’t really want your help.
“You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. By the Lady, you’ve never seen him fully transformed, have you?” She put a hand to her stomach, mouth twisting. “You think they’re hideous now?”
Not anymore.
“Please. They’re… Light help me, they’re horrible. Just look at Wroth’s face—he’s got fur, he’s got claws! And he expects me to want to touch him?” She curled her lip. “As though I would kiss him, let alone fuck him!”
You don’t have to torment him for what he is.
“And to think I would let him touch me with those hands, after the things I’ve seen him do… I’ve watched Wroth pull a man’s arm off, like a boy pulling wings from a fly. They’re violent monstrosities, and if you think they wouldn’t ever turn that violence on you, then you’re delusional, not me.”
I stared at her across the table. Did you give him a chance? Because I don’t think they would. With the way you carry on, I think if Wroth meant to kill you, he would’ve done it by now. Besides, no man’s hands are clean after the war. Even children who could hold a spear fought.
“Ha!” Kajarin flopped bonelessly on the couch again. “But, Cirrien, at least they grew into men, who look like proper men should. They don’t have a mouth full of teeth or walk on paws. He’s a thing, not a person. So, if you’re smart, you’ll do what I’ve done—take all you can get, and live as best you can, even if you’re owned by a grotesquerie. Wroth might have the title, the castle, the gold… but he is not a man.”
She said the last ferociously, through her teeth, fists clenched.
I watched her take deep breaths, calming herself.
Anger was understandable. I, too, had been furious under the terror when I’d been plucked from washing the floor to being readied for a wedding. It hadn’t seemed fair, but then… life wasn’t fair. Life was simply what one forged with the raw materials they were given.
So, I could see the anger at being given to a fiend in marriage. What I couldn’t see was torturing him, playing mind games, to make him suffer for something he likely hadn’t wanted at all.
Are you living the best you can? I wrote, wishing I could talk to her just to give her the full acid of my tone. Or are you just trying to make him as miserable as you are? You can talk all day about them being creatures and monsters, but remember, you were perfectly happy to try to lure my husband to your bed to strike a blow against yours.
I knocked the table hard, holding the journal up for Kajarin to read when she opened her eyes.
“Is that what you’re upset about?” she asked. “Of course I wouldn’t have done it. By the Light, Bane is even uglier than Wroth. I pity you.”
I swallowed back a spew of hate, and just wrote: Then why try it at all? What were you hoping to accomplish?
Her eyes glittered between her slitted lids. “To destroy him, bit by bit. If a human can’t hold the title, if I’m to be his little figurehead, impotent and pointless but to keep a thing like him in power, then I want him to wake up every day as sick as I feel from having to look at him.”
She had to be mad. She was the Lady of the Rivers, and while a fiend might hold the title of Lord, she was far from impotent. A single one of those hairpins could finance the rebuilding of a decimated village, with gold to spare.
I felt no pity for her anger, looking at her slumped drunkenly on the couch. I would feel pity for any girl like me, scooped from their life and given in marriage, but her venom made it impossible.
Damn the guest-right to politeness, then.
I think you’re pathetic, I wrote. You have the power and the gold to make a real change, to rebuild to something greater than we were before. Whatever your feelings for Wroth, it seems to me that devoting all your energy to making him miserable isn’t living the best you can—it’s just a waste of life.
Kajarin smiled crookedly, her eyes sca
She got up, a little unsteady on her feet, tugging her skirts down and adjusting her bodice so her breasts were nearly popping out. Once again I wondered who she’d brought into the library stacks… and if Bloodrain would culminate with an execution.
But, more importantly, her hatred became clear to me: she was a human loyalist. There was a possibility the lai Orros family had been the rulers of Owlhorn, if not the next in line for that throne, and for her and her people, the vampires would always be interlopers—never mind that they had signed away the title themselves.
There were a few small factions of loyalists in Argent, slowly being pushed out as vampires became integrated with humans. I’d seen them spit at the vampires before, and once, they’d been responsible for the burning of one of the blood shops, where humans could willingly be bitten.
They were from all walks of life, and defined solely by one trait: their shared hatred for vampire-kind. Not even the Sisterhood held a candle to their absolute desire to wipe them from the earth.
“I’ll look forward to the day you see them as they truly are—no better than animals.” She gazed down at me imperiously. “Lady forbid you get in his way. Trust me, Cirrien—no matter how much you think he loves you, when it comes down to it, he sees you only as meat. Our kind, we humans, we’re nothing but meat to them.”
Before I could write, she flounced off, her heels clacking on the floor all the way down the hall. Thorn watched her go, then returned his attention to the library, staring into the dark corners. Light only knew what he was looking at; I was grateful for the peace and silence.
How strange, that a loyalist would end up married to a fiend. Now there was a match made in hell.
I looked down at my journal, flipping to the lexicon, but my concentration was completely broken.
What had I been expecting? I knew perfectly well that none of the other Accords marriages had gone smoothly. Wyn and Visca had been perfectly ready to tie me up to get me to the altar, if necessary… I had a vague memory of Visca telling me of Owlhorn, treasonous humans trying to stop the wedding…
So Kajarin came from a family who would have been happy to accept the vampires’ sweat, blood, and tears fighting to defend them from the Forians, and were just as happy to try to renege on their promises. The apple hadn’t fallen far from that tree.
But it wasn’t my problem. I wasn’t like her, and moreover, I didn’t believe a word she said. If Bane thought I was just a meal, just a hole, as she so charmingly put it, he wouldn’t be making the effort to learn my language. He wouldn’t have gone out of his way to give me a project I’d be useful at, unlike virtually everything else.
He wouldn’t write me poems.
And if he was even more hideous in his full transformation… I didn’t care. Because I knew that no matter what he looked like, he was still my Bane, and that was that.
I stared at the ritual book, my eyes blurring, and finally snapped it shut, carefully tucking it into my bag along with my journal, and went to find Wyn. I couldn’t take the silence in the library anymore, still ringing with Kajarin’s vitriol, her surety that I meant nothing to Bane but meat.
She was wrong.