Page 21 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

N o one, not even Giles, said a word as the carriage jostled along the torchlit path toward the main road.

With Adelaide’s agreement, the market party had formed quickly.

Giles would continue to drive, with Adelaide sitting up with him.

Despite a pleading look from Adelaide, Lorietta politely refused her invitation, saying she had the inn to look after.

She insisted even when Lilac pointed out they should be gone for a day and a half at the longest, and Meriam was more than capable of handling things for one night.

The two witches quickly worked together on a tracking spell for the market, with the result being a small green firefly currently floating just ahead of the two horses, guiding them toward the Midraal Market.

Only the travel party would be able to see the insect as it directed them, and Giles would only have to stay alert to ensure the horses remained on track.

Lorietta had also provided a warm cloth for Lilac to clean her skin, a lined basket of bread ends and cheeses, and a beaten travel bag she told them contained magical essentials for their trip. These were shoved under one of the benches for easier access.

Before they departed, Sable and Jeanare had come to give their farewells.

The korikaned had retired to their warded camp stationed behind the inn, Blitzrik’s arms filled with pastries baked just for Aife.

Sable slung her arms around them both and pressed a small scroll into Garin’s arms before pecking him on the cheek. “For your troubles.”

His brow had creased as he quietly shoved it into his pocket.

It was that pocket leg which Lilac tapped now, in the quiet of the carriage, listening to the muffled one-sided conversation Giles was having with Adelaide. “Well? Are you going to see what Sable gave you?”

“Nosy, are we?” Garin lounged against the partition opposite her, his head resting against the curtain-drawn front window, arms loosely crossed. A strip of moonlight slashed across his chest from the window, but other than that, she could only sense his smile in the dark.

“I’m only curious.”

“I would joke about your own timeliness of opening letters and parcels, but I think you’ve had enough for tonight.”

He wasn’t wrong. In fact, nothing about the night had gone right.

Instead, she left the tavern in a worse state than she found it—the Daemons were just as unprotected as before, and she’d invoked Kestrel’s wrath again .

Not to mention, she was now embarking on some quest to fulfill a generational debt to the faerie king.

What had her family taken from the faeries?

She thought of the numerous scrolls and knives in her father’s armory—now hers, she supposed.

The jewels encased there, the brooches her mother owned, her dagger…

but why would Kestrel once own something so useless?

A dagger that didn’t kill anyone, especially the Daemons Henri had claimed it did.

Pretty, but completely and utterly useless.

Garin’s hand rested lightly upon her knee, bringing her back. “You were incredible tonight.”

Lilac grimaced, and for once she wanted him to be brutally honest. “I destroyed your tavern.”

He made a dismissive sound. “The inn tidies itself in the early morning hours. I’ve seen worse after a korrigan brawl, but I’m sure Lori will put Bastion to good use.”

The dark mood brewing inside her was not so easily assuaged.

“My family ruined everything for Brocéliande. I promised Kestrel I’d fix it.

I promised you—” She broke off, embarrassed afresh at her…

naivete? Her evident inexperience in leading, in making swift decisions to protect others.

Her audacity to hope that she could make some real change with th e Accords, but instead, she’d spent the evening fucking around with Garin and then killing one of her own guards as Kestrel possessed him.

She’d seen the kind of power the faeries held after striking her bargain with Kestrel, the moment Sinclair came much too close to stealing the throne from her.

She’d heard what it had done to Garin, and was fortunate she’d been clueless that he was fighting the urge to rip out her throat that day on the ramparts.

And on top of her piling debt to the Faerie King and his unfathomable magic, she was a young, inexperienced leader of a small kingdom that was apparently doomed unless she announced her decision to marry by her coronation ball.

If she didn’t, the world would then see she intended to rule alone, and France would advance.

She leaned forward and placed her head in her hands.

Her joints and muscles ached, but the greatest exhaustion was emotional, souring her growling stomach and gripping her chest. She’d planned and planned, worried and ruminated, but not for any of this .

Kestrel and the threat he posed as she and Garin acted as his puppets—he was supposed to be the thing that scared her most.

It turned out that this was not the case at all.

“I’ll remind you, your grandfather catered to both humans and vampires after our raid. It was not without flaw, but he was generous in comparison.” He paused. “Perhaps that sort of thing skips generations. Empathy. Common sense.”

It did, evidently. Her father’s full reversal of her grandfather’s law that allowed donors to willingly give vampires their blood—which somehow resulted from the Raid of 1482—came days after Lilac was caught in their kitchen speaking to Freya, shifter and mother of two.

She would have to dig for information on where Sable’s grandsons could be, maybe even issue posters and a reward for them if the old woman agreed to it.

Lilac dragged herself out of her circling overwhelm, preferring to focus on whatever information on Daemons Garin was offering. “When those humans frequented the inn, was the ward up for them, too?”

He was staring distantly at her hands on her knees, so she instinctively removed them and crossed her arms. “No. They came to us as donors, intending to help.”

“Donors? That doesn’t sound any better than cattle. ”

Garin looked up. “I’m sorry. Do you have a name suggestion you’d like to bring to the vampire council? Perhaps we can make some changes at the next meeting.”

She ignored this. “Wouldn’t they be considered your thralls?”

Something about Garin’s grin shifted in the darkness. The low sound of his laugh made the hair at the back of her neck stand. “There are different types of victim proximity when it comes to interacting with us.”

She straightened, prepared to listen.

“Donor is the preferred term for anyone who simply volunteers to be fed on and enjoys it. They remain free. Cattle is an unofficial term used in our coven by Bastion, for those imprisoned against their will,” he said, staring out the window.

“That has always been against Laurent’s code of conduct, and it will be against mine.

But donors and cattle are the same in that they hold no connection to a single vampire.

They are food. Sustenance. Nothing more. ”

“What about vampires like Casmir?” She’d seen the foreign vampire romancing the woman at the bar the night she’d met Garin. Lorietta said he’d had his pick of human donors whenever he’d visited. “What are they to him?”

“He bounces between donors throughout cities, countries even. He’s very old, very rich, but enjoys coming to places like Brocéliande because of the seclusion. They remain donors.”

They swayed as the carriage shifted right to take a wide turn onto the main road.

Lilac wondered about Garin. Did he have a favorite donor who gave their blood to be bottled?

Maybe a preferred scent or taste. Had he seen any willing donors since his biting curse had been lifted?

She frowned. How was he eating? A surge of hot jealousy ran through her at the thought of his hands—or teeth—on another.

“So they’re not attached to each other at all?

Regardless if they’re having sex?” she asked quietly as the orange-green torches faded into the distance.

After supper, that night they’d met, he’d brought her to her room and tried to entrance her.

It was pointless to pretend she wouldn’t have invited him in even without his vampiric powers or even knowing he was a Daemon, because that was exactly what she had done.

“Not attached in the Sanguine Magic sense. It’s not the sex that binds them. ”

Lilac exhaled and rested her forehead against the window, letting the glass cool her, feeling so, so stupid. Garin needed to eat to survive.

To ensure something like the Raid would never happen again.

She’d meant her inquiry to sound careless, merely curious. The heat radiating off her would give her away; surely her ears would melt her earrings off. Hesitantly, she peeked at him through her hair, expecting him to ridicule her insecurity.

But if he noticed, he didn’t acknowledge it.

Garin’s hands were clasped thoughtfully against his stomach, one foot propped upon the other knee as he said, “Whether they’ve been sleeping together does not matter.

Ours are matters of blood, not the heart, though a donor technically could be romantically tied to any vampire, or several—and vice versa.

But that alone would not tie them in the manner you’re referring to. ”

“And thralls?” she asked, intrigued. Garin had demanded she pretend to be his thrall when he’d brought her to the Sanguine Mine. She’d received little to no instruction, but one thing was clear: they were supposed to be obedient. It was a role she’d certainly struggled with.

“Thralls are bound to us by the blood bond, which develops fully over three separate instances of deep feeding and blood revival—me feeding you my blood.”

She remembered the way he’d confessed to needing to drink from her to the point of unconsciousness, then feeding her his own blood. “That’s what you tried to do to me at the inn.”