Page 26 of Once Upon a Dark October

Chapter Twenty-Six

T apestries were useful for more than decoration, I learned. I borrowed the ones without tears or fraying threads and hung them where the far corner of the dining room had fallen away into rubble. The tapestries were the only shield I had against the wind; they dampened the cold but couldn’t smother its bellowing. And since I had nothing to prune the ivy and overgrowth that I had pushed through the cracks, it remained, autumnal colors like soft paper on the walls, vines twisted and reaching. Crimson and purple-red leaves sprouted over the ceiling, cascading from the chandeliers with a macabre beauty.

Back and forth from the kitchen and the dining room I went, stirring the thick stew while it cooked and then dashing over to continue tidying an impossible mess. Broken chairs, cobwebs strangling the room, mice and squirrels chasing each other through crumbling stone. I had to repurpose the drapes in a neglected drawing room to serve as a tablecloth. After clearing the dust and hastily washing the floors, I managed to start a fire in the hearth. At least that began coaxing out the icy air in earnest. I’d have to keep it blazing so her guests might ignore the gaping holes in the walls.

I found an entire set of silverware—real silver, with a collection of fine porcelain plates and crystal-cut wine glasses—in the gigantic mahogany sideboard. I had no idea where they had come from, because they couldn’t have survived centuries, not if the people had stripped this place of its finery. It must have belonged to the last High Council to reside in the castle. While I was washing everything in the kitchens, I realized the heavy silver utensils were the work of an alchemist. It had lost its scent long ago, but I could tell the difference.

And I had no desire to know whose blood it had once been.

“I’ll need you to stay and serve our guests.”

I startled. The candle flame in my hand guttered. I hadn’t heard her footsteps, hadn’t felt the air shift colder, the light muted by shadow. Perhaps I’d been too distracted in my chores or Sonia had moved in the form of ichorous shadow.

Lowering into a curtsy, I blew out the flame. “Yes, of course, my lady. Whatever you need from me.”

There had been extra blood-red tapers in Sonia’s favorite drawing room, so I filled the candelabras on the table and lit the sconces with them. Places had been set, though I still didn’t know how many we were expecting to seat. Sonia swiped a plate with her fingertip as she approached, humming in consideration.

“You’ll remain quiet,” was all she said. An order, an expectation. “No one should take notice of you. You must anticipate their needs, keep their glasses filled even if they try to turn you away.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Vampires will be seated on the left,” she instructed. “Mortals to the right, in accordance with the royal traditions. I wouldn’t expect you to know the decorum, you’re much too young. But I don’t need you mixing up blood with wine…unless they ask for it.”

Oh, no. The revelation, which I should have considered, turned my fingers numb with cold panic. It would be difficult to play mortal for this dinner. Please let me get through this evening. If my sanguine desires give me away—

“Are you feeling all right, child? You look pale.” Sonia pinched my chin between her fingers. I nodded. Her grip stung. “Clean the dirt off your face. You stink of woodsmoke.” She clicked her tongue, searched my face with her dark red eyes. “I don’t need the High Council distracted by a girl who looks as if I’ve pulled her off the streets. Your relations were of high-born blood, weren’t they? Your poor cousin was, if I recall.”

My mind tripped over the words. The High Council. As if she hadn’t eaten enough of their hearts already.

“Y-Yes, Lady Tremaine.”

She released my chin with a rough touch, my head jerking to the side. “What they must think.” Sonia appraised me with a last hard look and I withered under it as she had expected, shoulders hunching. “Perhaps something can still be done with you.” Sweeping from the room with mild disinterest, her voice floated through the doors in her chilly wake.

Why had the High Council accepted a private invitation? Were they so lost to her influence already?

I had enough reason to believe tonight would be a bloodbath.

Perhaps this was my chance at last to capture hers.

If she hadn’t yet seized the veins of everyone on the Council—by a sorcerer’s beguiling hand or killing—then those who hadn’t aligned themselves with her would try to put a stop to her bid for power, or so I hoped. If one of the vampires challenged her, all it would take was a moment of distraction, a wayward fingernail, a shattered wine glass, a silver knife thrown across the table.

But there was work to be done first. I went back to the kitchen—the stew needed every minute left to simmer—and scrubbed my hands and face clean, combed the stray wisps of hair into my bun. I didn’t have a clean apron, so I left the dirtied one folded on the counter and hoped the break in decorum wouldn’t upset the lady of the castle or offend her honored guests.

I was nearly finished roasting the squash in seasonings, drizzling them with oil, when one of the fledgling vampires sent word from Sonia that the councilors were arriving. They were prompt—the sun had started sinking toward the horizon ten minutes ago.

Wine decanter in hand, I hurried through the side door and started to fill the glasses to the right. I had helped serve dinners in the vampire households where I once worked and had attended plenty before that. It was customary to pour wine before blood, as the former stayed chilled longer once decanted.

Voices bloomed in the hall. As the Council began to file in, I melted into the shadows and stayed there, waiting for them to be seated so I could begin serving the vampires. I pressed tightly to the wall and stared ahead, listened to the voices, the fractured conversation echoing. I hoped their eyes would simply pass over me.

“I haven’t walked these halls since the last Council left them. A shame they voted to let it fall into ruin. It used to be enchanting.”

“Not much remains,” another said. I heard the grimace in his tone. “Quite drafty in here, isn’t it?”

“This is only the beginning of our reign,” Sonia reminded. “There is much to rebuild. A castle—and its queen—needs its court first.” She gestured to the table, holding out her hands. “Please, sit and help yourselves before we discuss any further. There’s plenty to drink. You’ll find the table arrangements are in accordance to royal traditions.”

It seemed that not all of the councilors remembered those archaic traditions, because a few of them broke into whispers, and there was some uncomfortable, embarrassed laughter between the vampires and the mortals while they made teasing apologies and switched chairs. Sonia seated herself at the head of the table, wearing a high-collared evening dress in sumptuous plum purple trimmed in black lace. I served her first when I returned with a decanter of blood.

I held my breath as I rounded the massive dining table. With each silver goblet I filled, the scent became harder to dismiss. The blood was human, spilled so recently I didn’t want to think about where they had drained it. I couldn’t. My fangs ached for a taste, the hunger burning to a fevered swell inside me. I caught myself sucking in my bottom lip. And I nearly overflowed a councilor’s goblet, red splashing perilously close onto the makeshift tablecloth.

An escape to the kitchen—under the guise of checking on supper—gave me a moment to breathe and clear my senses. But I still had to restrain myself from licking the dregs out of the decanter. What a monstrous thought, helping myself to a dead mortal’s blood just to sate the hunger.

Control yourself , I reminded. You cannot do this now.

As Sonia had instructed, I waited until the mortals had finished their first glass of wine to serve dinner. Eight of the twelve place settings had been filled, so there was plenty to eat, as the vampires outnumbered them. Steam coiled up from the hot bowls of meat and vegetables in savory broth. I set out plates with roasted squash beside them, and slices of fresh bread.

“Stew,” someone commented. “How quaint.”

I pretended not to take that as a slight.

“Delicious,” another—a bespectacled mortal man with greying hair—said. “This’ll certainly warm up the bones.”

The other mortal councilor hadn’t touched his food nor his first glass of wine. He had two fingers pressed underneath his chin, a fork clutched in his fist. He hadn’t stopped watching Sonia’s every move since he had sat down. Purple shadows mottled the skin underneath his eyes. Dark brown hair swept his shoulders, his pale skin sickly with exhaustion. There was something familiar about him that nagged at the back of my mind.

Perhaps the two of us could become allies .

I moved between our guests, refilling glasses and serving second portions whenever I thought they might want more. When another mortal councilor made a remark about dining room’s creeping chill, I hurried to toss more wood onto the fire.

“Lady Tremaine, please forgive me, but I know I’m not the only one among us who might be skeptical of your proposals,” she began. I recognized her voice as I continued poking at the logs. I’d voted for her in our last elections, so it had been rather appalling to see her seated at this table. “Are we guaranteed to keep our positions? Will our families, our children be promised safety in the aftermath?”

“If I have your full cooperation, then you will be rewarded, I assure you. You’ll have titles and wealth and the gift of immortality for your bloodlines if you so choose. Even I cannot build an empire alone.”

I replaced the black iron poker into its stand and disappeared into the shadows again, feigning indifference to whatever they were planning.

“People will not go along with this,” someone else agreed. “They’ll reject the idea of a monarchy as they did forever ago. They don’t easily trust sorcerers. The harbor will descend into bloodshed.”

Sonia folded her hands in front of her. “I don’t need their trust. Nor do I want it. Dreadmist’s voice has faded, by virtue of your presence here. There will be bloodshed either way. Thrones are never won without it.”

“If you’d like a position of authority, then perhaps we can use another consultant,” the mortal councilor said, holding his wine glass idly. “There’s no reason we can’t have two sorcerers working side by side—”

“That was never part of the agreement.”

“We cannot promise the full cooperation of the High Council,” another, a vampire, said. Their fangs glistened in the dark. “They know nothing of your skill. ”

“Then I have no use for them.” Sonia held up her hands, unbothered by the implication while she drank from her glass.

“Lady Tremaine, it simply cannot be done this way—their loyalty—”

“Is to a weak, dying sorcerer,” she spat. “Morrigan will be dead before midnight under the Blood Moon, and if you cannot get the High Council to fall in line, then you’ll have to join her, won’t you? The harbor deserves a sorcerer with power in her veins. The throne has always belonged to us.”

My muscles stiffened at the mention of Morrigan’s name. Though we had known of Sonia’s plans to kill Morrigan from the start, hearing it aloud from her lips and watching some of the High Council nod in agreement, churned anxious rage in the pit of my stomach. I clenched my hands into fists, burning from the inside, seething with the kind of hatred I didn’t know I could possess.

The monster within me wanted to lash out.

“My lady—”

“And what about the dhampir…?”

“How are we supposed to—”

“An ineffective recluse…”

“—agree she needs to die, but why such a spectacle? Might be in poor taste, so to speak…”

Suddenly everyone began shouting over each other and a new argument blossomed from every corner of the table. Someone’s fist slammed into the wooden surface and glasses overturned, plates and silverware rattling. Words flew like arrows back and forth. I swore the leaves above us shivered at the accusations being thrown, voices rising along with tempers.

“Silence, all of you.” Sonia’s command eclipsed the din of raised voices, and with a twist of her fingers, the words died on everyone’s lips. Sorcery rippled through the room and extinguished candles, stirred the flames in the hearth. I wrinkled my nose at its scent—her sorcery carried the distinct reek of demon’s blood.

A few of the councilors brought their hands to their throats. Glances, confused and troubled, were exchanged around the table. Others choked, for it was all they could do when the words they tried to force from their mouths produced no sounds. After several of them were left gasping for air, Sonia released her strangling grip.

“Now.” Rising from her chair, she presided over the table. “Much as I love sowing chaos, this simply will not do. I cannot have this court in disarray already—that is not a strong foundation on which to rule.”

The mortal who’d been silent this entire supper shot to his feet so quickly the chair toppled behind him. With the flat of his hand, he pounded his fork against the table. His bottom lip quivered with anger. “When I gave my daughter to your coven, it was with the assurance that I’d be able to see her.” His glare reflected the roaring fire. “Where is she?”

I held back my gasp. Flattening my spine to the chilly stone, I wrestled with the feral power awakening in my veins. The man’s heart had been sent into a galloping pace. His blood was surging, pumping fast, scorching with his rage.

Drusilla’s lover, Rosie—that man was her father, the one she’d mentioned in passing.

“You may see her when her task for me is complete. Dhampir must work harder to earn their place in my coven. That is the way of things now.”

“I demand you bring her to me at once.”

I felt his blood surge. His veins were right there within my reach, if only I could whisper to them, caress them, bend his body to my will. It could save both of our lives. If I whispered to him…made him pick up the knife lying in front of him, tell him to drive it straight into Sonia’s throat. The wound wouldn’t kill her, but there would be plenty of blood. A gushing spray of it, cold an d ichorous. I’d make my escape once the room collapsed into absolute chaos—

I feel his blood. I can taste it on my tongue.

Then she would discover me, and I’d be dead before I took a single step.

The monster within me couldn’t have its bloodlust. I pushed it away, quieted its restless stirring.

“You forfeit that right,” Sonia continued. “Until our arrangement has been negotiated with the rest of the High Council and I’m seated on Dreadmist’s throne as its rightful heir.”

“You cannot have her—”

She forced him into silence again with a flick of her wrist. His fingernails scraped desperately at his throat, leaving red scratches. “And I believe you are quite done speaking to me in that manner, sir,” she hissed, low firelight glancing off her fangs. “If it’s assurance of my power that the High Council wants, then you’ll send them a message for me. Perhaps it will help them to finally see reason.”

Her sorcery prickled like ice being dragged across my skin. It drained the fire’s heat from the room in the next instant. Shadows gathered close, embers crackling in the hearth. I wrapped my arms around myself. A piercing cry rose from the table, and I watched, mouth agape, as one of the councilors—a vampire—plunged their dinner knife into the eye of the mortal sitting beside them.

The unwitting knife-wielder looked horrified, trapped inside their own body while red poured from the woman’s gory eye socket. The knife-hilt bobbed in her eyeball as she attempted to flee the table, vibrant red speckling her clothes and silverware and half-eaten dinner. She only managed a few paces before she fainted.

Beneath the shouting and screaming that erupted again, two other vampires remained in their chairs, sipping their dinner as if nothing had happened. A few of their mortal colleagues sat expressionless, whether it was out of sheer terror that they might be next or showing deference to their future queen, I wasn’t sure.

I didn’t care to find out how many lives they thought were worth their place in their lady’s court.

Nausea curdled my insides. I fought the urge to cover my face with my hands, to run into the wine cellar and through the castle’s underbelly and never return to this cursed place.

“I have a gift for the High Council.” Sonia’s skirts rustled around her ankles as she moved closer to the man trying to claw the words from his throat. She braced her hands at the edge of the table, tilting her head to the side. Even from my distance, I knew how those sorcerer’s eyes impaled his soul. I saw the sneer curl her lips, tasted her poisonous violence like ocean brine on the air. “It’s an ancient tradition from the blood sorcerers who came before me, you see. But I’ll need your help.”

The man choked on a whimper. It was all that she would allow. With wide, fear-stricken eyes, he picked up his knife and fork. Sonia hadn’t lifted a finger, yet she controlled his every movement. She hadn’t even blinked. The man’s motions were stiff, muscles held rigid as though he was trying to fight her manipulations. But she had him captive, using his blood like threads of a marionette. I couldn’t look away. Both morbid fascination and terrified curiosity kept me from turning my head or averting my eyes to the floor.

He thrust the silver dinner knife into the center of his chest. Sonia wouldn’t let him utter a sound. No screams of pain, not even a warbling cry. All that he had to offer were his tears, silent as they fell, glimmering weakly as the blood that coated his hands. Again and again, Sonia forced him to bury the serrated edge into his chest. He had turned into a feral thing, desperately tearing himself open, blood and viscera ruining the meal he hadn’t touched. He clawed at his gaping chest with the knife and fork, and when that wasn’t enough, he used his bare hands.

I knew the sounds of sinew and tissue and muscle being ripped apart, but this was utterly monstrous. Gore dripped from his fingers, slick and dangling from underneath his fingernails. Blunted weapons for Sonia to wield against him. Once I heard his ribs begin to crack, my macabre curiosity had reached its limit. I squeezed my eyes shut against the stomach-churning sounds, the scent of copper drenching the room. Finally, a blood-curdling scream, a jangling clatter of silverware, and the muted thump of the mortal man’s body hitting the floor. His last breath like the fog creeping through autumn leaves.

When I summoned the courage to open my eyes, I found the man’s heart in a pool of bright red next to his cold supper.

Suddenly I had the vile, overwhelming urge to claw the sorcery from my veins. I didn’t want to possess the brutality it craved. A sorcerer who tortured for her own amusement made me ashamed to carry its legacy. Even though it had been bestowed upon me through Morrigan’s blood, through her compassion for my waning mortality.

“Pity,” Sonia mused. She loomed over the dead councilor, kicking at his motionless body. “Make sure the High Council receives my gift.”

A wave of her hand like an afterthought dismissed the others from the table. I hadn’t seen how they had swept the man’s heart from the table, but it was gone now, and I was alone with a sorcerer in a room soaked in blood.

At least she wasn’t aware that I had the same power within me.

Now. A stray thought materialized. You have to do it now . Anything you can think of to get at her veins. Take what you need and run.

It seemed rather foolish to strike her at the height of her victory. And I was scared after everything Morrigan had said about attacking another blood sorcerer. I wasn’t strong enough to make her bleed. What wounds would she give me in return? She’d leave me badly scarred—or worse .

We were alone, the two of us, and I felt like the weak mortal, the clumsy street urchin she could step all over. If she caught the faintest trace of my power nudging against her veins, nothing would stop her from gifting my heart to my coven.

I went to tend to the dying fire instead. The feeling and warmth had disappeared from my fingers. My teeth were chattering, but it wasn’t from the night’s wind. I dropped one of the split logs while attempting to toss it onto the glowing embers.

“Elspeth?”

I had hoped she would have forgotten I was here, but my fumbling to stoke the fire had drawn her attention. Hurrying to my feet, I lowered into a curtsy and used my remaining strength to keep the fear out of my voice.

“Yes, Lady Tremaine?”

Sonia traced around the edge of the man’s plate, gathering scarlet onto her fingertip. She sucked the man’s blood from her skin while she took slow, graceful steps toward me. So close to her now, I saw the ichor staining the whites of her eyes, writhing beneath her flesh. My pulse was thunderous in my own ears.

“I hope you understand that you’ll have a place here among us when we begin a new reign in the harbor.”

“Oh.” My exhale trembled, the offer sudden and unexpected. “I would be most honored, my lady. I’d…I’d like to remain in your employ at the castle, if that suits your needs.”

Her laughter was short but devious, wicked in its echo. “You must climb your way up—you’ll have a lot to prove, but I know there is potential in your bloodline. It could be more than a servant’s work, child.” Sonia licked the last of the blood from her fingers. “Much more.”