The Vampire Lord's Wolf Bride

Chapter 5: Wind and Walls

Lydia. Of course I knew the name.

Not long ago she'd been a blood servant down in the cellars, beneath anyone's notice. Then Liam handed down one order, and overnight she was turned. The thing Selena had spent three bitter years waiting for, Lydia got without lifting a finger.

Selena watched me for a moment, probably checking that I wasn't playing dumb.

"She's pregnant," Selena said, her tone flat as still water. "They've moved her to the annex in the Lower Ward. The Regent Elder gave the order himself. No visitors."

"What's Lydia's pregnancy got to do with me?" I scooped up the dice and rolled. My move.

She hadn't expected me to take it that calmly, I think. Her hand paused on the teacup, and then she smiled. "You don't want to know whose child it is?"

I looked up at her.

The door opened just then, and Helen came in with the teapot to refill our cups. Head down, steps prim and correct, but I caught the way her stride hitched half a beat as she crossed the threshold.

Selena paid her no mind. She set down her cup and nudged a game piece, idle as you please.

"They say it's Liam's."

The teapot tilted in Helen's hands. A few drops of hot tea spotted the tablecloth. She hurried to blot them and didn't dare look up.

I looked at Selena. Then at Helen.

Honestly? I didn't feel much of anything. Liam and I have barely traded ten real sentences; jealousy doesn't come into it. Whose child he fathers is his business.

But Selena was waiting for my reaction. I asked nothing. I moved my piece.

She smiled again. "You're the Lord's wife. You ought to know about these things."

On her way out, she paused at the door and looked back at me once. I couldn't put a name to that look.

Helen waited until the footsteps had faded completely before she shut the door.

"My lady. Don't let her use you as a shield."

"Meaning what?"

"That line of hers. She waited for me to walk in before she said it. On purpose. She hates Lydia, but she'll never dirty her own hands. She needs someone else to do it for her. If you go to the annex to see Lydia, for any reason at all, the people out there will see exactly one thing: the Lord's wife got involved. After that, if anything happens to Lydia, anything at all, you're the first person everyone thinks of."

I more or less followed.

"So I do nothing?"

"Nothing," Helen said, blunt in a way she never is. "Whatever Selena means to do is her own affair. As far as you're concerned, you heard nothing today."

One thing still didn't add up for me, though. Lydia's already turned. The Regent Elder's people are watching the annex. However much Selena hates her, what could she actually do?

That night Kayla took me down the drainpipe, and we went drinking at the tavern in Shadow Town.

There's no signal anywhere on the Night Court's lands, carry a phone in and it's a brick, so the people of Shadow Town live like the world rolled back a few hundred years. I like it better that way, honestly. The tavern was thick with smoke and nobody sat bent over a screen; they were packed shoulder to shoulder, drinking, bragging, slapping down cards. Blood servants mixed in with hired blades from out of town, every voice louder than the last. Beats the Inner Keep by a mile. That place has no living warmth in it, quiet enough to drive you out of your mind.

I arm wrestled two blood servants, three rounds each, and won every one. Then I got into a drinking match with a beastkin drifter in the corner and put away most of a bottle of cheap rum, harsh enough to bring tears to my eyes.

Somewhere in the middle of it, talk drifted over from the bar, tangled up in the clatter of mugs.

"Shadow Town's been lively lately. Somebody over by South Canal Bridge bought a whole shop outright. Word is his sister has a post at the annex in the Lower Ward."

A little later the mercenaries at the next table got going, loud, not caring who heard.

"...heard the wolves up north are stirring again. Hit a blood caravan."

"Serves them right. Beaten that badly in the War of the Shattered Moon and they still won't stay down. Marrying a daughter over as a hostage wasn't enough, now they want to turn the tables?"

"You lot don't know, do you? It wasn't like this a few hundred years back. Wolves were the strongest race on the continent then. Vampires bowed their heads to their Alphas. Even the High King sent a noble's daughter north to beg for peace."

"Pfft. Ancient history. These days their wolf princess is only fit to marry the Lord of the Night Court and sit in his castle like a piece of furniture. The man won't even look at her straight."

The table roared with laughter.

My cup stopped halfway to my mouth.

The vampire noblewoman who married north all those centuries ago was named Vera. Dad used to tell me about her. She lived most of her long life among the packs. The herbs we use, she brought them. The liquor we drink, she taught us to brew it. When she died, every wolf in the pack howled for her the whole night through. Dad said she was no furniture. And she was never a hostage.

These men didn't even know her name.

They were talking about me, and somehow not about me at all. Like sitting across a room listening to strangers tell a joke that happens to have you in it.

Kayla's reaction was what scared me.

She'd gone bowstring straight, hand on the hilt at her hip, knuckles white. She's usually the one hauling me back from a fight. This time it was my turn. I clamped down on her wrist and shook my head.

Then I stood and pulled her out of the tavern.

The night wind knocked most of the drink out of me. Kayla leaned against the wall, chest heaving, jaw locked tight.

Back north, I'd have flipped that table before the man finished talking. But Dad married me off for peace.

Treat them well, Dad said, and they'll treat us well.

That's wolves for you. We keep thinking an honest heart buys an honest heart in return. But this place isn't the north. People here fold three meanings into every sentence, and while one hand shakes yours behind a smile, the other might be holding a knife at your back.

Kayla came back to herself and patted my shoulder. Let's go.

We wound home through Shadow Town's back lanes, taking it slow. The alleys kept narrowing, high stone walls pressing in from both sides until it was hard to breathe. There's nothing like this in the north. Step out of your tent and the grassland runs to the horizon. Here, it's walls everywhere you turn. Walking between them, I always feel like I'm slowly shrinking.

Three years here. I've seen plenty of things the north doesn't have, and every one of them only makes me miss Dad more.

I was still lost in that when a sound reached me: crying, small and strangled.

Around the corner, three young vampires stood blocking the alley. Lesser noble clothes; castle boys, most likely, come down after their wine to hunt up some fun, wearing the kind of smile that knots my stomach. In front of them, a blood servant's child crouched shaking in the angle of the wall, ten or so, thin as kindling.

One of them squatted, pinched the boy's chin, and tipped his face up, using the voice you'd use on a dog. "Say master. Make it sweet and we'll let you go."

The boy said nothing. The tears just kept falling.

Another one laughed. "Forget it, mongrels like him can't make anything sweet. Didn't his mother take up with a werewolf once? No wonder he came out like this. Look at those eyes. Animal eyes."

Hurried footsteps came from the far end of the alley, and a woman stumbled into view. Thirties, dressed like a blood servant, hair loose, one shoe on, the other lost somewhere behind her.

"Mama!" The boy saw her and cried harder.

The moment she saw her son cornered, everything else stopped mattering. She rushed in, dropped to her knees, and started knocking her forehead against the stones before the three of them.

"Mercy, my lords, the money, I'll find a way, before the month is out..."

She never got to finish. The one in charge drove a kick into her stomach.

She folded with a choked sound and curled up on the ground, and for a long moment she couldn't get up.

"Always the end of the month." He looked down at her. "Your deadbeat man ran off. What are you planning to pay with?"

He paused, glanced at the boy in the corner, and gave a thin laugh.

"Or we send your son to the Blood Vaults. Call it settling his father's debt."

The Blood Vaults.

Cold crawled down my spine. Three levels beneath the castle. No windows. No light. People taken from outside, bandits, drifters, it makes no difference, locked into iron cages with tubes in their arms, kept alive for one purpose only: producing blood.

The woman heard those words and scrambled up off the ground like something had snapped in her. She wrapped herself around the leader's leg, sobbing, pleading.

Beside them, one of his men simply gripped the boy by the scruff of the neck and lifted him off the ground. Like picking up a rabbit.

I was moving before the thought even formed.

One arm hooked around the boy's waist; my other hand drove straight at the vampire's eyes. He let go on instinct to shield his face, and the kid dropped into my arms.

The leader lunged. I caught his wrist backhanded and wrenched it outward. c***k. Wrist bone, quick and clean.

His last two friends traded a look and came on anyway, teeth gritted.

Kayla moved then. Sheath across a knee. Elbow into a chest.

Start to finish, under three seconds. All three of them were down.

The leader sagged against the wall, wheezing, his face white as paper.

"You're... finished... do you have any idea who my father is..."

I didn't waste breath on him. I crouched and handed the trembling boy back into his mother's arms. She clutched him, shaking all over.

"What's going on here?"

Two night patrol guards rounded the corner into the alley, torches held high, lighting the whole lane.

Good, I thought. Perfect timing.

I opened my mouth to speak.

The woman hit her knees with a thud and knocked her head to the stones three times, fast, in the guards' direction.

"My lords! It was this woman! It was all this woman..."

"She tried to take my son for the Blood Vaults!"