Last night, I was wrapped in myself. My heart ached for a boy I won’t see as a monster. I was watching movies like The Holiday and A Walk in the Clouds and holding myself. Sometimes I put my head on my chest so I could hear a heartbeat, which helped me. I pictured it was someone else‘s blood beating, someone I loved. Someone good, someone decent.
I closed my eyes.
Oh. I’m also talking to Katie.
There’s a Bargain proposed by Dyrim: she’ll give Ryan back to me if I slash myself with a dagger and bid him drink. I didn’t know what to do.
Have you made a decision?
She asked me that. Like I’d know.
I’m not sure. I don’t want to go. But I can save him.
Get sedition before you let him drink. Also can he claim to be a splinter or something crazy powerful from drinking your blood?
She'd broken a rule and double texted, her next being:
Decisions decisions. Do you have guards covering your back? Can they protect you past what you’re agreed to?
I…. don’t want to let him. Politically it is correct for me to go. But I don’t…. think he deserves my blood. Not after what he just did to me.
Then don’t agree to the offer. I agree with you. No blood.
He’d have my powers again…. Like nothing happened. He could rule me again, own me again. But he’d be safe. But he…. He would….
I can’t finish the sentence.
Oh hell no.
He made me a promise on the fifth of January. Thursday, that Thursday. I can’t let him keep it. I won’t… let him…. I can’t keep…. Poisoning him, Katie.
The Holiday is getting to a close. I get hopeful. Maybe the world isn’t so bad. …Commercials. I remember his last visit, sobbing for me; begging me to stay.
To me it sounds like he has something to do with this bargain. As in he’s using your need to save him get exactly what he wants.
She’s read the past text of mine now. Her next text is,
The promise being?
He said he’d… negated.. The more… enjoyable… parts of… Sedition. He… intended… to use it more often.
Yeah. Fuck no.
Thank you. I feel the same way.
And now… now… he manipulates my heart… as a human man. He may need me, but I… I can’t put myself through that. Not again. Christ… not again….
My tears are collecting, klink, klink, in the bucket of suckiness. I pick up my phone and continue,
I feel so alone, Katie. I know that’s stupid, and his fault, but… I do. I am doing the right thing. I know I am.
As in not doing it.
Yes. No knife shall touch my skin, no lips shall take my soul from me, on his behalf tonight. Even if I feel heartbroken. He made my own heartbreak my fault.
Not your fault good choice thank you
Mm. No punctuation, no capitalization? She’s entertaining or asleep. Given this is a text conversation, if I said she were entertaining it’d end up seeming I was jealous. I don’t want that.
I know I’m doing the right thing, but this hurts. I feel so alone. Your weakling human girl is three inches from a breakdown… but it’s at least one in the right direction. Now you sleep, yes? You live in hope for me.
I’m on a rant now. We selfish bitches, we do that.
Thanks to stupid Roses I’ll be here, admit to broken, and watch bad romance movies. Nineteen… so sleep. I’m safe from everyone but this room.
A Walk in the Clouds is on. I’m watching Keanu Reeves get off the boat from war, struggling with his inner monster. His wife, met the night before he departed for war, is beautiful, empty-headed, and cruel, with no interest in his dreams or hopes.
He gets on a train to sell chocolates. There’s another, more gentle beauty there with a slow, soft smile….
I’m sorry everything sucks. I’ll talk to you later. Love you.
I deserved that. I did ask her to attend to her business. The right thing to do, I had just done. I fought off the lump in my throat and the tears on my cheeks.
That isn’t true. I have you. Goodnight, Katie. I love you.
I mean what I say. Because even when I’m hurt, even if she was just talking to me for a minute, she was there. My heart heals itself when she’s with me.
I’ll be up if you need anything.
Huh. The Superhero complex is kicking in, and she’s not here. I had this big speech prepared on why she didn’t need to come, too. Shit, I must be interrupting something important.
Not unless you, too desire bad romance films and mint flavored trees. Go on. Sleep.
I’m only joking halfway.
I’m hanging with a friend until morning so…
So hang with your friend. I won’t pry someone else of your company. Just… a human girl is all. I’m not in danger. Listening to an Italian waltz and missing a man who doesn’t exist.
Not anymore.
Girl, I owe alligence to you. What I can offer I will.
Well helloooo there, Rose language. Way to be! I’ve decided I like your friend if they wake this in you, even if they aren't reading your shoulder enough to correct your spelling of allegiance.
I shan’t tear you from your company. No danger, no bitemarks. All’s well. Go have fun. Live. One of us oughta. And one of these day’s we’re watching A Walk in the Clouds.
Because that song reminds me of you.
What’s that about?
A woman meets a solider. Pregnant, already married. They fall in love on the woman’s family’s vineyard…. I love it. Now. Nineteen year olds cry at moments like this. You are twenty. Immune. Now go have fun.
Uh right.
It’s a good movie. It ends like it deserves to, but they fight for it. They fight love. True love…. Is worth fighting for.
…Yes. Yes as love I agree but true love is hard to define properly.
I don’t mean to say true love. Just love. Because when you feel it, it’s worth whatever else they did to you. Even this time…
Even after how I feel now.
Wanna hang with me and my friend? New people is good.
Oh my God?! Social?! With a human? One of your humans. Your humans are so precious, Katie. Oh, God, thank you. Oh God. Oh God. People. No more sad Romance movies.
I don’t want to impose.
Please be okay. Please be okay. Please okay. People. People people people. Leave house, no Revels, no danger. People!
You can’t impose if you’re invited. It would be rude to decline. Please?
Oh, Katie. Katie I love you. You’re rescuing me. Again. For no reason. You’re rescuing me from my aching heart and you’re giving me a new friend.
Rude to decline? I didn’t mean it so. I just don’t want…. To ruin your awaking night. Go. Have fun.
He wants to meet you. Come on!
Me? He wants to meet me? He must not be from around here, huh?
I think it would be nice, if you’re sure.
And by nice I mean oh my God, a person who doesn’t want to kill me. Oh Katie.
Okay. We’re coming. :) also wanna bring assions creed?
I think you meant Assassin’s creed, dear. But I was still amused and too grateful to be irked.
Sure. Give me warning and turn down your music please?
It’s two-forty-nine in the morning. Craig catches me and I’m out on my ass. I don’t care. I feel alone and heartbroken.
Deal.
A little while later.
Here.
Sean is the name of the friend. I watch Katie, bustling in the cold dark, the headlights streaming light on the blowing snow; throwing shit in her trunk so I can sit in the back. He smiles at me, and my eyes find his arm. I decline comment; it's his pain to tell.
We get in the car after introductions, though they’re unnecessary: we’ve met before. At a movie party for her birthday, at the Pinecone, when he still had the woman with the anger in her heart. He hasn’t been sleeping well. His eyes on me were checking to make sure I wasn’t a threat, his eyes flicker to the trees occasionally. He’s polite and handsome.
Shaun.
We’re similar spirits. Katie and him were talking about a man named John Smith, which is so obviously a character I stop and bite back the urge to ask questions. I listen instead. I listen to his description of playing characters, how close he’d been to power.
He’s charming in his simplicity; there’s a lure to his game.
The masquerade. I remember the names, the terms, the culture, but only in pieces. I find myself infinitely more happy to be in the car. I can talk now, I can speak normally! No guarding!
Your friend is masquerading as a Vampire! That’s… so…. Cool!
I listen to his story with pleasure, having heard about the character’s desire to serve the law, keep the people safe, follow the traditions. I comment occasionally with a witty remark that seems relevant and has Rose undertones and watch Katie bite back her laughs as they smoke in the front seat.
He seems surprised that I latch on to him so quickly, that I’m so willing to know him. Katie had said she’d told him about me, and I want to know what was said. I want to say, did you break Concealment? How much of myself can I show here?
I ask him questions all the way to the apartment, strangely, neither of us are bored with it. I watch Katie shake her head with amusement at the nerds, armed perhaps with a little apprehension. There’s more to his story than he’s telling with me there, and I sense that. I won’t press him for it. I don’t know why but that would be wrong.
I love him, after all. If for nothing else, I love how much he loves Katie. I love Sean for the gentleness and the patient understanding he all but has tattooed on his forehead. I love him for his suffering, too. How he overcomes that pain, which is nothing less than courage.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she announced as I sink into her couch, running my fingers over the screwdriver. “You two play nice.”
“So,” I said, watching her round the corner and deciding to push the edge a bit, “Are all your kind sanguinary?” Your Kind? Sanguinary?
Good God.
“I don’t understand what that means,” he said honestly. I saw the tiniest flicker behind Sean’s eyes, like he thought he’d underestimated me.
I admired that flicker. The things I could say--well Sean, there are three types of Vampire, and only one feeds upon the Blood--seem to die in my throat. One.
I realize that he is not under the illusion of my grandeur. This is a human boy.
Two.
“Do all your coven feed on blood?” I asked instead, biting my lips a moment.
“Well, the thing about it is,” Sean replied carefully, trying not to show he’s been miffed. “Feeding goes on behind the scenes, really. Unless someone’s stupid and brings in a human and everyone goes, Whoa! Snack!” I laugh, understanding too well that frustration. Laugh, too, to hide the flush creeping up my neck.
An untied Sanguinary. The questions I could ask him, the things I could show him, the stories I could tell--! Tempting. Tempting, tempting, holy mother fucking shit. I glance again at his forearm, and realize it isn't a bite. Which is a bit of a relief.
By the way, most Vampires in the Roses don’t do the by-my-teeth-alone style. They find it too unctuous. Most have extra, really specifically long and sharpened porcelain teeth that pop onto the canines. There are only the two puncture wounds, to idealize the terror that is the Vampyre. It also means that if you’re in a fight with a Rose Vampire, you punch their teeth if they look suspiciously long. That hurts like a bitch, they howl, and you’ve won.
I don’t use the teeth for that reason. My own are sharp enough.
Three. I hadn’t answered, but he saw that not only was I interested (with a minimal amount of flirting the Vampirism-suffering males of my acquaintance find most flattering), but also that I was knowledgeable.
“My friend and I have some crazy shenanigans planned,” he continued with a grin, “involving fey. We’re going to bring some in to Elysium and say,
‘You are in a sunny field, but not harmed by that sun because of the power of the faith and my God an Elephant! Wood Sprites, bring me some wine!’”
I laughed and laughed and laughed at both his concept and his expression, remembering when I’d tasted my first Fey. …Shit. Just Fey. Not mine. Don’t think about it!
I’m still laughing, so hard I’m gasping with the faintest edge of a snarl, when Katie came back.
“Oh Jesus,” she joked in what I fondly label as the ‘this is only funny to you, Payton, isn‘t it?’ voice, “What did you do?” Sean was staring at me with a flicker of shock in his eyes. How could I understand this?
“I explained that I planned to bring in some Fey to Elysium--”
“--Because Fey blood makes Vampires go bat shit crazy,” I finished, so pleased with this old friend of hers, realizing I hadn’t told her that part of herself yet. Katie made a tiny gesture of triumph, ignoring Shaun’s raised eyebrows. We’d set off the alarm bells.
“Right,” she said. There was an amusing struggle as we conversed, slowly moving away from the Vampire thing, we tried to turn on her Xbox and failed. I managed to slip and mention the Roses during that time, when he was moving on to his Martyr Complex and crazy protective instincts, but I was fast in covering it up.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
“I’m giving you the choice here,” I said after a minute. “Tell him about the Roses? Yes? No?”
“You already kindof mentioned it….” she considered it. “Do it. Tell him.”
“Should I edit? I mean I can’t really just unload everything onto the guy--”
“Okay, I’m back!” Sean sat down. We’d turned on the Xbox successfully. “So listen I have an insatiable curiosity and you have peaked it.”
If I didn’t love him already, I would. Right at that moment, I would have. Katie had said such a similar sentence to me, and I could hear the love in it. It wasn’t curiosity, it was a willingness to protect, a fierceness that he concealed, an agelessness gentleman. I was impressed, severely, with the nonchalance with which he communicated that.
“Peaked it?” I asked, just to say something within the count of three, already preparing my response for his answer.
“With this off-shoot thing,” Sean confirmed politely.
“They’re called the Roses,” I said in response, after nodding at Katie, “And they aren’t so much an off-shoot as a similarity, I even believe they started around the same time. There are three. The Red Rose, which is like your soccer game referee, keeps everybody in check. The Black Rose, which hates humans and wants to wipe them out, and the White Rose, which wants to keep humans around. White Rose--my Rose--is outnumbered by almost ten to one, surprisingly.”
I suddenly understood Katie’s argument against me being harmed much, much better.
I told him about Katie, how I’d protected her. I explained the Council, the circles, the races, the language, who I was and what I did. I’d never seen someone just accept it the way Sean did. Never.
Katie popped in to explain things when I left them too far from human, explain how I was overtly tolerant and implied, in her own way, that I was far too forgiving.
I told him about Azrael. Sean, like Katie had, wanted to murder Ryan for what he had done to me. Every tear, every scream, every unvoiced objection, was wrong to my new friend.
Sean wanted to blooming murder him. He was so angry for me, this Sean, even though he hardly knew me. I was a stranger. I could have been pulling this shit out of my ass for all he knew, and that didn’t matter: I had been harmed, and he would defend me. Despite having heard of my flaws, my shortcomings, my failings, he would kill for me.
Just because I knew his friend, and had suffered to protect her. Just because I was decent and vulnerable.
Was most especially blew Shaun away was how I defended Ryan. While Sean, most likely in deference to my delicate feelings in the subject, failed to call him directly a monster, he believes that I should be much more angry at Ryan.
“Enough of that,” he said, after he realized how quick my responses were.
“Forgive me,” I said, feeling somehow defeated, “It is an old argument, one I’ve had with this one many a time. I fear I find my answers rehearsed.”
“Which is why I’m not continuing it,” he said firmly. How very like Katie he was!
“I can’t… give up hope on him,” I said, my eyes on Ezio falling from a tall building with two health boxes left. Katie heals him. “If I am angry with him, if I send my guards for his blood, then I prove his ideals of me. Allow him to do this leaves me hope for him, and him hope for me.”
“But you can’t just let him do this,” said Sean, exasperated just as easily as his friend, “he has to be punished in some way--”
“Penance,” rang in Katie helpfully.
“His blood on my lips has settled that score,” I said quietly. “I assure you.”
I told Sean about Ryan again. This time, not just the vague character sketches, but the story behind him, where he had come from and what he had done to me.
“He was just a human boy then, so young and so sweet,” I began, as I had done but twice before, “but when he saw the Roses…..”
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” said Sean. I nodded slowly.
“He wanted to be more than what he was. He felt invisible, and I’d given him a reason to be seen. I wouldn’t turn him, Sean. So one night, he poisoned my water glass, which is like a big no-no in the Roses. Water is always safe to drink, always--”
“Which is a good note if you’re ever at a Rose Revel,” said Katie quickly, “It’s called the Right of Hospitality.”
“Parley?” Joked the newcomer. I shook my head at him.
“No,” I said. “If the right is declared incorrectly, your near-correct knowledge will make it the worse on you.”
“Oh,” he said. “Continue with your story...if you would.” I loved that. He didn’t order, didn’t press. He gave me the time, precious time with his friend that he shared with me, and now he was patient.
“I am immune to most drugs there,” I said simply, “I worked up an immunity to them during my time of training. The drug that he had dosed me with now I was not immune to, and I went crazy.” I looked at him with my most hurt expression, struggling to remember this. “I bit him, but I didn’t turn him. He went to the Vampire King and Queen--Vampires,” I said apologetically, hoping not to affront the traditions of his Coven too horribly, “are one of the few foreign courts with a Monarch at their head--”
“Well, of course they would be,” Sean said with a flash of a smile.
“They offered him a deal,” I said simply. “A Bargain, if you will. Capital B, because it’s important, right proper noun important. It’s like an unbreakable deal. If Ryan--Azrael--could get them my blood, they’d give to him all of the Vampire’s…. touch-gift.” My brow furrowed. “You could call it an aphrodisiac. It works, which is why it’s so terrifying. Much like the Death Fey.”
“….Death Fey? Shit that sounds intense!”
Katie waved gleefully.
“Katie’s one,” I said calmly. “Only, like, super powerful. It’s being-an-offshoot-of-me-thing.”
“Way to be, Kate!” Wait. Did he just call you Kate? Huh. Katie giggles.
“I know right? I’m just such a badass….”
She is, actually.
I've decided.... I like this friend.
"You've caught me off-guard a bit. I'm not used to that."
"I'm sorry," I said, sincerely, realizing he didn't need any more of that from the area just below the stomach. This fellow had some intense pain going on. "It wasn't my intent."
It never is.
Fy Rhos does that.
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