In short order, the intriguing reeve is sent on his way by my fast-acting uncle, who has appeared now as if suddenly gaining the power of teleportation. He has no right to be here, let alone throw my guests out of the estate.
I consider the means at my disposal, but without any proper servants, let alone guards, still living, I have no one who can remove the man from this house.
Should I try and talk sense to him, it would only devolve into an argument. My uncle acts as he wills. The rotten man has no respect for anyone but father, and even then, it’s a tenuous thing.
With father gone, the man is sure to throw around his rather sizeable weight, and already he’s making it clear that he thinks of this house as his own. By right, this home and all the lands and titles of my parents are passed onto me as the direct progeny of my bloodline, yet here he is.
The man glares down at me with the sort of hunger I’ve seen from other lesser nobles wanting to rise above their station, not satisfied with their place in the world. It isn’t anything beastly, he’s not quite so low, but it’s not a noble quality that shines in his eyes.
“An awful thing to have happened,” he says, though he doesn’t even try to disguise his smile.
While my disgust for him is nothing new, was he always so brutish as this?
Was I always so cold as to focus on such things? My family lies dead, but my eyes are dry, and I feel no passion in my still chest.
The least of the changes that have taken me, but uncle has no such excuse for his own behaviour.
Even still, his greasy smile comes as no surprise. Born into noble blood through a mis-sight of the divines, they cursed him well in turn.
I don’t know the putrid details, but his ill scent is something born from his own sickly nature. A sickness of his guts, that has left a hole in his oversized belly that drips with his ‘droppings’. I honestly can’t stomach the thought of it, and if I ever see it for myself, I’m certain that I’ll vomit.
“Quite awful indeed,” I say, meeting his eyes. “So why have you appeared here in my home, and with such a large entourage at that? I’m sure you understand that I’m not in such a position as to be entertaining guests, so I’d ask that you leave me to my mourning. A few months in the darkness should see my heart recovered enough to entertain you and your family.”
“I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you to suffer this tragedy alone. Why that reeve walked in from the streets with the intent of laying the blame at your very feet, what would you have done without me?” He says, shaking his head in feigned sympathy. “I’ll properly ensure that your estate and lands are tended to until your engagement can be settled.”
“My engagement?” I ask, “I can recall no such arrangement. Now, I ask that you take your servants and leave.”
“Oh, no. I don’t think I will,” he says, his fat lips curving upward, “You aren’t yet of age.”
“A few months is nothing so considerable,” I say.
“Oh, I think they are, and I know others who would agree with me. Do not worry, I will care for your estate with great care until your marriage is fully arranged. My son is in need of a wife, he’s kind-hearted and I’m sure that he’ll treat you properly.”
“My cousin? He’s barely five years old.”
“Six, actually,” uncle says, huffing a short laugh at my expense. “Now, my servants are preparing to take care of this property, and I’ve called for a proper reeve to look into this matter. Just stay quiet and in your room until a proper lady’s maid can be found to take care of you.”
I blink, staring up at his pudgy face, waves of indignity flow through me from my toes to my scalp. Æther flows through my veins, guided to a proper flow by instincts forced into me.
My eyes burn with magic as I glare at the face of the pig before me, but though he takes a step back from me, he quickly recovers from that moment of weakness.
“If you wish to discuss the issue then you may bring it up over dinner, but I’m sure we’ll be busy discussing the deaths in the family. It would be quite unpleasant should distasteful rumours persist, so it would be for the best if you were to restrain yourself.”
He says as much and leaves the room while I’m still working to formulate a reply that wouldn’t involve any cussing. If the man had as much wit as he did confidence, then perhaps he’d be able to get a wife of equal standing at least. Instead, his wife is the daughter of a Knight of all things, with only a trace of proper noble blood in her, and even she has trouble suffering his presence.
A few servants enter the room to tend to the blood stains and the sole victim still lying dead on the floor, a man whose face is vaguely familiar. It seems that one of the maids here is somewhat more familiar with him, her mouth opens and closes like a fish pulled from the sea. She wails like a banshee while clinging to the corpse and covering herself in blood.
It’s… intriguing.
This is how grief is meant to be expressed? How I should have acted upon finding my family this morning? It seems so alien, and… ugly. She howls and whines like a dog, and her face is completely twisted into animalistic expressions that seem truly unfitting for a proper human.
The sight of her, suffering, pained, and despaired, summons a distant longing within me. A thirst that inspires my dead breath to return to me as I taste at the lingering blood in the air, flavoured with the tears of the servant still weeping.
The other maids and butlers are quick to help the crying woman, but the looks that they direct toward me are wholly unkind, and even a little fearful. It just proves that they’re not proper servants, a true maid or butler can be recognised even if completely stripped of their livery, they move with far more dignity and never dare to look at their masters as these do.
I suppose a noble of filthy blood would only surround himself with servants that are as counterfeit as himself. What a terrible state for this house to degrade to. I really must find that red-eyed fiend and see that he is properly disposed of, but first I must deal with uncle and his family.
Noblesse oblige. Even now, even cursed to be burned by the sun, I still carry the responsibilities of the blood that was drained from me.
A noble must always act as a noble. They must ensure that their peasants are fed and protected, they must be ready to answer the needs of the kingdom, and they must stand and act always with proper noble bearing and dignity.
I cannot let my house be filled with such unsightly cretins like my uncle. Such creatures must be returned to their proper place, and for far too many surrounding me today, that place is buried in the manure fertilizing the roses outside.
Setting down the awful tea, while considering the conundrums that will be born from this change to my noble self. I head out to greet the rest of the roaches that are settling into my home.
“Oh, Tina. Are you okay? Were you injured at all?” My aunt rushes at me, wrapping me up with her frighteningly muscular form. Her heritage as a Knight’s daughter couldn’t be clearer than right now in the cage of her pulsing muscles.
“Aunt Newark,” I say, pulling away and curtseying to her, hoping that it might be enough to have her realize that this is a house of civilised nobles, even if most of them are still splayed on the dinner table.
“You look alright… How did you survive?”
“I was lying among the dead,” I say, “It seems the killer thought my pale complexion a consequence of injury. How glad I am of my beauty, that it could protect me in such a way.”
“Oh, I’ll need to bring you out and show you how to use a sword and a spear,” she says, ignoring me. “You have to learn to defend yourself, but don’t worry. I’ll be here to protect you if that awful monster ever comes back. No, if anything happens, I’ll come to protect you.”
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“Then I’ll take the chance to escape in the moment that you busy him,” I say, turning to the boy clinging to her tree-trunk legs. “This boy is my husband-to-be, then?”
“Oh, did Lucien say that already?” She asks, blushing bright. “I’m really not sure about all of this. I mean you’re cousins and he’s so young…”
“Yes, well uncle is an unseemly sort. You should know that better than most, sharing his bed,” I say, kneeling to get a look at my young cousin.
He hides his face from me, hugging his mother’s leg.
“Do you want to come out for a walk?” My aunt asks as I stand.
“No, the sunlight is dreadful for my skin,” I say, stepping away and leaving her to tend to her business of taking over my home.
“Are you sure? You shouldn’t be stuck in here, especially not while we’re still cleaning, and the reeve is still investigating,” she says, but I only smile and nod.
“I’m quite fine,” I say, leaving her to deal with her young cretin.
Ordinarily, I’d be able to call upon some of father’s knights to help me deal with this infestation, but it seems as though something has delayed them. Perhaps they don’t think me worthy of my title, or maybe they’re waiting to be called upon. I’ll have to see what’s delaying them when I have the chance.
“Just… so much to get done,” I say as a servant pulls the curtains in the hall.
I catch her by the hand before my skin can go from red to bubbling, and I close the curtains again.
“Leave all the curtains closed at all times of the day,” I say, meeting her eyes and glaring at her. She squeaks a quiet reply, that doesn’t make much sense, but it’s not a refusal.
“I am the Countess, and this estate is mine. You will do as I say.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I hide from the light, curled up in my reading chair by a window that I can’t even open. My favourite books rest at my side, but the words on the pages mean little to me anymore. It’s nothing more than meaningless ink scratchings.
This is my little sanctuary.
I can hear everything from here, from my uncle’s boisterous laughter to the servants’ nervous rumourmongering. They think that I’m the one who did it. They think I killed my family, and all the servants too.
The one who I ordered to keep the curtains closed has not only disobeyed me but now is spreading rumours about my unusual disposition against the light.
I knew that they were worthless, but I didn’t know that they were this ill-mannered. I truly will have to clean this place of pests from the top floor to the bottom.
This is my home.
My brothers and sisters should be sitting at the table for dinner, my father telling stories of his day in the court, and my stepmother listening attentively. Instead, my uncle and his family now spread their ill humours through this estate, still haunted by the scent of blood and death.
Patience.
A knight may stand firm, and strike down their foes with a sword, but a lady must plan and act with every decency. Even against such foul creatures, I must take great care not to spoil my reputation with ill temper.
Also… There’s another part of me, a new part of me, power thrumming through my dry veins. The veins that no longer carry blood, but instead guide the dark æther that has corrupted me.
I want to see them afraid.
Father’s eyes, cold and scared, as he watches the monster cut at mother’s eyes. My siblings and I all frozen in our seats, held down by a terror so thick that it manifested itself as tangible chains around us.
That fear I felt in the moment flushes through my memory, tasting so sweet. So precious. So distant.
I want to make these pests feel that same fear. I want them consumed by terror, trembling in the dark, crying and weeping. I want them to see hope burn before their very eyes, and I want to taste them, at the peak of their fright. I want to taste them in the very moment that their hearts burst in their chests.
My breath flows shallow as I taste the air, my æther singing in delight for the darkness surrounding me, but… I must refrain. I am still weak; I need practice if I am to act at all. I need to understand these new abilities granted to me by the red-eyed monster at the moment of my death.
What magic can this æther summon?
Before even seeing that… I think I might sneak myself a small meal.
Even from here I can smell the food that uncle’s family gorges on, the filthy corpses roasted and spiced, may as well have been tossed in the mud. No, what I need is something else.
While I was lost in brooding, the sun has finally retreated. The lanterns don’t harm me quite the same. The new æther running through my veins may not like the light, but these torches and lanterns aren’t powerful enough to garner the same intense reaction as from the sun itself. It’s merely unpleasant.
The guards at the front door move to stop me but freeze when I turn my gaze to them. I draw upon my new power and can feel it glow in my eyes. It’s not something so powerful as what the red-eyed man could do, but it’s a threat, and that’s enough to have the guards stand down.
I continue through the night, bright as day to my corrupted eyes, and pleasantly cool with only a faint glow of moonlight shining from above. It’s through the yard and along a fair distance that I finally come upon the small stain that is the slave’s hovel.
I still don’t fully understand father’s insistence on keeping them. By any right, they’re illegal property even for us. After our kingdom bargained a peace with the tribes of the north, we were obligated to release any slaves of their race in our lands.
Many nobles, my father among them, were offended at the prospect of obeying such an unsightly treaty.
‘It is comparable to surrender,’ is what he’d say. ‘We should have continued to fight, and we would have won.’
While I never thought it at the time, keeping the animals here in our own home for such a silly reason is an outrageous idea, and I still find the very thought of it disgusting. They used to frighten me, but now…
It does not matter, their presence here is the reason that I have something to eat. I hope their blood isn’t completely unpalatable.
Why blood?
How do I know it will satisfy me?
Questions that flee from my mind before I dare to consider them. The cold dread that fills my unbeating heart warns me against such thoughts.
The door to the hovel is locked, and the guard watching over them with a bored expression takes in the sight of me with wide eyes and a small shout. I suppose that most people would be carrying a lantern with them at this time of night, but that would only be a bother.
“Open the door,” I say, letting my new magic flood my eyes as I stare at him. The man trembles, and messes with his keys and in mere moments the lock snaps open.
Entering the small wooden building, I close the door behind me, and the guard nervously waits outside for me to be done, whispering worried thoughts aloud.
“Now, what shall we do with you…” I say, turning to gaze over the gathered creatures. They look like humans at a glance, but even with their animalistic features sliced off, they still stink like the animals that they are.
It should put off my appetite, but the shining little eyes that stare at me in horror, fill my mouth with the sweet taste of anticipation. My noble bearing is decaying as I can smell the fear in the air, it thickens around me into a sweet ichor, and I fill my eyes with dark æther to deepen their fright.
Is this what he felt, what he tasted, as I trembled?
My teeth ache pleasantly as my incisors grow in length, sharpening into tiny daggers. The shadows lengthen in the room around me, magic stirs at my demands, strengthened by the atmosphere of terror.
Pressing æther into the shadows that cling to the edges of the room, I form phantasmal hands and claws from the nothingness, crawling out from the darkness to pry at the flesh of the slaves. The claws barely have strength enough to track white lines across the slaves’ exposed skin, but it causes the younger ones to startle and leap to their mothers. Their fear fuelling my magic further.
“My lady?” A girl, a creature, of nearly my own age, stands up. Her incredible calm pushes away the shadows that I send crawling towards her feet, the magic unravelling in much the same way my æther bursts away in the light.
“Why aren’t you afraid?” I ask, taking a step back as my power wanes. Her bravery is infecting the others around her, and without their fear, the magic is too weak to form.
“What more can you do to me, my lady, that hasn’t already been done?” She asks, meeting my glowing eyes without fear.
Her face is covered in dirt and filth, and her hair is a knotted mess that covers the wounds where her cat-like ears were cut off. The rags she wears are covered in stains both new and old, and torn by overzealous whippings.
“I can do anything I please to you,” I say, confused. They are not meant to be like this, speak like this. They are meant to be animals, barely more than beasts.
They shouldn’t be so brave.
“And what is that?” She asks. “What do you want to do with us? Why have you come here tonight?”
“I… I’m here for your blood,” I say, standing up straight and repairing my noble bearing. What was I thinking coming here and doing such things? This is not noble, not by any measure…
I meet her eyes and instinctively flash my fangs, but she still shows no fear of me.
“Is that all…? I bleed every day because of the whippings.” She says, kneeling on the ground before me and placing a claw on her wrist. “Like this?”
The blood that pools on her wrist, dripping down to her cupped hand, is an enchanting thing. Suddenly it feels wrong to stand over her, my new instincts, no longer violent, scream at me to kneel at equal height.
She offers herself to me freely.
It’s not the same sweetness that I taste in the air thick with terror, but something else. Something warm.
She doesn’t hesitate, slashing her wrist deeper, and filling her cupped hand with fresh blood. I take what she offers, and I sip from her fingers.
The warmth of the blood soothes my parched throat and settles in my stomach for a moment before it flushes through my body like a fever. I drink all that’s bled from her and then drink straight from the wound as I look up into her violet eyes.
“Are you done, my lady?” She asks, looking a little pale.
I cannot harm her. My new instincts demand that I repair her injury, but it takes a moment for me to realize how. The dark æther in my veins forces me to bow and press my fangs to her wound, injecting the magic formed.
I can heal her because I feed from her. Knowledge seeded into my mind after my death, or perhaps, upon my rebirth.
“Thank you,” I say, feeling so flush with vigour that it takes me a moment to realize what I have done. “I…”
I forgot that she was a slave, an animal. She was, for a moment, something else and now I can’t quite see her the same.
Even as I leave, her violet eyes stay on my mind and her blood boils throughout my body.
For but a moment my mind returns to my family, now gone, but the thoughts slip away before they can settle. There is no meaning to such remembrances.
The dead do not mourn the dead.
The gods must be laughing at such a silly thought.