A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood #1)(13)

“Did something happen?” I asked quietly. I felt suddenly very useless, as though there were depths of pain within you that even my gentle love couldn’t plunge. Scars that you would not allow me to see, much less heal.

You heaved a sigh and smoothed a hand over my cheek, taking me in with those appraising eyes. Then, as though making up your mind, you leaned in and kissed my forehead.

“It’s nothing, Constanta. Forgive my temper.”

With that, you slipped away, leaving me confused and alone.

You left for two days after that. I still don’t know to where. You gave no warning, no explanation, simply took up your hat and slipped out of the house one evening while I was still waking up. I dimly remember seeing your dark silhouette stalking away across the city square, shoulders hunched. You gave no indication of when you would be back, and once it became plain that you hadn’t simply stepped out for air or an errand, the panic began to set in. I hadn’t been without you for a single day since you found me, and I realized with shattering terror that I had no idea who I was if you were not at my side.

Were you dead, decapitated in the dirt somewhere? I didn’t know exactly what could kill things like us, but you had theorized decapitation could do it.

Had I done something wrong? Had I earned your total abandonment with my dalliance with Hanne, with my wandering eye for the city and her charms? I ruminated over my every indiscretion, chewing my nails bloody and wandering aimlessly from room to room. The city called to me, and I was desperate not to be alone, but what if you came back and found me gone? Would I have failed another one of your mysterious tests, proving my fallibility? I sent away the artisans when they came knocking at the door, even my precious Hanne, who I never spoke to again. To do so, I felt, would be a betrayal of you.

For two days, I burned. I broke into a cold sweat like I was flushing opium out of my system. I writhed in our marital bed, sheets sticking to my sallow skin, as misery crawled along my skin with scorching fingers. I prayed to God to crack open the sky and douse me in enough rain to stop me smoldering, but I was left alone in my sickly fever.

Then, late in the evening on the second day, you arrived at our door. You stood in the doorway, the shoulders of your coat speckled with crystal rain, your cruel mouth reddened from the cold, looking more perfect than ever before.

I sank down at your feet and cried until I was empty, my long hair covering your shoes like a mourning veil. You didn’t pick me up until I was shaking, then you drew me into your embrace and wrapped me in your cloak. You smoothed my hair and shushed me, rocking me like a babe.

“It’s alright, my jewel, my Constanta. I’m here.”

I held you tight as life, and let you scoop me up like a doll and carry me gently into our bedroom.





You seemed to me a fire burning in the woods. I was drawn in by your enticing, smoky darkness, a darkness that still stirs memories of safety, of autumn, of home. I touched you the way I would touch any other man, trying to make my eager presence known and inscribe some sense of intimacy between us. But it was like grasping at a flame. I never penetrated to the burning heart of you, only came away with empty, scorched fingers.

Whenever we were apart, you left your essence caught in my hair, in my clothes. I scented the taste of it on the wind, I shivered and ached for it. I could think of nothing but you the entire time you were gone, until you returned to me.

I was happy to spend countless lifetimes chasing the warmth coming off you, even though the haze was clouding my vision.

I still wake to the smell of smoke, sometimes.





We made Vienna our home until war, my old enemy, came to the city in the early 1500s. Suleiman the Magnificent sent his gleaming ranks of Ottoman soldiers to seize the city. Their brightly colored tents encircled the city for months, unbothered by the cold rains of fall. Vienna was torn between the Hungarians and the Austrians, an attractive jewel to any expansion-minded ruler and a more valuable bargaining chip by far. Seemingly overnight, there were hundreds of thousands of troops outside our city, and emissaries were sent to negotiate a surrender.

The energy in the city was one of abject dread. Rumors flew about Turks digging under the city, and we could hear the distant detonation of explosives by night, rattling the thick defensive walls.

Religious fervor whipped the churches into a frenzy, and I often heard people talking in hushed whispers about the end of days when I slipped into the chapel to pray in the evening. My piety was a sporadic, half-feral thing, sometimes lashing out at God with teeth bared, other times nuzzling against His loving providence like a kitten, but prayer steadied me. Whether I was talking to myself or something more, it brought me peace.

The world we had all known, it seemed, was drawing to a close.

You did not fear the Ottomans, not their weapons or their foreign ways. You admired their tactical skills, their finely crafted weapons, and spoke highly of their customs to me behind closed doors, the way you might talk about the Swedes or the French. You had lived too long to fear one culture more than another, and you had seen more empires fall than I could fathom even existing. War and desolation was par for the course, and so was the inevitable rebuilding and cultural flourishing that came after.

“Perhaps Vienna will remake herself if the city falls,” you mused once, watching frightened citizens hurry by outside our windows as the encroaching army drew closer. “Perhaps she will become a flower of art, or a trading center worthy of her position.”