A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood #1)(24)

“No, no my love!” Magdalena crooned, wrapping her fingers around your arm. She steered you to the nearest chair. “We would never do such a thing.”

“You couldn’t even if you wanted to, you know. You aren’t old enough, your blood isn’t strong enough. Is this Constanta’s doing?” you asked, though I had barely even spoken. “She’s infected your mind with her moralism.”

“I’ve done nothing!” I exclaimed.

“This is about your obsession with justice, isn’t it?” you said, dark eyes flashing. “You think those youths are innocent and so you let them live. Hear me Constanta: no one on this wretched Earth is innocent. Not you, not me, not those children.”

Tears sprang to my eyes unbidden, and I scolded myself. I hated crying in front of you. I felt like it gave you even more power over me, like your heart was an empty lacrimosa waiting to catch my tears.

“Beloved, please,” I said.

Magdalena, bless her, stepped in before you could reduce me entirely. She settled herself at your feet, skirts pooling around her, and laid her head on your knee. She was the picture of coquettish contrition, but I was beginning to know her well enough to know that it was, at least in part, an act.

We all developed our tricks for dealing with you: my invisibility, her sweetness.

“It was just an experiment,” Magdalena said, thinking on her feet. “We were curious what would happen if it we let them live, if it could be done at all. You’re always talking about studying the nature of humans and vampires. We were simply releasing a few test cases into the wild.”

You threaded your fingers through her hair while your gaze burned into my skin, searching me for any sign of disobedience. You usually looked at us like we were hoards of gold, precious and rarefied. But now you looked at me the way you looked at one of your books. Like you were draining me of all useful knowledge before tossing me aside.

“Very industrious,” you murmured. Your voice was still suspicious, but you seemed to be willing to accept her answer. For now.





I, for my part, tried not to hold how you came to love her against you. You hadn’t set out looking for a new bride. You had simply fallen in love, just the same way I had fallen in love when you had presented Magdalena and I to each other. I couldn’t blame you for that, could I? I tried not to think of the quiet machinations that had gone into our meeting as we followed the whims of Magdalena’s wanderlust from country to country. I tried to banish the clamoring thoughts of how long you must have been writing letters to her without my knowledge or consent, telling her all about our life together. Winning her over to your side.

I tried to be generous with you my love... but the seeds of doubt, once planted, put down deep and stubborn roots. Soon, the suspicion that you had not been entirely honest began to gnaw at me, despite the joy of a life shared with you and Magdalena. I was suspicious, and even more dangerously, I was curious.

Asking you directly was out of the question, and I didn’t want to needle Magdalena for information either. If you found out I had gone behind your back to ask questions about your behavior you would be furious, and I was loathe to disrupt the idyllic family life we three had in those early days. Perhaps, my lord, I was simply a coward.

You must forgive me. You had overstepped so many of my boundaries and left me so little of my own privacy that it didn’t seem unfair for me to deny you a little of yours.

We were staying in a rented house in the Danish countryside, with a repurposed barn in the back for your workshop. You spent more time out there than you did in your own bedroom. I waited for you and Magdalena to go out on the hunt together before I went looking for your letters. You two loved hunting together, the thrill and the sport of it. You left me to my misguided sense of justice in those days, having given up on converting me to killing for any other reason.

I let myself into the barn quietly, careful not to leave so much as a footprint in the dirt or a fingerprint in the dust. This is where you hoarded all the new inventions flooding the scientific markets, barometers and handheld spyglasses and calculating machines. They were lined up carefully on your worktables. You also had laid out human bones, harvested from victims and hand-washed, and had somehow acquired an entire skull laid out next to a pair of forceps and scribbled notes.

I ignored the evidence of your grisly work and set about searching for something more precious; a simple wooden cigar box where you kept stationary and letters of sentimental value. I had never so much as seen the inside of this box, but I knew it was cherished by you, because I was forbidden from going near it.

My heart hammered at the weight of my indiscretion as I looked under papers and stooped below the tables to rummage through wooden crates. Touching that box was a sin worthy of excommunication from your good graces, I was sure. But then again, I was strictly forbidden from ever entering your workshop unaccompanied. What was one more sin to add to my litany?

I found the cigar box laying out in the middle of a table, carelessly exposed. You never once thought I would have the strength to disobey you, did you? The possibility that my will was stronger than yours never even crossed your mind.

I opened the lid so, so delicately. My reward for my tenacity was sheaves of letters in your tight, prim hand. I flipped through the papers, looking for ones addressed to Magdalena. I only wanted to know how long you had been in contact with her, I swear it. I just needed to know if you had been courting her for years, right under my nose, or if your fascination with her was as recent as you claimed.