Bloodsong Ch. 02

"Don't tell him." Valeriana wasn't above begging. The thought of her father learning what she'd been up to was enough to turn her stomach. "Please don't tell him. He won't understand."

"No one understands. No one! It's unfathomable that you are this irresponsible!" The twins were abandoning and picking up each other's sentences, leaving Valeriana's eyes swiveling between them and her head spinning with the effort of following who was talking. "The way the two of you carry on at home was already shocking, but to pull this one day before the Glass Tower ball? That's more foolish than even you should be capable of—"

"Are you two planning to stop howling any time this century?" Jack's voice reached them before the man himself appeared. Valeriana supposed he must have run downstairs and back up in record time, the alternative being that he'd tackled the first server bearing alcohol he'd come across. He offered the twins a mocking wave on his way to retake his seat. They returned identical stares of frosty rage. "Well? Is that all?"

The twins glared. Belladonna's left eye twitched like she was considering slapping him. The only way civility would have wanted less to do with the situation would be if Tessalia or her father were there also, a scenario so terrifying Valeriana dared not contemplate it.

"What are you playing at, Aramis?" Belladonna had to stand on her tiptoes so she could snarl in Jack's face, which Valeriana knew irked her. All her sisters still acted like it was a sudden and nasty shock that he was no longer a scrawny thing half their size, easy to swat away. "Are you trying to disgrace her? Is that what you are aiming for?"

"No." Jack sat down, ignoring the irate facade and the purple parasol brandished at him like a spear. He took the glass sitting upside down over the neck of the wine bottle and let the pink-red liquid stream in before tipping it in Valeriana's direction. "Pomegranate, since I couldn't convince them to surrender the contraband Black Chira they have stashed down back. Can I tempt you?"

Behind them, Angelica made a noise like something had died in her windpipe.

"No, you may not tempt her! She should not be drinking in your company. She should not be in your company to begin with! Honestly!"

"No one requested your thoughts on the matter, Pink." He grinned in an annoyingly ingratiating manner and winked in Valeriana's direction as if she hadn't spent the last half minute kicking his foot and praying that at some point he'd stop winding the twins up. "Is it just me, or are your charmless sisters somehow even more unbearable than usual today?"

"Why, you—"

"Must be this humid weather we've been having that's making them fester. Shame; had I known, I'd have gotten more wine." He cast a mournful look at the bottle. Valeriana gave up on kicking him. What point was there? It only seemed to encourage him. "Or the ladies could do everyone a favor and go haunt another venue for the rest of the afternoon, how about that? I promise to return your sister before sundown, undisgraced and mostly sober."

Valeriana buried her face in her hands and let her hair fan over them, wanting nothing more than to vanish as she steeled her nerves to prepare for a fresh round of shrieking.

Jack's words were instead met by silence.

That was somehow more frightening.

"Uhm," she began, feeling both out of the loop and apprehensive as wordless communication exchanged between the twins. They nodded at one another, of one mind on whatever the matter was, and turned to opposite sides, Angelica so that she was facing her while pointing a finger at Jack, Belladonna so that she could regale him with the foulest look in existence.

"He doesn't know? You haven't told him yet?"

At that, Jack managed a semblance of interest.

"Told me what?"

"You haven't told him!" Belladonna moaned, throwing up her hands, head shaking back and forth. "Val, for crying out loud!"

"I . . ." Valeriana began, but she was lost, because her sisters were right, and she'd known that they were right, that being the exact reason why upon entering Modona's earlier, she'd said 'brother' and not 'friend'. "I know, I know, I was about to, I'm sorr—"

"What was she supposed to have told me?" Jack demanded, dragging his eyes over the lot of them as if they belonged to some unknown, mayhap poisonous species.

Belladonna sighed, features pinched, and turned to give Valeriana an incredulous snort.

"It's your future on the line, and you who will need to explain yourself to our father if you make this arrangement fall through, and it defies belief that you still went and . . ." Her sister trailed off before rearing back and stalking around the table to stop in front of Jack, sight narrowing on a spot of nothingness halfway up the space separating them before leaning in to hiss at him. "She's been matched. She can't carry on gallivanting in your deplorable company. If she ruins this, our father will wash his hands of her. Now, for some of us, getting thrown out does not translate to spending the season lazing around in a guest house, so if you have a shred of decency or care for our sister, you will take your leave forthwith. There, Val. Is that so hard?"

The clink of a glass bottle shattering against the tiles botched Valeriana's attempt to stutter a reply. Jack's elbow had knocked it over as he stood. His mouth made odd, pulling motions that one might mistake for spasms.

"Matched?" he spat, turning to Valeriana, seeming to beg her to tell him he'd understood wrong. It was both a better and worse reaction than she'd prepared for. Jack looked like he'd just discovered he was about to be hit by a freight train, but his voice remained at conversational volume. "What do you mean, matched?"

"Darkness take me, you're hopeless," Angelica sighed, lifting a delicate hand to her brow as though the effort of enlightening him was entirely too much. "Someone asked for her. As a mate. And he's suitable, or at least as good as she can hope for given her condition, so all parties involved would appreciate it if you refrained from tainting her with your continued association."

"He's not tainting me," Valeriana mumbled, wishing that she could hide from the twins' judgmental eyes and Jack's petrified face. His right hand shook. She reached out to squeeze it still until she remembered that it would only cause Angelica and Belladonna to double down. The best she could do was softly ask: "Are you alright?"

"Mated?" He all but spewed out the word, his features twisting as if it were the sourest thing to ever pass his lips, tapping his right foot on the ground, looking ready to grasp the edge of the table and overturn it, glasses and all. "Mated. And the lucky fellow's name would be?"

"He—" Valeriana began. Angelica cut her off.

"No. Don't tell him. Don't tell him anything else. There's a reason it took this long for a man to dare make a serious offer." Here Angelica shot Jack an indecipherable but pointed stare, holding it for a spell. Once she understood that no response would be forthcoming because her target was too stupefied to note his surroundings, she huffed. "Count yourself lucky that you'll even get invited to the ceremony."

"I'll . . . be going." Jack stepped away from the table, his stare fixed on nothing and not sounding anything like himself. He paused, reached for the surviving wine glass and emptied it as he elbowed his way past Angelica and Belladonna, who eeped in unison and belted out simultaneous complaints about his rudeness. Valeriana took half a second to regain her bearings and call after him, but he'd wasted no time vanishing inside.

A purple limb smacked her on the shoulder, hard, when she made to follow. She gasped and reached to rub the smarting spot, giving the twins an opening to wrestle her back into her chair.

"Let him go, you silly, soppy pile of mush." Belladonna shook her head as she sat down beside her, blocking her escape route. "He had his chance and let it go to waste, and that's his problem. Although you remain an idiot for putting yourself in this situation to begin with — gods, breathe."

"I didn't . . . I didn't even get to explain."

"Explain what? This was always going to happen." While that was true, it didn't make Valeriana feel any less devastated. She'd had a speech, stuck somewhere in a corner of her mind, and she didn't know what Jack's reaction would have been if the twins hadn't shown up, if the words hadn't fled her each time she'd tried to bring them to her lips, but any argument they might have had would have been a step up from leaving as he had.

It hit her then that he might give the ball a miss. Which would leave them with no chance to talk, and who could say when she'd meet him again, because she couldn't go out of her way to see him until after she was mated, and even then it was possible that she wouldn't be allowed—

"Valeriana, lungs. Use them before you faint on us." Angelica placed a hand on her arm with a mildly alarmed expression, as though she feared that she'd tumble to the side without something to sustain her. Belladonna bookended her from the other side, appearing not so much worried as she did testy.

"He's really, truly, honestly not worth getting this worked up about. He'll either get over it or not, and you'd have to give him up regardless." Her sister's words were . . . not unkind. Neither was Angelica's expression as she nodded her agreement. Valeriana wondered how miserable she must look, to have convinced them to hold a ceasefire. "Men don't share, you realize that, don't you? You may still get to speak with him at social gatherings, but everything else . . ."

". . . is the price you pay for being the first one who gets to leave that burial mound of a house," Angelica completed. This, too, was kind, that she would say it as though it were an achievement, something to envy. As though by finding a suitable match, she'd beat them.

There was no race. The twins were not running; they strolled leisurely. Their father might not love them, but since he didn't loathe them and had a more favorable impression of their worth, he indulged them. They weren't made to feel as though every year since reaching maturity was another they'd outstayed their welcome. Angelica and Belladonna could browse through suitors and be as picky as they liked, having no pressing need to take the first suitable option and make themselves scarce.

"We won't get to dally around forever either." Belladonna might have read her thoughts. "He'll start pushing us too once we're in our fifties. It's not like we are Tess."

"Talking about me behind my back, Bells?"

Belladonna's squawk of surprise would have been funny under less strained circumstances. As it was, Valeriana only summoned the will to nod in greeting as her elder sister stalked through the archway and laid claim to a spare chair.

"Don't sneak up on people!" Angelica snapped, though she shuffled over to give Tessalia a space at their table. "Where in darkness have you been?"

Tessalia ignored the question and motioned behind her.

"Was that Jack Aramis who I just saw scuttling out of here looking about to do a murder?"

"Uhm."

"Yes! You were meant to take this idiot to Modona for a dress, and she went there with him instead. Didn't tell him about the match either, we had to break the news for her."

"That explains that face, then."

"Where were you?" This time it was Belladonna who insisted, sounding tetchy. Tessalia, who had noticed the glass and spilled wine under the table and had been scrutinizing them with a questioning expression, shrugged, unfazed.

"Doing actual work on your lazy behalf, as it so happens. Behold! The guest list for tomorrow!"

The twins trilled and bent over the table as if they'd coordinated the motion, reaching for the ivory white booklets laid out before them. Their hands were smacked away, Tessalia smiling at them in that way of hers that never failed to make Valeriana uneasy. It had less effect on the twins; perhaps you could gain immunity to it, as with silver.

"What is the polite thing to say if we'd like someone to give us something?"

Valeriana sighed, grateful that attention had drifted away from her but not looking forward to the eleven thousandth round of her sisters snipping at one another.

The dynamic between the four of them had always, for reasons including but not limited to insurmountable age gaps, mismatched personalities and parental favoritism, been odd. Valeriana supposed that she might have it easy. The others viewed her so much as an overgrown, simpleminded child, that she was more prone to rouse their pity and exasperation than hostility. Living at the bottom of the hierarchy of their father's affections also meant that she didn't have to put up with jealousy, like Tessalia did by dint of being the unambiguous golden child.

At least the twins got along. Mostly.

"Please." Angelica sounded like someone eating poison. Belladonna echoed her in the least beseeching way imaginable. "Please, dear sister, would you grant us the boon of the knowledge which you so—"

"Have it, you're insufferable. Both of you. Val at least doesn't require nannying." Tessalia cast a sideways glance in Valeriana's direction, letting her know that she absolutely thought nannying was required, but hadn't been willing to pass up the chance to hit the twins where it would be most vexing.

"Lord Azar, Lord Jadras, Lord Valmis." Belladonna halted her scrutiny of the list to pull a face. "Ugh, why is every unmated man who holds a title at least eight thousand years old?"

"Trevesse's name is here. He isn't that old," Angelica countered, nose buried in her own booklet. "However, his right to his father's title is still disputed, so he's a waste of time until that gets settled. Bremker will attend too, and he's a surer bet, but there was talk about a match between him and Calpurnia Milacros—"

"—which he won't go through with, for obvious reasons." Belladonna twisted her features so that they were as grotesque as she could make them, going to the trouble of shifting an extra limb to loop under her hair and around her head, to trick the eye into thinking it grew from it. Angelica laughed. Valeriana couldn't see the humor, no matter how hard she tried. "Historical instance of Jack Aramis doing something useful. Val, did you get him to fess up to what he dosed her with? Because I can think of a few other faces that could do with a bit of a lift."

"It's not sporting to poison the competition," Tessalia admonished. "If you want to make progress and find someone decent sometime this century, work on your conversation skills. You may have a decent face and all your limbs accounted for, but that's a low bar to clear. Find a subject to talk about that isn't gossip or planting things. That diatribe you subjected Councilman Meere to last week, about the variance of acidity in different types of soil? No one cares about soil acidity except you, Bells."

"And farmers, one supposes," Valeriana risked, to be met with blank stares. "Erm. I don't get a—?"

"No. You need not worry about the list. There's just one person you'll be focusing on tomorrow evening, and I trust that by now you have memorized the file I gave you on him. All that's required is that you do nothing to make him take back his offer. Which I'm certain you won't."

The twins looked less certain. Belladonna in particular looked dubious.

"You trust her enough to believe she won't mess up? Did you miss the part where this idiot went out, in public, with a man notorious for irredeemably disgracing another eligible young woman? Because that decision doesn't scream 'sound judgment'!"

"Calling Val eligible is a stretch," Tessalia remarked, unflinchingly and unapologetically. "Calling what he did to Calpurnia 'disgracing' is misrepresentation, since it makes the business sound more salacious than how I understand it went. Aramis obliterated her ability to shift in a very unsightly manner; it's not like he slept with her. That aside, both of you know full well that Val is stupid—"

"I—"

"—when it comes to that boy, and that he is an abject moron about her in return. Hopefully, this development will go a ways towards changing that. If not, it will all be over soon either way."

Valeriana, who'd gathered the nerve to square her shoulders and stop tucking her chin against her chest like a distressed turtle, caught the look that passed between her sisters in the silence that ensued. She wasn't included in whatever message they exchanged, which, since she suspected she was the subject being wordlessly discussed, didn't sit right with her.

"Ah," Angelica said, nodding knowingly. "Like that, then."

Tessalia shot her a dirty look, like the twin had made a misstep. Belladonna cleared her throat.

"Go order us drinks, Val."

Valeriana went. When she returned, conversation had meandered back to the guest list and remained there, not touching her again.

________________________________________

Valeriana spent much of the ride to the Glass Tower focusing on the movement of wheels over cobblestones, using the back-and-forth jostling of the carriage as her cue to breathe in and out.

On her left, Belladonna lay slumped against the window, mellowed out by the heat and sound asleep. On her right, Angelica fought to stop herself from following suit by fanning herself with increasing desperation. Tessalia, sitting across from them next to their father, didn't have a bead of sweat anywhere in sight and appeared blissfully unbothered.

There was little variance between climates on isles of the Central Archipelago, but unlike neighboring Lenosh, Alkarosh had been raised on swamp land. Back home, days were scorching but dry. Here the temperature might be a little lower, since they headed towards the seaside, but was worse to handle for its dampness. With every breath, Valeriana felt as though she were inhaling soup.

Outside, the sky was a pure black curtain speckled with white and red stars, the night abuzz with swarms of insects. Since the area they traversed smelled of the sweet, pungent earthiness of plants decomposing in stagnant waters rather than the fresh salt of the sea, they still had a ways to go before they reached the Glass Tower.

Valeriana bit her lip and swallowed a sigh. The shallow puff of breath made her father turn his attention away from the window and pin her with a hard stare, instantly causing her heart to gallop.

"Anything on your mind, Valeriana?"

"No, father."

"Then what was that sound?"

"N—nothing, father."

He held her eye. Valeriana had met no one who could glare like Haldon Lazur. Even Jack at his most ticked off couldn't hold a candle to that armored ice. It was dressing down unto itself.

"Don't ruin tonight. Smile. Beam. Please Maltos in whichever way you can and by all the gods, don't talk unless he requests it. Requirements so simple that even you should be able to meet them — and I trust that you understand the consequences if you do not. Am I clear?"

"Yes, father."

"Yes, what?"

"I won't disappoint you."

His expression communicated in no uncertain terms what he thought; that it was too little, too late for that, seeing as she'd been a disappointment since the day she'd been born.

Tessalia dropped the notes she was reviewing and clicked her tongue against her teeth.

"She'll do fine. I'll be watching over her and intervene if needed."

"That does reassure me." It would, coming from the only daughter he loved. Her father swept a hand across her sister's forehead in as affectionate a gesture as he ever showed anyone. Valeriana didn't share the twins's virulent jealousy of Tessalia's status as the favorite, but still the sight stung. None the least because her sister didn't appreciate it, issuing a gurgling shriek and patting her hairline.