“For lo! the days are hastening on, by prophet bards foretold — when with the every-circling years, comes round the age of gold!” Voices swelled around her, rising in a final crescendo. “When peace shall over all the earth its ancient splendors fling; and the whole world give back the song which now the angels sing!”
The last of the song echoed through the church, lingering on the air. There was no clapping — that sort of thing was discouraged during something so somber as the Christmas service — but appreciative murmurs rippled through the audience nonetheless.
Her breath came hard in her chest as she stepped off the stairs, but it was a good feeling. The joyous sense of a meaningful, well-executed performance stayed with her as her mother came to take her hands.
“God bless’d you for an angel,” Valentine’s mother sighed. “I never get tired o’ hearin’ you sing.”
“Nor I,” Sidney said quietly, just behind her. Valentine ducked her eyes shyly as his gaze focused on her intently. Sidney Ellis was well-dressed, well-spoken, and really terribly handsome, with his dark eyes and sharp features. She knew many of the other women in the choir would have given their right hand to have Sidney say something so sweet to them.
“Thank you,” Valentine murmured. “You’re too kind.”
“No indeed,” Sidney said, with a smile playing over his lips. “I am being quite selfish.” He stepped past her mother to take her hand in his, lifting it gently to his lips. “What would I have to do to get you to sing for me alone, Miss Valentine?”
Valentine’s breath stuttered. She blinked quickly. “I… um…”
Her mother swatted gently at Sidney. “Have some respect for th’ Lord’s house,” she said — but her eyes were twinkling. “You come by tomorrow, young sir, an’ we’ll ‘ave some proper tea. Maybe Valentine will sing you a song or two, if you’re truly kind.”
Sidney met Valentine’s eyes over the back of her hand. His smile made her feel faint and giddy. “I shall practice my manners then, assuredly,” he said.
Valentine woke up — much to her disappointment.
Her chest still hurt terribly. It was a dull ache now though, and not a sharp, stabbing pain. Her old wool jacket was missing, along with her shirt. Someone had done a very neat job of stitching up her injuries, and had ensured her modesty with a suspiciously expensive old oxford shirt. The ivory crucifix around her neck was utterly untouched, which struck her now as a strangeness.
Moonlight still swam through the window next to her, though a false dawn had begun at the edges of the sky. She’d been laid out upon a soft feather bed in what she suspected to be a guest room. The furniture was nice enough, but there were no personal effects anywhere, and everything seemed far too neat, overall.
Her bleary eyes fell upon a pale figure on the floor next to the bed. The man who’d carried her back was all but collapsed on the rug there. His eyes were closed, and his breathing seemed labored. His snowy white hair was quite mussed now, and his tweed jacket was missing. He’d rolled up the sleeves of his own oxford shirt — there was dried blood on his hands which she much suspected to be her own. Even as she watched, he shivered on the floor, curling into himself with a faint groan.
Valentine forced herself unsteadily upright. Her vision wavered dangerously, but she ignored it in order to stand stubbornly free of the bed. Slowly, she reached down for the man on the floor.
His red eyes opened instantly as she leaned down near to him. He winced painfully, pulling back from her, and she realized that her crucifix had fallen from her borrowed shirt.
“…so sorry,” he murmured weakly. His tone was still so cheerfully polite and upperclass that she had to resist the urge to kick him. “I seem to have a bit of an allergy to your jewelry.”
“An’ you still forced yourself to stitch me up?” Valentine muttered acidly. “Got something wrong in th’ head, do you?”
“Oh, plenty,” he laughed into the floor. He had such a pleasant laugh, for a man who’d just dragged her kicking and screaming back to life without properly asking first. He looked absolutely miserable, curled up and shaking on the floor, but he sounded so damned chipper, all the same.
Valentine closed her fingers around the crucifix at her neck. Most vampires would find the iconography desperately uncomfortable, even nauseating. The fact that he’d been able to touch her at all while she was wearing it was impressive. If nothing else, he had to be possessed of a very singular discipline, if not also a superhuman endurance.
Why he’d bothered to put himself to such awful trouble on her behalf, of course, was an absolute mystery.
Valentine’s fingers hesitated on the crucifix. The idea of removing her best protection against the vampire in front of her didn’t faze her in the least. The fool had already stymied her death once — there was little worse he could do to her at this point. But in more than a hundred years, Valentine had never taken the crucifix from her neck. She wasn’t sure what sort of person she might be, without the sense of desperate stability she had imbued within it.
Nevertheless, she thought. I’ll have no decent conversation with him while I wear it.
She sighed, and tugged the crucifix over her head, stashing it out of view within the drawer of a bedside table.
Dark, terrible dread crept into her heart, where it had once been held at bay. I should have died. I wanted to die. Why must even that be taken away from me?
The man on the floor closed his eyes, breathing in slowly. His hands still shook, but she saw him gather himself slowly in the absence of the crucifix. He pushed himself up to a seated position with a wry, helpless smile. “And here I am, stealing you away to my home without a proper introduction. My deepest apologies. My name is Percival. Percy, if you prefer.”
He offered out one bloody hand — blinked quickly, as he saw the mess. Valentine took his hand anyway, before he could retract it. His fingers were long and delicate, but she knew there was a steely strength to them when he so preferred. His touch was cold, as she’d known it would be. But she could have sworn that there had been a real, true warmth to his touch before. Had that been a hallucination?
“Is something the matter?” Percy asked her curiously. “Other than the obvious, of course.”
Valentine frowned. “Your hand is cold,” she said bluntly. “It wasn’t ‘afore, was it?”
Percy tilted his head at her. “Oh,” he said. “Perhaps.” And then he soldiered on, as though she’d said nothing at all. “May I be so bold as to ask your name? Or at least something to call you by, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Do you always use so many words to say so little?” Valentine muttered, irritated.
Percy laughed again. “The curse of academia,” he said. “Too many years at Oxford will destroy your ability to speak like a normal fellow, and give you a big head to boot.”
“Hm.” Valentine frowned at him, annoyed. “People call me Pallid Valentine. I serve th’ Drowned Lord. I was about to exit his employ, ‘afore you interrupted me.”
Percy blinked. His fingers tightened on hers imperceptibly, and she felt his strength again. “A faerie warlock, then,” he said. “But you can’t possibly mean that you wanted to die? That’s a beast of a way to quit your employer.”
Valentine tugged her hand back. She felt him intentionally slacken his grip — the only reason she was able to escape him, she was sure. “What d’you care? You never met me ‘afore now. How I quit my employer doesn’t seem any business of yours.”
Percy raised his eyebrows at her. “You decided to bleed out at my feet,” he said, and there was a hint of steel in his voice this time. “I call that rather my business, my dear Valentine. I do not, in general, think of myself as the sort to step over a dying woman’s body.”
“I am not your dear—” Valentine wobbled on her feet, as anger made her blood rush to her head.
Percy reached his feet with a truly dangerous speed. He caught her gently against him, his eyes still flashing with a hint of red.
V
alentine rested her forehead against his shoulder, mainly out of necessity. Her body trembled at the abuse she had put it through, no matter how she tried to force it back under her control.
Percy’s shirt was neatly-starched against her skin. He smelled of something clear and clean and overwhelming — it took Valentine a long moment to place the scent as wintergreen.
“Quite all right?” he asked her softly. She found herself oddly struck by the pleasant timbre of his voice — the feel of his arm around her back, holding her up.
A truly terrible thought struck her then.
He reminds me of Sidney.
Valentine shoved at his chest, but her strength was nothing like it should have been. Percy’s frown deepened, and he helped her sit gently back upon the bed. “You’re quite weak,” he said. “I’ll be honest, you probably shouldn’t have survived. But you have done — just barely — and so I doubt you’ll be walking on your own for a while to come.” He smiled ruefully at her. “I suppose I’ll ask your forgiveness, rather than your thanks. You live in spite of your druthers, my dear Valentine.”
Valentine set her jaw. “If you call me that one more time,” she promised, “I will make you regret it.”
Percy grinned. It was a devastatingly handsome, boyish look upon him. He leaned in toward her. “I think you’re quite far from being able to make me regret a thing,” he told her. “Let’s simply agree that once you’re able to do so, you’ll be ready to get off of bedrest, shall we?”
A worried shiver went down Valentine’s spine. “I can’t afford bedrest,” she said. “An’ neither can you. He’ll come lookin’ if I don’t go back.”
Percy shrugged. “Nonetheless,” he said. “It’s what you require. If your drowned faerie comes looking for you, I suppose I’ll need to explain the situation, as your… well, as your doctor, I would say.”
Valentine swallowed. “You don’t explain things to faeries,” she said hoarsely. “They don’t ‘ave the head to understand explanations.”
“I can be quite compelling when I put my mind to it,” Percy told her, with another careless smile. He brushed right past her protests once again, reaching out to tug the covers over her with his still-shaking hands. “I’ll be nearby, if you need.”
“I won’t need,” Valentine whispered.
But the lack of her crucifix made her heart hurt in her chest, and she found she missed his hands unaccountably, once he was gone.
Acknowledgments
Every time I write a halfway decent romance novel, it’s probably because I’m thinking about my relationship with my own husband. We were best friends before we got married, and we remain best friends to this day — and I really cannot think of anything more romantic than that. Gabe’s terrible pick-up lines are one hundred percent inspired by the man I married. I complain because the winces and groans fuel him, but secretly, I love it.
As usual, Laura Elizabeth and Julie Golick remain fantastic alpha readers. Not only do they keep me inspired to write, they also often ask innocent questions that point out my huge, glaring mistakes before I write too much further. (Hey, shouldn’t people be losing their memories when they leave Arcadia, like in your other book?)
Lastly, I’d like to thank Kayla for her inordinate patience with my medical questions. I know it’s all magic and faeries and vampires, but I appreciate the fact that the mortals in my writing know how to properly bring down a mild fever.
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Appendix: The Zodiac
Aries (Fire)
+ Adventure, Creativity, Exorcism, Strength, Vitality
- Conflict, Fury
Greater Anchor: Weapons
Lesser Anchors: Bloodstone, Holly
Taurus (Earth)
+ Comfort, Good Fortune, Home, Love, Stability, Wealth
- Greed, Stubbornness
Greater Anchor: Plants
Lesser Anchors: Emerald, Ashwood
Gemini (Air)
+ Communication, Intellect, Movement, Travel
- Capriciousness, Impatience
Greater Anchor: Coins
Lesser Anchors: Aluminum, Elderwood
Cancer (Water)
+ Divination, Emotion, Friendship, Life
- Madness
Greater Anchor: Moonlight
Lesser Anchors: Silver, Moonstone
Leo (Fire)
+ Bravery, Enthusiasm, Fame, Leadership, Light
- Vanity
Greater Anchor: Sunlight
Lesser Anchors: Gold, Amber
Virgo (Earth)
+ Banishing, Evolution, Grounding, Healing, Meditation, Responsibility
- Despair, Isolation
Greater Anchor: Writing
Lesser Anchors: Platinum, Sapphire
Libra (Air)
+ Beauty, Diplomacy, Glamor, Harmony, Justice, Relationships
- Avoidance, Duplicitousness
Greater Anchor: Feathers
Lesser Anchors: Copper, Walnut
Scorpio (Water)
+ Banishing, Blood, Healing, Intuition, Passion, Secrets, Sex
- Death, Decay
Greater Anchor: Blood
Lesser Anchors: Iron, Opal
Sagittarius (Fire)
+ Aspiration, Exploration, Freedom, Optimism, Wisdom
- Inconsistency, Overconfidence
Greater Anchor: Fire
Lesser Anchors: Brass, Oak
Capricorn (Earth)
+ Achievement, Ambition, Ancestry, Command, Respect
- Moodiness, Overcaution
Greater Anchor: Bone
Lesser Anchors: Lead, Salt
Aquarius (Air)
+ Rebellion, Righteousness, Intellectualism, Invention, Spell-Breaking
- Fanaticism
Greater Anchor: Cups
Lesser Anchors: Amethyst, Wormwood
Pisces (Water)
+ Artisticness, Creativity, Dreams, Illusion, Intuition
- Cowardice, Escapism
Greater Anchor: Water
Lesser Anchors: Pearl, Tin
Also by Isabella August
Faerie Lords
Crown of Frost (Taurus)
Crown of Briars (Scorpio)
Crown of Glass (Cancer)
Crown of Salt (Capricorn - Forthcoming)
Crown of Glass Page 21
