CHAPTER TWO
SHE WAS FOUR years older than her sister Magdalia, and she remembered when her sister had been born.
She remembered her mother calling her over to the bed. “Onivia, come see your little sister.”
She wished she could say it was love at first sight, but truthfully, she had hated her sister at first sight. She hadn’t been pleased with her red, pinched face or the way that she squalled. Most especially, she hadn’t liked the way that her mother’s attention had been diverted by the horrid baby, who wasn’t the least bit pleasant.
During the pregnancy, she’d been told stories about having a playmate, but the baby could not even move her hands purposefully, let alone play with dolls with her.
No, Onivia thought the baby girl was worthless.
Years had passed, and Magdalia had gotten bigger but not much more interesting, in Onivia’s opinion. She followed Onivia around, asking stupid questions and breaking Onivia’s things and copying Onivia’s actions. She was annoying.
Magdalia was childish. What was worse, she was spoiled and indulged. Everyone—even their nurses—seemed charmed by the little girl, even though Onivia was better at everything than Magdalia was. She could stand on her head and she could hold a pitcher and pour her own drinks and she could run very, very fast.
Then, their mother was pregnant again.
This time a little boy was born. Their brother, Romus.
Only this time, their mother did not call either of them over to look at the tiny baby in her arms, because she was too tired and barely conscious.
The next morning, the baby cried, but her mother didn’t move.
Magdalia had screamed. “Mama, Mama, wake up!”
Onivia understood it, and Magdalia didn’t, because she was stupid and too little, and Onivia did this better than her, too, but she couldn’t hate Magdalia for it, because she understood her sister’s heartbreak. Her heart was broken too.
And so she had wrapped her arms around her toddling sister and held her tight against her and whispered shhing noises and kissed her sister’s curls.
It wasn’t that she liked Magdalia after that, but she loved her.
Her sister was still spoiled and indulged, even more so since she had no mother. Though Romus was the youngest child, Magdalia was the youngest girl, and everyone doted on her. Everyone gave in to her every whim. Everyone wished to calm her tears, Onivia included.
When they had discovered Magdalia’s magic, Onivia had volunteered to go with her to the capital, where Magdalia would be trained. They might have stayed in the capital forever, Onivia thought. They had been happy there, and the city had agreed with both of them. But then the unrest had begun, and there were demonstrations and riots in the city, and they came home.
And then years passed, and they all kept saying that soon the imperial legions would put down these minor revolts and soon Magdalia could go back to the capital and resume her training with magic and soon everything would return to normal.
But the revolts had gotten worse, and they had spread to the countryside. It seemed every month, they were hearing of some villa owner on one of the islands being strung up by his fae slaves, hung overhead from the bough of a tree as they flung their iron earrings and nose rings into piles and danced under the moon.
It was madness. That was all.
And Fortune only knew, it was people like Magdalia who were needed. Magdalia had magic. Most humans didn’t, but occasionally, Fortune saw fit to grant the gift to a human. If there were more magical humans, they wouldn’t be losing this war.
The fae were descended from a court of fae called Unseelie. They were the only ones left alive. From what Onivia understood, generations ago, the Seelie fae—the life fae—had used their power to assist the humans in capturing and imprisoning the evil death fae. Then the life fae had left the mortal realm for a magical one, never to return. The death fae could rot crops and wither trees. They could make the ground barren. They could make the breeze bring in cold, wintry air.
Even if many of them were badly affected by the metals in human weapons—their cannons and pistols and swords—they made the land inhospitable for their enemies. They were powerful in their way.
And some of them could use the weapons, because they had co-mingled human and fae blood. This was a shameful thing, of course. The humans were not meant to go and use the fae slaves for pleasure, but they did. And children resulted.
The fae, always cunning and sly, had concealed how little the half-bloods were bothered by iron and steel. The half-bloods groaned and screamed when they were pierced, but they were not in nearly as much pain as they had pretended to be.
Now, there were half-blood fae running all over the empire, able to wield weapons and use magic. Now, the fae would destroy the humans, take their revenge.
And now the fae had Magdalia.
ONE WEEK AGO, Onivia was called into her father’s study.
She and her father weren’t close. He was old, so very old. He had been old when he married Onivia’s mother, and he’d already had sons from his marriage before. Those boys were his heirs, and they were his real family. This dalliance with Onivia’s mother had been some distracting bit of entertainment in his twilight years.
He never paid them much mind.
He never even seemed sad when Onivia’s mother died.
But then, that was what women did. They got pregnant, and they gave birth, and sometimes they didn’t survive. Onivia had heard someone say something like that, some guest, deep in his cups at her father’s table.
Anyway, she knew her father only paid attention to Onivia and her siblings when he wanted to punish them. Even Romus—
Dead Romus, only fifteen, dead in a pile of dead bodies, slaughtered by the fae.
—Romus was no concern to her father. He had run wild in the fields near the villa, unchecked as the dominus’s son. He had done as he pleased.
She had to admit that her brother had not been what anyone might have termed well-behaved. There was that girl, the daughter of the dominus of the Villa Nolcia, the one who’d been pregnant, who had fallen ill from visiting the fae in their huts and asking them to kill it in her womb. She’d said it was Romus’s babe.
And there were at least two fae girls on their own villa whose stomachs swelled and whose fingers pointed at Romus.
He had drunk too much, too, and he had gone through their father’s money too easily. If he had come along with them to the capital, he would have been destroyed.
Of course, then sometimes she wondered if he had felt abandoned. She and Magdalia, his only full-blood siblings, had been carted off to the capital and he’d been left all alone. He had been so very young then, only nine years old, just a little boy.
Dead now.
But one week ago, he was alive, and Onivia went to her father’s study, since she had been summoned, and he waved her inside as he fussed over the papers on his desk and did not look at her.
She waited and she did not speak, as was proper.
He straightened a stack of papers, sniffing. His hair was gray. His beard was gray. “I have arranged a marriage for you.”
It was a blow. She felt it like a slap straight across her face.
Some would say it was past time. She was one and twenty, and many girls were matched as young as fifteen. Her mother had been younger than she was now when she had borne Onivia.
But there was a war on.
Well, they did not say that. There were some pesky revolts in the empire, and they were being put down, and until these skirmishes were over, there wasn’t time for things such as marriage.
And besides, Onivia had sort of come to think that perhaps she would never get married, and she couldn’t say she was entirely displeased by this prospect. Certainly, she had her curiosities. In the capital, the women giggled—the young wives and their maids chattered to the dominissae. They had taught her the word cock, and they had spoken of other strange and intriguing things. Certainly, in the
depths of the darkness late at night, Onivia’s own fingers moved on her breasts and between her thighs, exploring her own secret pleasures.
But that didn’t mean she needed to get married.
Why, she knew from the women in the capital that men were not especially skilled at bringing women pleasure, and Onivia was rather adept at pleasing herself.
She did not want to be a wife, because then her husband would sow his seed in her womb, and then…
Well, Onivia wanted to live until there was gray in her hair, like her father had, and if she had to avoid marriage to do it, she would do so.
She had once confided these fears to her aunt in the capital, and the woman had laughed, saying that there were plenty of women who delivered their babes and then lived to be quite old indeed.
“Onivia, you cannot allow your life to be ruled by fear.”
But here, in her father’s study, one week ago, she had realized that it was silly that she had ever contemplated it, because it was not as if she was going to be given a choice.
She tried a weak protest. “I had thought perhaps that I might remain unmarried.”
“None of that, girl, if you know what’s good for you.” He lifted his face to glare at her.
Not all fathers were like hers. She had met girls who had fathers who doted on them, who would never dream of forcing their precious little ones to marry a man she didn’t choose herself.
There were also women marching sometimes in the streets of the capital, declaring things at the top of their lungs— “Forget the fae, what of human women, treated as slaves in their own homes? Why can women not be senators? Why can dominae not run villae?”
Dangerous words.
Sedition.
Treason.
She bowed her head. “Who?” she whispered.
“Prantius Aurelius, of Tertia Island.”
Her lips parted. He was old. Not as old as her father, but quite old even so. Fifty years old at least. He was not handsome. He was not appealing. He was nothing she wanted, even if she had wanted a marriage, which she didn’t.
“Thank your father,” he said.
“Thank you, Papa,” she whispered, bowing her head.
“Well, that’s all.” He made a shooing motion.
“When?” she breathed.
“Less than a week,” he said, squinting at the papers on the desk.
Of course it would be quick.
She had walked out of the room with her head held high. She managed to wait until she got to her bedroom to cry. Then she sobbed, face down on her bed, her pillows soaking up her tears and her gasps and her wails.
“Onivia?”
It was Magdalia, sitting down on her bed.
Onivia sat up right away, wiping at her eyes.
“I can’t believe you’re getting married before me,” said Magdalia, wrinkling up her nose. “I can’t abide that. Anyone can see I should be married first.”
Onivia gave her a watery smile. “I’m older than you.”
“But I’m prettier,” said Magdalia.
“You’re horrible is what you are.”
“Don’t cry, Onivia.” Magdalia stuck out her lower lip. “I can’t bear it. Just get angry with me instead and call me names? I’m used to that. You never cry. So, you doing it now? It’s very upsetting.”
Onivia’s lower lip trembled at this, which was what passed for kindness from her younger sister. She was horribly spoiled, and Onivia had contributed to that herself. “I’m so sorry, Magda. You know I hate to cause you discomfort.”
Magdalia beamed. “Much better.”
“You can console yourself with knowing you wouldn’t wish to marry him, because he is disgusting and old.” Onivia’s voice quavered.
“True,” said Magdalia. “When I marry, it will be the son of the csaer himself.”
It was likely that Magdalia would not marry, not with her magical talents. She would be expected to focus on them and would not be thought to have the capacity leftover for a husband and children and a household.
Onivia felt bitter about that, not for the first time. Magdalia had everything she wanted, and here she was, being sent off to the bed and the villa of some old man.
“I know what will cheer you up.” Magdalia leapt off the bed and went to the window. She put her fingers into the soil of the plants there, and they began to grow, right before Onivia’s eyes, buds bursting off the stems, and then blossoming into bright flowers. She had often seen her sister’s magic, but it always astounded her, even so.
Magdalia presented Onivia with the potted flowers, her eyes dancing.
“Beautiful,” said Onivia, reaching out to brush the blossoms. “Thank you.”
“Papa said that I can come along,” said Magdalia. “To your wedding. At first he didn’t want to, because there is to be no unnecessary travel until the skirmishes settle down, but I said that I must be there for you, that a girl must have her sister at her wedding, and I told him how good he was and how caring and how lucky I was to have such an indulgent papa.” She rolled her eyes to indicate that she didn’t believe any of these things. “And he finally agreed.”
“Good,” said Onivia. “It will be good for you to be there.”
Onivia didn’t know how news had spread of Magdalia’s impending journey. Probably through some insidious spy network of the fae slaves. There must be traitors in her own villa, her own home.
But the fae had known that Onivia would be there.
They had known that the celebration would mean that everyone was drinking, even those who guarded the villa, and they had attacked in the dawn, coming for Magdalia, coming for her Favored sister, taking her sister away.
But when Onivia and the others had set out on their journey, they had known none of that. They had to go by boat, and perhaps the fae could have attacked them at sea as they traveled between the islands. But they had not done that, and she didn’t know why. Maybe the fae had not stolen enough ships to have a navy.
The fae certainly managed to move between islands easily enough, of course. The Eeslia were where she had grown up, a chain of islands to the south of the empire. The fae were native to the Eeslia, and generations ago, the empire had invaded.
The empire was always invading and always competing with the other empire of Emmessia. A long time ago, the Vostrian Empire had fought with the Emmessian Empire for the Eeslia, but Vostria had won.
They arrived on Tertia Island and they traveled quickly to the Villa Prantia, where she would soon be the domina, and she had felt sick to her stomach with fear and awful anticipation.
Her husband-to-be seemed less interested in her than in the possible alliance with her father, and she gathered that the two of them had made some agreement about pooling resources if their slaves revolted against them, that this marriage was the cementing of the agreement and that this was why it had all been arranged.
Magdalia kept her distracted, talking all the time of what she would do if it was to be her villa. “I should definitely tear down all of this wallpaper,” she pronounced. “I should paint it bright yellow and have all the couches reupholstered in blue fabric. I love yellow and blue together, don’t you?”
Onivia wondered if she should do such things. Perhaps she should demand to be allowed to redecorate in the middle of a war and when her new husband denied her, she could throw it all in his face. But it’s only a few skirmishes, I thought.
She would have to see if she would derive pleasure from making him angry. It was something that Magdalia would do, but it held its own possible enticements, because it might make her feel a bit more in control of her situation.
However, it was possible that Aurelius would be kind to her, and then she would only feel awful if she behaved like a brat.
She waited, the night after the wedding feast, waited in her room for him, and he never came.
After midnight, she went looking for him, and she discovered that he was up with the rest of the guests, still drinking wine into the ni
ght, and she instructed the slaves to say that she was asleep and to deny him entry.
Perhaps it was petty, but it was a momentous occasion for her—
For the bleeding. Your maidenhead.
—and she wanted her husband to pay some attention to the fact that it mattered to her, that she mattered.
She was already considering that she was going to have to be a brat, after all.
She went to Magdalia’s room and crawled into bed with her sister. Magdalia was asleep and she kicked her and stole the covers, but Onivia stayed anyway.
At dawn, they heard the sounds of the battle.
There was no announcement of it. It wasn’t as if the fae rode in blowing horns and proclaiming their intent to kill.
The sounds were screams, men yelling for help, and gunfire. Eventually, there were cannons too. The fae’s cannons punched holes in the side of the north part of the wall around the Villa Prantia, and men with rifles fell from the top, screaming.
She and Magdalia watched from the windows as the sun came up.
They spoke to each other, both assuring the other that the humans would quell this uprising. Maybe Magdalia even believed it, but Onivia had known it was impossible. There were so many fae, and they had freed all the slaves in the villa. They had armed the slaves as well. The humans were badly outnumbered.
No help had come to them—no one to help them dress or to bring fresh water for them to drink or to fill the washbasins. They had been obliged to help each other into their dresses.
She and Magdalia were eventually rooted out of Magdalia’s room by fae females with knives, women who jeered and poked them and called them human whores and spoiled bitches.
By that time, it was over, though.
That was when they had shown them the pile of the bodies in the feasting room, all of their male relatives shot or cut or stabbed.
Magdalia had squealed like a wounded pig, shrieking and crying out, “No, no, no,” over and over again.
Onivia was reminded of the day when their mother had died. She pulled her little sister into her arms and made shh-ing noises and gaped up at the leering and pleased faces of the freed slaves, who were drinking up their suffering like fine wine.
Battles of Salt and Sighs (Rise of the Death Fae Book 1) Page 2
