Battles of Salt and Sighs (Rise of the Death Fae Book 1)

by Val Saintcrowe

  They paused to bow or curtsy to the Croith, but he waved them on, telling them to see to what they were working on.

  He deposited her in a room with bare walls, which was filled with dirty children, watched over by several tired and similarly dirty young women, all of whom seemed to be pregnant, their bellies swelling in a way that seemed almost terrifyingly obscene to Magda. The children were playing with whatever they could get their hands on. They had broken pieces of wood and chipped stones, and they had imaginatively turned these into trains and swords and animals.

  The children were bright-eyed, seemingly engaged and happy as they played.

  “I have some things to see to,” said Duranth. “I’ll be back for you soon.”

  “You’re leaving me here? I thought you were insistent I come here in the first place.”

  “Well, you are not the only concern I have, as much as that may shock and surprise you,” he muttered.

  She gave him a truly hateful look.

  He barely seemed to notice, because he was walking away from her.

  She sighed, leaning against the wall and watching the small children.

  A pebble rolled over to her feet. She reached down to pick it up.

  Immediately, a small fae boy was there, his blue hair curling around his pointed ears. He smiled up at her, holding out his hand. “May I have my ball back?”

  She looked down at the pebble in her hand. It could hardly be termed a ball, but this boy didn’t seem to mind. She thought of Duranth as a boy, how he could imagine anything from nothing. “Of course,” she said, handing it over. “It’s a fine ball.”

  “It’s small,” said the boy, “but I like to pretend that it belongs to a race of very tiny people. I have called them Littlies, and they have gills here.” He touched under his jaw. “Like fish, so that they can swim in the pond and they can eat things like fish do. It’s much easier for them that way. They’re never hungry.”

  Which was when she realized how gaunt the little boy looked. She raised her gaze to look out amongst all the children and realized they did too. And—oh!—that was why the pregnant women were so repugnant to her. It wasn’t easy to see how the women were too thin because of their swelling stomachs, but they were.

  “Are you hungry?” she whispered to the boy.

  “Me?” He shrugged. “Sometimes, but I don’t cry about it, not like my little sister. She never stops crying about how her tummy hurts, even though she has had all the food there is.” He rolled his eyes. “She gives me a headache. I don’t cry like that.”

  “I see,” she said, nodding. “Of course you don’t.”

  “Thanks for giving back the ball,” said the boy, running off to the rest of the other children.

  When Duranth came back, she pulled him out of the room and spoke to him in a harsh whisper. “Why can’t you send food from the capital to these people?”

  “You think I’m not?” He raised his eyebrows. “These are refugees from further south, and more people arrive daily. We are stretched thin, Magda, even with our financiers, and some of them are getting cold feet, because this is not helping their bottom lines if all the farms are turning to violence and the harvests are being ruined.”

  “But we eat well at the palace—”

  “You eat well,” he corrected.

  She drew back.

  “I thought that you needed it,” he said. “I thought you were silly and flighty and concerned primarily with your own comfort, because it is all I have ever seen of you. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is some depth to you, Magda. Is there?”

  “Not everyone is fed the meals that I am fed? What do you eat?”

  “You saw the corn out there,” he said. “We could feed these people. These children.”

  She didn’t say anything. Oh, he had played her. He had manipulated her. What was this but not further evidence of his innate evilness?

  “Come now, Magda, you can’t truly believe that those children are evil just because of their fae blood. How does that make sense?”

  “Everyone knows that the fae are evil.”

  “Do they? Or do they simply tell themselves lies to soothe their guilty consciences? Of course they wish to have slaves whose contracts can never be earned out, who are property for life. Of course they wish to work us to death and not to pay us in return. But deep down, Magda, you must see that slavery is the true evil, owning other people. These are children. They are not property.”

  Magda had heard bits and pieces of these sorts of sentiments from the mouths of demonstrators in the streets of the capital city, but she’d always dismissed them, never really listened to them.

  “You are the reason they do not eat,” she said finally. “If all was as it should be, there would be food for everyone. You chose some ridiculous ideal over food, and now you will starve to death for your supposed freedom.”

  “I don’t deserve freedom, you mean? Why? Because I am evil?”

  “Yes,” she hissed.

  “The children?” he said, gesturing to them. “Are they truly evil?”

  She was shaking. “Did you put him up to it? The little one who looked like you with the pebble and the pretend Littlies?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, I hate you, Duranth. I despise you. Everything about you is horrid.” She broke away from him, and she started to run.

  He came after her, but she picked up her skirts and ran faster.

  She burst out of the door of the house and she ran into the fields of corn, the browned stalks slapping her face and arms as she ran.

  She fell down to her knees and she put her palms against the soil.

  She pushed.

  Her magic rose up within her. It was easy to summon. She had practiced so long in the capital with her magister that it was second nature to her. And plants, well, she had always been good with plants. They were easy to work with, so willing to take to the magic, to be moved by it. Animals were harder, of course, and people the hardest of all.

  But she had healed people, knitted them back together, put their skin back to rights, sealed up their wounds.

  She shut her eyes and felt the soil, the roots, the stalks of the corn plants and she pushed her magic into all of it. It was similar to healing, because she was setting it back to the way it had been before. She could do that, but she could also push a thing to grow more quickly—this was what Duranth had said was only hastening death.

  She felt the magic roll out of her, going out in ripples from her hands, pushing itself into every stalk.

  And her eyes were closed, so she didn’t see the stalks turning back to green, the leaves stretching out green and bright, the corn filling back with water and health and color. Instead, she felt it, seeing it through her mind’s eye.

  She pushed and pushed and pushed, sending her magic through the fields as far as she could go until she felt resistance, her body in pain, tired.

  Too much, she thought.

  And then he was there, at her back, kneeling behind her, hands over hers, his stomach pressed into her back, straddling her body from behind. The position was scandalous and lewd, and she knew it, but she was too grateful for his power rushing into her, mingling with hers, strengthening her, to care.

  She let out an audible sigh.

  It felt good.

  Their magic mingling always did. It always felt right. She was wreathed in warmth and safety and goodness.

  He let out an answering sigh, sounding pleased as well.

  She sagged into him.

  He laced the fingers of his good hand with hers, lifted both her hands, and pulled her into him. They settled together, both still on their knees, her body against his, her back cradled against his chest, their fingers entwined, the magic surging out from them and into the ground everywhere that their bodies made contact with the soil.

  Now that they were connected, the power seemed nearly boundless. She was stunned at how much power they had together, and she
could tell that it wasn’t simply his own power, that when their power touched, their magic joined and grew in a miraculous way.

  She knew from her magister that magic shouldn’t come from nowhere. She must use her own body’s resources, combined with whatever potential was in the object she was attempting to manipulate, to have the power to perform magic.

  But with Duranth, their mingled magic created power. The magic multiplied, strengthening as they touched, as they worked together.

  It was heady and blissful, and she liked the way it felt.

  It went on and on, their bodies touching as they sent out their minds and their magic through the fields. And when each and every row of corn had been restored, they stopped.

  She was exhausted, loose-limbed, barely able to hold herself up.

  Duranth held her. “That was good, little Magda.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me that. I’m not so little anymore.”

  “You fit in my arms perfectly,” he murmured. “You are small and sweet and soft.” His mouth pressed into her temple, a kiss.

  She groaned. She should stop him, but that had been nice somehow, and she liked being close to him. It felt so right being close to him, like she belonged here. She leaned her head back into his shoulder.

  He put his lips against her neck, and she realized she’d exposed that to him.

  She made a humming noise.

  He brushed her hair away from her skin. He kissed her jaw and then her ear lobe. He kissed the hollow below her ear.

  This made a sweet tremor go through her. She moaned.

  He made an answering noise, guttural.

  She turned her head, facing him. She put her mouth against his.

  He made that noise again.

  She should stop this.

  His tongue stroked hers—startlingly good, sending tingles through her that were reminiscent of the way it felt to use magic with him.

  She slid a hand up into his hair. She moved her tongue with his, losing herself in the sensation of it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  OCCASIONALLY, ONIVIA NOTICED that Akiel would not be at one of the dinners, and she understood that this was because he was holding some sort of private dinner in his quarters. One of the other officers would usually be invited and he would not be there either. Of course, this meant that Loretia was not there either, nor was the girl of whatever officer it was, assuming the officer had a girl.

  Not all of them kept someone regular. Some seemed to prefer to pick and choose daily from the pool of women—the ones who’d been in the tent that first day, who were now housed in the lower levels of the house in a cot-lined room. She and Marta often spent afternoons there with the women.

  So, when Larent received a summons for one of these dinners, she supposed she wasn’t surprised.

  He didn’t seem pleased. He told the militus who’d been sent with the summons that of course he would comply, but then he shut the door, expression contorting, and stood there, glaring at the floor, unmoving for several long minutes.

  She watched him, clutching her book.

  They had not been speaking as of late. It was back to business as usual between them, though she had inquired about Cassus on one occasion, and he’d said he was still thinking it through.

  He raised his gaze to hers. “Did you hear what’s just happened?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I am not deaf.”

  “Well, it’s unfortunate,” he said. “I had hoped that we wouldn’t have to… but it seems we do.”

  “We?” She slowly closed her book, marking it with a bookmark she’d found on one of the shelves. “I didn’t hear myself being included in those summons.”

  “Of course he wants you there. What do you think those dinners are?”

  She had noticed that the girls weren’t there, but she assumed it was only that they were not needed for serving, not that they were at Akiel’s dinners. “I don’t know what they are. I suppose you’re going to tell me.”

  “Akiel enjoys… watching,” said Larent. “Some of the men don’t seem to mind being watched, but I…” He rubbed his forehead. “Ancestors protect me, how am I even going to manage this?”

  “You can’t,” she said. She got up from the couch where she’d been sitting. “I told you that I won’t submit to that again. If you attempt to take me in that way, I will fight you with everything I have.” Her heart was starting to beat very fast.

  “Akiel will love that,” he muttered. “It will excite him. Unfortunately, it won’t excite me, and he’ll see that.” He ran a hand through his hair. “This is a disaster.”

  She stood there, heart pounding, panic pumping through her. “No,” was all she could say. “No.”

  He started to pace. “I thought if he saw the two of us together at the dinners, it would be enough to silence him, but we must not have convinced him.”

  “We’ve convinced Marta,” she said. “He must be convinced. No, he simply hates you, Larent. He will relish observing your discomfort, and he knows it will cause you that.”

  “That obvious, is it? His hatred?”

  “Everyone observes the way he is with the half-bloods,” she said. “You are the only half-blood centurion, after all. I suppose he resents you for it.” She furrowed her brow. “Does he force all of the half-bloods into your centuria?”

  “Yes, which is why it’s not a hundred men but three hundred,” said Larent. “You’re very observant, domina.” He gave her a dark look.

  “I have nothing to do but observe,” she said.

  “So, then,” he said, “if it’s because of hatred, there’s nothing I can do to dissuade him from what he does to me. He’ll do it regardless.”

  “You can’t see this about him? You seem to be good at reading people. Not Akiel?”

  “Perhaps I hoped that I was wrong. I don’t seem to be as good at understanding how people see me, just how they see other people, other situations. Your opinion of me, for instance? I don’t know what that is.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.” She squared her shoulders. “And I won’t allow you to… to…”

  “To fuck you,” he said. “Say it. Why not say it?”

  She felt off balance. She sat back down on the couch instead. “Why do you endure him? You are twice the soldier he is. I had heard of you before all this. The celebrated and brilliant fae strategist Larent. It is your centuria who wins the battles for him. I have never heard of Akiel, and you don’t need him.”

  “Is this your attempt to sow discord in the fae ranks?” He gave her a wan smile. “Not bad, domina, but know I hold the cause in too high regard to rise up against my princep.”

  “I didn’t mean for you—”

  “We’ll say you’re ill,” he said. “Or that you’re having your bleeding—” He turned on her. “You’ve bled since we… haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said. She had, once. “You didn’t finish, or had you forgotten? You seem frightened, but you have no cause.”

  “I don’t know, I’ve heard of it happening rarely, even if…” He shook himself. “It’s good, though, very good.”

  Her upper lip twisted and she glared at him in disgust.

  “I owe my own existence to violence done to my mother, domina,” he said softly. “You can’t imagine I would wish to get a child myself in that manner. It would…” His look of disgust mirrored her own.

  Her face fell, and she was filled with shame, and she didn’t know why. It was not her fault, what had happened to his mother, how he was made. But she felt a sudden, strange kinship with those female fae slaves out on the outskirts of the villa, used by their dominem, and she wondered at it, because she never thought of it quite that way before, never as if the fae women were like her, her equals.

  This experience had worn her down, changed her from the inside out, destroyed her.

  She would never be whatever she had once been, and no matter how she guarded herself, guarded her body a
gainst his invasion, it didn’t truly matter, because she was full of cracks now, and she could not be mended.

  “At any rate, it should work. He will be disappointed, but it will put him off. This time, anyway. Not forever, though.” He sighed. “I need to come up with some other plan.”

  “Can you?”

  “It’s said I’m clever, domina,” he said. “I’ll think of something.”

  She gave him a nod. “Good. Please do.”

  They fell into silence then, as they usually did. They did not speak of it again.

  Days passed, and the night of the dinner came.

  Larent spent time in front of the mirror, carefully shaving his chin. He did not have a thick beard, not like a human man might, but there was enough that it was visible. She’d never seen him shave, however, not once, so it didn’t seem to grow very thick or long on its own. She supposed the sight of it—so human—offended Akiel, and this was why he removed it.

  Larent had to get dressed for dinner, and he donned a suit with a cravat and vest. He had two different cravats, though, and he kept taking one off and putting the other on and tying it, while looking in the mirror.

  He was nervous.

  She found herself taking pity on him. “Wear the green. It brings out your eyes. Your eyes are very fae.”

  He looked at her, sucking in a breath. “Is that a good thing, do you think? Won’t he know I’m posturing, attempting to make him think I am more fae than I am?”

  “You are fae,” she said softly. “Who cares what he thinks?” She wasn’t sure why she was reassuring him. This seemed dangerous in some way she couldn’t quite explain, more dangerous than letting him wrap his hand around her thigh, maybe, more intimate.

  He turned back to the mirror. “I don’t have magic. Not a drop. Nothing.”

  “So?”

  “So… I don’t… all my life, I have been challenged by other fae, fae who hated whatever humanness they could see in me, and I’m used to it. Perhaps I should simply face it, not try to pretend otherwise.”