The Demon of Darkling Reach (The Black Prince Book 1)

by P. J. Fox

  The rest of the afternoon and evening passed in a fog. Isla didn’t taste her supper and excused herself from the table as soon as she could. Her father, half-drunk and eager to avoid confrontation, let her go without so much as a question. Whether Tristan had left word for her, or had finalized their marriage contract, evidently made no difference to him, either, as he hadn’t said a word about it. He only gestured for more wine, and stared gloomily into the distance while Apple flirted with others.

  The new overseer sat where Father Justin had sat the previous fortnight. He was a yeoman and had no rank, and thus technically no right to sit at the high table. But his appointment gave him importance sufficient to the placement. Tristan, with the signing of the marriage contract, had effectively become Enzie Moor’s new lord. Peregrine Cavendish had no legitimate heir, and although he could have done so under the new law he’d refused to legitimize Hart. Therefore, he’d always known that whoever his eldest daughter married would inherit his lands and title. Silas, as Tristan’s representative, acted with his authority. An insult to Silas was an insult to Tristan.

  Silas been pleasant enough to Isla during dinner, if not overly friendly. Too much familiarity with his lord’s young bride would be inappropriate. But he’d smiled once or twice, a conspiratorial smile that said he understood. Neither of them really belonged there.

  Still, Isla had picked at her food and said little. She’d been too deep in thought to eat much, even if she’d had an appetite. Hart’s explanation, that Tristan hadn’t abandoned her but left, rather, because he had important business to conduct, only made Isla feel worse. She hated the fact that, as a woman, her lot in life was to be left behind. To sit around doing nothing while the men did everything. Women weren’t allowed to make important decisions, even about their own lives. She was sick of pretending that what color of floss to use in a tapestry was an important decision.

  And so, with a nod, she’d finally excused herself and escaped into the ill-used and almost empty confines of the west wing. She’d often traversed these halls, peering into the rooms, imagining what the dust and bat-infested space was like back when the manor was new and filled with people. They must have hosted dinners, and danced, and been happy. Until the first of the civil wars had come, and they’d all died. There were still blood stains in some of the woodwork, faded smears from where people had bled to death slumped against the walls. The armies had come, and then more armies, and then the hordes.

  Isla ran her fingertips along the wall. She hadn’t felt irrelevant when Tristan was here. She’d felt wanted, needed, important. For the first time in her life. He’d wanted her. Listened to her. Protected her. And when he’d been with her, other people had been interested in her, too. Being so visible had made her uncomfortable, but now that she’d gone back to being invisible she realized how much she’d grown used to her new status. For so long, invisibility had been a comfort; an escape.

  Now, it was a torment.

  With Tristan gone, everything was bleaker than before. Everything was smaller and darker and drabber and her food tasted like ashes. Everything, too, was a reminder of Tristan’s absence. She’d missed Asher at the table, whispering with the other pages, but of course he’d left with Tristan. For all his pretense of disinterest, Tristan never let the boy far out of his sight. The boy he’d referred to as his boy. Which made Isla wonder; what was Asher’s true parentage? She couldn’t have been the only one to notice that he didn’t look much like his ostensible father with those gray eyes. Tristan’s eyes were black, but had they always been? She’d never seen a portrait of him from—before—but she supposed that one must exist. Most men of his rank sat for their first portrait by the time they were seven years old.

  She let the thought go. There was no sense in tormenting herself. She wouldn’t mind if Asher turned out to be Tristan’s illegitimate child; despite what Hart might think she was no babe in the woods and knew full well that most noblemen had a bastard or two. Hart’s own parentage, after all, was hardly a secret.

  She’d grown strangely attached to the boy in such a short amount of time; almost as attached, if in a different fashion, as she had to his master.

  But at dinner, there had been only Apple’s eunuch. The sour-faced man smelled of lavender and wore too much rouge. He stared at Isla with a mixture of low cunning and disapproval that made her skin crawl. She wondered if he, and not Apple, had been the one to push Hart’s mother down the stairs. Jasmine had died horribly, screaming and writhing in pain from a set of injuries that no physician could heal. Her back had been broken, and something on the inside damaged. There had been blood, eventually, from her mouth. When she finally lost consciousness, it had been a mercy. The earl had stared on dumbly, too poleaxed to comfort the woman he loved, and Apple—who’d been a ladies’ maid, at the time—had had no expression at all. Beside her, her pet manservant had been equally as quiet.

  No one knew precisely where he’d come from, only that one morning he’d been there. And had stayed. He’d been Apple’s pet from the beginning; no one else talked to him and he talked to no one else. Apple’s father was a merchant of some note, and there was no real explanation given for how a woman of means had ended up as a ladies’ maid although in some respects the position represented a promotion. It put her in contact with people that she would otherwise never have met. And unlike Rose, or Alice, Apple was educated. In that sense, her position was far more genteel. She was more like one of the ladies at court, ladies who were in essence paid companions—both to each other and to the queen. They had as many servants as anyone else, and most had titles in their own right.

  Isla wondered if she’d ever learn the truth, and if the truth was anything more than the sordid scheming she’d guessed at. Rarely, in life, were there great mysteries. Tristan was a great mystery; with his arrival, he’d brought magic back into the world. And she wanted him back.

  The general consensus, according to Hart, was that Alice had run off. She’d been having an affair with the miller, apparently, and the miller’s wife had found out. Isla wondered, again, what the allure was with millers. Alice had gotten herself in trouble by sleeping with married men before, but the miller’s wife was out for blood. Just last week, she’d publicly threatened Alice. Shouted at her, in fact, on the steps of the massive stone church in town. That someone like Alice, hot-headed and full of herself, should run off to seek her fortune was no great shock.

  Isla had asked if Hart thought something might have happened to her, which Hart had brushed off with another laugh. He’d told her not to be ridiculous; the only things that happened to girls like Alice were unwanted pregnancies and speedy marriages to old and unsuspicious men. Isla had let the subject drop.

  She walked and walked, remembering. Loneliness pierced her heart like a knife. She wasn’t surprised when, some time later, she found herself in the windswept gallery that overlooked the manor’s grounds. Their gallery, as she’d come to think of it. She’d come here, without planning to, because she’d wanted to be close to Tristan.

  And there he was.

  At first, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. He’d left hours ago, and virtually the entire household had seen him leave. She must be hallucinating, wanting to see him so badly that she was creating his image out of whole cloth. She took a hesitant step forward, and then another, expecting him at any moment to disappear. But there he was, his back to her, his broad-shouldered frame outlined against the night. He looked much as he had on that first night, when she’d steeled herself to confront him.

  She was almost upon him when he turned. His eyes pierced hers, cold and dark in the moonlight. “Tristan,” she breathed, “what—”

  “We don’t have much time,” he said softly, interrupting her. He reached out and, gently, pulled her to him. His hands were cold, and his claws were sharp against the flesh of her arms but he held her carefully. As though she were a delicate vase and he afraid of breaking her. How he’d known she’d come, know where to f
ind him, she didn’t know. Unless the tug she felt at her heart was a thread between them, that he felt as much as she. Whenever she thought of him she felt it, so acutely it hurt. Being parted from him was agony.

  She nodded.

  “Before I left,” he said, in that same quiet tone, “I had words with your father. He has been…reticent, which is unfortunate. For him.” Something flashed in Tristan’s eyes and was gone. “But I meant what I said: I wasn’t going to leave here without finalizing the contract. The date has been set,” he continued. “And the marriage will occur in one month’s time.”

  “So long?” she protested. A month seemed like forever.

  “It’s not so long.” He stroked her cheek. “You’ll leave here within the fortnight, and spend a full half the month in travel. You’ll see something of the world, at least, and more later.”

  “I don’t want you to leave without me. I can’t stay here I—”

  “You’re not alone. Several of my retainers have remained, and my tailor arrived this afternoon.” How he knew that, Isla had no idea. She hadn’t known; she’d spent most of the afternoon with Hart, and the hour before dinner attempting to read in the library. Her mind kept wandering, and she’d read the same paragraph over again five times before giving the exercise up for a farce. “She is responsible for designing your trousseau,” he said, bringing her back to the present moment. “You may speak freely to her about your needs in that regard and in any…other regard. She is trustworthy.”

  “Oh,” Isla said. She’d never heard of putting so much faith in tailors.

  His claws flashed before her face as, lifting his hand, he removed the strange ring he always wore. The ouroboros, the mark of his order. He took her hand and slipped it onto her finger. His hands were much larger than hers but, strangely, it fit. She looked down at her hand, stunned. The creature seemed to wink malevolently back at her, its tiny ruby eyes glittering. She glanced up at Tristan. He enfolded her hand in his. “Keep this on at all times, even to bathe. And remember me.”

  And then his lips were on hers and she was kissing him. He pressed her to him, his touch hard and almost bruising. There was all the fevered passion of a lifetime in that kiss, and all the desperation of lovers about to be parted—perhaps forever. Isla didn’t know why she was so scared, or why she was so desperate for him not to leave her. But she was terrified of being left behind, of being alone in this crumbling viper pit and she communicated that fear through her fevered touch. Her parted lips, her hands in his hair, her body pressed to his, all communicated a silent plea that he take her with him.

  Isla froze as she heard footsteps behind her.

  She pulled back slightly and her eyes met Tristan’s. Remember, he mouthed, and then he was gone. Black motes hung in the air, shimmering dully like coal, where he’d stood a moment before. Isla stared, unable to comprehend what had just happened. She thought she could almost see a whirling cloud of motes, like an afterimage against the backs of her eyes.

  She almost jumped out of her slippers as a hand came down on her shoulder. She whirled around, and there was Rowena.

  “What?” Her sister seemed surprised that she was.

  “I just…you startled me.”

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “No one.”

  “I heard you talking,” Rowena insisted. She peered into the gloom, and frowned. There was, of course, nobody there. “Probably talking to yourself,” she murmured. “We shouldn’t call you Isla, we should call you the absent-minded librarian. Because that’s what you are. Father should have shipped you off to an abbey when he had the chance.” She smiled at her unkind joke. Isla wondered why she was here—she’d obviously sought her out—when Rowena’s next comment made the question moot. Rowena, more than anything, loved to be the bearer of gossip. “But it really is too late now,” she continued. “Your wedding date has been set—it’s in a month!” She clapped her hands delightedly. “In the North, which I think is a little inappropriate. A girl should get married from her own home, don’t you think?” She nattered on, without waiting for Isla to reply. “In The Chivalrous Heart it says….”

  One month. Isla brushed past Rowena, ignoring her entirely. Rowena, oblivious to her dismissal, followed her down the hall while holding forth on how excited she was to leave Ewesdale. She, like Isla, had never been outside its borders. And she, unlike Isla, was bound to make good use of the experience. Rowena was a cultured woman and needed to see something of the world. The paradoxical nature of that statement evidently lost on her, she continued on about her own brilliance until Isla reached the door of her room.

  She pushed it open and, bidding Rowena a firm goodnight, shut the door equally firmly in her sister’s face.

  She turned, and almost died from shock.

  There, standing near the bed, was a pale and slender woman. She was too slender; so slender, even, as to be almost impossible as a human being. She looked as though, if she turned sidewise, she’d disappear. Her eyes were fixed on Isla’s. They were large eyes, and very pale. Her lips were completely bloodless. Isla stared back. She couldn’t put her finger on what, exactly, but something about the woman was…off.

  “I am Eir,” she said in a musical voice. “It means mercy in the old tongue.”

  And then she laughed.

  Her laugh was the most chilling sound that Isla had ever heard: like the sound of ice breaking. Isla thought uncomfortably of the old campfire legend about a village full of demon-possessed children who lured unsuspecting adults out into the corn. A sudden and uncomfortable knowledge possessed her. “You’re—”

  “Your tailor. And companion, until such time as our lord should wish it otherwise.”

  “But can you—I mean, do you actually sew?”

  “Yes, of course.” Eir made a faintly dismissive gesture with her long and spidery fingers. They were impossibly thin, like the rest of her. “I can do a great many things. And one of them will, naturally, be to design your wedding gown. As well as your other gowns, of course.”

  The door banged again and Rowena demanded entrance. Isla walked back over to the banded oak and shouted that Rowena had better go away or she’d find Cariad and pay her to perform a hex. Isla had no intention of doing any such thing, but Rowena didn’t know that and she heard her sister beat a hasty retreat down the hall.

  When she turned to resume her conversation, Eir had vanished. She put a hand to her fast-beating heart; there was entirely too much of this happening lately. And then she caught movement from the corner of her eye, and looked up. Eir was crouched, spider-like, in the corner of the room. In the upper corner of the room. Her arms were turned so that her hands were pressed, palms up, against the ceiling.

  Seeing that the coast was clear, she dropped back down to the floor. Calmly, as though nothing untoward had happened, she walked over to the small sideboard and poured herself a cup of wine. Isla hadn’t even remembered wine being in the room; she certainly hadn’t called for any. Eir regarded her calmly over the rim of the cup.

  Isla swallowed once and then, very deliberately, walked over to her chair and sat down. She stared into the fire. Her back crawled, and she wished very much that it were not turned on Eir, but she would not show fear. She wondered if Eir, and those like her, were…common at Caer Addanc. She wondered, yet again, what she’d gotten herself into.

  At her feet, Mica stretched out and began to purr. Cats were wonderful creatures, because cats had no crises. It didn’t matter what was happening, or to whom; they wanted their dinner when they wanted it. The only crisis, to a cat, was having a chair moved.

  Isla, passing a hand before her eyes, settled in for a very long wait.

  THE END OF BOOK ONE

  The story continues in BOOK TWO of The Black Prince Trilogy, THE WHITE QUEEN. Look for The White Queen, available now from Evil Toad Press. In the meantime, P.J. Fox welcomes visitors to her website, pjfoxwrites.com, where they can learn the latest updates on her characters as well as on what she hers
elf is doing (and writing). She encourages fans to contact her, and welcomes questions and comments of all kinds.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  P.J. Fox published her first story when she was ten. Between then and the present moment, she detoured to, in no particular order, earn several degrees (including a law degree), bore everyone she knew with lectures about medieval history, get married, and start a family. She realized, ultimately, that she had to make a go of this writing thing because nothing else would ever make her happy.