She couldn’t have said how long she would have lasted without it. Her name. Was that really who she was anymore? Loretta Maradona, future duquesa, did not butcher beasts in open combat. She certainly didn’t give herself over to the killing, dancing in the blood of her enemies and wishing it would never end.
A twig snapped. She whipped out the dagger she’d been forced to borrow from Dupont’s team. A deer stood, frozen a few yards away, staring right at them. Loretta sighed and shook her head. “I wish I could still shoot.”
Aim, really. Aiming was the issue. The hand-eye coordination was all messed up. She’d tried using a sling like Malin’s and found she had the same issue with it as the gun, though not nearly so bad. Her brain simply refused to transform the necessary thoughts into performance.
She glanced over at Malin, a small smile on her face. “I envy you.”
She expected Malin to grin back at her, to beam or stand up straighter with pride. Instead the girl, and she realized that she most definitely thought of the tiny beast as a girl, crumpled in on herself. Her shoulders hunched, her face fell, and she let out a small, shrill sound that sent the deer leaping into the brush.
Loretta nearly jumped back, her tail and ears both leaping upright in alarm. “What the hell was that?”
Malin threw her head back, tears spilling from her eyes. “You don’t have to do that!”
Loretta had no idea what was happening. “Do what?”
“T-t-try to make me feel b-b-better,” Malin said, then hiccupped.
“Uh, do you need to be made to feel better?” Loretta asked uncertainly.
Malin blinked away the tears and lowered her head so that she could stare at Loretta with wide, reddened eyes. The glow about her brightened, as did the color in her cheeks. “No,” she said much too quickly.
Loretta gave her a flat look. “When I pay you a compliment, Malin, I mean it. Or do you mean to insinuate that I am a liar?”
Malin’s eyes widened further and she stumbled back, outline and cheeks both glowing brighter still. “N-no! Of course not.”
“Then what did you mean?” Loretta demanded, hands going to her hips.
“I-I-I—”
“Out with it,” Loretta snapped.
“I’m useless!” Malin wailed, falling to her knees on the ground. “You fought all those beasts and I couldn’t even…all I could do was throw rocks! A-a-and I could only do that because of Sir Moreau.” Tears fell from her eyes anew in great wet dollops.
Loretta sighed and shook her head as she took up a crouch beside Malin and put an arm around her shoulder. A part of her knew that at least one of them should be on the lookout for Rampant beasts, but, as there had been no sign of any in the days since they had arrived, and no sign of the shipment that was due for delivery, she thought mending whatever was ailing Malin to be a better use of her time.
“You saved my life several times that night,” Loretta said.
“Even Ulrich was more useful than me,” Malin said, all but falling into Loretta’s side. “Only a beast for a few minutes and already able to fight while all I can do is hide. And she’s a he!”
Loretta had to admit, she was struggling to get her head around that. A man who could Fall must never have truly been a man in the first place, but a woman in a man’s body. A femella. She’d only ever heard of them in the most scandalous of whispers. Bad enough among the nobility to have a daughter who Fell, the shame of losing a son the same way was a gaping pit that could swallow a family’s dignity whole.
It raised a question in her. How many were out there, men with the spirits of women, who might not Fall? The only way to really prove it resulted in the sacrifice of their freedom, to say nothing of their humanity. If there were men who were really women, then might there not also be women who were really men? It was a disquieting thought.
One which did nothing to help with Malin’s current situation. “You’re much smarter and more capable than you seem to realize, and I’ll not stand for this kind of moping. Pull yourself together.”
Malin gave a shuddering heave.
“You were the most valuable member of our…” she hesitated a moment to use the word, “menagerie last night during the infiltration. We never would have made it as far as we did without you, and when things became bloody, that was not your fault. You are not a frontline warrior. You are an infiltrator and a sniper, and you performed both of your roles admirably.”
“But…Ulrich—”
“Has a very different skillset and seeds than you or I possess,” Loretta interrupted. “Comparing yourself is neither accurate nor fair to either of you.” Though she privately admitted that, more often than not, she found herself doing the same thing. Ulrich—or whatever her new name would be, had a very unusual combination of seeds that had made her dangerous from the moment she had Fallen, and Loretta had to fight down a surge of irrational envy.
Frustration boiled up to replace it. She did not want different or better seeds. She did not want any seeds. She wanted to be human again, restored to her rightful place as firstborn heir of the Maradona family. What if that wasn’t possible?
The thought came from nowhere, and she smothered it brutally. She would deal with that when it arose. Until then, she had hope and would not allow herself to be made any less by circumstances.
“Do you understand me?” she asked.
Malin nodded.
“Do you understand that you did well that night?”
Malin nodded again.
“Are you finished moping about something that is not an issue?” How embarrassing that she had been so caught up in her own head that she hadn’t noticed? Loretta Maradona, firstborn heir to the Maradona family, future duquesa, she heard Moreau’s voice whisper in her mind. It sent a shiver through her.
“You cold?” Malin asked, looking up at her. She really was a diminutive thing.
“No,” Loretta said, standing up. “Come on. We have a job to do.”
It was beyond odd that she meant it, too, she thought as they returned to their patrol—or began to.
Pain flared along the roots connecting her to Moreau. Loretta clenched her teeth, but Malin actually let out a gasp. Moreau was hurting.
Without a word, they both took off, racing through the woods back to the ruins of the fort. They dashed past burnt out structures, sending up ashes in their wake, and darted into the makeshift hospital quarters where he’d been situated, hands going to weapons, only to be brought up short outside his room.
Moreau was on the floor, coat unbuttoned, bandages only half fastened and his broad brimmed hat askew. Loretta watched him for a moment as he struggled to right himself.
“You’re wearing that stupid hat indoors?” she asked, crossing her arms.
Moreau showed her his teeth. “Got to protect my delicate complexion.”
She grinned back at him, though not because of his lame joke. There was something satisfying about seeing him on his knees and struggling.
He’d said her name. The satisfaction fled.
Moreau had dragged her, wounded, across the fort and nearly drowned making sure she survived. He’d been bedridden since, by Sir Balzac’s order, and absolutely miserable. If he had managed to save the documents, then at least he’d have something to do. As it was, the man had been forced to lie about doing nothing but thinking and receiving their banal reports about the lack of Rampant beasts in a supposedly dangerously infested area.
Loretta had enjoyed teasing him these last few days, taking a malicious glee in her own ability to flit about his quarters while they spoke. Learning to be still had not gotten any easier for her—even now, she fidgeted in place. Perhaps she had been needlessly cruel. Of course, what else was she to do? The man had saved her life, spoken her real name, and then said absolutely nothing of it. The ragamuffin bastard.
She was beginning to think that she might have hallucinated parts of that night. A part of her would have liked to be
lieve that because, up until the portion where she’d been exhausted and dying of her injuries, she could not recall a time where she’d felt more…more. She’d been an unstoppable killing force and every move she’d made, blow she’d struck, and life she had taken had been ecstasy. Only, if she was going to hallucinate, she’d like to think her imagination could come up with a better fantasy than Moreau using her real name.
“Help him up,” she said to Malin. She wasn’t about to touch him. Not with the memory of her name on his lips so fresh in her mind.
Malin hurried to obey, earning a raised eyebrow from Moreau, which was quickly followed by a raised hand and the feel of his anima seizing upon them, holding them both back.
“No,” he said, voice stern and laced with mingled pain and effort.
Malin was brought up short and forced to take a step back.
Loretta crossed her arms. “And what do you think you’re doing, oh, wise knight keeper?”
Moreau slowly—excruciatingly slowly, so slowly that Loretta began to push back against the pressure of his anima in an effort to go help him up, if only to get on with it—rose to his feet. “I am going to see the Leloup siblings. Ulrich is not doing well.”
Loretta’s ear twitched. Thinking of Ulrich still confused her and made her uncomfortable. She said nothing, however. If Moreau wanted to exhaust himself so he could make a fool of himself in front of Una Leloup, then Loretta would follow along and allow it.
The longer she watched him struggle, however, the more she became aware of just how strong their connection, their roots, had grown. She could all but feel his pain and exhaustion as he hobbled down the hallway as if it were her own, but she could also feel his determination. She focused upon that feeling, closing her eyes to sense it within him, if for no other reason than so that she would not have to watch him be stupid. And stubborn. And hurt.
The determination burned hot within him, hotter than the pain from his cuts or injured shoulder. She sank into it and found what was fueling it. When she did, she let out a small gasp of surprise that earned her odd looks from both Malin and Moreau. She flushed, tail sticking straight up, and scowled at both of them.
She had expected to find embarrassment or pride beneath that determination. Both had been present. Stronger than either, however, was a desire to get to Ulrich and help her. Because she was his beast.
Loretta scowled. Had Moreau then only done what he had done for her because she was his beast? Of course, she thought. He’d have done the same for Malin. The realization set a cauldron inside of her to churning and frothing with a bubbling concoction she could not make sense of.
“Sometimes,” Moreau said, giving Loretta a sidelong look as they finally neared the door to the Leloup twin’s quarters—Una had insisted upon their sharing. “I wonder what is going on inside that head of yours.”
Damn those roots! She gnashed her teeth and let out a tiny hiss. It only made him laugh, the bastard. How dare he be reading her emotions?
Shaking his head, he knocked on the door and removed his hat.
It opened, slowly, and only partially, to reveal Una. She used her body to block entry and Loretta suspected that the hand she was keeping out of sight held a knife or small firearm. She glared at Moreau with pale, red rimmed eyes. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“If that was an invitation, I’m flattered,” Moreau said. “But I’m afraid I need to recover more or you’d find the experience remarkably one-sided.”
Loretta nearly choked. Had he really just insinuated…? She slapped a hand over her face and swore she could feel the angry heat from Una Leloup’s glare.
“You dare speak to me that way?”
“I’m delirious from a dozen different injuries,” Moreau said flippantly, then became more somber. “On the somewhat related subject of which, your sister is not doing well.”
“I don’t have a sister.” Una slammed the door. The sound of the key turning and the lock clicking into place followed an instant later.
Moreau sighed and leaned forward, letting his forehead rest against the wooden door. “You can pretend all you want, but Ulrich is a femella.”
“Ulrich is a boy!”
“Once, biologically, perhaps,” Sigmund said through the door. “But you know spirit is stronger than flesh, and hers is a female spirit. She never could wield her anima right, could she? Never harvested a beast?”
There was no response.
“She has Fallen, and I have harvested her, which is the only reason she’s not feasting on your intestines right now.”
Still no response.
“She needs to spend time in the hot springs, and time with her keeper,” Moreau went on. “My lady, she is suffering right now.”
“Stop calling him ‘she!’” Una screamed through the door. “Ulrich is a boy, not a femella, and boys don’t Fall! No Leloup has fallen in three generations!”
It clicked into place in Loretta’s mind. Three generations. Once Una reached her majority at twenty, she would be declared diamond souled. The status her family had only just reached. If Ulrich Fell, it would prove that her family line had not overcome their impurity after all.
“Malin,” Loretta said, making the girl jump.
“Y-yes?”
“Pick the lock.”
Malin blinked, then grinned, going into a crouch and producing a set of lock picks from her belt.
“What are you…?” Moreau shook his head in disbelief. “Sto—"
Loretta bumped him, cutting him off. Pain flared down the roots and he fell over. The words never left his lips, and he was unable to concentrate well enough to bring his anima to bear stopping them.
An instant later, Malin had the door unlocked, and Loretta strode through.
The room did not suit the young noblewoman. It was stark and smelled of cinders. The tininess of it was only made more claustrophobic by the presence of Ulrich in the corner. Fluid as the beast might be, she could not actually change her mass, of which there was plenty with her legs sealed together in that odd tail configuration. She huddled in on herself, rippling and quivering, as if struggling to hold something in.
Loretta did not know what that was about, but suspected it had to do with why Moreau had wanted to see her and take her down to the hot springs. Time away from their keeper could not be good for a beast.
Loretta stabbed a finger at the pathetic figure. “You are killing her!”
For a moment, Una gaped at her, too shocked to do anything.
Loretta seized her advantage. “What’s more important you? Diamond souled status or your sister’s life?”
Difficult as it was for her to get her head around the idea of femella, there was no doubt that the beast in the corner was most decidedly not-masculine. Thus, Ulrich was Una’s sister, not her brother, and Loretta knew exactly the lengths she would go to protect Sirena.
Una Leloup’s anima struck Loretta like a shotgun blast to the chest. She staggered, suddenly cut off from Moreau. Her brain struggled to make sense of the world, to process the information coming in through senses that were not human. She felt like she was falling, the world opening up beneath her feet to swallow her whole, even though she had not moved. She gasped, grabbing her head.
It was bad. Not nearly as bad as when the Vizcondesa Velazquez had wielded her anima against her, however. Compared to that woman, this untrained girl was nothing. Loretta was able to retain her facilities and cognizance well enough to hear the next words shrieked from the girl’s mouth, and then she wished very much that she hadn’t.
“You’re one to talk, Loretta Maradona, firstborn heir to the Maradona line and future duquesa,” Una snapped.
Loretta reeled back as if slapped. She knew. She knew her real name. Her identity. The disgrace her supposed Fall would bring on the Maradona house. Loretta felt lightheaded. How had the girl known?
“I heard him call you by your woman name that night,” Una all but spat, flinging
a hand at Moreau as she stalked across the short distance to tower over Loretta. That was when Loretta realized that she’d fallen to her knees. When had that happened? She had no memory of it. Una Leloup leaned down near her face, eyes blazing. “I heard that you were dead.”
Loretta squeezed her eyes shut. The girl’s anima was stabbing into her brain like a blunt knife. Strangely, that pain was the only thing that kept her centered enough that she could process the words. Without it, her mind would not have been able to focus. Her family was in danger. Sirena was in danger. They could lose everything.
Her father’s face glared down at her, dripping with disgust. The memory rose to the fore of her mind and floated there, disembodied. She couldn’t get rid of it. Couldn’t see anything else but it.
“I admired you,” Una said, voice cold, almost detached. “I respected you. I actually wanted to be you. I tried to get into the academy early, you know, like you did. I was not smart enough, they told me. Not pure enough.”
Loretta could hear the pain beneath the words. Each stab was sent directly into her. Was this what it felt like to be eviscerated? The thought almost made her giggle. She swallowed the sound down and nearly vomited.
“This whole time, your position was a lie. Your station, a lie. Your purity—” she broke off and Loretta sensed rather than saw her walk away, too agitated to remain in place. “What else of you is false?” Una screamed from the opposite side of the room, but her words might as well have been shouted into Loretta’s ear.
There was no helping it. She was going to be sick. It was all too much. She couldn’t keep up, couldn’t process…the world was falling, and she was falling, and her family was going to be destroyed. She wanted to scream. Wanted to protest, to explain that she had not Fallen. She could not.
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