SWNOVELS Queens and Monsters: Chapter 25
I slipped into the shower before Seema brought my breakfast, erasing any evidence of my solo adventure to Dray’s treehouse. After breakfast I dressed in another slacks and blouse combo set out for me, then decided to spend some time wandering the house. It was big—much bigger than the Wren’s main house—and had at least thirty people living here at any one time. I lived in the main building, but there were two other wings with living quarters.
Most were cousins. Aside from Antyne and Helena, Mary, Presymus, and Rhymus, there were four second cousins and their partners, plus a half dozen third cousins. They all worked directly for Antyne, either in winery operations, or with House business. I spent a couple of hours each day with a different cousin, getting to know them and their role. At this rate, I’d barely know everyone and how the businesses ran by the end of my summer vacation.
But then again, a three-hundred-year lifespan meant that there was some wiggle room.
For the second day in a row I scoured the library looking for information about the family, especially Anya. It was as if she’d been completely erased from the house. There were no pictures, no one mentioned her. I passed a group of four having an intense debate in the parlor. That was probably the most dominant characteristic of the Axl’s. They were passionate about everything. Sex, opinions, wine vintages, you name it, they wanted to go at it. I had a new habit of listening at every door before going into a room after having walked in on so many trysts. It seemed like all anyone had to do was look a certain way and the clothes came off. Didn’t matter if it was the middle of a snack or a conversation.
I stopped at the door to the study and listened. Sure enough I heard lots of grunts. At least two voices…no three. Four? It didn’t matter, I kept moving down the hall in search of a quiet space to read and think. I wound up in the dining room, out of options. Apparently the party the night before tired no one out. If anything, it made them more energized to get to work today.
I had just spread out the books and pages I wanted to study when I heard Antyne and Presymus’s voices echoing down the hall.
“The sightings have jumped more than thirty percent this year alone. And that’s on top of the fifteen percent jump last year. I think we have a problem,” Presymus said.
They came near the dining room’s open door and stopped.
“These ghost sightings fluctuate all the time,” Antyne sighed. “It’s normal.”
“No, brother. This is more than quadruple the normal fluctuation. The last time we saw numbers like this,” he paused, then lowered his voice, “the last time we saw an increase like this was in the sixties.”
“You think we have a leak?”
Presymus sighed wearily and the pair began walking again. I rushed to the door to keep listening. “I’m almost positive,” he said. “We need to investigate.”
“But which one? Hoia?”
They moved too far away for me to hear anything else. Ghost sightings and a place called Hoia. What did those two things have in common? The word rang a bell, but I couldn’t remember why, so I went back to the table, scanning my new resources. Nothing triggered a memory…so maybe it was in the data on the tablet. I could look it up when I got back to my room.
“A strange place to work.” Lou stood in the doorway, her black hair down today. “Especially the morning after a party.”
“Must run in the blood. Every room is occupied. This is the only place I could find to spread out.”
She moved across the room with the kind of silent grace I envied. “What are you looking for?”
“Anything. Everything. I know so little I’m trying to learn it all.”
“I can see that.” She flipped through the pages of a notebook I found between some old ledgers. “Is there anything I can help with?”
“Do you know why no one talks about Anya?”
Her hand paused on the cover of a journal, only her eyes moved to meet mine. “Because Mary doesn’t allow it.”
“Mary? The one married to my uncle?” She was so quiet I assumed she kept to herself.
“Anya was the oldest sister. Then Mary, then Helena. It was unusual to have three children, let alone all daughters. They were considered blessed, hopefully with fertility. But then Anya and Mary only had one child each.”
Wait…what? “Helena, my grandfather’s mistress, was my grandmother’s sister?”
Lou picked through my stacks of maps. “It’s not uncommon. It keeps family together. I assume Helena believed she’d win Antyne over at some point, but he has declined to elevate her to the position of his wife.”
Was that why she seemed so sour all the time? “Why does Mary not want anyone discussing Anya? Remembering her?”
“The quicker she’s forgotten the faster she can be replaced.” Lou pulled out a chair and sat facing me. “What else?”
“Where are the children?” At the Wren party there were many children running around. “And why haven’t Dray or his siblings had any yet?”
“Those are two very different questions. I’ll start with the easy one. The Wrens are just barely of the normal age to marry and mate. Dray and Bo are both of acceptable age to marry, Leena is a tad on the young side. They still have plenty of time.”
Darned samhain aging. It was going to be a while before I got used to seventy being on the young side. “Is mating as intense as I’ve heard?”
Her eyes glinted with amusement. “Oh yes. Probably more so. What have you heard?”
I shrugged. “Only that it’s intense. Tell me about it.”
“Once you’ve chosen a partner you can become fertile. Or, when a samhain prefers to live their life with a member of their own sex, they can designate a mating partner. A series of rituals can be performed to activate fertility and have offspring that way.” She paused while I processed that series of information. “Usually the female triggers the process, her fertile time begins and the scent causes her partner to enter fertility as well. For the next forty-eight hours the couple becomes utterly obsessed with sex. It’s all they do; all they can think about. Nothing else matters. Not food, not drink, only blood and sex. When it’s over they collapse in exhaustion, usually sleeping for about twenty-four hours before returning to normal.”
Damn. I didn’t know if I was excited or terrified.
“And the reason there are no children here is because Tymothy is the only one.”
I couldn’t hide my surprise. “No one is having children? At all?”
She shook her head slowly. “Not the immediate Axl family. Cousins five times removed have normal fertility levels, but no one closer to the line of succession.”
“Does that mean Tymothy—that you—are in the line?”
She licked her lips, casting her eyes over my books. “Why don’t I escort you to your room? These kinds of questions require discretion.”
I stacked everything back up and started down the hallway, noticing how Lou stuck to the shadows, nearly disappearing when someone passed by, keeping several feet behind me at all times. This wasn’t some sort of Lady Axl ceremonial crap, either. Lou’s behavior was to be invisible from everyone else.
I closed my bedroom door with my foot and dumped my load on one of the many chairs in my chambers. “Why do you hide?”
She smiled. “You are very observant, Rhysa.”
Not an answer. “Well?”
She found a comfortable seat near the window with a matching chair beside it. “If we’re going to work together I should tell you a story. It will help you understand what we’re doing here.” She waited until I sat before she continued. “Nine years ago I was brought here against my will.”
“I am so sorry.”
“I appreciate that, but just listen. I am a cousin. If I grew up in the House of Axl I would have lived in the house with the other cousins. But my mother is a prominent member of the House of Sato, and more of my blood is Sato than Axl.”
She glanced out the window, her eyes focusing on the sliver of the roof of the dorms. “I don’t have to tell you that there are Dregs on this property or how they came to be here. And you probably know that Dregs can be bred into full blooded samhain in three generations. But what you probably haven’t figured out yet is that there are more Dregs than Samhain here.”
She snapped her gaze back to my room. “I was put in a locked room and left in isolation for six months. The only blood I received was warm blood in a cup. I saw no one. I spoke to no one. They did this to break me. So that when they let me out I’d be grateful to them and, hopefully, disoriented. I wasn’t. I was mad but I kept my wits about me. That’s when they set about grooming me. It was such a slow process that I fell for it. Nearly a year after I came here I thought I was in love. I didn’t know it—hell I didn’t know anything anymore—but he was a second-generation Dreg. I had Tymothy. He is fully samhain and a blooded member of the House of Axl.”
The only one.
Damn.
“Please don’t say you’re sorry again. I really don’t want to hear it. The only reason I’m telling you any of this is so you fully understand who I am and what is going on here. I try to be as invisible as possible, as submissive as possible, so that no one here even bothers to think of me, and when they do, it’s as Tymothy’s mother. Because as long as they don’t think about me, they won’t notice what I’m learning, what I’m passing along to the Alliance.”
A spy. And she wanted me to be one too. “Why did they do this? Take you?”
“I was an experiment they couldn’t wait for. They needed to know if they could use their Dregs to create a new line of succession that kept power here in Antyne’s control. They succeeded. But now that they have you, maybe they’ll abandon this idea they can breed their Dregs with the cousins to create new heirs.”
“What happened to Tymothy’s father?”
Her eyes flashed with something. Anger maybe? “He’s the head of the Dreg army. His reward for his sacrifice and service to the family.”
I didn’t realize they had an entire army. “Well that’s some bullshit. Does he see Tymothy?”
“Hell no. He was the sperm donor and nothing else. Dregs aren’t allowed in the house except to serve. I’m tied here now, forced to move between my home and here.”
Or else she’d have to give up her son. “I understand your desire for revenge.”
“As you should. Because if you don’t end this, you’ll have no choice but to become part of it.”