Page 71 of Disillusioned
“When, how, and how much?” asked Adelaide, a shocked grin blooming.
“We haven’t,” she hissed, composing herself, her face scorched. “Not in an amount that would matter.”
“Your Majesty,” Lorietta said slowly, stepping closer and dragging Adelaide forward with her. With a wave of her hand, the front door to the inn swung and clicked shut, blocking out curious ears. “This is important and could cost lives if it hasn’t already, so I encourage you to answer in full transparency.” She looked this way and that and lowered her voice to a threatening whisper. “As long as you are on my property, your answers are safe here. But I need your honesty.”
“I can poison the truth out of you,” Adelaide optioned.
“That won’t be necessary,” Lilac snapped, feeling stripped bare. “In my bedchamber, at my tower. He visited me one week after my ceremony. We talked, and he fed me a drop. A prick on his finger, to reveal the memory of me walking into your tavern the night we met.”
Lorietta’s brows creased for a brief moment before the expression smoothed. “He used his magic on you?”
Lilac scoffed. “I don’t think he has a problem with that.”
Then there was that second time when she’d bitten his hand as she came, when his blood had shown her the view of a familiar desk—her father’s study, books and papers askew. It had looked like it, but in the moment she’d been so shocked she hadn’t thought of what it might mean. Another question for the vampire. “That’s what their blood does, doesn’t it? Shows you their memories?”
“Sometimes,” said Adelaide, looking to Lorietta for confirmation. “With intent, they can send vivid memories through to the consumer. They show you what they want to, a past vision from their own eyes. It’s part of their Sanguine magic.”
“I thought that only referred to their entrancement,” Lilac said.
“Their entrancement, their ability to host thralls, aromatic lure, and even the strange effects of theirvitaeare part of it,” explained Lorietta. She closed her eyes as she spoke, almost as if quoting or paraphrasing something from memory. “Sanguine magic, though limited in the scope of arcana, is still powerful as it is mystical. Sending visual memories through their blood is how they can recall their own memories that might be lost to time if they’re extremely old or weren’t paying attention in the moment; for them the memory might be something obscure, vague, but it is as if thedrinker experiences it for himself, usually under entrancement.Histories of the Lasting Night, Volume I,” she recounted. “Long ago, Meriam had me read up on vampires if we were going to take one in. Since you left, Garin has been on edge and threatened anyone who has tried to enter his chamber. Had Bastion up against the wall on the first night.”
“A textbook.” Lilac thought of the human-authored texts and manuscripts on Daemons that had her making a fool of herself her first time in Brocéliande. The vampire manuscript, which she’d been meaning to search for in her Accords planning. “Is there anything in it that might tell you what’s been happening to him? To us?”
“I’ve searched and seemed to have misplaced it. I haven’t seen that book in quite a while, though I am usually able to dig it out.” Lorietta sighed laboriously. “Did he drink from you, too? In your tower.”
“Yes, moments after,” she admitted quietly. Just to get it over with, she added, “I had his blood once more, accidentally, the night of the Accords meeting. Downstairs in his chamber before everything happened, and it was also a very small amount. A smear, but it wasn’t an exchange. He didn’t take my blood from me then. We were?—”
“I don’t want to hear it, don’t make me cast a deafening spell on myself.” Lorietta threw her hands up, exasperated. “And those were theonlytimes, outside of the exchange that saved your life? You are sure?”
“Yes,” Lilac said defensively. “He told me how it works. It has to be a significant amount of blood. He did tell me our exchange might cause some effects that would decrease with our time apart.”
“And were there?” Lorietta pressed.
“Sickness without fever. Restlessness. Sleeplessness. Nausea. Now gone,” she lied. The restlessness had certainly returned, morphing into something else entirely.
“You must be drained a large amount, to the point of unconsciousness but not death, which is a very fine line. Then comes the challenge of the vampire bloodletting into the victim’s mouth, getting them to ingest it. That is why it is always the vampire’schoiceto enthrall a person, one with astute self-control and ample knowledge of what a dying pulse sounds and feels like.” Lorietta eyed Lilac decidedly as Adelaide stared nervously between them and the trees. “A drop, a smear, not even the amount he took from and fed you the other night comes close to what would need to occurto trigger the thrall bond at any level. If it did, there would be thralls running amuck.”
“Plus,” added Adelaide, “the effects of a first-level blood bond would have eased over the course of the three days you’ve spent away.”
Lilac forced her quick, shallow breathing to deepen as she quietly assessed herself. She thought of the inhuman strength that had surfaced when Garin had challenged her upstairs. He’d said it was a result of the volatile combination of his sanguine magic and the arcana still in her body. Was that truly a product of both? Or either? She wouldn’t dare mention it now.
“He entranced me to go to the castle, consider my options, and marry. I did as he asked—exceptmarry,” she clarified as the witches exchanged glances. “I had no proposals awaiting me. After learning such this morning, I made the decision to see him. And now, here I am. His entrancement has dissipated.”
“It seems it has.” Lorietta placed her hand to her lips, as if there were more to say. She refrained.
“But she is still in her bridal glamor. All but the gown.” Adelaide shifted her black knitted robe further onto her shoulders. “It even withstood theGuàiarrow’s enchantment.”
“I have no explanation for that,” Lorietta admitted. “Arcana, even Sanguine magic, is at times uncertain, skirting the rules society pretends makes it predictable.”
“And he hasn’t been sleeping, or even come out of his room to feed from the blood whores?—”
“Donors,” corrected Lorietta.
“That’s right,” Adelaide said. “Blood whoreis what Lilac is to him.”
Lilac didn’t bother responding, couldn’t even listen to their bickering; they grew quiet once they observed the dark fury that surged across her face, the shame and flash of jealousy again at the thought of his fangs in another’s neck turning into panic once more.
In all this time spent talking, she could’ve found him by now. “I’m leaving.” She started in the direction of the carriage.
