Agnes let her lashes flutter shut, sleepy and content. She could have drifted then into her dreams, but she was interrupted by Liuprand, who reached out and grasped her hand.
He held it up to the light, carefully extending all her fingers. The scars that laced her skin were a faded, shimmery blue-white, scarcely visible to the eye. Agnes recalled the event that had caused them only at odd and banal times, when she made to pick up a quill but found it slipping from her clumsy, trembling grip.
Though her left hand was not reduced to complete uselessness, Pliny had not succeeded in restoring most of its more delicate functions. Yet now so many years had passed that she had trained her right hand to do all the tasks she had once done with her left. Her quill raced nimbly across the page again. And the memory, the agony—all banished, like the rest of her ghosts.
But Liuprand did not mean to make her look at the scars. He turned her hand over so that the band of pearls showed around her ring finger.
“It shames me,” Liuprand said softly, “that this is the only thing I have ever given you.”
“You have given me more than can be put to words.”
Liuprand shook his head—it was not what he meant and Agnes knew it. But she also knew that they were edging closer to a precipice of danger. It was not such a simple thing for him to give her a gift. Should courtiers or servants notice that the lady Agnes wore a new brocade or jewels while the princess was bereft, it would cause whispers, which could grow into suspicions, which could grow into threats. Anything Liuprand gave to her would have to be subtle, unnoticeable to the perfunctory eye, or something she could treasure only in the privacy of her chambers or the darkness of the chapel.
Once, Liuprand had been a creature without indulgence, and Agnes had been a creature without greed. But now that they had given in to the desires of their hearts and their flesh, new needs had flowered up within them both, red as poppies, quick as marigolds. Why should a noble lady not want for fine jewelry and fine dresses? Why should a husband not want to lavish such bounties upon his wife?
“I have been thinking,” Liuprand said, twining their fingers, “that there is something I can give you after all. Something that will bring us even greater joy here in the dark. We have created a few small comforts here, but there is more that can be done, with a bit of aid.”
Alarmed, Agnes sat up. “No one else can know of this place. Only Pliny and Waltrude, who keep our secret.”
Liuprand rose, too, pushing himself onto his elbows. “Do you not trust that I can force someone into silence?”
There was a faint prickle of cold on the back of Agnes’s neck. When Liuprand’s arms were around her, she felt safe in their strength, and his largeness was a comfort to her. But when she recalled that moment in the dungeon of the House of Blood, his size and his power, the boons of his Seraphine heritage, felt vaguely sinister to her. It seemed the natural order of the world that everyone who encountered Liuprand should shrink from him. That the people of Drepane should cower before him, just as they had all once succumbed to Berengar’s blade.
“No,” she said, swallowing, “I only mean that…it is a risk.”
“It is not a risk that should trouble your mind.” Liuprand shifted her with near-inhuman dexterity into his lap, her thighs spread about his hips. “I will never let harm befall you. Never, ever. Of all the vows I have sworn, you must believe this one, above all others.”
Slowly, Agnes nodded. “I do.”
Leaning forward, Liuprand kissed her on the mouth, on the throat, and bowed his head to the valley of her breasts. He was stiff again already and slid inside her, and she was so slick that there was only pleasure, heady as summer wine, not even a glancing pain at his intrusion.
Agnes buried her face in his shoulder, muffling her gasps and mewls. In the fevered haze of passion, it was easy to forget, but just as easy to remember, the one gift Liuprand could never give her, no matter how forceful and prevailing his love. No matter how often he filled her with his seed, it would never take root. Never, never. The ghost of her grandmother was gone, but this relic of her cruelty remained.
And yet, despite that, Agnes was not lost to her bitterness and grief.Joy pervaded her. She could scarcely even fathom that Castle Crudele had once felt savage and inhospitable. Now when she walked its halls, shadows fled, phantoms dissolved into dust, and warmth, which radiated from her proudly bragging heart, chased away the coldness of iron and stone. The violence that constructed this great monument was less real than a dream. All because of this—Liuprand panting into the curve of her throat, whispering his devotion between breaths.
Agnes was in love: with the boy who regarded her as mother, with her husband, who had wed her by secret rite, and with her world, which seemed to enclose her in its gentle embrace, like the velvet petals concealing the bud of a rose.
II
Humanity’s Other Inheritance
In the east wing of the castle, there was no silence that could not, at any moment, be broken by a howl or a scream.
These were the discordant, ear-piercing sounds of a child of great need and even greater greed. If she was not attended to at once, her pink-cheeked, cherubic face cracked open with sobs, and tears rushed to the corners of her limpid blue eyes, brightening them further, like the ocean in the blistering midday sun. And if she could not muffle her cries in her mother’s skirts, she grasped handfuls of her own golden hair and bit them, masticating the curls until they were ragged and soaked with spittle. Her name was Meriope, and she was to be married in sixty-six days.
It was not clear, at least to Ninian, whether the small girl understood what fate awaited her. Certainly her mother did not speak of it, at least in so many words. Once, the castle’s tailor had come to their chamber with orders to measure the child for her gown, and the princess Marozia had slammed the door so hard in his face that bits of the wooden frame had splintered. Then without even a glance at Ninian, she returned, expression pale and impassive, to her daughter’s side. They had been in the middle of a story.
This was no dull tale from a book, bloated with noble knights and virtuous maidens, dragons and romances and quests for grails. This was a story that came rolling off Marozia’s tongue, and though she had told it more times than Ninian could count, it was always the same, down to the number of breaths she drew at each pause and which syllables she stressed. The story never, never changed.
Marozia took her daughter onto her lap and kissed her three times: once on each of her soft temples, and then on the top of her head. Meriope wriggled with happiness and anticipation. And Ninian busied herself with the ordinary chores of a handmaiden, but all the while she had her ears pricked, listening.
“The House of Teeth was not always the House of Teeth.” To her daughter, Marozia always spoke quietly, in a voice so sweet it almost tinged the air with the scent of flowers. Ninian breathed deeply of it. “Our ancestors had another name, though it has been lost now. And when the plague came, they were wise enough to shut themselves up in their castle, remote in Drepane’s dark mountains. While the other houses suffered and some ancient lineages were struck wholly from the earth, our venerable and noble house remained such—potent, preeminent.”
Surely Meriope could not really understand such adult words; what did a child even know of mortality? While her mother spoke, Meriope sucked vigorously and noisily on her thumb.
“And then, when the plague had spent itself, there came another age, when the remaining noble houses of the island seized heretofore unknown power for themselves,” Marozia went on. “The conquerors claim this was the magic of death, but really, it was the magic of life. Bodies rose from their graves and walked the earth again. Mothers were reunited with their children; sisters with their brothers; lovers with their lovers. The conquerors will tell you this was a time of darkness. But it was a time of joy.”
Ninian, who was cleaning out a chamber pot, paused in her ministrations to listen more closely.
