Page 51 of Red

“So, you are my Elizabet’s daughter. I can’t say that I am not disappointed,” she said with a dour sniff. “But then, I should have expected it with Samel for your father.” She circled the bed. “I am Lady Vera. You will address me as such. So that you understand your position, I will tell you that by the laws of Old Wayfairer Citadel, you are my legal ward. As such, I have complete control over your welfare and future.”

Arie swallowed, attempting to wet her dry throat. “Then you have the power to let me go home,” she rasped.

Lady Vera frowned, her face hardening. “Nonsense. The Great Mother has brought you here in recompense for your mother’s disgrace. Thanks to Elizabet’s selfishness, our family has been unable to fulfill our own duties. You have been brought here to take her place.”

Arie shook her head weakly, her anger giving her some brief control over the movement of her neck, though her voice remained thready. “No! I want to go home.”

“You will not! What you will do is come to terms with your fate. You will present yourself accordingly and abide by my rules until you are settled into your own household. Not that I don’t have my work cut out for me. I see nothing of your mother’s elegant beauty in you. Just your father’s crude common stock,” she stated baldly and clicked her tongue as her eyes focused on Arie’s face. “Still, you are not at a total loss—pretty enough, I suppose, for the tastes of some men. All that horrible red hair though, we will have to do something about that.”

Arie stiffened, and her hand twitched at her side. Too weak to move and reach up to her hair as was her first impulse, she eyed her grandmother warily. This was not what she had expected when she’d imagined their meeting so many times as a child. Her mother had made her grandmother sound like a great lady, but Arie didn’t see anything great about the woman in front of her. Just a cold, shrewd, commanding woman who seemed bent on wielding complete control over her.

“In any case, you no longer have a home in that hovel of a sanctuary village. Even if you hadn’t burned down your mother’s house—for which I had to compensate the village leaders for the loss of property they couldn’t claim—you wouldn’t be welcome there among them.” Her expression became more forbidding. “Though, if you are referring to the Ragoru with whom you were found holed up, I refuse to see my own flesh and blood living among those terrible beasts. No, you will remain here and do your duty to your family that your mother refused.”

“I don’t know what duty you’re talking about,” Arie protested.

Lady Vera smoothed her wide, voluminous skirts, and gave her a brittle smile. “By taking your mother’s place, you will be doing what she refused to do and relieving us of the disgrace our family has suffered ever since she fled the Citadel. You will be joining our family, the line of Felicity Anwar as her last living direct descendant, with the power of the First Elite of the Order. And I’m pleased to tell you that his lordship welcomed our proposal. He is most eager for the joining ceremony. In fact, he has already set aside his other wives in preparation for this holy union so that you will have the station of first wife in his household. You should be grateful that you will be taking your mother’s place at his side.”

“Wait, you expect me to marry an absolute stranger whom I’ve never met?” Arie shook her head and gave a humorless laugh. “That’s insane! Not only am I not grateful but I have no intention of joining with the First Elite, or any other man. I’ve already been joined with my mates, and I need to get back to them,” Arie protested as her fingers clawed weakly at the bedding beneath her. “They’ll be so worried.”

“Joined? With whom?” Comprehension slowly came to Lady Vera and eyes widened with horror. “You joined with those beasts, didn’t you? Do you realize what you have done? You have tainted both yourself and our family. I see now that I will have to summon the clergy to see to more extensive purifications. I do not know what insanity or evil spirits have gripped you, but rest assured you will never see the Ragoru again.”

“They are not beasts!” Arie snarled in offense. “They are good males whom I love and will be returning to.”

Her grandmother clucked her tongue. “You seem to be under the mistaken impression that you have a choice. I will not make the same mistakes that I made with your mother. There will be no opportunity for you to sneak off. You will always be chaperoned by guards within and outside these walls. There are currently two stationed outside your door as we speak. No one will have access to you outside of whom I allow until the day you are properly joined. Afterward that responsibility shifts to your spouse, and he can deal with you as he sees fit. Frankly, as you do not have the benefit of Elizabet’s education nor are you in possession of any skills or social graces by which to recommend you, you should be thankful that the First Elite Edwar even wants to join with you. But this will be happening, girl, so you might as well find peace with it and save yourself a lot of misery.”

“No!” Arie snarled, her body twisting helplessly in the bed despite the rage filling her. She understood far too late why her mother had left and never returned. She would have jumped from the bed and run as far and fast as she could if she had been physically capable of it at that moment. Instead, all she could do was glare with every ounce of fury in her being at the woman standing over her. “You cannot keep me here against my will. I don’t care if the guards follow me to the ends of the earth—I am going to leave this place.”

Her grandmother smirked and shook her head. “Now that would be an interesting trick, all things considered. Tell me… how do you feel? Not well, are you? I’m afraid you still have the sedative in your blood. And that’s not bound to change. For your safety, you will be kept mildly sedated while you are in this house. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, so please, for your own wellbeing, don’t attempt to do anything foolish.”

“Why?” she croaked. “Why are you so determined to do this to me? If I am the last direct descendant, what does it even matter?”

Her grandmother became nothing more than a shadow as a fog descended over her vision. She could hear her footsteps, however, as she stepped forward.

“You may be the last direct descendant through the maternal line, which provides you with a sort of protection of status, but the welfare of the rest of our family depends on it. My children from my first marriage, though they inherited much through my husband legally adopting them, need the connections and wealth that you will provide for them. Your mother’s brothers and sisters, and their children need it. I need it. Ours is an old and distinguished family in this Citadel, but our affluence is nothing compared to the family of the First Elite. You will open that up for all of us with your joining.”

“So, you seek to use me?”

Vera chuckled, the sound worn and raspy like she seldom bothered to laugh, yet there was no real humor in it. “My dear girl, you will soon learn that we all use one another. It is the way of life in the Citadel.”

With a rustle of skirts, her grandmother turned and walked away, her steps brisk as she made her way back to the door. Arie blinked, her vision momentarily clearing just enough to see her grandmother slip a narrow hand into the pocket of her dress and pull out a key. Panic swelled in her breast.

The crazy old woman was going to lock her in the room!

Arie struggled once more to push herself off the bed. Desperation gave her just enough energy that, though her feet felt heavily weighted from the drugs, she was able to roll off the bed stumble toward the door with the assistance of the furniture. The room spun around her, but Arie swallowed back her nausea and rushed forward on her wobbly legs. It was not enough. The door cracked open, providing nothing more than adequate space for Vera to slip out and give Arie a glimpse of the green coats of the guards before swinging shut again.

The lock clicked, the sound loud in the silence of the bedroom, as Arie collided with the door. Her fingers scrambled against the doorknob, turning it in vain as her legs trembled with the quickly waning energy keeping her upright. With a frustrated shriek she released the metal knob as her legs finally crumpled from under her. She hit the floor hard, sending pain shooting through her. Beyond that, everything felt wrong. Her body was strangely scented in whatever astringent chemical she’d been washed in, and even her comfortable leather dress had been replaced by a loose linen nightgown that billowed down to her ankles.

There wasn’t a trace of her life with her mates.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, but eventually she forced herself to slowly crawl back to the bed, dragging herself weakly across the floor. No matter how she begged for help, she didn’t receive a response. The guards might as well not have been there. She considered just laying where she was at but changed her mind after what seemed to be some time dragged by. If she was going to lie in a miserable heap, she figured that she might as well move back to the bed where she would be far enough away from the door to be able to react to any potential threat coming through it. Pulling herself back over the side of the bed proved to be more of a challenge than she expected, however. After three failed attempts, she was forced to lay there on the cold, hard, merciless floor until the door cracked open sometime later to admit a maid. Her soft exclamation of surprise filled the room, followed by the rush of her footsteps across the floor as she hurried to Arie’s side. It was only with the maid’s help that she finally flopped back onto the cool sheets. She lay there, blinking back her tears as the woman went about her work, carrying on a casual one-sided conversation as she exclaimed over all the nice things in the room that Arie had been given and her good fortune to be marrying First Elite Edwar. It was a relief when she finally left, freeing Arie to sob into her pillow, hating how weak and helpless she felt.

Eventually, she rolled tiredly onto her back and wiggled her way back into position until she was propped once more on the numerous pillows piled against her headboard. Arie glanced out the nearby window, curious if it offered her any opportunity to escape but was greeted by the sight of a steep drop from a tower room high above the gardens. The view was pretty, and the rich perfume of flowers that drifted through the window bathed her senses in their sweet scent, but it did little to soothe her. Instead, the roses made her eyes sting with tears as it conjured Rager to mind talking about his mother’s roses around their den. With tears tracking once more down her face, Arie curled into the plush bedding and cried herself to sleep.

It was several hours later, marked by the evening sun shining through her window, when a purple-robed priest of the Order came into her room. His dark eyes squinted at her from a round, cherubic face. Arie imagined he would make a passing model for one, if cherubs were beady-eyed, sour little individuals with a penchant for using too much hair grease. With the worst of the drug fog slowly retreating, and her strength trickling back in, she at least felt better equipped to deal with him though she eyed the guards who stepped in after him. Thankfully, they didn’t approach any closer, Instead, they took position at either side of the door, watching silently as he opened a bundle and began to lay various tools out.

Arie attempted to lean forward to get a better look but immediately recoiled at the cruel appearance of the various metal instruments and pinchers. Next to them, he placed a metal brazier on the table and filled it with coals. These he immediately set fire to and watched the flames with a certain solemn satisfaction, never once saying a word to her. When nothing but hot coals remained in the brazier, he threw on a number of pungent herbs and resins as he chanted under his breath, and a plume of smoke coiled up from the coals, filling the room.

Arie coughed at the terrible sting in her lungs. The smoke was so thick she could no longer see more than a few inches in front of her. The priest and the guards were concealed, so it was little wonder that she recoiled in surprise when the priest, still half-obscured, stepped forward out of the smoke. In his hands, he held a long, thick needle, the tip slightly hooked. A cruel smile twisted his lips as he approached her.

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