Page 14

YVES

My sanguine partner, a genius chess player by the name of Abize Duval, sat across the table from me, his ringed fingers hovering over his queen. “Shall I beat you now?” he asked. “Or should I let you lose a little longer?”

I slumped in my chair, dragging a hand down my face as my attention drifted to the stack of letters sitting beside me. Most of my brothers chose beautiful young women as their contracted blood donors. I, however, always chose someone whom I enjoyed spending time with.

“Let me lose a little longer,” I told Duval.

He hummed, then tapped his queen against my rook and the piece toppled over. I expelled a frustrated sigh. How had I not seen that coming?

“Bold of you to sacrifice your defenses so early,” Duval mused.

“I didn’t sacrifice anything,” I muttered, reaching for my knight and moving it without much thought. Truthfully, I was a decent chess player, but today, I was distracted.

“No,” he agreed. “You failed to protect them. An amateur mistake.” He moved his bishop, cutting off my king’s escape. “Check.”

“Traitor,” I huffed.

“Mm.” Duval rested his chin against his knuckles, studying me with mild interest. He had the features of a man from the Isle of Markal: a wide nose, curious brown eyes, and ochre skin. My grandmother had hailed from the very same island. “I have other matters to attend to besides watching you sulk, Your Grace.”

“Sulk? I’m not sulking.” I shifted a pawn forward in a half-hearted attempt to block him. “So what if I am?”

He sighed. “Is this about Adrien, or your extraordinary harbor rescue?”

“It was not extraordinary,” I said with a dismissive hand wave. “I simply ensured she made it back to shore alive. It’s what any man would’ve done.”

Except any man hadn’t done it. I had.

Duval stared at me with a blank look. “Is that so?”

I couldn’t meet his eye when I said, “Of course.”

“I see.” His attention shifted from me to the stack of letters sitting on the table beside the board. “Well, if you’re going to pretend the harbor rescue wasn’t extraordinary, then tell me about the correspondence you keep side-eying.”

It was a stack full of bad news. Most were prim declines from prospective blood nannies. All, save for the one at the bottom. The heavy letter sealed in black wax stamped with a rose. My brother Bastien’s seal.

It arrived three days ago, and I had not opened it.

I told myself it was because Bastien’s letters were never brief, and I hadn’t the patience for a lecture on duty. The truth was duller and more shameful: opening it meant answering it, and answering it meant being a person who answered things, and I had not been that person in a long while.

Alas, the easier topic to discuss was the nannies. Or my lack thereof.

Adrien had never felt the warmth of a mother’s love. Since birth, he had been fed by an inconsistent stream of women who never stayed on for longer than a few months.

It was true: he’d always been a busy child who tested even the most patient nannies. But now, Adrien’s general disregard for rules and social graces had earned him a reputation amongst the ladies of society. By the stack of polite declines for interviews, I knew I’d reached a breaking point.

“Every last blood nanny has canceled their interview.” I glanced up at him imploringly. “I don’t understand.”

“No?” Duval said. “He put frogs in Henrietta’s bed and pushed poor, sweet Lucile to the ground.”

“It was an accident. He doesn’t know his own strength.”

He leveled me with a glare. “She broke her wrist.”

I ran a frustrated hand through my hair. “Is he busy? Of course. Is he precocious? Undoubtedly. Does he like to hide when it’s time for his lessons? Yes. But he’s a boy. A boy who’s… too much like me. Or at least, how I used to be.” I stared blankly at the chessboard. “I cannot keep asking you to feed Adrien. It’s not how this is supposed to work.”

Duval remained quiet, leaving me to sit in the aftermath of my very infrequent rant about my son. Most days, I kept all of this inside me, letting each fact chase the others around until I inevitably reached for a glass of wine and returned to the balcony to stare blankly at the ocean.

After some time, I started to wonder if maybe the problem wasn’t with the nannies. Or Adrien. But me.