Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series) (17 page)

“When Jania fled the Sibylim, she made it public that the Swan had been tampered with and that Calira’s oracles had been struck out. Angry as she was with the Council and the Sibylim, she blamed your mother too, and me, for bringing this upon her. Jiordano called for Jania’s exile for breaking her vow, but she found allies in others who mistrusted the Council or the Swan. Before they could be banished, they left and founded Milandor high in the mountains.”

Another sigh escaped her lips, and she sat back in the chair. “For many centuries, I know that Jania regretted her decision. I know she blamed your mother for it and me for bringing the parchment to her. She has even tried to convince me the parchment I found was a lie and that it is her I am destined to love. But I know it is not so.

“After your father’s death and your birth, your mother begged permission to return to Silvenhall. She was worried for you, Amedeo. She wanted to keep you safe. I was told she begged Daneo to forgive her.”

“But he would not.”

“No. He was too proud. He refused her, as she had once refused him—or at least, that is how he saw it by then. All could see that he loved her still. Perhaps, as the Swan had predicted, they might have found peace and love together ... had he forgiven her. They might have lived happily, despite everything. Instead, Daneo turned away from her, and Jiordano mated her as a ... political union.

“Silvenhall and Dusindel had fallen out some centuries earlier. Jiordano maintained that Dusindel would return to the treaty and to the Council if he was granted your mother’s hand—the fallen former high priestess of Silvenhall. United once more, Silvenhall and Dusindel would then march on Milandor and overthrow it.

“But so many had joined Milandor; it was too strong. Milandor won the war and a truce was called. Jania and her lover Lilyana, Proxim of Milandor, were able to buy a seat on the Council of Paleon. Jiordano has never forgiven Jania.”

“I have never cared for him,” I growled.

“Jania told me that he promised Calira, when their daughter was born, that he would take both of her children to Silvenhall.” She hesitated, as if considering what else to tell me.

“Some go so far to suggest that he...” She cleared her throat. “That he was glad Calira birthed a daughter.” Gray eyes watched my face carefully. “He brought Kisana here, to the Crèche at Silvenhall, when she was a babe. His words at the Council were rumored to be, ‘Your Silvenhall bitch whelped. Do with her pup what you will.’”

“He did not grieve for her,” I said. “I have known it all my life.” But still my fists balled at my sides to hear it. “I hope he was kinder to Kisana as she grew.”

“He grew to be a father to her, of sorts, but it was Daneo who watched out for her. Perhaps he felt guilty. Or he saw in her your mother’s beauty. When she came of age to nest, he bade Samea to falsify the Swan, to bind their names together; that was how corrupt it had become. So you see, when I tell you Silvenhall was once happy, how unhappiness spread like a cancer among us after your mother’s exile.”

I nodded, still processing her words and angered by the Council’s superiority. These were the Cruxim that had judged me.

“More Cruxim lost faith after Jania left, fewer joined the Sibylim and more fled to Milandor, and even more remained childless. What could the Council say about it? Daneo and Jiordano were complicit. They were Proxim with a seat at the Council table, yet both had falsified the Swan. If Councilors could tinker so easily with the Sibylim’s oracles, erase them, create new unions, why shouldn’t others ignore them and flee to Milandor where they might drink Haemil, love whom they liked, and never hunt? Many, like Jania, chose the love of their own kind, some so they might never lose their lover to childbirth, others for love alone. Within centuries, Milandor was the strongest of the Crèches.”

“If one decides to clip the Swan’s wings, to join Milandor, or to join the Sibylim, what happens to their intended?”

“The betrothal is dissolved. Both intendeds remain unwed.”

“Neither is betrothed again.”

Skylar shook her head. “No. Not until Daneo and Jiordano anyway. Sometimes, the jilted party leaves the Crèche for another, out of shame. Some secretly hate the intended for eternity. Some secretly love them anyway but remain chaste, such as Shintaro and Eresia. Some take a vow themselves and remain celibate in the service of the Sibylim or the Aspis—the vanguard of our strongest warriors. But most remain alone—or did, until Jiordano and Daneo.”

“That is what I am,” I said. “One destined to be alone.”

I felt her hand on my arm, the warmth of it. “No, Ame. It is as He says: ‘You are never alone.’” She prized open my clenched fists to place the parchment on my palms. “Read it,” she whispered.

The whisper of the pages filled the space where Skylar’s voice had been. All I saw was a line of images, wedge-shaped and all running together. The tiny illustrations seemed to dance upon the page, scribed in red ink or blood—I could not tell.

“I cannot read it,” I confessed.

“It is cuneiform.” She stroked a slender finger across the page. “We are taught to read it in Cascadia.” She took my hand nearest to her and gripped it firmly. “Do not read it with your eyes. Read it with your mind.” She drew my fingers down the page.

I felt a charge, like a buzz or a bolt of lightning from the page, and my dark eyes met her pale ones.

They were blank.

“Or with your heart,” she said, and broke my gaze. She guided my hand, steadying it until a voice in my head began to read.

It was a jumble of Cruxim names, first and last, and only those of the Crèches were repeated at each marriage of names. The Crèche names spilled through my mind as I searched for names more familiar:
Silvenhall, Luminil, Milandor, Argentil, Palindil, Selindor, Hiltenhall, Kindamor, Dusindel, Willendel.

When I came to the words “
Skylar Emmanuel, Silvenhall — Amedeo Aeternus,”
I stopped.

“You are my betrothed,” she whispered.

A shock passed through me, and then a nervous laugh sprang from my throat. “It must be wrong.”

“You are not the only one who thinks that. That is why the Council tried to destroy it. Except that...”

“What is it?” I wrenched my hands away.

Skylar took her hands into her lap, examining the neat nails, the perfect slender whiteness of the fingers. “The Swan was never wrong. Not until your mother...”

I scanned the list above and below. “Aeternus,” I ran the word over my tongue. “Is there another Crèche?” My thoughts lingered on the plaques I had seen above the chairs in the council chambers, searching for memory of the Crèche.

I caught a flash of some thought, unspoken behind her eyes.

“Read it again,”
her mind said.
“But first there is more you must know.”

“
Your sister belongs to Silvenhall,” Skylar explained, “because so did your mother before she was banished. Male Cruxim fledge in the Crèche of their departed father, females in the Crèche of their mother.”

“If my Crèche is Aeternus, then take me there.”

She hung her head
.
“There is no Aeternus.”

My thoughts were confused. “To which Crèche do I belong then?”

Sympathy made her voice catch a little. “To none, Amedeo. Male Cruxim belong to their father’s Crèche.”

It took me a minute to understand her words.

“Your father, Lorluno Aeternus had no Crèche.”

“My father was not a Cruxim...?” I felt dizzy. Sick. 

Skylar eyes remained on her own hands, twisting in her lap.

“My father was a mortal?”

“He is a long time dead, Amedeo.”

“Nothing but mortal dust,” I said bitterly. I ground the words out through a clenched jaw as I pushed the chair back from the table.

Skylar’s eyelashes were wet with tears. “Do not think yourself alone.” She put her hands on my arm. “You have me, should you want me.”

I was still trying to process her words, and I shook her off. “The parchment is wrong.” My hands trembled where I folded them across my chest.

At that moment, I longed to be free of the place. If I had no Crèche, then let me be free to follow my regrets. If Skylar wanted my heart, let her find it in the ocean’s depths ... or in a crumble of ash. In a silver cross ... or in a golden tomb.

“The oracles were never wrong, Amedeo,” she said. “Never in a thousand moons was a Sibyl wrong until your mother met your father. All others who were betrothed before her were betrothed for life.”

“Life!” I sprang to my feet. “What life? A life shared until another life usurps it—and that the life of a child. There can be no happy ending when a child kills its own parent, when a son does not know the love of his father, or a daughter the love of her own mother. That is not eternal love. That is not Cruxim lore. That is cruelty.”

Her hands knotted together in her lap. “Yes. It is our Crux: our cross to bear.” I could hear hurt in her whisper. “But do not fear it. I will not bid you nest with me if you do not wish to.”

“That is courteous of you.” My tone was cruel; I hated myself for it.

Rain threatened in her eyes, and her tears were salt rubbed into the raw wounds of my past. Sabine’s face sprang to my mind: her fair curls tumbling around me and her tail extended, her breath warm with lust while I denied her, too, the consummation of our love.

“This is wrong,” I said again, pacing at the front of the hall. “A lie!” I snatched the parchment off the table and threw it to the floor. “I will bear no sons,” the words came hard from my mouth, “nor daughters. My only offspring is death.”

I tore at my shirt, revealing the wickerwork of scars that crossed my chest. “Keep your Crux. My cross was put there by disbelievers, by Gandler and Beltran, and by others who would torture me with their humanity.”

When she spoke again, the undercurrent of hurt had swept away her calm. “There is a debt we owe, Cruor. While Vampires still live to remind us of our wrongdoings, we will suffer the burden of childbirth, and our immortality will suffer with it.” Her tone grew strident. “Don’t you see, Amedeo? They must all die if we are ever to live happily, you and I. And only one among us can defeat them without fear of death. Only one among us can survive the Haemacra. And that one is you, Cruor.” She bowed her head to me.

My laugh was a gurgle. “That is what this is: to be free of your own pain, you would turn me away from mine.”

“No!” she cried. “Keep your pain if it pleases you so. I only offer you my love!”

But I had already turned away from her toward the obscurity of night.

T
he tree at my back was uncomfortable; its bark scraped my wings, but I made no effort to move away.

This was what they had whispered about, Kisana and Skylar. This was why Skylar had followed me. No doubt it was also why she had made no move to help Joslyn or Sabine and why Daneo had warned her that I was not for her. I ran rough hands through my dark curls and over the planes of my face—the high cheekbones, the jut of jaw, the lips that had kissed Joslyn and Sabine, that had sucked the life from Danette and had drawn blood from Evedra. It was as if it were a stranger’s face.

Skylar had offered me her love and had asked for mine, but it was too late. I loved her already, what little good it did me. Or her. My love would kill her, as assuredly as it had killed Joslyn, as certainly as it had destroyed Sabine. If we loved, loved truly, then I knew that I would give Skylar what she wanted—a child—and in doing so, I would lose her, or lose myself.

“We always lose ourselves in love.”

I searched for Skylar, or for Kisana or for another Cruxim who might have intercepted my thoughts, but none was there.

The Maker?
I wondered. A breeze through the angel trumpets set the flowers nodding in agreement.

“Why burden me with such pain, and Sabine also, if my love for her was not real?”
I asked him. “
If you knew I would betray her heart?”

“Many loves exist. Many things are real and many false.”

“Tell me then, is it true—the Swan, Skylar? How should I know?”

But all I heard was the whisper of the wind. All I saw were the nodding white petals.

He was gone.

I longed to ask Sabine what she thought of all of this herself—Crèche and creed and fate—but even if she had been there, I could not. It would have destroyed her. I had seen the jade glare of her jealousy. And now that I had betrayed her, what friendship could I count on? I knew what my betrayal meant: I did not deserve Sabine or her love.

Nor did I deserve Skylar’s.

The thought stole into my mind that I should leave Silvenhall forever; however, I was yet to discover the riddle I sought, and doing so would force Skylar’s exile as well.

I could not hurt her.

I had already hurt her.

I had hurt them both.

Many things are real and many false.

The glow I had emitted in Skylar’s arms had been real, undeniably. And the feeling of longing—or was it belonging?—real also. I put my head in my hands again, all anger faded to despair.

Skylar had not spoken out of self-interest but out of truth. The Swan. The light. The hammering of my heart.

But if all were true, why would the Council and the Sibylim have tried to keep us apart? Why exile me for my mother’s crimes, why falsify records if it meant going against their own beliefs and against a union their own holy book and priestesses had sanctioned? Simply to punish my mother? Had they hated her that much?

I watched a procession of mountain deer wind down the path towards me, their dappled hides rippling in the sunshine. The orphan tagged along at the back. I remembered Skylar’s gentleness with it, and with me, and her tears on my arm as I had held her, glowing head to toe with love for her. I would have stayed in her arms forever in that moment, at the expense of all else, and I knew it. My heart seemed no longer a place apart, a cold country, but a hearth that warmed a nest here in Silvenhall.

I had to apologize, but what could I say to Skylar after my actions in the hall? I had been a fool.