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Forêt du Brocéliande, 1532
Laurent Beaulieu took solace in the ancient giants of Brocéliande. There were centuries of secrets hidden within its thick greenery, and what he was about to do—with whom he was about to meet—would become one more.
Were another human or creature to see him, they would find themselves turning away, forgetful. If they were difficult, he would finish them off. Though uncharacteristic for him these days, he’d do anything necessary to keep his coven from learning he had agreed to a conference on mortal terms.
At least for the time being.
The fog of early twilight had rolled in, nestling among the dense foliage. Laurent pivoted, spotting the figure slinking toward him. He‘d sensed her first—a slow cadence of measured footfall, the aromas of patchouli and stifling musk filling the air.
The unlikely pair met, at her request, at the edge of a hillside glade overlooking a coniferous expanse of green—the sprawling High Forest, the western half of Brocéliande. Behind them, beyond the moor, the red sun bled into the Celtic Sea.
Laurent ran his tongue smoothly over his teeth as the woman halted ten paces away and began to speak. He listened to her ludicrous proposal, shifting in the shadows to avoid even the faintest rays of dwindling sunset. Finally, when she finished, he could only stare.
“Well?” The woman glowered at him.
His brows knitted together above his deep-set eyes. He’d . . . misheard her.
That was it.
She glared at him with crossed arms. “You heard me, Daemon,” she said, suddenly advancing and eyeing him with such disdain that she could have spat on him.
In the letter requesting Laurent’s company, Vivien Le Tallec had never revealed what she needed to discuss. Before this moment he didn’t even know what this woman looked like and didn’t know what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this, and it certainly wasn’t her. The one standing before him, the Duchess of Brittany, stood tall, nearly matching his height and her shoulders squared. Her too-prominent nose made her resemble an irate swan, and the eyes above it pierced through his soul.
To keep the space between them—why had he come hungry to this meeting?—Laurent retreated; a twig crunched beneath his foot, and he startled.
“My goodness, relax.” She barked a cruel laugh, waving a hand at the surrounding trees. “I’ve come alone, as promised.”
He paused, inhaling and sensing she was telling the truth. There was no one around for leagues. There were no guards concealed in the brush, no other human to come to her rescue if things went awry.
His fingers flexed ever so slightly. She might have thought her position made her untouchable. Social status accounted for nothing in the woods; he was ten times as strong as her husband’s soldiers, and thrice as quick as their steeds. And this human was wed to the man whose family had hunted Laurent’s coven—and many more—over the decades.
The duke deserved to learn the kind of slow, agonizing death he could offer her.
But the consequences of such revenge would undo years of work toward what he hoped was a better future for his kind. He would not touch a dainty hair on the woman’s head.
Maybe she somehow knew this, too. Or, perhaps she was just that bold.
And beneath her blonde locks, her neck—he couldn’t help but notice—was as elegant as the rest of her. He absently licked his lips and ignored the growl in his belly.
Vivien sauntered towards him, daintily lifting the hem of her scarlet gown. Her teardrop earrings glimmered in the evening haze, their crystals casting a rainbow of freckles onto her plunging neckline.
Laurent forced himself to blink twice. Her sudden proximity was overwhelming.
“Madame Le Tallec,” he replied warily.
Her eyes narrowed into slits as she leaned in, voice barely above a whisper. “All I am asking is that you do what you do best. It shouldn’t be difficult, given the likes of you.”
Laurent shut his eyes to focus on the trickle of the nearby stream as he attempted to process the sheer absurdity of her request. Much like her bellicose husband, the woman was mad.
“Don’t be daft.” Her shrill voice shattered his thoughts, and a moment later she lunged forward to grip his vest. “Kill the princess. Drown her in her tub. Have her fall upon her dinner cutlery, since she can’t seem to put them down. You’re good at covering your tracks, and I will make sure you are never caught.” She stopped herself with effort and exhaled, as if attempting to smooth out her wildness. “You are more… capable, more poised, than your boy, are you not?”
Laurent frowned. His boy? When it registered to him just whom she referred to, he suddenly laughed. The sound took him aback just as it did her.
“You mean my charge,” he said, his voice thick with amusement, “whom your husband and his men won’t leave alone?”
“He taunts them.” A delicious, irked vein bulged on her forehead.
Laurent fought an incredulous grin. “He would be more suited for your little job than I, but I encourage you to ask him directly.” She wouldn’t make it out of that meeting alive.
Vivien scowled, ignoring his counter. “You have my word, Daemon. I don’t care how you make it happen but I want her gone.”
As gently as possible, Laurent pried the woman’s fingers from his clothing. With his fists clenched at his sides, he took a long step back. “I cannot kill her.”
Her cold glare broke as she snorted. “Then get one of your kind who can.”
His jaw tightened as thoughts flickered through his head. It was one thing for a Breton noble to ask a creature to kill a low-class harlot. He had many associates willing to do so for whatever meager fee thrown their way. But it was ludicrous for anyone, even the duchess, to expect him to execute the future monarch. And wasn’t the Le Tallec son promised to the girl? He at least knew that if such a union occurred, it might benefit the mortal kingdom, but the societies of Brocéliande would have problems much bigger than starvation and societal alienation. The very creatures who had finally stopped attacking humans in an attempt to get those humans to hold up their side of the treaty.
He searched for some sign of delusion in her eyes, in her pulse. But her heartbeat remained slow, steady, her irises wide as they locked on him. She was dead serious. “Why would you want us to regress in our progress? Why could you possibly want this?”
Vivien sighed, shrugging dramatically, her breath billowing into the cold. “We can’t have a successor with her… abnormality taking the throne. We won’t.”
Laurent blinked. There it was.
In his shock over her request, he hadn’t had the chance to put it together.
Those like him and of different kin were bonded over an ancient, inhuman tongue—the common tongue of magic blood. Whether this magic was unique to the enchanted forests of Brittany or extended to the rest of the world was something he had pondered, and intended to explore one day when resources weren’t so scarce, perhaps one day when things felt less volatile. The fact remained that the Trécesson girl was the only known human who could speak it; if one existed in other arcane empires or across seas, he in his several years of light research had not heard of them.
When the news of her ability had spread a decade ago, it caused an enormous uproar in the towns, just short of storming the castle. Laurent remembered the bitter crowds, the apricot-pelting abuse of
the couriers and town criers, halted only by King Henri’s loose threat of imprisoning anyone who got caught in their dungeon.
For Laurent and his kind, the announcement had had the opposite effect.
The sun had finally dipped past the trees, projecting rosy pinks that melted into violet twilight. Laurent’s vision only sharpened with the dark encroaching. A distance off, he could make out the limestone towers barely peeking out from the canopy. The Château de Trécesson sat at the southwestern corner of the High Forest, a sprawling keep and fortress, heavily warded to keep creatures out.
“Vivien.” Laurent placed his next words carefully. “Killing her and enacting the next ruler after her is not in my personal interest at this time.”
Vivien spun away from the sunset, sneering. “How is killing her not in your interest?”
He ran his palms down the front of his vest, smoothing out where it had bunched under her grip. “Nothing has changed, even when we have.” His voice stayed steady despite a building rage at the images that flashed before him of desperate creatures being shot at for appealing to the king for aid. He had worked and wheedled relentlessly over the past two decades to limit Korrigan mischief in Paimpont, to keep ogres away from the villagers, and to teach his own coven to remain inconspicuous and responsible with feeds. Shapeshifters had been advised to live in solitude, and the Fair Folk at least kept to themselves.
He attempted to keep the animosity from his voice but couldn’t quite manage. “The creatures in this forest don’t deserve to be punished any more than they’ve already been, and I refuse to do anything that would further ruin our standing. I refuse to harm the princess.” There was no need to mention that a princess who could speak to his kind, even those who could not learn the human tongue, may one day see a reason to lift her father’s law.
Vivien’s scowl morphed into a brief grin before fading into nonchalance. But her eyes gleamed brightly. All she said was, “For a vampire, you’re very level headed.”
“I’ve been around a long time. Much longer than you. I’ve seen what this kingdom needs.” And it isn’t your son was what he wanted to say. But he didn’t. “Her arcana lingua will one day prove useful.”
Her face twisted in irritation. “Her what? Do you mean her Daemon tongue?”
“I mean her arcana lingua.” Even if undocumented, these abilities had proper names; he swallowed his frustration. He shouldn’t expect a human like her to try to grasp the complex nuances of the wicked wood. And this was why the kingdom needed the very girl she wanted dead.
A moment of silence passed before she spoke again. “And when the people revolt at her leadership?”
Laurent shrugged. “The throne is rightfully hers. There is no other heir. She will become queen, whether they like it or not.”
Something in what he’d said made her lip twitch, despite her mask of calm.
“You forget the things humans are capable of when they are fearful. But perhaps there is another option.” She tapped her ruby lips. “The princess turns twenty years old in five days’ time, on the day of her ceremony. She has everything in the world she could want, except her public’s trust. But if she were to be rid of the Daemon tongue by the time of her father’s official proclamation, on her accession day…”
Laurent’s eyes narrowed. She was negotiating with him. “How could we possibly do that?”
“Not we, but she,” she replied, spinning to face him head-on. She snapped her fingers, and a blinding flash threw the forest into stark relief. Laurent rubbed his eyes and blinked the remnants of light away. An ethereal blue orb the size of an apple floated inches from Vivien’s face. By light of the Will-O-Wisp, she scribbled onto a piece of parchment that sat in the palm of her hand. After slipping the folded parchment into a palm-sized envelope, she whispered something to the specter, shot it a sharp look, then nodded. The forest spirit bobbed coherently, then soared up and away through the treetops.
She glanced at him. “I’m alerting a local witch who goes by the name Ophelia of the unfortunate circumstance Miss Trécesson finds herself in, and that she might expect a visit from the princess within the next few days.”
Laurent’s brows lifted in recognition. Ophelia was a transplant, willing to do both human and Daemon bidding in the town in order to afford her funny little habits. She was powerful, and there were many magicfolk who both envied and marveled at her for fearlessly using forbidden magic. The location of her cottage gave her unique access to volatile ingredients from the faerie-infested Low Forest of Brocéliande.
Legal magic, or at least the kind those witches supposedly would not be prosecuted for, was useful in a pinch. The kind for removing tea or blood from garments. For flourishing one’s crops. But Laurent had never heard of the kind of magic capable of purging an entire language from a person. Such a spell or potion would surely require the very type of dark ingredients and magic prohibited. She might even refuse to do such an enchantment, since she could be executed for performing it.
But the fact remained that Laurent wanted the princess to retain her ability. He relished the idea of a monarch who would possibly be open to forging a mutually beneficial relationship with Brocéliande. Though if it would alienate her enough from her own people so that she would be unable to win their loyalty, as Vivien suggested… Such an outcome would not be beneficial to his cause either.
Vivien was now folding up a second note and sliding it into another envelope. “And I’ll have a sparrow deliver this to the castle courier before dawn.” She twirled it between her fingers as Laurent eyed her warily. “A forged note to the princess from the witch. An offer to rid her off her Daemon tongue.”
After a beat of stunned silence, Laurent exhaled. “You expect her to make this journey alone, with no magic to aid her?” No creature would dare attack the princess in the castle, but anyone—royal blooded or not—who freely entered Brocéliande alone would be
considered free game, law or no. “It will be extraordinarily dangerous.”
“Without a doubt.” Vivien approached him until she was just within reach, then ran her nails along the leather trim of his vest. “But you know as well as I, nothing extraordinary comes free of sacrifice. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Her glacial eyes challenged the embers in his. She suddenly reached up to tenderly brush her thumb across his cheek.
He kept his mouth shut in case his fangs dared sprout.
“One more thing,” she whispered, gripping his lapel with one hand.
Laurent swallowed, his senses overwhelmed by her closeness.
“I will say this about you. You are brave to defend one of our kind like that, especially the heiress apparent. I fear her godforsaken talent will only lead to her own downfall, while you hope it can save your monsters.”...
