Stepping into my room, the smell hits me first. I glanced over the table by the window, and there was a bowl of stew, still steaming, a large hunk of bread, and a tankard. I owe someone my thanks—probably one of Filippa’s staff. I walked to it, sat down, and sniffed the tankard. It was ale, probably a quick-brew since it was midday. I took a sip; it was refreshing in a way that only an ale can be. I brought a spoonful of stew to my face and blew on it before sticking it in my mouth. It was good, very good, but it’s also very dense. They must have used the meat from a beast that’s at a higher cultivation than I was, not that that was hard.
I was well below the average cultivation of an adult on the surface. That thought brought another to mind. I didn’t actually know at what age someone became an adult for Dhampirs and Weres. They were much longer lived than Humans, but not as long as Elves. Not to mention it could just be a cultural difference. For me though, it was just another thing that made me feel isolated and adrift. I swallowed those thoughts as I shoveled more stew into my mouth.
After lunch, I found myself in the garden. The guest house I was staying in was right by it, so it wasn’t too hard to find my way there. The gardens looked better up close where I could walk amongst the flowers. The mana was intense, but not overwhelming. I could feel the tenderness and care the groundskeeper used when cultivating and arranging them. The mana was denser on the surface than it was in Doranna. I didn’t notice it at first because being surrounded by such high level people has a tendency to throw off one’s senses, but now that I was alone, I could tell. The mana was denser and richer. It wasn’t just the purity of mana coming off the plants in the garden either. Those had their own distinct hum I could isolate easily enough, but it was like the air I breathed and the ground I walked upon was more real.
I wonder if this is why someone my age is normally more advanced in their cultivation.
I found a fountain that had a wide enough lip for me to sit on and took a seat. I allowed myself to breathe for the first time since coming here. Everything had been so intense, so immediate: the need to find Stephanie, dealing with her death, the overwhelming emotions that constantly threatened to drown me. Here there was peace. In and out, I breathed, and slowly, very slowly, I felt some of the knots unravel and the resolve I had mustered in the bath solidified by the tiniest margin.
I can do this. I can make a life here. I can get my revenge and with it closure. And then… something.
*****
The dull droning roar of the water spilling from the fountain has become my everything. Sitting on the ledge of the fountain, my body turned so that I might gaze into the water more comfortably. My eyes have long since gone out of focus as I let the sound of the water crash over me, eroding away everything else. It’s just me, the sound, and mana.
Someone blew into my ear, and I jumped up off the ledge to my feet, heart hammering in my chest. Principessa Ippolita was laughing like a teenager who just pranked their friend. I grabbed my chest and let out a long exhale.
“Gods, your majesty, you scared me.”
“I’m sorry, Jack, but I did call out to you first, several times in fact.”
“You did?” I ask. Had I really been that lost in thought?
“Yes, I did,” she said with a knowing smile. Just like before, there’s that light of mischief and intelligence in her eyes.
I cleared my throat. “Well, to what do I owe the pleasure? Is there a curfew for the garden? I admit, I kind of lost track of time”
“Curfew? No, not at all. I came to fetch you for dinner.”
“Fetch me? Does the principessa of Fortenna have that kind of time?” I asked, somewhat petulantly.
“Oh, carissimo, is someone upset I left them alone today?” she asked teasingly.
“What? No, not even a little bit. No, I’m just—I’m sorry. You’ve been more than kind, more than hospitable. Frankly, it’s a little suspicious how hospitable you’re being, and I don’t mean to—”
“No, I understand. I am sorry, as well. In truth, I am perhaps hovering more than I would for a normal guest, both because you’ve lost someone so dear to you and because you’re a human male. And both of these are things I wish to talk more about over dinner, if you’ll accompany me?”
She made it sound like an invitation, but I knew better. You didn’t tell the nobility no—not as a commoner anyways. Not that I was inclined to, the principessa has been nothing but kind to me, even if her real motivations are elusive. I certainly wasn’t going to take her words as the entire truth. There was something more. I could see it in the melody of her mana even if I couldn’t hear it.
“Of course, do I need to change? Oh, thank you, by the way, for having clothes made. I honestly hadn’t even thought about the things I no longer have.”
“You are very welcome, and no you do not need to change. It will be a private dinner with just us in my solar. Follow.”
She turned and started walking out of the gardens, so I stood and followed after her. She led me out of the gardens and into the main palace. We passed several guards and even more servants. If I understood the principessa’s power correctly, the guards were really just shows of force of her station. Their strength wasn’t actually needed, but it was expected that the principessa of a city would have hundreds of powerful cultivators guarding her estate, even if she could “pulp” anyone within her walls.
Her palace was gorgeous. I didn’t possess the words to describe what I was seeing. There was a deliberate focus on symmetry and geometry. Orderly pillars lined the halls with pilasters on the walls, and lintels above us. We approached what must have been the great hall because it was just beyond a very grand archway. However, we turned and ascended up a beautiful staircase that seemed to be cut into the very marble of the walls. I couldn’t tell if it was some feat of architecture, magic, or both.
When we topped the next floor, Principessa Ippolita led me through a smaller, but no less masterfully designed, archway into a spacious room that somehow felt cozy.
It’s her mana. That’s why it’s cozy. It’s wrapped this room up like a warm blanket on a cold night.
There were large windows on opposite walls, one of which faced the gardens. The other overlooked the main courtyard. There was a long table in the center of the room beneath a gorgeous fresco on the ceiling.
“Sit, I’ll ring Filippa,” she said, interrupting my slack-jawed observations.
I sat down at the long table, close to the end that put me close enough to the window facing the gardens so that I might view them while we ate. They really were a wonderful site. I’d never been much for flowers, but something about the different thrums and symphonies of mana in her garden just captivated me—and in some ways comforted me. Ippolita walked back to the door we came from and placed her hand on the wall next to it. I could feel the pulse of magic, then turned around and came back to the table and sat at the end next to me.
“So you had to hold court this morning, your majesty?” I asked.
Ippolita looked at me with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I did,” she said. “You and your city were the primary topic today.”
“The city I can understand, but me too? I guess word of my arrival through the gate got around quickly.”
“Carissimo, I was getting questions about you before you even left last night. The godsway activating did not go unnoticed. That was the third big thing we talked about. All manner of questions around its activation. If other cities can expect theirs to activate, and so on. Ours, of course, never will, since its sister came crashing down with the rest of your city. The final topic of conversation was Vittoria and her brand new army.”
“I want to fight,” I said, my mouth moving faster than my brain. “Your majesty,” I added sheepishly.
“Of course you do,” she sighed, “But unfortunately Jack, you would be a liability as you are.”
She was interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Ah, that’ll be Filippa with the food.” I felt a pulse of magic from Ippolita and the door opened revealing Filippa pushing a cart with a large plate topped with slices of some kind of meat, root vegetables, and beans with chopped leafy greens mixed in. Lastly, were our drinks. A large tankard of the quick brew, most likely, as well as two empty snifters, a bottle filled with an amber colored spirit, and finally a large wine glass filled with viscous red fluid.
Filippa placed the plate directly in front of me along with the tankard and the glass of blood in front of Ippolita. She then moved the card to the wall by the window closest to us. “Would you like me to stay for glass service, your majesty?”
“No Filippa, that’ll be alright. Please go and get something to eat yourself. I’ll summon you again if I need anything.” Filippa bowed and left, closing the door behind her.
I realized again that I was alone with an extremely powerful vampire. The surreality of the moment sent my brain adrift.
“Please, eat Jack. I’ll be drinking my dinner tonight,” she quipped.
“Was that… was that a joke, your majesty?”
Despite her best efforts a smile was making itself known on her face. “It was. I couldn’t help myself. I so rarely dine with mortals that it’s nice to be able to make vampire jokes.”
I laughed despite myself, “Is that so?”
“Oh yes. I have several of them, though admittedly, most are sexual and perhaps not appropriate for dinner, so I’ll save them for when I can actually get a laugh from you again. You do deserve to laugh, you know. By now, you’ve realized that she wouldn’t want you to be mired in grief.”
The topic sucked a lot of the energy out of me, but I knew from earlier than if anyone could understand me, she could. “I guess when you’ve gone through this as many times as you have, you start to figure out the timings of things.”
“You do, but it was your mana earlier that gave you away.”
I scrunched my brows in confusion.
“Oh caro, I know Fiametta told you. I can feel everything that happens in my dominio, and that includes people’s mana. Certainly, I block everyone out for the most part, but you are not everyone. You are both my guest and… well. My point is, you’re under my care for as long as you are here, so I’m going to be sensitive to your fluctuations. I could feel it earlier when you began to solidify your resolve. And it’s adjacent to something we need to talk about.”
“Invasions of privacy aside, what does my resolve have to do with anything?”
“Eat. I’ll explain while you eat, but you need to eat. I’ve had Filippa prepare you food that is more mana dense than you’re probably used to. You need to eat all of it.”
With that suspicious statement as my guide, I ate. She was right, the food for lunch and this were both much more mana dense than I was used to.
“First, is the military action that I know you wish to be a part of. You can’t.” She raised her hand to forestall my complaints.
“You would be a liability. You are weak, extremely weak. You would need to rise two full steps before I felt comfortable allowing you to participate, and while I expect you to breakthrough soon, it will be longer than we have before your second breakthrough. Humans advance faster than any of the surface races, but they have to. They evolved to, just like the other races in the skies. Down here, where the mana is denser and more pure, yes I expect you to advance quickly, but there simply isn’t enough time for you to reach F by the time Vittoria and her army are here.
“What you do have time for is to break through to E. At that level, I’ll allow you to stand atop the walls and watch, even participate in the defense of the walls if necessary, but I can’t let you go outside the walls. I’m sorry.”
To avoid saying something I might regret, I took a long pull from the tankard. “Surely, you can appreciate my need to liberate Stephanie’s body myself.”
“I can. I do. But Jack, not only are you weak, but you are not properly trained for a military engagement. You would be a distraction to most of the defenders, and you’d need a minder. Just—” She stopped abruptly and sighed. “Please, do not fight me on this. As a favor to me, just let us handle it. I would even have them capture Vittoria so you can kill her yourself, but please, you must stay inside the city.”
I could kill the bitch who raised Stephanie from the dead myself? That was a tempting offer. I sighed deeply and took another big pull from the tankard. “Okay.”
Principessa Ippolita relaxed some of the tension in her shoulders, “Thank you, carissimo, truly. Now for something else unpleasant.”
I choked on my drink mid sip at that. Way to bury the lede. I wiped my mouth as she continued.
“You have two months to break through; by our estimates, she’ll attack during the next ball. Which is plenty of time. I want you to use my cultivation gardens. You walked through them earlier, but there’s an area towards the center I’d have you use instead. It is designed to help those on the cusp of breaking through find the enlightenment they need.
“Also, during these two months, I will need you to learn to dance and take some tutoring from Filippa on etiquette and the cultural differences between our cities.”
“Dancing?”
“Oh, do you already know how? That’ll make the lessons quicker.”
“No, I have no idea how. Why do I need to learn to dance?” I asked.
“Because Jack, I can only shield you for so long. Two months is the maximum amount of time. You can either entertain callers at the guest house, or you can get out in front of it and show up at the next ball in two months.”
“Why do I even have to do any of this? I know men are rare down here, but surely not all men are subjected to this.”
“They aren’t. You, however, are a curiosity as well as human. If I continue to house you, I will have to either marry you, which you aren’t ready for, or allow you to have callers. If you don’t want that, then you could attempt to find housing arrangements yourself, but then you’d have nothing to slow down the storm of people coming to see you.”
I swallowed the last bite and pushed my clean plate to the side. I took the final sip of my quickbrew ale and set the tankard down. Ippolita patiently watched me as I sat back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. I closed my eyes, took a breath, and counted down from 5 during the exhale.
“So let me get this straight. I’m stranded in a city where nothing makes sense. I have practically nothing to my name. I can’t leave because everything beyond that wall is 2-4 steps higher than me—”
“At least that.”
“I’ve just lost the person most dear to me. I can’t even get revenge myself, I have to rely on your beneficence.” She raised an eyebrow at me, but I was on a roll. “And to top it all off, I can’t have time to myself to grieve? I have to entertain an entire city’s worth of noblewomen who are only interested in turning me into a breeding stud?”
Ippolita, Principessa Ippolita, continued staring at me with the single raised eyebrow. “Were you expecting your life to be easy? Was it easy before? We are only a handful of generations away from a point of no return. If you want sympathy from me on this point you won’t find it.” Her expression softened as she continued, “I do empathize with your need for space and your need to grieve. It is why I am proposing you maintain minimal courtly appearances so that I have something to keep them away with.”
I clenched my fists. I wanted to fling everything off this table, hit something, or do anything to express how I felt other than use words. Words just felt so inadequate in this moment. Why couldn’t I just be left alone to grieve my fiancee?
“May I?” Ippolita asked, her right hand extended towards me, palm up. I stared at it briefly like it was a snake preparing to strike, but eventually, I grabbed her hand. Immediately a soothing calm washed over me. Her mana pulses were like a lullaby, a hug, and a comforting memory all at once. “Take a deep breath. That’s it, now let it out.”
I did as she said, and she released my hand. “Thank you. I’m still angry, but I see your point.” I sighed heavily, the acceptance of my situation was slowly settling on my shoulders. It was heavy, heavier than just expectations; this was an obligation. I was part of their society now, regardless of how alien it was to me. I didn’t know what that meant in its entirety, but what Ippolita mentioned was doable. I pushed myself up from my chair.
“Thank you again for dinner, your majesty,” I said, bowing. “If you will excuse me.”
“Jack, caro, please stay for a drink,” she said, arm gesturing towards the cart with the two glass tumblers and decanter of amber liquid.
I turned my head away from her and closed my eyes, not happy with where my mind was going or what I was about to ask. “Can you do that thing with your mana again? If I stay?”
“Of course, carissimo.” Her words were all at once free of judgment and filled with understanding and empathy. She’s been here. She knows how this feels. I walked over to the cart to pour us a drink.
“Did you get enough to eat, by the way? Do I need… did you want?” I didn’t know how to ask if I was supposed to offer her any blood. I know I’m supposed to do the blood tax, and that blood offerings are usually for those in a relationship, but she really had done so much for me, and if she just wanted a glass, I could do that. Besides, we were becoming friends, and I would offer my friends any snacks I had. Why is she looking at me like that?
“D-don’t offer something like that, Jack.” she stammered. Her face was an impressive shade of red. I didn’t know vampires could blush, but there was also a slightly unsettling hunger in her eyes. “That is an extremely private thing.”
“Wait, you mean friends don’t do that? I know all the vampires are nobles, but surely some of their friends, who aren’t vampires, offer their blood?”
“No! It is not something you offer friends! It is for lovers, and only lovers outside of the tax!”
Now, it was my turn to blush. “Oh. I really stuck my foot in my mouth on that one. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insinuate… I’m not…” She raised her hand, saving me from digging myself a deep grave.
“I had plenty of sustenance for my meal. Thank you for the consideration, and we’ll laugh about this after a glass or two of brandy. I think, however, that etiquette lessons might be taking a priority.”