Page 5 of Mortdale

There was a slight scent of cloves and something cold and earthy in the air, fighting hard to linger against the myrrh incense lit by the window.

“Willow,” Agnes greeted, pointing to a green velvet armchair next to the crackling fireplace. Its mantlepiece and the rest of the room were dressed in dried hawthorne and decorated with braided straw baubles for the Sunstead festivities which overlapped with the Bloodletting—the ceremony where a sacrifice was exsanguinated to refill the Blood Chalice. “Apologies for drawing you out of work so suddenly.”

“Oh, no, I needed to get my legs moving,” I offered, pinching and fiddling with the edge of my worn-out skirts. “Have I been called out of Meridian?” Occasionally, the sailors travelling up from the Far Isles and the Down Continents hired Agnes’s services to inspect their men before they were let onto land, to make sure none were under the enchantment of a siren. I was often the first to be recruited in such pursuits when there was nothing for me to pull apart. And I had to admit, there was no better sight than a dazzled man with scurvy and a mouthful of cavities attempting to rob a cobbler, holding a silk slipper to the cobbler’s throat. No finer way of using chaos than to make a fool out of a man.

“Nothing of that matter,” she said, filling a cup of tea for me. “This is for something far more concerning.”

I blanched. Had someone finally noticed Ronnie’s presence? Was she going to ask me to perform an exorcism on him? Swallowing hard, I asked, “Concerning?”

“It’s about the Blood Pact.”

Tea spilled from the sides of my teacup, filling the saucer to the brim. “What…what does that have to do with me?”

The Blood Pact. An oath taken to preserve the sanctity of peace between the witches and the vampires; two species who’d been at terrible odds since the beginning of time. Every year at Sunstead, Meridian fed a witch to Mortdale to honour this ancient agreement between our kingdoms. That witch would be wed to a vampire, and would honour their night code. Blood be their kin. Blood be their God. Utter blasphemy considering we were like oil and water. They despised our traditions, our ways of life, the ways we worked to preserve life, our craft, our sciences. Just the same as we despised theirs. Their hunger was sacrilegious to us as our magic was sacrilegious to them, a thing of the devil—though this very particular devil of the Beyond had never stepped forward to claim either. But the blood of witches ensured the strength of the vampire bloodlines. Pure vampire children didn’t live long and were riddled with weakness and illnesses that claimed them young. And besides humans, no other species was particularly fond of being fondled by a cold-blooded mammal, let alone carrying their very own parasite. Though I was sure vampires were more than happy to procreate with humans alone, the more powerful the witch, the stronger the bloodline the vampire would sire. So, the high and noble of Mortdale all lined up and joined a waitlist for the next witch-bride offered at Sunstead. In return, a vampire was offered to us as a sacrifice, drained in the Bloodletting Ceremony to fill the Blood Chalice and give us another year free from its curse. The debate on the willingness of the sacrifice was…questionable. It wasn’t much of a secret that Mortdale was dumping one of their many death row prisoners on us—but no love was lost there, and we still got to survive another year without the threat of extinction.

When Lady Death had brought the Blood Chalice to Epiron from the Beyond, she’d entrusted it to the Holy Mother. But many, many years ago now, Katya Lovegood, the Holy Mother at the time, had lost it to her lover—who’d turned out to be nothing more than a petty thief who’d tried to sell it to the highest bidder. Which had angered Lady Death, and the Sunstead Curse had ensued. Plagues had spread, turning chaos into poison, magic into disease, until Katya had found it and refilled the cup with blood—and that was how the yearly Bloodletting had begun being celebrated.

They called these victims of the chalice sacrifices made in the name of survival. Selfless sacrifices to honour life. But before the pact with the vampires, witches had been offering payment, blessings, and magic to the poor in exchange for a sacrificial soul a year—a life for as little as a bag of grain, for as little as a bottle of medicine. Sacrilegious offerings that were tainting the earth, our faith, our very honour. Yet no one questioned it. No one questioned everything. It was how things were. It was how things would always be. I wondered for how much longer could we stare at ourselves in the mirror and not see the disfigurement, the stains, the horror leaking from our pores.

“As you know,” Agnes said, dramatically landing on her emerald velvet sofa across from me, “Sunstead is in a few hours. The Blood Pact requires honouring before we can drain the vampire for the Bloodletting.” She ran her fingers back and forth along the long scar that started just below her neck and disappeared down her bodice. “Tragic. So very tragic, my dear Willow.”

Witches who were to be offered in the Blood Pact were groomed by Agnes from a very young age. They were given the title of a red maiden. Offered valour, and a cosy upbringing full of richness and rest while they prepared for their new life. A red maiden would be taught about vampiric family customs and traditions. Taught how to serve the families they were bargained into. Anything to ease the new life they were about to join. Anything to please their new vampire masters. They were merely glorified servants and breeding stock to their husbands.

“It will be Moira this time, right?” I asked, itching the tip of my nose and hoping she’d come to the point quickly because I was incapable of small talk.

“Well, yes. She’s in line to graduate from being a red maiden.”

I nodded, already bored. There were bodies I had to get to, pages of research I’d been reviewing, my own research to write that was being published in a few scientific periodicals. I was no use to anyone up here. “Who will she marry?”

“The Duke of Darkheim.”

I loudly sipped on my tea, itching for her to get to the dratted point. “Never heard of the name before.”

“No red maiden has married into the Duncan family.”

“Ever?”

“Ever,” she echoed, a little too merrily.

“Where do I come into it?” I asked, my foot practically vibrating against the stone floor.

Her gaze drifted away from my face, scouring the distance for something interesting as she hesitated over the next few moments. “An...acquaintance of mine managed to send me word from Mortdale earlier this week. They told me Harriet Merit—or Derby now—is dead.”

Harriet had been one of the best red maidens to have graduated; an extremely talented witch who’d trained under Agnes herself and even served in her close court for years. She’d been wed last year to some ancient vampire aristocrat at only twenty years of age. “How?” I felt compelled to ask due to the way she was looking at me to carry this conversation forward.

“Illness, they were told,” Agnes sighed, filling herself a teacup full of sherry.

Illness.

Illness.

I dreaded to know what this illness looked like. If it looked like bruises and blisters and cuts on her body. If its strength made her bleed internally. If it had made her beg and cry in her final moments, or if it had been a slow torment, collected in weeks and months of silence.

Her head dropped back as she ran her long fingernails through her curls. “That’s not all. My resource tells me that Harriet seems to not be the only one to have died of this mysterious illness. In fact, there’s been many over the years. Of an almost identical affliction.”

Something in her tone made me sit straight. “We would have known. The agreement is that they would hand our sisters to us for burial after they pass. A witch must be married and buried in Meridian soil. Those were the conditions.” I itched the tip of my nose again. “As far as I remember.”

“Please,” she mused. “When is a vampire to be trusted?”