A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood #1)(3)

“Easy, Constanta. You must remember to breathe. If you don’t start slowly, you’ll make yourself sick.”

“Please,” I rasped, but I hardly knew what I was asking for. My head was swimming, my heart was racing, and I had gone from nearly dead to viscerally alive in a matter of minutes. I did feel a little sick, to be honest, but I was also reeling with euphoria. I should be dead, but I wasn’t. Terrible things had been done to me, and I had done a terrible thing too, but I was alive.

“Stand up, my dark miracle,” you said, pulling yourself to your feet and holding your hand out to me. “Come and face the night.”

I rose on shaky knees into a new life, one of delirium and breathtaking power. Blood, yours and mine, dried into brown flakes on my fingers and mouth.

You swept your hands over my cheeks, cupping my face and taking me in. The intensity of your attention was staggering. At the time, I would have called it proof of your love, burning and all-consuming. But I’ve grown to understand that you have more of the scientist obsessed than the lover possessed in you, and that your examinations lend themselves more towards a scrutiny of weakness, imperfection, any detail in need of your corrective care.

You tipped my face and pressed your thumb down against my tongue, peering into my mouth. An urge to bite swelled up within me, but I smothered it.

“You need to cut your teeth or they’ll become ingrown,” you announced. “And you need to eat, properly.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said, even though it was a lie. I just couldn’t fathom having an appetite for food, for black bread and beef stew and a mug of beer, after everything that had happened to me that day. I felt like I would never need food again, despite the hunger gnawing at my stomach like a caged animal.

“You will learn, little Constanta,” you said with a fond, patronizing smile. “I’m going to open whole worlds to you.”

You kissed my forehead and smoothed my filthy hair away from my face.

“I will do you a twofold kindness,” you said. “I will raise you out of the dirt and into queenship. And, I will give you your vengeance.”

“Vengeance?” I whispered, the word harsh and electrifying on my tongue. It sounded Biblical, apocalyptic, beyond the grasp of human experience. But I wasn’t human anymore, and you hadn’t been for a long time.

“Listen,” you said.

I fell silent, ears perking up with newfound sharpness. There was the clanking of armor and the low chatter of men, far enough away that I would never have been able to hear it before, but not so far that we couldn’t close to distance between us and them in a matter of minutes.

Liquid rage pooled in my stomach and lit up my face. It made me strong, that rage, hardening to solid iron in my limbs. All of a sudden, I wanted to destroy every man who had beat my father until he stopped moving, held torches to our home while my brother screamed for them to spare the children inside. I wanted to break them, even more slowly and painfully than they had broken me, leave them bleeding out and begging for mercy.

I had never been inclined to violence before. But then again, I had never borne witness to acts so vile they demanded retribution. I had never experienced the kind of agony that leaves the mind coiled and poised to lash out at the first opportunity. I would carry that viper inside me for years, letting it out intermittently to rip the wicked to pieces. But that day, I had not yet befriended the serpent within. It seemed to me a strange interloper, a frightening thing, demanding to be fed.

You put your mouth close to my ear as I stared off into the distance, towards where the raiders were enjoying their meal. Even now, I have no idea how they stomached taking their supper feet away from the disemboweled entrails of women and children. War is the whetstone that grinds down all sense, all humanity.

“They will not hear you coming,” you murmured. “I will stand a little ways off to ensure your safety, and to make sure none of them run.”

My mouth watered, aching gums screaming out. My stomach twisted into painful knots, as though I hadn’t eaten in a fortnight.

Slowly, the shaking hands at my sides curled into steady fists.

I felt you smile against my skin, your voice taking on the rough pleasure of the hunt.

“Water your mother’s flowers with their blood.”

I nodded, my breath coming shallow and hot.

“Yes, my lord.”





My lord. My liege. Beloved. King. My darling. My defender.

I had so many names for you in those days, my cup of devotion overflowing with titles worthy of your station. I used your name, too, the one your mother had given you, but only in our most intimate moments. When I comforted you during your rare displays of weakness or made a vow to you as a woman, as a wife.

But I am not your wife anymore, my lord, and I don’t think you ever truly saw me as a whole woman. I was always a student. A project. An accessory in the legal and decorative sense.

You did not let me keep my name, so I will strip you of yours. In this world, you are what I say you are, and I say you are a ghost, a long night’s fever dream that I have finally woken up from. I say you are the smoke-wisp memory of a flame, thawing ice suffering under an early spring sun, a chalk ledger of debts being wiped clean.

I say you do not have a name.





Bloodlust brings on a delirium that’s difficult to describe. From the first squirt on the tongue to the last dying jerk of your prey under your hands, the whole experience builds and builds into a screaming fever pitch. Those with little imagination have compared it to carnal climax, but I liken it more to religious ecstasy. I have never felt more truly alive in my waking death than when I am taking the life of another person.