Vallan lets out a rare chuckle. “Two things can be true at once, silverblood. Though I doubt Skar or Lukain will let us keep you to ourselves once we reunite with them.”
“That’s why this needed to happen tonight, my big brute.” I finally plop onto my side. I’m filthy on the cold floor of this prison-fuck-cell that’s been repurposed as a tiny bedroom. Now all I can think about is sleep.
I’m naked, spent, and filled. “Now,” I murmur, closing my eyes and twitching with an aftershock from our coupling, “if one of you could watch the door for an hour to make sure we’re unbothered, and the other could wrap me in their warmth, that would be fantastic.”
Vallan grunts.
Garroway takes one look at my prone form, my curves, my pale skin and rolls and muscles hinted at in the darkness, and clears his throat. “Let’s draw sticks to see which of us gets which job, brother. I know which one I want.”
Chapter 20
Sephania
Losing myself in the heat of my mates in the cold darkness is something I’ll never take for granted. There’s still a mission to be done, and I can hardly sleep once my task comes back to me.
Vallan and Garroway have no such issue. After our raunchy session where I managed to relieve my adrenaline and frustrations and power all at once, we find Antones and are given a small dwelling together to rest the morning and afternoon away.
The vampire and dhampir are out like snuffed torches within minutes. They’ll be like that for many hours. For me, it only takes two hours before my exhaustion has eroded and my previously sex-drunk mind has refocused.
It’s then I decide to make a reckless decision—something everyone knows I’m prone to do.
I leave the Firehold on my own.
The underground stirs with activity, as normal humans do in the afternoon hours. It’s much busier when I emerge from my dwelling, leaving my sleeping mates behind, and make my way through the labyrinthine corridors and snaking passageways.
First, I find a warmed underground spring to sit in, easing my sore muscles and body aches from the fighting and the fucking. I’m alone, naked, and feel entirely free, even with the roof of a cave above me, dripping runoff from the Nuhavian surface, the Floorboards.
The water springs are not new to the Firehold—they are how we bathed when I first came here—but Antones’ ingenious quality-of-life advancement is. Heated stones rim the pool to keep body heat close.
Moseying through the subterranean town for the exit ladder, I notice other changes Ant has made, impressed by each of them. A network of interfolk and girls make dresses in a room, now with some boys mixed in. That would have been forbidden in my day. Antones was always a fashionable man, so this isn’t too confounding. The training and swordfighting regimens are, as noted before, entirely mixed, integrated, and optional. Old Endolf’s alchemical cave has been cleaned, redecorated, and now houses an educational school with some of the elder Grimsons teaching the younger flock. Ant has partaken in new enterprises, such as in-house tailoring, leathermaking, and even smithing.
In my time, all tools were traded for, stolen, or bought aboveground. Now, everything is made here, which lets Antones spend his slim margins on better food stores and options.
He truly has made the Firehold a home,I muse on my way out.Even with the madness happening on the Floorboards, underneath it all is prosperity, somehow, against all odds.Though he is humble and not occupied with self-serving, I’m not sure I ever met a better man than Antones.The Chained Sisters will be content here, I’m sure of it. They’ll be welcomed—more bodies to do the work needed to keep this place running.
That being said, it’s no utopia here. Some of the same struggles I faced still remain. There are no families because everyone here was ousted from theirs. The orphans are no longer slaves, which is good, and they’ve created their own cliques and groups which act familial. But there’s lost love in these walls.
Some of that plays out with high rates of promiscuous behavior, even for the younger Grimsons. They have no parental guidance. Which leads to high rates of pregnancy—whether wanted or unwanted—births, and stillbirths. There is no dedicated childbirth wing in the Firehold, though I suspect some of the tutors in Endolf’s education chamber have begun to try and enlighten the youth.Maybe the Sisters can help with that.
Those issues exist even for the young members who have seen no more than thirteen or fourteen winters. It’s a sorry sight to see, a plump girl who only comes up to my chest and has the smoothness of innocence on her young round face, full-bellied and waddling by through the corridor.Surely there must be a way to stop this from becoming endemic.
In the past, Old Endolf concocted potions—blue in color, I recall—that, if imbibed, would do the magical deed of ending a pregnancy. It was not always painless, and it didn’t come without its own peril, but it was something.
They need a new alchemist,I realize once I reach the ladder and head up into the sunlight.Maybe once the Silverbood is finished manufacturing Silverblood, my mother can shift her focus to more altruistic pursuits that still help people?
It’s a thought I’ll have to throw on her. She’s never been as good with children or young people as, say, Iron Sister Keffa, but her maniacally focused glee with which she tries to craft things to change the world might actually do some good here.
My plan is to return to Kep’s basement, retrieve the Chained Sisters, and give them the good news. We might as well start the moving process now, in broad daylight, while the vampires are sleeping and the dangers on the roads are not as evident as they are at night.
It’s very easy for a flesh-trader to steal someone in the shadows and darkness. It’s harder to stop a rush of two-dozenwomen and girls from marching across the city to their new home in the sunlight.
The few grayskin and vampiress Sisters will have to wait until night to make the trek, but they can shoulder the burden easier,I ponder as my eyes touch sunlight above.I’d like to see a lanky fucking sex slaver try anything against a fullbooded vampiress, no matter how frail she looks—shit that’s bright.My eyes close with an instant wince as the sharp rays of sun greet me over the crack of the grate. I shield my eyes and see yellow and red spots behind my lids.
It takes a full five minutes of staggering, stumbling under an awning of a shopfront, before I’ve acclimated to the torturous sunlight. It makes me see I’ve become more vampiric the longer I’ve stayed with my men, and I chuckle at the thought. I’m also growing pale like one, keeping only nighttime hours for so many months.
Nuhav during the day hides its horrid qualities well. The scars of the riots from last night are being swept away. The bodies hanging from gables and beams have been cut away and draped with cloth or dragged away. The bazaar I used to steal goods from bustles with energy and a cloying blanket of dirt that makes me cough.
It’s old memories like this that make me feel sentimental about my homeland. I’ve been locked up in Olhav for so long, trying my hand at rebellion, that I almost forgot what it was like to be locked up downhere.