Demons, Lucia knew, rarely consorted with mortals.
Eccubi like herself, of course, were an exception, but even then, their trysts were momentary, brief affairs of passion. No succubus she knew had ever … settled down with a human.
What would that even look like?
Demons were bound by contract. Once a demonic contract was fulfilled, they were drawn inexorably back to the Abyssal Dream. Lucia knew this in her bones. Any relationship she had with Talia was temporary. She felt the distance between them with every beat of her heart, every breath she drew into her lungs. It was a chasm she could not cross. And yet.
And yet.
She could not keep from yearning for Talia’s regard. Her traitorous heart beat fresh blood through her body, and with each and every thrum her desire was reborn anew.
***
The night after the duel, Lucia could not sleep. The silver glow of the greater moon tenderly brushed across the curtains of the bedchamber as the demon took to pacing her room. It did not help. Her heart beat furiously in her chest, and she could not still it by mere effort of will.
So, she cracked the door to her chamber and slipped out, the last pretense of sleep having departed her frame.
Her feet took her through the whole of the manor, her mind too much awhirl to see where they were leading her. What did, what could Talia mean to her? What could the demon do about her infatuation with this woman, this human? She had a definitive contract, the most lucrative she had taken in centuries, and she wasn’t going to fuck it up with feelings.
Well, try telling that to her feelings. Talia’s face during the duel, in all its perfection, swam before her eyes yet again. She groaned and pushed open the door she found herself facing.
She was in Talia’s study. The room was dark save for a window, where the same silvery moonlight filtered through behind the curtain. As soon as she had opened the door, she moved to leave, but something kept her there. A narrowing of her eyes.
Who was this woman, really?
She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t. But her eyes wandered over to the neat desk, and then the tidy shelves overfull of volumes of paperwork, ledgers, and other literary curios, and she thought …
… well, why not? She had a right to know. She was invested, now, and she should discover just what sort of woman her heart had hopelessly entangled with.
Lucia stepped forward and scanned the shelves, blessing Talia’s largely readable handwriting that adorned the ledger spines. Finances of the Estate was the thickest tome, by far, followed by Known Correspondence between the Gentry. Interesting. Her hand traced along the various collections Talia had amassed, before catching on one particular volume.
Record of My Life, A.C. 1121 – Present.
Her diary? Talia kept a diary?
Lucia pulled it down and cracked it open. No, she amended—this was not a personal diary, she realized as she skimmed over the contents within. This was a self-compiled collection of documents tracking what was publicly (and, in some cases, not so publicly) known about the history of the Duke of Fallmire.
That’s a careful woman, Lucia thought. She’d clearly sought out everything that could be known about her, most probably so she could more effectively obfuscate those parts of her history that were not.
Or something. Maybe that had nothing to do with it. Perhaps she was simply proud of her journey and wanted to keep a record of it.
No, that wasn’t it. That didn’t sound right.
Lucia pulled out a newspaper clipping on the execution of a person named Antonin Lovelace, and paused, recognizing the name. It had been in her contract. The Duke’s father.
She replaced the clipping as she flipped forward through the collection. Another headline caught her eye. Under the words “General Hawthorne Cleared of All Charges in Murder Investigation,” she read,
CAVALINE—A Justice of the Peace has ruled this morning that Commander General Hawthorne should not be prosecuted for the strange and sudden murder of Deacon Riley Hyatt Francis in the early hours of the morning three days ago at the Hawthorne Estate.
The Commander has continued to maintain his innocence of the crime; readers will recall he has laid the blame of the murder at the feet of his former steward, a certain Mr. Ellison. Other witnesses interviewed
And it cut off there. Beside the clipping of the article, a note had been scribbled, “saw the crime committed with my own eyes,” and the date of April, 1121. Lucia wondered how that could be; what had Talia been doing at the Commander General’s estate sixteen years ago, in the “early hours of the morning”? The mystery of that she pushed aside as she flipped further into the tome, before coming upon a notice clipped from another broadsheet—
IT IS HEREBY PUBLISHED that the contract of indentured servitude for Ida Lovelace, daughter of the condemned traitor to the Commonwealth Antonin Lovelace, has been transferred from Commander General Hawthorne to the House of Forteza, effective this date, the seventh of May, in the year of the Calamity eleven thousand and twenty-one.
Ida Lovelace. Beside the clipping was another note: “could not have taken ship for another week. I recall the festival of Bells before departing B. H.”
B.H. had to be Black Harbor—and was Talia saying she was this “Ida Lovelace”? Lucia made the connection as she flipped back to the beginning of the tome, skimming again through the newspaper clipping declaring the execution of Antonin Lovelace for treason.
She had to have been this Ida. And that name, Ida Lovelace, was known to the Commonwealth, printed publicly as the daughter of an executed traitor.
Lucia couldn’t help herself flipping further through the tome. Many of the records preserved seemed to have little to do with the Duke, or with Ida Lovelace; or, at least their connection was too obscure for the demon to understand. One letter jumped out at her, however, as she spotted for the first time the name “Talia”.
To the Esteemed Head of the House of Forteza, greeting.
Your humble agent has completed their assessment of the events surrounding the ruin of your plantation on the island of Grenalia, and the vile murder of many of your loyal servants in connection with the uprising of the indentured workforce contracted there. The esteemed Lady is no doubt familiar intimately with the publicly-reported facts in relation to this incident, so your humble servant will not enumerate them again here. A few details not widely known have, however, revealed themselves to your servant in the course of their investigation, which shall be detailed below.
The uprising occurred over the course of a single night, that is, on the night of December the fourteenth, 1121, and in the early morning hours of the day following. During the afternoon preceding the uprising, the overseer of the plantation, Ms. Talia Greenglove, had initiated several interrogations among the indentured workforce regarding a petty theft that had occurred earlier that day. The result of this was the unfortunate killing of a young worker. It is the opinion of your servant that this act galvanized the remaining workforce against your appointed overseer and the rest of your enforcers on the plantation.
Weapons were no doubt distributed among the workforce in the hours after sundown; a surviving guardsman recalls that two of her fellows had been knocked unconscious while guarding the armory attached to the manor house, and were not discovered until after the main action of the rebellion had been accomplished. The loss of life accompanying this rebellion is well known to you. It is probable that Ms. Greenglove’s life was taken while she was sleeping, an act that initiated the aforementioned proceedings. Whomever her killer was, they left no trace of their presence, a sure mark of a mind singularly focused on the intent to kill.
The rebellious workforce has since dispersed among the population of the southern isles generally, and in your servant’s humble opinion it would be prohibitively difficult to trace any of their movements at this time. Your servant hopes this report is sufficient to
And the letter cut off there on its second page, the rest torn away. Beside the letter was another handwritten note. “Report generally accurate. I killed the overseer myself at Fallmire’s urging.”
Lucia shook her head. That had to be a reference to Captain Fallmire, but what was an infamous pirate captain doing at a random plantation in the southern isles?
She put her finger on the name Talia Greenglove. The Duke claimed to have killed her—was that why she had taken her name? This woman had quite the macabre sensibility. The Duke had taken the given name of a plantation overseer she had killed … and had named her House for an infamous pirate captain whose bounty she claimed with her head.
By the dead god himself! Who was this woman?
Lucia started as she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Caught in a moonbeam, the ghostly face of Talia stared at her from across the room. The demon blinked, adrenalin kicking through her in alarm, and let the volume fall closed in her hands. Talia—for, in the seconds after seeing her, Lucia recognized her as being there in the flesh—simply looked at her, before slowly walking up to her and wordlessly taking the ledger from her hands.
She did not look angry … and Lucia could not sense any other emotion bubbling within the Duke apart from pity.
“I’m sorry, I—” Lucia whispered into the silence.
But Talia did not answer, simply sliding the volume back into its place on the shelf. Then, she retreated back to her chamber, leaving Lucia alone again in the darkness and the silence of the Duke’s dusty history.