It was apparent to me that she worked spells to charm men. She used magic to enhance what her makeup could not. Yet, I could not escape the sense that it was not as simple as a murmured verse to bend the world to her intent. There was a power thruming deep in the stones of The Lady's Stag that could not be accounted for by the softer side of spellwork.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  Dragos met Viorica’s obvious anger with calm confusion. “Er, how can I help?”

  The woman, still bouncing up the last step in a flounce of opulence, whipped her head around to see who might hear. Katya was still at the bottom of the stairwell, open mouthed, astonished, staring up at Viorica who had just run. Up the stairs, no less.

  “Come with me,” she hissed through her teeth, arm linking with his firmly.

  As they walked, she calmed somewhat. That wire of anger ran through her still, but she forced it down, beneath her civil veneer. Dragos glanced at her noble profile, her lips twitching as she sought words.

  Finally, Viorica murmured, “You shall not go seeking revenge for my affairs!”

  “What do you mean?” Dragos asked, his banal tone hiding the sunken feeling in his gut. He’d committed a near-perfect… Murder. Call it what it was. What it would be, eventually, if Torres-Cruz had even survived the night.

  She stopped. Facing him, she laid a hand on his cheek, fingers curling to hook at the corner of his jaw, the gentlest and keenest of threats. Her gaze searched his before she spoke.

  “They said a ‘werewolf’s claws’ had torn an important man asunder. A man who happened to have boasted of a wicked deed done in this house. The foreign quarter and the market is agog, commerce is weakened, the Caravanserai is rampant with rumors as the fearful flee. By the dripping garments in the basement…”

  Her other hand lay delicately on his chest, over Dragos's pounding heart. Her lips thinned, and her teeth flashed again. “And by the ironclaw gloves you long ago chose in my presence, I know who is to blame.”

  Dragos swallowed, his gaze flicked up at the cast of Katya’s shadow from where she lingered just beyond sight. He scoffed, “And now it’s laid on a werewolf. Of which there are none in this city; they’d never stay in one.”

  “There are links that cannot be erased, Dragos, tenuous as they are. You should have left it,” Viorica hissed, spinning away from him to stalk off.

  He almost followed her. Do damage control, soften her anger, something. He did not.

  That piece of him that feared nothing reared its dark head.

  He was glad. His momentary horror for having done a terrible thing to a man who had unrepentant ways had vanished in the face of this confrontation.

  Viorica’s wisdom was conventional. She protected her business first. He had no such urges. He glanced around, but Zgavra wasn’t lurking, as far as he could tell. The zmeu may have had opinions on the matter, but its place in the realm of the living was optional. All of this was mere games to the Nerostit? dragon spawn.

  Dragos shook himself free from his thoughts and walked towards his office. The door creaked open to reveal his gloves, still sitting out where he’d left them by the windowsill—a damning view if ever there was. Hurtling in, he shut the door and crossed the small space to snatch them up. Leather and iron, freshly oiled and sharpened, slick and eager for violence. He smoothed a thumb along the side of one of the dark iron blades jutting from the knuckles of the glove and recalled the feel of them as they ripped into flesh. With a shudder of revulsion, he found the pouch he kept them in and hid them away.

  He’d just set the pouch down when a knock came.

  Dragos spun around, calmed his breath, and then called, “Enter.”

  Katya eased the door open, peering in. Her gaze fixed on him, then flicked nervously about before she stepped in and shut the door behind her. She leaned on it, as if being in the room with him frightened her. She’d never been fond of him. Superstition had drawn invisible lines. However, she’d also come to respect his skills, was less hostile.

  “Was it you?” Katya asked, almost too quietly to hear.

  “I’m not a varcolac,” Dragos said, easing to sit on the stone slab, the frigid air outside radiating through the thick, green glass. Sunlight’s glare on the rippled surface cast the room a sickly hue, warmth weaker than a candle at his back.

  “But did you do it? Did you take revenge for Maria?” More insistent now, something hopeful tinged her voice, even as her hands pressed back against the door hard enough to whiten her fingers.

  He glanced away, mouth twitching a smile difficult to rein in. “Maria deserved justice. It was served.”

  “Thank you,” Katya breathed. Her eyes glossed, and she turned, swiftly letting herself out.

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  Dragos glanced out the window and sighed, his breath fogging, freezing to the surface, becoming crystalline at the edges. He murmured to the air beyond, “There is no justice here.”

  He did his best to keep to himself for a while. No one seemed to draw connections beyond Viorica. The prince distanced himself but did not stop paying his princely dues to The Lady’s Stag, so soon enough Viorica was sweet again.

  Maria was maimed but survived. She moved to the orphanage to take care of lord’s bastards and foundlings. Word filtered in that Torres-Cruz died a week after the assault, his wounds having festered. His last days as a living corpse was an agony full of leaking pustules and fevered screaming.

  Dragos found a measure of contentment once more; however, after seeing another of Viorica’s girls abused, he fought himself over it. The beating had been more mundane, easily treated. The guest’s invitation was revoked. He remained still.

  Fane was extra thoughtful after the death of Torres-Cruz. Dragos assumed he too had figured it out. Or Katya had told him.

  He left honey cakes in Dragos's study. He brought tea himself, not sending servants. He’d chat about food, about Pacha’s escapades and theft attempts, and about the inner goings on of the house. Dragos learned more about their food than he could have imagined from the stolnic.

  One day, Fane appeared with a tray as Dragos scribbled in a journal, outlining the health of the women in Viorica’s charge. Dragos looked up, unbound hair spilling over the black sleeves of his jacket. Viorica liked to buy him black, playing up the contrast of his paleness. He was a study in dramatic comparisons, she’d said.

  After receiving the call to enter, Fane edged in and kicked the door shut with his heel. He sat at a stool by the work table. Dragos got up with a long, bone-cracking stretch and turned around to join him. Fane poured the tea, a pale, yellowish stuff that he’d traded for in the market, from the east. It was invigorating. Dragos loved it.

  “I forgot what we were going to talk about,” Fane said, tapping fingers on his chin. As ever, he bore a disheveled fastidiousness, as if his energy fought his desire to be neat. His dark hair was bound back, but fringes escaped, his robes were clean and unwrinkled, but gapped to one side, revealing a hint of collarbone. “Oh yes. Viorica. She’s behaving strangely. Ordering odd things.”

  Dragos brow popped up. He hadn’t noticed. She ran her business, he took care of the house’s health, and that was how it was. Dragos recognized Fane had his fingertip to the pulse of the institution, so he settled in, hands warmed by the hot cup in his hands.

  “She requested fennel, rue, and belladonna,” Fane said in a low, conspiratorial tone. His gaze flicked to the closed door. “Also, gold thread and twelve candles in green.”

  Poisons, mostly hallucinogenic, but the thread and candles? It sounded like spell work. Dragos set his cup down and tapped his fingers on the workbench. Fane waited, expectant. When Dragos said nothing, he sighed. “It’s some kind of occult craft, and you know what it is! You must!”

  “Has she ever ordered those things before?” Dragos asked, not letting any confirmation fall from his lips.

  The house was liberal, but the believers of Light would twist on a thread if the line of their skewed sensibilities was crossed. Not that Fane ever seemed one. They’d never discussed beliefs. Still. Silence was Dragos's practiced policy.

  Fane frowned, picking up one of the confections he’d brought. Tipping it to his lips, he admitted, “I’d taken on the job a month before you appeared. I don’t know… but I can find out.”

  Dragos nodded. He cast a glance at the pale green glass and then the golden candle flickering above his desk, creamy wax spilling down in solidified pools. He could piece together ideas by the things purchased. Or. He could simply ask her.

  Asking her would put Fane in a spot, as he was her stolnic.

  Better to say nothing and watch her more closely.

  In the frigid days that passed, the shipments came in. The fennel came by a typical dispenser. Two separate runners, one with rue, one with belladonna appeared at different times. Both were well paid for their silence.

  The poisons didn’t concern him much. In small doses, medicines, and should she poison a customer? He considered that. Viorica wouldn’t allow the customers of The Lady’s Stag to die in her establishment. A political poisoning was unlikely. The gold thread bothered him but wasn’t in itself a problem. The green candles made him nervous.

  The night he walked into Viorica’s room and witnessed her combing her servant’s hair, his blood turned to ice. Both were seated on Viorica’s plush bench beside her dressing table. Katya perched on the end, head down, hands pressed to her knees. Perfumed oils eddied in the air. Her expression bespoke fear tinged by a barely concealed hope.

  Dragos froze. Not because he thought something romantic was happening. He knew that look, and Viorica wasn’t wearing it. She contentedly drew an ivory comb through Katya’s unbound hair, her cool eyes flicking up as he entered and paused. The soft rasp of the comb brought a poignant memory of her doing the same for him. Favor and affection.

  “She’ll be so pretty in a year or two, won’t she? She’s blossoming right before my eyes. I’m so pleased with her, Dragos.” Her hands came to rest on the girl’s narrow shoulders.

  She’d never said anything delightful or hateful about the girl before. Katya looked more or less the same as she had a few months ago. Big eyed, a little thin, but even as he thought it, Viorica tapped her shoulder with a fingertip and leaned to pluck a honey cake to offer her. “Just needs to fatten up a bit. Isn’t she pretty, Dragos? She’ll be the delight of The Lady’s Stag, once I teach her the zither.”

  “Of course,” he agreed cautiously, gaze flicking between the two.

  The edge of doubt he’d balanced on dropped away, and his stomach with it. It took all his effort to keep his fears under control. She’d lured him, lulled him, made life easy for him, and yet the girl from school was likely planning something terrible.

  He took in a sharp breath, and Viorica mistook it for something passionate. Her gaze turned sharp, and she waved the bone comb at him. “Katya is not for you.”

  “You’re the only one I want,” Dragos said, his heart pounding with the desperate hope that things could stay as they were. Foolish as it was to think.

  How much he’d changed since he’d been there. When he first set foot in Viorica’s chamber, he would have scoffed at the idea that he’d fall to a lady’s charms. Laughed out loud.

  Viorica’s expression softened. She found a ribbon on her table and tied a neat bow around the girl’s hair. With a soft shooing motion, she sent Katya off.

  The servant girl passed him, smoothing fingers over the silk. Though her eyes were glassy and unfocused, her broad, dreamy smile painted the picture of a girl who thought herself chosen by fate. Dragos stepped aside for her, his heart picking up a new tempo to the beat of his inner thoughts.

  Let it. Not. Be so.

  Rate and review. The Cerel is watching you. Don't disappoint a baby.

  Zmeu (zmyeh-oo): a form of dragon. A shapeshifter that travels between the world of the living and other realms. They are known to steal fair maids to be their wives. Suffers great hubris. Very powerful monster given to chaos, born of the Umbregrin. Solomonari wizards ride them when controlling weather patterns.

  Nerostit? (neh-ross-TEE-teh): Calruthian word for all things unnatural or strange, synonymous with Unspoken. Places, events, and situations can be referred to as this, as well as beings.

  Varcolac (vir-ko-LAK): Werewolf.

  Stolnic (Stol-NEEK): Pantry manager, much like a butler, but with responsibilities regarding the kitchens more than the house and grounds.