Gemma Pettinato Writes

By Gemma Pettinato

I jolt upright with a gasp, blinking into the dark, half-choking on the stench. Rot. Damp stone. Old blood gone sweet. Familiar, intimately so, though not in the nostalgic sense. This dungeon is not one I’ve had the pleasure of bleeding in, but its perfume reminds me of every place I’ve ever screamed for mercy and been told to beg prettier.

And of course, Master is going to be positively livid if I don’t return with the dull-witted, soft-featured artist I’ve spent the better part of five days charming out of his breeches and into Master’s grasp.

I slide off the barber-surgeon’s table, its surface tacky with gods-know-what, and pad across cold flagstone toward the desk that waits nearby with its secrets just waiting to be told. I need something to take back—proof. Something that says “See? I didn’t run.” Not that I’d be believed if I had.

There’s a body on the floor. Of course there is.

Dungeons have a particular décor—chains, blood, bones, a scent that settles in your throat like a confession—and always, always bodies. Or the soon-to-be deceased—even if they don’t know it yet. In this case, they’re a touch too late. I’m already dead. One of the few privileges of vampirism: I no longer count among the living. Only among the suffering.

I rifle through drawers, scattering paper like autumn leaves, looking for anything noteworthy. A letter. A seal. A sketch of my quarry’s final, failing work. Instead, I feel it.

Warmth.

A sunbeam—small, tentative—trickles through a crack and rests on the back of my hand. It does not sear. It does not smoke. I stare at it, stunned. My lips part as I trace my fingers through the light.

“So very curious,” I murmur, the whisper of wonder entirely unwelcome. I shake it off before it can become something dangerous, like hope, and return to the task at hand.

And there it is. A leather-bound book, nestled beneath crumpled parchment. Familiar. Uncomfortably so. I know that embossing, I know the feel of the skin that made this vellum—this is one of Lord Lazthien’s tomes made from my own flesh. The book is small, slightly larger than my hand, and it holds notes on a spell he created to sell—unless he’s changed practices in the last two hundred years.

“Shit,” I breathe, clutching the book, already turning to leave—when I see her.

Lady Azara Lazthien.

Filth cakes her golden skin, grime dulls her beauty—but only barely. Dirty though she may be, she is radiant. A goddess dragged through the dirt and still shining. My chest caves in at the sight, shame crawling up my throat like bile.

How many times have I cursed her in silence? Wished her ruined because she wouldn’t look at me? Because I was a slave to her grandsire, and she was the heir, cloaked in silk and sun, and I was not even allowed to speak unless spoken to?

She doesn’t even flinch when I step closer, just stares with empty garnet eyes and those perfect lips parted slightly, dazed. Vacant. Broken in a way I recognize all too well.

She’s been missing a decade. Master gave her up for dead. So did Lord Andrath, reluctantly placing a thorned rose—coated in their own blood—into an empty sarcophagus. The drama of it. The poetry. And now, here she is. Not ashes, but flesh.

A tavern girl once whispered about a golden-skinned half-elf locked in a wizard’s dungeon, and I laughed. I gloated. I was so glad. And now I can barely stand to look at her through my shame.

“Did you do that?” I ask softly, gesturing toward the corpse with a lazy flick of my fingers.

She nods. Small. Timid. She scarcely seems even a figment of herself, the brazen girl who took her father’s slave—that pale imitation of myself—as her lover in secret, or the heir of a house whose unofficial motto is “it is as I say it is.”

“Well, good for you, darling.” I set the book beside her on the table. I hate how being near her stirs things I thought I’d buried beneath mountains of loathing—desire, admiration, envy. Things I have no right to feel.

She sways, her knees buckling just enough to make her stumble against the table’s edge. I twitch forward instinctively—but stop myself. No. Let her fall, if she must. She’s not mine. She’s his. That shade of myself. Her father’s slave, the bard whom he glamours to be in my own glorious image to re-enact my breaking two centuries later–according to Master.

“What do you make of this?” I ask, tapping the book before sliding it toward her.

She takes it with trembling hands, delicate fingers brushing a spine she doesn’t know was once mine, and begins reading. Her voice is soft, tentative, but still there’s something bright in it—something that was always hers. I remember watching her from alcoves at Shadenmore, tucked in shadows while she read by candlelight, and I salivated like a starving thing at the window of a bakery.

She talks about fairy stories, sorcery, nonsense—but her voice. Gods, her voice. The cadence, the rise and fall, the way she frowns just slightly when she finds an error—it’s all still there.

And yet… when she stands fully, meeting my gaze, there’s something else in her expression. A pleading. Like she’s waiting for me to speak aloud something unspoken. To name her. To remember her. Not only that, but she sees me now. She wants me. I recognize the heat lurking there under the emptiness in those bright garnet orbs tainted with fear all too well.

But she doesn’t recognize me. Not even in the slightest, though I’ve stood less than a step from her more times than there are stars in the sky. Perhaps it’s for the best. All the better to ruin her. Now I’ll make her crave me. Long for me. I’ll seduce her like all the others. And when she’s finally aching for me—gods, when she begs—I’ll drag her back to Master.

 She didn’t want me? Fine. Never saw me as I stood less than an arm’s length away at a masque? Wonderful.

Because now, I can have my revenge, you see. My glorious fucking revenge. I can have her. Use her. Make her crave me as I do all those whom Master sends me after, then I can drag her back and let him weep over her return. Let him reward me richly for finding his favorite ghost still breathing. Perhaps I’ll get a new ring. Or a reprieve from his bed for a ten-day. Or perhaps, just perhaps, I’ll finally be allowed to feed from a thinking living creature.

No matter. Master will reward me. He loves his pretty little prodigy too much not to—his sweet little shadow.

And I—well, I will do what I have always done.

I will play my part.

And pretend I feel nothing at all. Then leave her wanting and craving what she’ll never have—for the rest of her very short, very miserable life.