EL Official BK5 Chapter 8 - A French Chateau in the Summertime (Patreon)

<-<-PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER ->-> | ᓚᘏᗢ CHAPTERS LIST

“Hold still.” 

“I am.”

“You’re pulling away,” the younger twin corrected, and I clenched my teeth. I wouldn’t have been, if he wasn’t taking so long fastening the buttons.

“Be kind Achaicus, he’s getting married. It’s understandable that he’s nervous,” Nathaniel commented with an immodest smirk, and I shifted my gaze to glare at him from afar. These two were utterly insufferable. 

The eldest was perched on the arm of the nearest chair. Placing undue strain on the Victorian era mahogany, and indenting the brocade upholstery with his weight as he watched his brother help me dress.

“Sit properly in that chair, it’s older than you are,” I chastised him blandly.

“No it’s not,” he answered, uncaring, as he folded his arms.

The nerve of him— “Markos,” Achaicus complained again.

“I’m being still!” I exclaimed, exasperated.

“Stop letting my brother distract you.”

I took a deep calming breath in, and exhaled it slowly. The truth of it was that I had arranged everything up until this point, and now it was out of my hands. Countless nights spent planning this wedding for my human bride… Now the day had arrived and a tangle of irritating feelings churned in my stomach. 

Nathaniel would handle any problems if they arrose, and Achaicus was in control of the reception. Hadrien would bear the rings for us while our first daughter, Joséphine-Rose, and current youngest son, Jean-Mikael, would decorate the way with flower petals. I should have realized Claire had ulterior motives the day she stopped pushing for our ceremony to happen before the end of the summer. 

She slowed the urgency with a purpose in mind: she wanted to have two little girls to throw the flowers. But our third child was another boy and when I wouldn’t let her delay any longer, she decided that Mikael would join his sister as a flower boy. I only hope he remembers to be gentle with the flowers, considering he ate them in both rehearsals. 

I don’t know how many children Claire intends to have. The number gets higher each time I ask, and my will regrettably weakens with every piece of clothing she removes.

“We’re going to keep going until we have twins~,” is what she whispered in my ear the last time her legs were wrapped around me. Although I can’t be sure I heard correctly as my attention was otherwise engaged. 

Perhaps what I fear most is the names of our future children. Claire insists on being the one to name them, and will likely continue the chaotic hyphen system, but it’s her choice of middle name that makes my stomach drop. She feels strongly that a child’s middle name should tribute those we hold most dear. One’s parents or friends. As such, she has begun to ask about my childhood, about my mother. 

I don’t know what to tell her…

***

It was a fair evening in the summer. Swathes of purple flowers bent in gentle waves with the breeze, rippling across the hillside under the moonlight. Church bells rang in the distance. Their continuous chiming echoed through the night and etched into my memory. Bodies were fleeing, disappearing past to somewhere beyond my awareness. Bright flame held me transfixed. It reached into the sky, casting amber sparks into the air and illuminating blood red against the plumes of smoke. It was our chateau that burned. 

Heat melted the paint from the walls as fire raced through the hallways, consuming hand crafted furniture and soft fabrics alike. The wooden supports cracked and groaned, gradually collapsing under the stone walls when they could no longer withstand the weight. It had been the only home I knew, but I felt nothing for it past a hollow sense of loss as I stood alone on the hillside watching it crumble.

The fire had started in the great room. Sheer curtains had softly billowed into the flame of a candle left burning on the mantle beside the windowsill. It was deliberate, but not my doing. I was too small to reach that high and too young to understand. All I knew was the smell of smoke.

When the villagers came, it was not to help us, nor even to save the building: it was to exterminate. We were like vermin to them. The magnificent structure burning before them held ‘Les Cheveux Blancs’ - the white-haired ones. Creatures they loathed for our dietary requirements. Still, it was our doorstep that they traveled to with their sick, and their prayers. They would come to beg my father for help, and he would grant it, for a price. 

He was away when the manor burned, fighting on fresh warfronts. Humans were advancing all too quickly, their weapons evolving and as invaders flooded in from both the north and south, we were caught between. Now it seemed the villagers no longer needed us.

With iron tipped bullets and weaponry, they attacked. Using the fire to their advantage they trapped those who had not yet escaped the manner inside it. Leaving them to burn. Agonized screams filled the air before long and the humans further mobilized. They gave chase to those who fled. Moving in groups they hunted as a pack, trapping and butchering servants I had once known as I watched from the hillside.

Some fought back, spitting venomous commands and cutting down slower enemies. One fae could easily face two or three untrained humans simultaneously. But it was a pointless effort. For every human killed, four more appeared as if there were an unlimited supply of them. 

Bright blue discharge outshone the fire and the battle began in earnest. Swords sliced through soft human flesh, the sound of men shouting and the pressurized bang of gunfire filled the air. We were winning, for a time, yet still more humans came from the village below in overwhelming swathes intent on our elimination.

Our magic is a finite resource and to command more than one other being at once requires strength of will and training. It’s difficult at the best of times, and almost impossible for ordinary Fae. And so it was that, slowly, the tides of victory changed. Fae began to fall, one by one to the onslaught of human determination. 

The blood of those I once knew formed pools in the dirt, and the humans began to dismember them, collecting pieces for trophies. Perhaps I should have looked away then, but it was difficult even to take breath and I found my body unable to move.

“Là-bas! l'enfant est l'un d'eux!” (Over there! That child is one of them!) 

It was a village man who first noticed me. His eyes reflected the hatred of the flames, and he approached brandishing an iron tipped bayonet. I felt no fear, nor anything else as he advanced up the hillside toward me with murderous intent. Instead my entire body tingled with nondescript numbness as I tore my eyes from the doomed chateau. He raised the barrel and took the shot. 

His aim was poor. The first bullet passed me, it struck the dirt to my right and a small stone was flicked into the air. It contacted the side of my head, and I flinched away too late. Falling over in my panic, I believed I had been hit. In an ironic way, it was the sharpness of the pain that released me from the numb paralysis and drew the world back into focus. 

I hissed, automatically gritting my teeth as I scrambled back. “Éloigne-toi!” (Go away!) I wasted my breath shouting. My aura swirled in nervous agitation, blood dampened my hairline and trickled down the side of my face into the corner of my mouth.

“Je jure de te faire périr, monstre dégoûtant!” (I swear you will perish, disgusting monster!) the man responded.

He was continuing to advance, baring down as if I were a caught fox facing a hound when he fired for the second time. Where he was aiming, goodness only knows, however, the bullet hit my lower abdomen on the right side. It passed cleanly through, but the iron burned inside and out. I screamed in anguish, instinctively covering the wound. From what little I had learned of healing, I knew magic wouldn’t help and that maintaining pressure was my best hope. 

Pain radiated outward from the source in blinding pulses. Cold sweat formed on my skin as I trembled and I struggled to keep consciousness through the shock. While he reloaded, I tried to crawl backward away into the taller grass, but he caught up in two strides. The man pressed the still warm muzzle of the barrel to my forehead and sheer panic coated my tongue with bitter magic.

“Tue-toi!” (Kill yourself!) I shouted the order through the blood in my teeth with as much force as I could manage, and he faltered.

Gradually turning the firearm on himself with rigid movements, “Monstre ignoble-” he spat before pulling the trigger on himself. If I weren’t the 7th generation of my family born with the gene, the command of a child would never have been strong enough. 

How long I lay there after that I couldn’t say. The world drifted in and out until the first light touched the bending grasses at dawn. It shone bright yellow through the dew drops in watery lines of light. The grass smelled sweet, but ashes filtered down gently back to earth and the air tasted burned. 

My father, Emmerich, returned to find me some hours later. I had managed to lay still enough, and hold tight enough to the injury in my side that my natural healing had begun to close the wound. Otherwise, I would have bled out in that peaceful field.

Of us all, only a handful survived the attack. My mother, Adélaïde, had been in the house when it caught fire, and helped no one but herself out. As a carrier of the gene she would have been more than capable of defending the chateau, but she likely hoped the rest of us wouldn’t survive. Even with all that happened she showed no guilt, nor any other emotion. 

Upon learning I had survived she looked my father in the eye and spoke without care. “That’s a shame,” she stated plainly. She rarely if ever acknowledged my presence, despite how I might have tried. 

My Aunt Peronne was another who had survived. She was my father’s younger sister, an accidental birth, and was around my age, if not fractionally older. She had crawled through a service hole in the wall and out under the manor to escape with three of my cousins from my mothers side. All four sustained minor burns.

I was the only other to make it. Our entire family had been destroyed in one night and the journey from France to America was sure to be a long one.

<-<-PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER ->-> | ᓚᘏᗢ CHAPTERS LIST