I’d holed up in the library all day to work, the presence of the golems dissuading Kajarin from returning. Bane had been busy, and the keep was strangely quiet without Visca and her legions. The vampires had emptied out of the keep overnight, leaving the walls mostly undefended.

Not that I was too concerned about becoming a breakfast for wargs—Wroth had planted himself firmly on the keep’s walls, and had shown no signs all throughout the day of ever moving from that spot again.

Here, the day had been quiet. If I hadn’t seen Wyn’s decorations for myself, I would have forgotten today was Bloodrain entirely.

In Argent, I knew that at this very moment the streets would be hung with crimson banners, and children would already be going door to door, collecting their salty-sweet candies and cinnamon buns. The bonfires would already be roaring thirty feet high, and for every fire, there would be an effigy made of spiced meats, pork and beef molded into Liliach Daromir’s feminine shape, to be roasted as the fires died down. The market stalls would be selling soft, chewy flatbread to go with it, and everyone would be drunk by midnight.

The candies were the best part of Bloodrain, a taste synonymous with childhood when we indentured foundlings were allowed out on the streets, but there was none of that here.

Instead the vampires, and the human nobility, celebrated by dressing in their finest and hosting a ball.

Rose tucked a tiny braid into the larger one, and twisted a ruby pin into my hair. My waist was cinched in tightly enough to pinch, so I could wear the dress that hugged my shoulders and torso, and bloomed outwards into a skirt like the petals of a rose.

It might have been easier to get ready in silence, but Wyn hovered over me as well. With Visca gone, her tension radiated to me, her new victim.  Though she was dressed for Bloodrain herself in red silk robes, thick with embroidery, her mouth was turned down at the corners, and she seemed to have taken me on as a pet project for her own distraction.

“Lovely,” she said, touching my hair as Rose clutched her cheeks and waved a simpering hand: oh, you.

I couldn’t bring myself to drive Wyn off. She clearly missed her wife and worried for her safety, and needed something to take her mind off that anxiety; and I had also noticed she seemed much warmer towards me since I’d overcome my fear of Bane feeding on me. I didn’t want to lose that warmth.

Besides, I would welcome the extra hands today, and I wouldn’t protest the expensive clothes. Not when I fully planned to seduce my own husband. Last night had not been nearly enough; sometimes I thought I was going mad, with how desperately I wanted to rip his clothes off with my teeth. It was an unshakeable craving, down in my bones.

She does beautiful work, I wrote in the journal, balanced precariously on my lap. You’ve outdone yourself with her. 

“I should say something self-deprecating, but… I really did, didn’t I?” Wyn looked over the golem smugly. “When you have children, I’ll make some to help as nannies. It would be best for a growing bloodwitch to grow up comfortable with sanguimancy.”

My eyebrows shot up so high they might well have vanished into my hairline. Children? I signed, temporarily forgetting my journal.

Children? How could I have forgotten them?

I’d never considered the possibility in my entire life. Before I was plucked from the river of life by Fate’s hand, I had been only concerned with my own education, and paying off the debt with the labor of my youth.

Children had never figured into the equation, much less a husband. How on earth would I have afforded them, working for the Sisters until I was fifty?

Fortunately, Wyn hadn’t lost her intuition for what I was asking.

“Yes, children,” she said, draping a ruby-studded necklace around my throat and eyeing it in the mirror. “You should have… oh, at least two, I would think. Three might be better. An heir, of course, but as you can never be too careful, you’ll want to have one prepared as the next sanguimancer to take my place. One day I’ll retire from this position and pursue another research expedition into Liuridar—but not before I’ve trained them up properly, of course.”

My hands remained frozen, hovering in midair, as I parsed which question was the most important to ask—children, sanguimancy, Liuridar… retirement?

Why did she have to drop a sack of bricks on my head right before I was supposed to appear composed and confident in front of other people?

“I can see you’ve got yourself worked into a tizzy,” she said wisely, discarding the necklace and trying out a lacy silver one. “Your children will be bloodwitches, Cirrien dear. As I am. The progeny of a vampire-human couple is always a bloodwitch, male or female. Which means that I will be in charge of teaching them, of course, and you should thank your ancestors for that. You won’t find a better teacher in Veladar.”

But… children, I said, the gears of my brain still grinding against each other.

“Of course I’m going to retire one day!” she said indignantly, completely misreading me. “I’m a hundred years old, and I’ve spent eighty-seven of those years underground. Once Hakkon is strung up and your children have completed their apprenticeships, I’m off to visit Serissa at least once in my life. Visca promised.”

I blinked at her and tried to unstick my brain from that one word.

So. Children. I was married, after all; it wasn’t like children were an impossibility when I was happy to peel off every scrap of fabric I wore when Bane came to bed.

And it wasn’t a concern that they would starve in my care; Bane didn’t lack for gold or food or clothes. I was no longer indentured into my fifties. Any children I had would grow up safe, secure, well-fed, loved…

So they were no longer an impossibility. I could even imagine them, with my red hair and Bane’s gold eyes…

They were just something so new in concept to my life that I couldn’t quite imagine that they ever would happen.

“You’re fortunate, though.” She discarded the silver necklace and found a crimson ribbon. “With the Accords in place, your children will grow up as respected, even beloved, sanguimancers. In my day…” Wyn chuckled sadly, tying the ribbon off as a choker. “Well, more bloodwitches were burned than lived. I only made it this far because my mother forbade me from the surface. It took many, many years of Visca telling me that it would be all right before I could bring myself to leave the Below—the expeditions into deeper earth, into Fae territory, those were nothing compared to the fear I felt of the world above! The thought that if I ever met my own father, he might tie me to a stake and char me to ash… that seemed far more terrible than the perpetual darkness.”

I touched the ribbon, just tight enough to kiss my throat without choking me. Wyn fussed with my hair, then the sleeves of my dress—giving her hands something to do. I thought she might only be talking to keep her mind off her wife.

“Now I’m glad, of course. This world is so lovely. But part of me will always feel more at home in the deeps. Besides, there’s a positive wealth of research down there that we might work on between the two of us, you and I.” Wyn beamed at me in the mirror. “Alas, that won’t come until after you’ve had children, and I’ve taught them both all I know of sanguimancy. Ancestors know I’ve a lifetime’s worth of knowledge to pass along, and by the time they’re old enough to practice the art, I’ll have more. Ha, it’ll take an entire second lifetime just to teach them all I know.”

Suddenly it became a lot harder to keep a smile on my face.

By the time Wyn was done teaching my children all she knew, I’d have one foot in the grave, if I wasn’t in it entirely.

If we had them. But if we did… I wouldn’t live long enough to see their full potential. I’d just have to trust in Bane, Wyn, and Visca to ensure they did.