Chapter 29
Previously: Obsidian: Ash and Moonbeams – Chapter 28
“Since when are you related to sugar lips? She said pretty much the same thing, especially because even if she kicks Vlad out of his coffin and sends him over, that’s at least ten minutes before backup is here.”
Putting a hand on John’s shoulder, telling him again to put the gun down, Art shakes his head. “I was a hunter. You do not attack a voivode. You try to not meet a voivode. We’re dead; we were dead the moment Radu set foot in here, so we’re on borrowed time, let’s use it.”
“Given that his enmity seems to be largely directed at Vlad, maybe we want to hold off on calling him in, I’d rather not provoke the voivode who can inconveniently read all our thoughts, too, so it’s not really like we could surprise him, either,” Arthur agrees.
Despite the fraught situation, it’s so… nice to have Art here for it. To have him for support, but also to be taken seriously by him, listened to.
And… while Arthur’s feeling a little jittery and unreal with nerves, it’s not the gut-wrenching panic of other fights, that wire-tight tension of disaster breathing down his neck if he makes one wrong decision, one wrong step.
He was all geared up for that when Radu first appeared, but now… now he’s only somewhere between nervousness and hope?
It’s weird.
“Minstrels, ugh.” Wrinkling his nose, Art groans once more, then puts his kit back down. “Alright, John, you do your best ‘silent guy glowering in the corner’ act, that’s honest enough, I’d say. Mariam, note taking is on you. And I suppose I’ll stay away, because it’s not as if hunters, even ex-hunters, normally get friendly conversations going with voivodes.”
“Do I want to be in the same room with him? Arthur, how about you take notes instead?” is Mariam’s opinion on that. “Fae research is one thing, sitting in the same room with a monster, no thank you.”
“I can do the note-taking,” Arthur agrees, a little surprised. Nothing else seemed to faze Mariam so far, but he supposes things were more… theoretical up to now.
It’s not like he can blame her, so he suggests: “You ought to go and find something to make you happy, since I’d say we can use all the good luck possible…”
“Very good point! I believe I saw there’s some puppies in that animal sanctuary in the back, yes, puppies, good idea.” With that, Mariam leaves, at a fast clip, too.
John nods after her. “Yeah, my level of enthusiasm about being close to that guy exactly.”
“If you very suddenly change your mind and attitude, at least we’ll have a warning that he’s messing with us?” Arthur offers.
“Shouldn’t Quincy be a warning then?”
Arthur considers that, and then decides: “…Nah. Quincy can be very surprising and dramatic, going from hissy to, uh… caring? actually seems pretty normal for him…”
That makes John snort more in amusement than disgruntled, and finally put the gun down. Arthur can’t help feeling a little pleased at having inspired that reaction.
“Touché. Fucking true. Fine, I’ll go glower then, I guess.”
Arthur smiles at him, and says, honestly: “I’ll feel much safer with you glowering at the big scary voivode… even if that’s not rational.”
Ruffling both their hair, Art nods. “Go intimidate him, you two.”
Arthur chuckles a bit incredulously at that, but nods, and starts back to the library- really hoping they’re not going to find some sort of catastrophe there. Quincy hurt, or mind controlled, or gone…
It’s none of those things. Probably. At least it would be a strange choice of mind control to have Quincy giggle and make sure to keep all his swatting at Radu coming up short while Radu seems to be on the final part of retelling a story: “I had half a mind of stalking up to your door right that night. Can you imagine? All that setup and then I get stood up, thanks to you! Rude, dastardly rude of you!”
“You’re not going to believe me, I win! I had a worse night than you: Featuring utterly unnecessary emotional horror and about six pints of bottled blood. Six pints! Can you imagine? All your fault, honey!” Quincy fires right back, still giggling. “But I’ll allow, you probably felt more sheepish than I did.”
“Oh angels forbid! My deepest apologies, that is the very definition of revolting. Had I known, I suppose I could have offered my ruined dinner preparations to you instead.” It’s said while Radu shakes himself, hands up to fend off the mere thought, then he turns and instead smiles brightly and warmly at Arthur and John, gets up to bow to John.
“It is my pleasure and honour to make the acquaintance of the man I thought I would find having married my beloved. Her mind was rather clear on who is the man for her when last she told me.”
That has John falter for a moment, but then he grunts and walks the other way, gets into a corner and crosses his arms.
“Ah, yes, she had mentioned that you are the very image of the brooding, strong man. I shall not stain that image with the frivolity Quincy and I get up to. My thanks for greeting me with a grunt rather than much blunter weapons.” Nodding at him once more, he turns to Arthur. “My renewed thanks for having negotiated my safety. Please, I fear dear Quincy and I have gotten perilously side-tracked in our conversation, would you be so kind and enlighten me to the details of the situation so I may aid you better?”
Arthur slants John an “I told you so” look at Radu making nice- and proving those social mastermind rumours are true. But… he and Quincy are talking about the night of the ritual? The memories lurking behind his thoughts make him feel cold and shivery and sick and sad and angry– they didn’t have to, and Darcy would still be here, and it’s all Gregory’s- the demon’s fault- well, the demon’s and Radu’s, the man sitting right there giggling with Quincy and being polite, so that’s not a constructive line of thought, so he shoves it away and focuses on the question instead.
(And if it’s the demon’s fault, then doesn’t that make it Arthur’s fault?)
He glances at Quincy. “Well, Llew tricked each of us into believing that Darcy spent the night with the others and we believe he brought her to Faerie. When she was gone in the morning- that was last week- we tried to talk to Eluned or Llew, but they wouldn’t answer. So we tried to break down the door, and that made Llew show up. But he said something about how he didn’t know where Darcy was, but that her contract with the castle was working so she was fine. And that none of us had a claim on her because we don’t have a contract with her…” He scowls at remembering that part.
~
Nodding along, Radu crosses his legs after taking the seat next to Quincy, steeples his fingers, and addresses them mentally again. “That does sound like we will need fae intervention on our side. However, first I would like to clarify that, no, this wretched ritual you did is not my fault, and you would have known as much if you had talked to Darcy.”
He can see that his words make Master Lancaster bristle.
“Because we could trust that her thoughts and emotions were still her own and unmanipulated? And that anything we said to her, you wouldn’t know about?” he shoots back, mentally. Which is something to be said in his favour, enough self-control to remember to put quarrels below handing information out freely.
“Oh, most certainly I would have heard some of it, but do tell me, what was my brother’s analysis of the enthrallment?” Radu truly does not think he has any reason to be fazed here. The enthrallment had not even been his own idea, strategically embarrassing as that would be, would he not generally consider such a breach of consent abhorrent. There is a reason why he never uses tactics like these, but he is a minstrel …-leaning voivode, what can he say, a knightly drac is persuasive to him.
“You mean that she consented to the first bite?” Master Lancaster asks. “‘Scuse me for being sceptical of the real consensuality of it when a centuries-old social mastermind vampire who can read minds talks an eighteen-year old who’s been out in the world for a few months into it- and then makes her forget all about it so she couldn’t even get an outside opinion on what happened. Or, you know, tell us whether there was anything to worry about or not. Or what we were dealing with at all.”
Lifting his hands, Radu nods. Again, no reason here to be fazed, his fight with his brother is a well known fact at the Court. And these people here, with the exception of Quincy, are merely human, they have little idea about the other well-known fact about him, that he has never hurt somebody weaker than him.
Well, he should admit to one transgression there, at least to himself, not right now to Master Lancaster.
“Responsibility for the feud aspects with my brother accepted. No question there. But I believe we both heard Quincy say it: You broke the enthrallment and she still loved me. Has it so much as crossed your mind that part of the memory removal was to get Vlad off the trail? He has questionable ideas of what to do with women I show interest in. Ask my dead wives about his hospitality!”
There’s a sudden growl under the words, eyes certainly turning wolfish again no matter if he wishes they did not, as Radu feels his drac strain closer to the surface despite his best attempts to push it down.
“Ask him about what he does every time I am involved in something that could further or interfere with his tactics!”
Master Lancaster crosses his arms, impudent, and surprising in its lack of overt fear, but Radu does have a reputation of not harming humans, even if this one may feel himself shielded too much. “But if your intentions were so pure, why enthrall her at all? The fact that Darcy loves you doesn’t prove a thing about whether you genuinely care for her, or whether she’s just a chess piece in your vendetta. And we were about as keen to have anything to do with Vlad as we were with you- but the only thing he was doing was pretending to be an actor, at least.
“And I don’t know what the history with him and your wives is, or why he’d do something like that, but I like evidence, and the evidence I’ve seen from him is that Lucy isn’t afraid of him one bit, and he saved her, and he let her slap him without getting upset at all, or using the opportunity to fight her when she challenged him for the Principe position. And he sang Darcy lullabies. And really, really didn’t want to fight his brother. And the evidence I’ve seen from you is that you enthralled my friend and murdered a man. So…” He spreads his hands, shrugs. “Unless you just go and change my mind for me, I’m not just going to absolve you of all responsibility here.”
“Do not absolve me. I did enthrall your friend, upon her own wish, which yes, I am not going to say did not play nicely into my vendetta with my abusive brother.” And there is the point at which he shall admit to his slip on the side of violence against those weaker than him. “Speaking of abusive, Harker would have been worth more to me alive, so much more, but I do not abide a man who beats his wife and child.”
Radu inclines his head towards Quincy, because he can see the pride he scratched there, as well as the unwillingness to admit to having been abused. He will have to find out if it is dhampir dracs in general that are this easy to read, for he finds there is hardly a barrier to him noticing what he can feel from the drac as easily as from reading it off of Quincy’s face.
In either case, he wants to soothe the pain his words caused.
“Apologies for calling you such, you are not. But I also heard the thought about you being glad he is gone, so again, my pleasure. Back to Darcy.”
Now for this, he truly should fix Master Lancaster and Lord Silver in turn with his gaze, but he tries to make it not as threatening as it surely must seem to humans to be glared at by a voivode. “What I am hearing is that you did not even trust her to try to speak, even if I may have heard something. You blanked her mind out completely, left her with less agency than I did. Listened less to her wishes than I did, or she would not have felt the need for me to rescue her from the nightmare her life had become. From her, and I quote, ‘gothic fairy tale’.”
To his credit, and he would expect no less from a man his beloved holds in high esteem, Lord Silver is gnashing his teeth. “I talked to her those days. I should have said something. It’s my fault.”
~
Arthur frowns as he considers Radu’s words, gives Quincy a surprised look for a moment as he hears about Harker- though he doesn’t think he approves of gruesome murder, still, on principle.
But as Radu said, back to Darcy… “No, I don’t suppose I trusted her- how could I, when I didn’t know how much of her mind was her own? Or even if she was telling us everything she was or wasn’t remembering?”
That seemed reasonable then. It didn’t even occur to him that it was a question of trust. And even if it had… It’s him. The socially-awkward one. How could he trust himself to tell whether she was being herself or not when everyone else was worried and saying how Radu was so dangerous and everything?
…He couldn’t even tell with the person he knew best of all… Or didn’t want to be able to tell. He sighs and slumps a little. “But I guess I didn’t give her much reason to trust me, either, since there was all this crap going on that I wasn’t aware of…”
~
“I was aware. Also that bloodbonds don’t work in a dreamscape, so enthrallments probably don’t, either. Fuck.”
John slams his fist into the wall, because in hindsight, this should have been obvious to him!
“She thought… she thought she was talking to Radu while I kept her asleep and…” He grinds his teeth again. “She was happier than I’ve ever seen her before. Curious, playful, asking so many questions and wanting to do so many things. I couldn’t keep up with all the places she pushed him to take her.”
Quincy chimes in, and his words make John growl and, unwillingly, very unwillingly, glower a little bit less at Radu: “I had to patch her heart back together. I talked to her about her dreams. She told me we stole her dreams. Not Radu. He was the light that made her dream again, that made her stop thinking the abuse was what it meant to be a wife. John and I only got to be the husbands because Radu made her dream of happiness again.”
Not that he’s not tempted to go back to glowering at the wolfish grin the fucker has on, but then, huh, that’s also totally a blush stealing onto his face.
That looks incongruous, wait… Drac and man running two different ways? He’s seen his bro pull stuff like that before. Great, is that a family trait?
If the stubbornness he can see in the way Arthur crosses his arms again and gives Radu narrow eyes is a family trait over there, too, John doesn’t really want to know. And it’s not as if he really disagrees, but still, maybe don’t test how much the drac over there is willing to play nice?
“Before you get too pleased with yourself, enthralling someone is still not okay. And no one’s going to convince me otherwise. Her being happy still says not a thing about your motives, or whether you wouldn’t have turned around and broken her heart, dropped her the moment you got tired of the game or didn’t have any use for her anymore. Or killed her. Or decided any of us was in your way and killed us. Basically…”
When their obvious resident moralist looks back at him, John thinks that’s meant as a pick him up, which is nice of Arthur, but also, yes, fuck, let him do something. “It took all of us to make this mess, so what are we going to do to get her back and make it better?”
Just, well, the drac isn’t done reacting yet, it seems. Radu starts snickering, then laughing, fangs out and head back before snapping it back down to grin at Arthur. And really, that should be terrifying, but John catches himself now wondering if that’s really just a drac thing, culver pulled things like that, too, when she didn’t have that fucking mask of hers on.
“I accept those accusations. For the first meeting. Maybe even for the second. But no, do not insult Darcy by thinking my selfish intentions survived our third date. For somebody who says he cares about her, you have oh so very little faith in her! Now then, let us get her back so that she can personally pout at you for that. I do not feel it is my right to do it in her stead. Which of you will be my companion to the Court, then, to keep an eye on evil, old me?”
“And she would, too.” Quincy sighs. “Both on the pouting and her turning unlikely heads, I’d know.”
Yeah, got to agree with Molly there. What is he supposed to say here? If anybody knows what level of raging river his girl is, that would be him. He doesn’t really want to admit to it, but hey, can he fault Radu for supposedly having been steamrolled by Darcy? He can see it, yeah, fuck, he really can.
Arthur is smart enough to concede to Quincy that: “I suppose you would, yes.” Then he tilts his head in thought while he looks at Radu. “So you’re admitting your intentions were selfish, but you’re saying she convinced you otherwise?”
“Her drac did. I was able to behold it more with every encounter, and the woman she will grow into with that knightly vigour, one shivers at the vision of such beauty.” There’s an actual little shiver going through Radu before he focuses back on Arthur that looks very fucking real to John, if he allows himself to look closely and use his observation skills.
“But likely more to your interest; yes, I admit to selfish intentions at first. How could I ignore such a valuable asset? How could I not try to deprive my brother of her? How could I not try to not let his cold tactics ruin one more Drăculești’s life? Make no mistake; he is a master at getting what he wants, by any means necessary.”
~
Quincy twitches at the last sentence, at the cold tone that can’t hide the pain underneath. Maybe he’s imagining it, but his drac just whimpered. He can’t hear Radu’s drac, but he is sure it hid for that sentence.
~
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Arthur agrees, and makes a mental note to find a moment to talk to Vlad the next time he sees him and get to the bottom of this- even if Vlad is all grave and brusquely uncomfortable. Because something so doesn’t add up here. He’s certainly no social mastermind himself, but he thinks he’s rather cautious and suspicious- shouldn’t the man Radu’s describing jump at the possibility to get rid of a brother he’s had a long feud with? And Vlad definitely didn’t. That also doesn’t sound like the kind of man who’d offer a runt of a kid his first name. No, this bears further investigation.
Speaking up, John takes a step away from the wall: “I’ll go. Quincy’s not safe at the Court. Arthur’s more valuable. If this is a trap, I’m the smallest loss.” With the earlier promised glower at Radu, he adds: “So if you kill me, it’s not helping you much. I’ll go.”
Quincy huffs loudly in protest. “Darling! Leave the drama to me. What do you think Cycy would say if she heard you undervalue yourself like that?”
~
“Agreed, she spoke fondly of you. To be exact, now let me remember this correctly…” Putting a finger over his lips once more, Radu allows himself some moments to recollect his memories, as surely, this is important to convey to prove his intentions and his understanding of Darcy’s mind: “She called you the only man she had been with who made her feel like a part of her own sensuality, her only reason to believe that there could be anything to the expression of making love rather than being raped. She spoke of her deep guilt as to not loving you as you deserve. That, not your supposed expendability, is why I shall take your offer. Especially because you are quite right, dear Quincy is in grave danger at the Court.
“I will not endanger him. Never.”
Radu lets his focus wander to Quincy for that last part, even though he is surprised yet again at the softness he can feel on his own face. He does mean his words. And that he means them so forcefully makes him suspect his drac, but that cannot be helped.
Schooling himself into more neutrality again, he turns back to Master Lancaster, clearly the most suspicious of them all. “Is that acceptable, or would you like to discuss with Lord Silver who of you should go?”
~
Arthur feels the cold, squirmy feeling of Radu saying that word, ‘rape’. That guilty feeling.
It still feels like his fault. He brought Gregory back and he didn’t see it, and everyone’s been so nice and supportive about his major fuck-up that he’s actually kind of glad Radu’s giving him shit for how he didn’t trust Darcy properly.
Because he didn’t. After all they’ve been through, that feels so wrong, but he didn’t, and he didn’t give her enough reason to trust him for her to tell him what was wrong, and the him of four months ago seems very far away and also very stupid.
If he’d done things differently, better, they wouldn’t all be here in this mess.
But he can’t fix that, he can only try to fix things now, and that’s not helped by him wallowing, so he forces his mind back to the issue at hand: “No, I agree, John should go. If it comes to a fight, any of us don’t stand much of a chance, as I understand, but you’re not a scaredy-cat like me,” he says to John, “so you’ll have a way clearer head to observe.”
With a grunt, John comes over to Arthur and punches him on the arm. “You’re twice as smart as me, but sure, I’ll go.”
Arthur blushes at John’s compliment. “Only with books…” he defers.
“Sure, I’m a people person now.”
~