Page 2 of Seduction of a Psychopomp
Grim
Itwassnowingwhenwe exited the portal into the southern courtyard of my family’s estate in the Boundlands, and I let my staff dissipate along with the portal behind us. Snow wasn’t unexpected this time of year, as the castle had been built into the craggy slope of a northerly mountain, but the chill felt unnaturally sharp tonight. Loud clanging from an outer bailey rang through the night air as we made our way to the main keep, indicating there was a sparring match in progress even though the sun wasn’t up yet. Someone was restless. My sister ‘tsked’ at the noise but held the door open for me with only a glare toward the bailey.
The smell of my childhood home greeted me—cold stone and warm bread—and I felt some of the tension I always carried in my shoulders loosen as I stepped inside. The familiar halls of the keep were open and vaulted. They had been updated to the Renaissance-Gothic style that had been in favor during my mother’s youth, but even the original castle had been built large enough to be comfortable for someone my size. My sister was considerably smaller than me—though she was tall for a woman at just over six feet—but even she looked perfectly suited to the space as she walked beside me. At just over seven feet tall myself, I was always relieved to return to the places in the Boundlands that were sized appropriately… whether they were meant for other reapers, orcs, ogres, or giants. Humans in the Void built structures that seemed so small, comparatively.
Yelena led me past the sculpted bust of an ancient elvish ruler whom my great-grandfather had been friendly with to a servant’s staircase tucked away in the back of the keep, likely trying to dodge small talk with anyone who might be up. She swept up the stairs ahead of me, shoulders back and head held high as she turned into an upper hallway and knocked on the door to our grandmother’s study. I turned a questioning look on my sister as we waited to be granted permission to enter, but she ignored me, looking for all the world as though she were preparing to march into battle. Maybe she was.
“Come.”
Yelena pushed the heavy door open and paced into the study without a backward glance. Grandmother Zdenka was seated at her oversized wooden desk, writing with an old-fashioned quill in one of her ledgers, the space lit only by candlelight. I’d provided her with numerous modern pens, but she always said she preferred the feeling of a well-made quill tip as it scrawled across the page. Now, as I watched her cap the pot of ink and replace her quill in its holder, the image was charming enough to make me regret my prodding. Let her enjoy her old things.
My grandmother wasn’t the soft, round, wrinkled woman that most people called to mind when they thought of “grandma”. She was sharp angles with an ageless grace, a tall woman with the same raven-dark hair that she’d passed down to all her grandchildren, currently worn in a low twist at the nape of her neck. Her skin was smooth and unblemished, and to glance at her you might be forgiven for assuming she was perhaps close to my own age—somewhere in her early thirties, maybe a few years older or younger. But once you looked into her eyes there was no mistaking the millennia of wisdom she carried. Those same eyes fixed us with a familiar intensity as we entered her study.
Low burning coals in the fireplace told me she’d been in here for hours and, despite the chill in the air that her thick curtains hadn’t managed to keep out, hadn’t bothered to stoke the fire by adding more wood. She had servants to do such things for her, of course, but only the cooks would be awake at this hour. She was perfectly capable, but she was often preoccupied with her work.
“Well, this is a surprise,” she said, lacing her fingers together as we took our places in front of her desk.
A spike of frustration flared inside me at her words. She hadn’t asked for my presence as Yelena had said, and we were here wasting her time. “Forgive us. I was under the impression that you wanted to see me,” I murmured, carefully trying to avoid directly implicating my sister in this breach of etiquette but knowing my grandmother would probably read between the lines anyway. I gave a small bow and leaned over to take my stubborn sister by the elbow, ready to haul her bodily from the room with me.
“Stay,” my grandmother said, stilling my movements.
The look Yelena sent me was triumphant as I snatched my hand back, and the scowl I sent her only served to please her more. I was going to throttle her.
“I do want to talk to you. Though, I was waiting for a more appropriate hour to send for you.” She turned a wry look on my sister, who stood silent and unbothered. As reapers, we didn’t sleep much—a few minutes here and there—but manners kept us from straying too far from a normal daylight schedule, wanting to respect mainstream society’s quiet hours and nocturnal habits.
I lifted my gaze back to my grandmother to find her giving me a considering look.
“I have a… proposal of sorts for you, Victor.” The wryness in her expression returned and a niggling thread of anxiety wormed its way into my chest. I waited silently for her to continue as she studied me for another moment, before purposefully shifting her posture and directing her full attention to me—making it clear that my sister was not a part of the conversation. “Or perhaps a new assignment, if you’re not amenable. But I would like for you to marry.”
My heart rate sped up at her blunt words. I’d always expected that my family would arrange a marriage for me. It was the custom of our people. We lived so long that the choice to bind yourself permanently to another wasn’t something to take lightly, and I’d heard the older generations scoff that it wasn’t something they would want to leave to something so foolish asfeelings. I knew this, but I hadn’t considered that it would happen this soon.
“No,” my sister interjected, her voice calm and resolute. “Absolutely not.” The racing of my heart only increased with her refusal. I didn’t care to be caught between the two most headstrong people in my family.
My grandmother continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted, and I had to strain to hear her over the pounding of my heart. “If you’re not willing to do so, then I would like for you to, at the very least, retire your position in the Void and take on guardianship of the girl while she seeks treatment for her illness here in the Boundlands.”
“He’s a child!” my sister interjected again, the calmness slipping from her voice.
I slid my gaze to my sister without turning my head, unimpressed with her appraisal of me. She might have been more than 400 years older than me, but that didn’t mean she needed to call me a child.
Grandmother pressed her lips into an unhappy line, finally giving my sister her attention. I couldn’t imagine the quarrels they’d gotten into over the past 436 years, but no doubt they were many. “Does he look like a child to you, Yelena? I seem to recall that he’s been besting you in the arena since he was fifteen years old. He’s thirty-two now, has spent the past decade fighting monsters in the Void, and is perfectly capable of speaking for himself.”
Yelena ignored the barb about her fighting prowess, though I knew she would try to take it out on me next time we sparred. “He only gets one chance to find a mate, and you would give it away! He has the rest of his life to find someone on his own! Someone he likes.”
“Like has little to do with love, Yelena. The older we get, the more set in our ways we are, and the harder it is for us to intertwine ourselves with another. You didn’t want a marriage when one was offered to you, and I respected that. But I would like to give your brother a chance to make his own decision without you hovering about insisting he’s somehow tied to your apron strings.” My grandmother’s patience with my sister’s interruptions was wearing thin, and by the end of her reply her words were clipped and her tone short.
I swallowed thickly and tried to breathe past my fraying nerves. “What did you have in mind?” I asked my grandmother, hoping to keep the disagreement from escalating.
She studied my face again before answering, and I could practically feel my sister bristling beside me. “Queen Danica Morningstar of the Kingdom of the Rising Sun approached us about a possible arrangement for her granddaughter, Princess Celeste of the Dawn Court. Loathe though they are to see their precious children leave Faery, the princess is a special case. Her health is failing, and it seems no amount of treatment there is helping, so she’s been placed in a magically induced stasis to buy her more time, though she doesn’t have much. Since your magic would heal her, and she would provide you a nice wife, I think it could function as a lovely arrangement.”
“That is preposterous!” Yelena practically shouted. “Why him? Ask Nikolai!”
To my sister’s credit, my cousin Nikolai did seem like a better fit. He was 125 years old and had always seemed to draw the eye of the women around him.
My grandmother addressed my sister but never let her eyes stray from mine. “I believe Victor and Celeste would be better suited for one another. They’re of a similar age, and I think it has potential to be a perfectly agreeable arrangement between our houses.”
“Grandmother, mortals die all the time! Must we cry over every spent blossom that falls from the cherry tree?”
Grandmother’s gaze snapped to my sister. “We do if it’s our cherry tree that we’ve planted in our yard and tended carefully for many years.”
