Eric & Fernanda, 1219-1220 CE

by The Modern Typewriter

Eric de Clermont has spent the last fifty years overcoming the losses of his human life and coming into his own as the young son of Hugh de Clermont. Back in the 21st century, Addison has spent the last six months trying to make sense of her mind and the world around her. Finally getting back on her feet, the last thing she wants or needs is a trip to 13th century Spain.

5. Fall, La Ithuriana

Chapter Five: Fall, La Ithuriana

Sorley pressed a kiss to her cheek. No— He kissed her forehead. Or... was it her hand?

Addison felt the ghost of his lips on her skin, but she couldn't quite pin down where they had landed.

A buzzing, loud and persistent, filled the air around her. It grew, gradually, into a crescendo so forceful she felt the ground vibrate beneath her. She threw her arms out. Desperate to catch her balance. And crouched down, low, to the vibrating ground, curling in on herself. Covering her ears. Desperate to block out the sound. To block out the motion as the ground shifted. And shifted. And shifted again.

A pit formed in her stomach. She opened her mouth. Stretched it wide to let out a scream. But the scream wouldn't come. Ripping her hands through her hair, she curled in tight. Burrowing in on herself as she crouched low on shifting ground, her body taut with thrill of fear and uncertainty.

Her eyes cast down.

Addison jolted.

Tried to throw herself back.

But found herself frozen.

The earth twisted. Hissed and moved. Linoleum and grass, stone and mud had transformed into cords of motion. Writhing and shifting and hissing beneath her. A horde of snakes twisted and curled in on each other. Knots. Serpents writhed and twisted into knots. They slithered beneath her feet which were frozen, even as the world stumbled and tumbled beneath her.

Her skin pricked by fear that the darkness around her tried desperately to numb. And the ground shifted. And shifted. And shifted again.

When it stopped, she stood in a pair of old slippers. The world was made of grass and mud. The sky was dark. Trees loomed like creatures above her. Shadows cast down around her. Her feet squelched. The fabric of her slippers soaked through in the mud. She let out a wretched cough and watched as the mud squished up between her toes.

She was cold again.

She was cold again like she'd been before.

Cold like the cold would never leave her.

She shook her head.

No.

No. This wasn't right. She'd been at home. The ground wasn't made of grass, it was linoleum.

She was in the kitchen.

Lala stood by the stove.

No.

No.

Lala was at Meadowbrook home.

She wasn't here. Lala wasn't here.

And Addison— Addison was— where was she?

The floor turned to stone. Hard stone. Muddy feet turned blue on an expensive rug, soft beneath her tired bones. Old midcentury wallpaper faded, the walls turned into the darkest of stone, lined in the finest of treated wood.

She turned.

Sorley's hand was at her back. She looked over her shoulder for him, but he'd already gone. She turned back and there was the entrance to Ailios's hut.

And then she was inside.

The beat of hooves against the soft earthen ground. He rode away.

Sorley was gone, and she was in Ailios's hut. And it was just her. Only her and the darkness.

There was no ground beneath her feet. No air left to breathe. No hoofbeats. No steadying hand at the small of her back.

Addison was floating.

Floating like she had always been floating. Her and eternity, strung up by some invisible string. In the dark of some long-forgotten hut at the edge of the woods. Pulled taut, stretched thin, at the very brink of security.

She couldn't move. She couldn't see. Darkness. It was too dark to see.

The fire had died out. She looked around. Eyes wide and desperate to see. Desperate for someone. Anyone. For Lala or Ailios. Sorley or Fernando. There had to be someone—

There.

Addison squinted. Moved forward as though it would help her— She couldn't quite make out—

Two barely-there shapes. Outline in shadow.

Just beyond the darkness, the slow stretch of a sinister grin.

No.

She let out a small sound, struggled to flee but could not move.

Addison tugged at her feet. Willed her body to move.

But she was frozen. She remained frozen. She would always be frozen.

She knew what came next.

An old familiar dread hatched itself at the base of her spine. Crawled like a spider up her back. Burrowed itself deep into her neck.

Addison pitched herself backward. Tugged uselessly against the invisible string. Tried in vain to run but knew she was too late.

And then the world burst into flame.

Addison jolted awake. Desperate to suck in a full breath, she couldn't get any air past the ghost of the smoke that flooded her airways. She felt as though her throat had collapsed in on itself. She couldn't keep any air. She gasped and heaved. The air scraping through her body making the most horrid of sounds.

Like wild but captured prey, she heaved.

She clenched her fists in the bed sheets, held on tight for fear that she would die here like this. That the last face she ever saw in the world would be the sinister face of Colum McCrae.

The curtains were closed. The room was dark and full of shadows. Her eyes flitted over every crevice and corner, heart pounding hard against her rib cage as her brain registered every long-stretched trick of the darkness and oddly shaped figure.

She— she couldn't stay here. She needed to do something. She needed to move.

Addison pitched herself out of bed. Walked forcefully over to the window and jerked the curtains open. Letting out a small, miserable moan to find that the sun had not yet risen. She was met only with more shadowy darkness. The tall trees of the woods around La Ithuriana were tall and angry looking. Black streaks against a dark blue and grey landscape. Fog stretched long across the ground, taunting her in the absence of even the moon. It was— it was too much. It was everywhere. The darkness had sucked all the oxygen from the world. And all that was left was smoke and shadow and the slow stretch of a sinister grin.

Addison drew her arms around herself and shuddered at the memories.

She didn't know what to do.

She was cold.

An old chill that she'd never fully shaken crept its way back into the forefront of her mind, and Addison suddenly couldn't think of anything else but her own frozen bones. Frozen bones and the fear of blue fingers. Mud between her toes and a cough that would never leave her.

Addison was famished.

Starving.

She needed food. She needed—

Her mouth flooded in remembrance of rustic nature stew. She heaved. Dropped down on her knees, reaching out blindly for the chamber pot. All of her energy pouring into not vomiting all over the cold stone floor beneath her.

One swift knock on her door. The turn of a latch. Jacqueline murmured a quiet greeting to her and swept into the room.

The maid appeared instantly by her side and Addison had to shake herself. Still heaving at the memory of the stew, she tried desperately to relax into the gentle hand that came to rub at her back. Allowing the softly accented words of comfort that the maid doled out to wash over her and drive the memories away. Jacqueline ran her fingers through Addison's hair and twisted it back into a braid while the younger girl emptied her stomach. Addison sighed out her blessed thanks.

It wasn't until later, after the sun had risen and Addison was fully dressed for the day, that she wondered at how Jacqueline could have possibly known she was awake so early before the sun. She had just sucked in a breath to question the maid about the odd occurrence when a sharp knock at the door interrupted her train of thought.

Jacqueline's fingers stilled around the scarf she had carefully knotted over the length of Addison's hair, eyes turning down questioningly to her mistress. Addison uncertainly rose from her chair, turning to make for the door but was cut off by Jacqueline's harried pace. The maid got to the door before Addison could blink and carefully tugged it open.

Fernando stood in the corridor. Black tunic, black breeches. Dark eyebrows furrowed low as though he was concerned, and she could tell by his smile that he was trying to hide the dark look in his eyes when he studied her.

"My lady Fernanda has not yet broken her fast this morning, sir," Jacqueline murmured quietly. He flicked his eyes to her and gave her an understanding nod before turning back to Addison, considering.

Addison, for her part, was distinctly uncomfortable. She and Fernando had come to a sort of accord in the last few days since he'd asked her to accept him as a father figure. They still had their awkward moments, but slowly they were trudging through the messy bits of getting to know each other. In no time at all really, she'd found that underneath his curmudgeonly exterior, Fernando was at the very least a very warmhearted friend. He just had the grave misfortunate of being surrounded by people who constantly stuck their noses in places that they did not belong. Addison herself included.

She sent him a hesitant smile. Unsure of where she stood with him now that Sorley was in the picture. Unsure of her position in this world in a whole new way.

How long had it been for Sorley? He seemed so... so real and so shocked. Floored by the sight of her. And she had to admit that she was still reeling from seeing him again when she'd thought him long dead or at least in another part of the world.

It was too good to be true. Too much of a coincidence to be coincidence at all. Addison's stomach turned a bit at yet another giant question that now loomed over her head.

Was she Sorley's wife? Or was she Fernando's daughter? Or was she Lala's granddaughter? Or was she someone else entirely? Her head was starting to spin with all the roles she'd suddenly been asked to play.

She had to clench her fist a few times and close her eyes to regain control of her shallow breathing.

A hand gently tapped at her cheek, jarring her out of her whirlwind of thoughts. Addison opened her eyes and there was Fernando. Close enough that she could see the light from the window reflected back at her in his eyes. His lips moved and she shook herself again.

"Are you well?" He asked again when she scrunched her face up at him in confusion.

"Oh—" she said and brushed her hands down the front of her dress, fidgeting with the scarf tied around her hair. He studied the movement, eyes taking in her scarf with a grim look. "I—Yes. Yes. I am fine."

"Fine?"

"Sorry, I meant that I am well. Very well," Addison coughed. "So well."

He arched a skeptical eyebrow and skillfully suppressed a smirk. So maybe she hadn't sold that one as skillfully as she had hoped.

"Well then, if you are so well," he turned back toward the door. "I will leave you to break your fast in private."

She watched as he nodded to Jacqueline and walked back out the way he came, taking a left into the shadows of the corridor that separated her from the rest of the house.

"Wait," she said. Not sure if he heard her, she made for the door and stopped abruptly when his figure reappeared in the doorway as though he'd never been gone at all. Startled by his sudden proximity, Addison cleared her throat and took a small step back to give him his space.

"Do you guys eat in bed too?" she asked him, cocking her head curiously.

Fernando seemed to fall still for but a second. Face blank, eyes thinking. As though breakfast had simply not occurred to him.

"Surely you eat breakfast," she said with a small frown. She didn't know how anyone in this world could skip breakfast. Not when she knew all too well the discomfort of what it was to be starving. She didn't think rich men like these knew how to skip meals.

"Of course," he said, smiling down at her placatingly. "We eat in the great hall."

"Oh," she said and paused. "Then why do I—"

A throat cleared politely behind her, and Jacqueline quietly intervened.

"If I may, sir..." she said and waited until he'd nodded his assent. "My lady, it is custom that the lady of the house breaks her fast in her chambers, as this is a space that is hers alone. Separate from her duties. Men and lower ranking women break their fast in the dining hall. It has always been this way. I apologize, I thought that you knew."

Addison considered the maids words carefully. Nodding in thought.

"Since that has been settled," Fernando said and shot her a good-natured grin. He turned as though to go but Addison shook her head. A look of consternation overcoming her.

"But I don't have any duties," she said. "And I don't know that I would consider myself the lady of the house. I— well— I'm just me."

"Fernanda," Fernando said. His voice a combination of stern and amused. "You've only just arrived, we wanted to slowly accustom you to your home, but you are the highest-ranking lady in this family. By default, that makes you the lady of the house. You will come into your duties as you learn," he said. "Now I really must insist that I leave you to Jacqueline's care so that you may eat in peace."

"I think I'd like to eat with you in the dining hall," she said with a shrug. Looking nervously up at him as though concerned he'd take exception to her challenge.

Fernando, if he had been less practiced in the art of exasperation, would have sighed. He did not like the nervous way she regarded him. It reminded him still that he had a long way to go before he'd earned her trust. Before any of them had. It would not do to be strict to the point of stifling.

"It is not proper, my lady," Jacqueline urged her to reconsider but Addison shook her head. Looking back and forth between the maid and Fernando.

"I think— well— if it's okay— I would like to eat with other people today. And," Addison looked up at him uncertainly again. Unsure if she should be honest. His eyes were all seeing, and it unnerved her. "I would like to see Sorley... that is if he is still here..."

Fernando regarded her with one long look that she could not decipher before closing his eyes and letting out a small knowing laugh. When he opened them again, they twinkled down at her like he knew exactly what was going on in her mind. As though he had seen all there was to see in the world, and nothing she could say or think or do could possibly surprise him. Addison felt her chest puff up a little defensively at that. What could he possibly know about anything?

But she bit her tongue when he tilted his head in acquiescence.

"I will inform the chef that you will be joining us this morning," he said. And left her in the capable hands of an exasperated Jacqueline.

---

Fernando appeared in the drawing room with a grimace. Idir was staring contemplatively into the fire at the other end of the room while Jean Luc pored over some missive or another at a table near the window. Hugh's eyes were locked intently on Eric who sat in a high-backed chair, looking a wreck. His hair was a nest of mats and tangles from a night spent running his hands through it in disbelief. His eyes were red though he'd lost no sleep nor shed no tears. It was as though the young manjasang had aged all his eighty years in one passing night, and now they were witness to him becoming some sort of tortured soul, unable to move on into the afterlife until he'd seen her again.

She was his mate.

Fernando sent a look over Eric's head to his own mate whose eyes had barely flickered up to greet him. Hugh was far more concerned with his son right now. And rightly so. The boy looked on the verge of a mad fit of rage or grief or some other far more intoxicating and crazy making emotion.

"Fernanda has decided to join us in breaking our fast this morning." He decided that, in the absence of a proper moment, just announcing their newest predicament into the air would solve it the quickest.

Idir let out a long, warm laugh. Looking up from the fire with eyes that sparkled far too much for the existential precipice Eric seemed to be teetering on. Hugh's eyebrows shot up into his hairline.

"That is highly irregular," he said, and Fernando could see from where he stood that his husband was trying very desperately to keep from his own traitorous ponderings for want of supporting his son.

Eric turned shell shocked eyes around to meet his. Still stunned silent by the events of the day before.

"She—" his voice was rough when he spoke. "She wishes to—"

"Break her fast," Fernando said. "With us. In the dining room."

Eric cleared his throat, eyes losing some of their shock as his mind registered the other man's words. He brought his hands down to smooth at his tunic and rake through his wild hair.

"Why?" He asked.

And Fernando thought he sounded much like a man in desperate need of water.

"Well," he shrugged. "The girl claims that she would like to see you."

"See me?"

"Yes," he said and shot the boy a grin that felt a little more threatening than he had been prepared to send.

Suddenly he wasn't so sure if Eric and Fernanda were a wonderful idea. After all, the boy was eighty summers old. And Fernanda... she was just a child. Only nineteen winters if she was to be believed. By Christ, she was so young. And while he loved Eric, the boy would certainly be unstable in the coming months and years that followed this discovery. The look Hugh shot him over his son's head could have made a dagger bleed. Fernando grimaced and reined in his ire.

"I believe there was some question as to whether or not you were still here at the manor." He waved his hand dismissively in Eric's direction. "I assured her that you were, in fact, still in residence. And I have already informed the cook that we will be dining this morning, all of us, on food suitable for my warm-blooded daughter. Now, unless any of you have any objections... I suggest you make yourselves presentable."

---

Eric stood in dining hall, hovering behind one of the chairs to the right of his father. Hugh lounged casually as though even here was some sort of king.

Eric had gone to his chambers at Fernando's announcement. Changed from yesterday's travel attire and splashed some cold water on his face. Trying to clear his tired eyes. He raked his hands through his hair and tied it back in an old leather band. Out of his face, but for the fact that he still fidgeted with the strands terribly. They would no doubt be loose by the end of the meal.

Now, he stood anxiously awaiting the arrival of Malvina—err—Fernanda. His mate. His— well he didn't know what she was to him now in the wake of five decades in this second life.

The doors pulled open. The other three men stood from their seats. And, still, he could not quite believe—

She was in an emerald green dress today. It brought out the golden tones of her skin and sat in contrast with her long black hair. She flowed into the room like a fae creature, and not even her nervous look nor her ungainly stumble could detract from the way she brightened the very room. Her eyes, wide and owl like, swiveled around to take in her surroundings and her company, before they landed resolutely on his.

There was a story in her eyes and for a moment he forgot that they were able to speak the same language. That she spoke Castilian of all things. Instead, he gave her a small grin and dipped his head in her direction.

One dimple. Her eyes twinkled up at him. And she turned her head away to fight back a grin. But he knew he had her. One dimple, and he knew.

He pulled the chair he'd been leaning on back from the table and gestured for her to take her seat.

She ducked her head, and he couldn't keep his ears from focusing in on the way her heartbeat fluttered a little faster as she strode quickly over to him. Her steps were fast and feigning confidence, but he could tell that her skirts bothered her, and her feet caught on them as she moved.

Somehow, even as she closed the distance, the space between them stretched long and wide, and her journey to the place he waited for her took its own small eternity. The tether in his chest gave a slight tug, and he couldn't help the way he felt his own slow heartbeat in the very tips of his fingers as her slight frame breezed around him. Eyes cast up only briefly before ducking back down, shy. She sat timidly in the chair he'd pulled out for her and allowed him to push it in. Clearing her throat and fidgeting with the goblet of mead that sat waiting for her on the table.

He took his own seat, glancing casually at her as he did. Watching amusedly as she snatched up a fresh roll and slathered it in butter and honey. Taking a bite with a groan and dropping it on her plate before she grabbed for the tray of fruit and loaded up her plate with fresh berries.

Smirking at her voracious appetite, remembering it well, Eric reached for a pear and deftly cut a slice, holding it out in her direction. True to form, Fernanda snatched up the slice. Sending him the most adoring look she could manage, with a face full of bread and lips covered in buttery crumbs. He couldn't help the way his grin stretched wide across his face and stayed there.

---

Addison was halfway through her second roll, gratefully accepting another slice of pear from Sorley, when she remembered that they were not alone. So focused had she been on the man beside her that she'd completely blocked out the presence of Fernando, Hugh and Idir.

Like waking from a dream, she blinked and the faces of the other three men came into focus.

Hugh was grinning at her like an idiot, sipping casually at a goblet of wine. He had a handful of uneaten almonds in his palm but appeared to have forgotten that he was holding them. Fernando next to him looked pained. Pained and exasperated and on the verge of laughing but perhaps more at his luck than at anything funny. Idir was patting the other man on the back, laughing quietly to himself but working his way slowly and methodically through an incredibly rare cut of meat that made Addison's stomach turn something fierce. She had to look away. She swallowed the rest of the bread down, used a cloth to wipe at the corners of her mouth in a way that was far daintier than she had eaten, and reached for her mead. Taking one long gulp of the sweetened alcohol. Gagging a bit at the taste, she choked it down.

And then in the corner of her eye she saw Sorley reach out, and when she looked down, she was pleased to find that he had offered her another slice of pear.

---

"So," he said, turning to face her a bit as they walked through the gardens. "You're Castilian."

Addison could feel Idir and Jacqueline at their backs as she and Sorley— err— Eric strolled through the grounds of La Ithuriana. She looked up at him, her face twisted, unsure how to explain this again.

"Mm... no. Not exactly," she shrugged. "I speak Spanish yes, but I am not from the Kingdom of Castile. Or any kingdom really..."

"I see," he said, and his eyes glimmered down at her as though she'd confided in him some great secret. Silently filing away the bit of information she'd provided him for later. Not from any kingdom really. He wondered at what else there could be in this vast world, but other kingdoms from which one could hail. But still, he was glad to have this of her. Her voice and the knowledge she shared. "And yet you have a near perfect command of the language."

"Near perfect?" Her voice rose up a bit with a laugh. She bumped him playfully and ducked her head away when he looked down at her. "I have a perfect command of the language thank you very much."

Sorley's smile was bright and wide and wholly becoming of him. The sun was bright today in spite of the cold. And she couldn't help but credit the brightness of the world to his presence in it. With him around, it was hard to see the clouds for the grey that came with them. She had a deep green cloak wrapped around her to complement her emerald green dress. Her boots were sturdy and warm, the frost did not melt through the soles as they had in her past life as Malvina. No. Here, as Fernanda, Addison found herself both warm and dry no matter the elements that fell down around her.

"Of course," he conceded. "My apologies. It is a perfect command of the Castilian language."

This, of course, was a bit of an exaggeration — a concession that would have his grandfather rolling in his proverbial coffin. For Fernanda had quite the speech impediment. Inexplicably, unfailingly, without question, she mixed her 'f's with 'h's every time she opened her mouth. And the household could not hear around her "fablar's" that had become "hablar's," her "faber's" which had become "haber's" and so on and so forth. It was the most miraculous thing to hear. One that drove Fernando up a wall and back down again. But Eric loved to hear it. Loved everything about her voice. The way it lilted all around him, and graced his ears with words he never thought he'd have the privilege of hearing.

Sorley and Malvina had communicated in awkward smiles and half gestures. Destined forever to question and guess what it was the other wanted or said. But now, he had to shake himself. Now, Eric and Fernanda had the ability to confide in one another if they so choose. To joke. And to learn. Now, he could tell her all he never got to say.

Except— he grimaced and looked away from her searching expression.

Except he couldn't tell her everything.

There were some things in the world that would do her more harm than good if she were ever to know.

Hugh assured him that in time things would be different. But for now, with so little between them and no stable ground in sight for her to stand on. With no way of unpacking the mysteries that she posed. He could not tell her who he was. What he had become.

The last thing he ever wanted was her fear.

The tether in his chest gave a dull tug that had him itching to reach up and rub at it but he held himself from the action. Well-practiced in the art of controlling his urges by now. Outward signs of discomfort had been tossed out the window the moment he'd joined the de Clermont line of succession.

Where he showed even a crack, the world would see a chasm.

Addison for her part couldn't quite reconcile how things had happened the way they had. How was it that she had found Sorley here? Or... she supposed... how was it that he had found her? Why was he called Eric now?

"And you," she said. Gesturing up at him with her hands. "You're... Eric now?"

He did not look outwardly uncomfortable but looking at him she couldn't help but feel as though he'd wanted to fidget with something while they walked. She furrowed her brow. He cleared his throat before smiling down at her politely and nodding.

"Aye," he said. "I do go by that name here. It is one of many names I was given by my father."

"Oh," she said, looking down at the ground as they walked.

Her face screwed up in thought. As though she had a million questions on her tongue, and she did not know which was the first that she should ask him.

She wanted to know who his father was. And how he knew Hugh and Fernando. Why he had so many names and why he changed them. Addison wanted to ask how he came to be here, and how he came to be Eric instead of Sorley.

She knew that she was in Spain — in Navarre. She felt in her gut that it was far from where she'd been before when she was Malvina. Even in the mountains, the world here was too arid. Too craggy. Too different. He had been a gall óglaigh. He was presumably still. And she knew from her research that he hailed from Scotland.

Except—

Unlike the steadfast, wild haired man she'd known in the highlands — where she had presumably been — this new version of him was... more. She didn't know what of really. More refined. Sharper edged. More something.

She had once begrudgingly compared him to a beast. A lion. He held himself as though nothing in the world could move him from the ground on which he stood, wherever that was. The ground beneath him would always remain his to command. But now, while that was still true, there was a feral quality to him that he'd lacked before. An alertness that he'd always maybe been predisposed to, but in her absence, had perfected.

Before, the ground he stood on had been his to command, but now it was like all the land that anyone stood on was his too. And now, no one could knock her or Jacqueline, no one could knock a stable boy or tradesman or a goat so long as they stood on his ground too.

Sorley had been honorable and strong and funny and warm. Eric... well... he was quite possibly still all of those things, but he was taller. Literally taller. She felt as though he'd grown. He was wider. His bulk was heavier set and more lethal. She felt as though one pinky could crush her throat if he caught her wrong with a stray swipe. Not that he would do that. At least, not that she thought he would.

And though he could still be funny and warm, she felt like he was sadder now too. More solemn. Heavier in his mind than he had been when she'd known him in the little village at the edge of the woods. It wasn't that she felt afraid of him per se... but she felt that she should be. And she couldn't separate it from how she'd felt about all knights before she knew him.

There was something about him. And Hugh and Fernando. Even Jacqueline and Idir and Jean Luc. They were so kind. And she was so grateful. But she felt that between her and them, something was different somehow.

She tried to chalk it up to the time period. Her odd arrival and the way she'd suddenly come up in the world. But Addison couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was more going on here than she'd been let in on.

He was watching her now, as they strolled through the gardens, and she felt as though he could see the wheels turning over in her head. Addison sent a smile up at him but couldn't fully keep the awkwardness out of her eyes. His own eyes reflected back down at her, kind and forgiving. Like he understood the puzzle he presented. He reached out and plucked a small flower from one of the flowerbeds and held it up to her.

Small and blue and all too familiar.

Addison stared down at it in astonishment.

A forget-me-not in a garden full of roses.

It hadn't occurred to her that he could remember such a small thing as this, but she felt her lip wobble a bit all the same. She reached out and gently plucked it from his grasp. Twirling the stem in her fingers, she reached out and gave his hand a gentle squeeze overcome by some silent emotion.

"Thank you," she said.

And then she turned, heading back the way they came, casting a look over her shoulder to see that he followed. Piercing blue eyes followed her every move, his head was ducked down low in consideration and his smile was soft and meant entirely for her. Then she continued up the path that led back to La Ithuriana, twirling her little flower in her hands, and trying not to stumble when she felt the heavy weight of his eyes settle low on her back as they had when he was a different man.

---

The drawing room was blessedly warm. Addison had rushed in, welcoming the warm air with a long sigh. She breezed through the room with a small smile to Hugh, a raised eyebrow to match Fernando's and a squeeze to Idir's shoulder in warm welcome. She went straight for the fire and ducked down onto the ground so that her face could fully thaw close to the open flame.

A cry of exasperation. A quiet scolding. And a strong hand came down to her elbow and lifted her back up from the ground.

"Are you trying to set yourself on fire?" Fernando cried out, guiding her away from the hearth and urging her to sit in an actual chair rather than kneeling on the hard stone.

Addison furrowed her eyebrows and looked up at the scandalized older man. He was staring down at her expectantly. Critically. In complete disbelief.

"Huh?"

"Your gown!" He snapped. Throwing his hands out toward her skirts.

"What about it?"

"It is common practice among ladies," Hugh said, his voice calm and professorial from the sofa in the corner. "To not stand or... crouch... quite so close to open flame."

"Oh," she said.

Her voice still bright and not understanding. Hugh smiled at her indulgently. Fernando growled too low for her to hear. He didn't need his mate encouraging her eccentricities. Not when it could get her killed.

"Yes," Fernando snapped. Sending a glare to his grinning mate. "So, they don't burn to death when their skirts catch in the hearth before dinner."

"Oh!" His adopted daughter's eyes snapped up to his in alarm.

His words finally sinking in. She looked back and forth between him, Hugh and the fire with a whole new light of understanding in her eyes.

"Quite right," Hugh said though the lightness of his voice did nothing to appease Fernando in the situation.

But he was a bit heartened to see the girl at least checking her gown for signs of scorch marks. At least someone in this family seemed to be taking him seriously.

---

They were seated differently at dinner than they had been at breakfast. Addison watched as Hugh sat at his typical seat at the head of the table and made her way to the space she had occupied in the weeks since she'd arrived, to the right of where Fernando usually sat next to Hugh. But Fernando caught her by the small of her back and guided her instead to Hugh's left.

She turned her head as she was redirected, catching Eric's eye as she did. His gaze flickered down to her own, trying to hide the glower he'd fixed on Fernando.

Her adoptive father held out her new chair. To the left of Hugh. Across from Eric who sat at the other end of the table. With one look cast down at her by her new curmudgeonly keeper, she knew she was meant to sit down and not make a fuss about this rearrangement. She frowned at him in confusion but took her seat nonetheless, allowing him to push the chair in for her.

Fernando sat down to her left.

Now, stuck between Hugh and Fernando, Addison awkwardly brushed at the napkin in her lap and turned her eyes up to Eric who had fixed Fernando with a displeased stare.

Fernando, for his part, surveyed the rest of their company in silent challenge, daring them to say anything about the sudden change in dynamic.

Hugh only reclined more comfortably in his seat, grinning wide at his mate and sending a sharp-edged look to Eric that had the younger man instantly looking down at his plate in submission. Idir watched the entire exchange like he was out at the theater. He politely dropped down into the seat next to Eric and leaned in to watch the chaos he hoped desperately would unfold, sending a wink to the young Fernanda when her eyes drifted uncertainly over to him.

---

A week passed and then another. Addison had begun to develop some semblance of routine. Or at least, as much of a routine that one could have when there was nothing to do. When they didn't want to be overheard, the men of the house spoke a language that was uncommon in the household. She knew when they were speaking Portuguese by the sound of it alone, but she didn't know what it was they were saying. She knew that sometimes they spoke French as well, and she could pick up little bits here and there, but never enough to know for sure what it was they were talking about.

But with every alors, peut être and ainsi she silently cheered herself for not completely wasting her high school credits studying the language. Of course, her old teachers would probably be shaking their heads in shame. Alors, ainsi and peut être did not a French speaker make. She felt like the fly on some sort of wall from linguistic hell. And she thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it, but she wasn't all too willing to divulge that she was eavesdropping.

Addison still had a lingering fear that they would find her weak grasp of the French language to be another peculiar thing about her, that they would file it away as another mystery they needed to solve. A girl with no home and no family, with a perfect command of Castilian who did not hail from Castile, and a wonky grasp on French but who also did not hail from France. Addison was very aware of how sketchy she appeared to be on paper. And she didn't want to rock the boat.

She didn't want to rock the boat, but also... to be completely honest... now that her odd new little family had mitigated the threat of death significantly in this bout of time travel, Addison found that she was incredibly bored. So bored in fact that 'guess that ancient language' had become her new favorite pastime along with 'count the cobblestones' and 'name that flower.'

Listening into their private French conversations and trying to recognize bits of old high school vocabulary words were quite possibly the only things that were keeping her from going insane.

They'd switched away from French again. And now... yep they were all speaking a different language as they conversed. She had five bucks on Hugh speaking another, rougher form of French that she didn't know the name of. Eric had switched to his native, guttural Gaelic. Fernando, to Portuguese. And she could only guess that Idir was speaking some form of Arabic. But none of them stuck to their native languages entirely... sometimes slipping into each other's language when they found a word that better suited their argument, or into possibly Latin or Greek as they referred to a scroll or tome, they hastily plucked off a shelf.

Not even five minutes into their rapid-fire assault on her senses and she could feel her eyes beginning to cross. She stood from the settee she'd been settled down on like a doll, turned to look at the gaggle of men crowded around a giant map and a pile of letters. They were gesturing and pointing, rolling their eyes and scowling. Voices raising ever higher as each man spoke over the other so that he could better prove his point.

Addison scowled.

She didn't know what they were talking about. She assumed it was important. And she rankled a little bit at being kept deliberately out of the loop. She knew she had no right to the information. Quite possibly didn't even want a right to it. But she still found their deliberate exclusion to be rather rude. With a huff she turned. Her skirts swirled obnoxiously and robbed her of all sense of subtlety as she stalked to the door.

"Fernanda?" Eric's voice called out, concerned, silencing the rest of the voices instantly.

She took a small calming breath and plastered on her best smile. Addison turned back to look at the group and knew instantly that her smile hadn't fooled a single one of them. Fernando's eyes narrowed at her as though he was trying to puzzle her together. Eric though... well... Gallowglass had the most earnest expression on his face, and she couldn't bare to be the one who put it there.

She felt some of the tension bleed out of her shoulders, the muscles in her face relaxed a bit and her smile felt a little more genuine. His own eyes relaxed around the edges to match her expression.

"Is everything all right?" He asked her.

"Of course," she said with a shrug. "I just needed a bit of air."

"I could escort you, if you'd like. We will only be but a moment longer," he offered, his eyes still studying her in mild concern.

"No," she said with a smile and a shake of her head. "You're busy. I can entertain myself for a while."

"If you are certain..."

"I am," she said. "Besides I'd hate to waste what little sun we have left before winter comes. I'll be in the gardens if anyone needs me."

Hugh and Idir quietly had turned back to their map during Eric and Fernanda's exchange, allowing the pair a semblance of privacy, but Fernando stayed where he was. Watching them say so much while simultaneously saying so little.

He didn't know if he wanted to bang their heads together and lock them away to work out their horrid communication skills, or to lock Eric in the cellar and ride off with Fernanda to somewhere she could grow on her own without the pressures of maybe having a husband at such a fragile moment in her life. He could tell by the set of his stepson's shoulders that the boy knew he was glowering at the back of his head. And the occasional flick of Fernanda's eyes in his direction told him that she had noted his attention too.

He felt a pinch on his thigh and hissed too low for the girl to hear, but the look he shot Hugh went ignored. His mate gestured down to their previous business, and Fernando reluctantly went back to the matter at hand.

When Fernanda was almost out the door, he looked up one more time.

"Have Jacqueline fetch you a wrap," he said. "The sun may be out, but you'll catch your death in the chill."

She froze for a moment, turning her head in his direction with a furrowed brow, bringing her hands up to rub at her arms as though in anticipation of the cold.

"I will," she called back quietly, and Fernando nodded to himself, satisfied as she made her way first to her chambers where Jacqueline had already scrambled to meet her.

---

Fernando had been right of course. The sun had been deceptive once again. There was frost in the air and on the ground, and the flowers had finally wilted and begun to die.

She made her way to her favorite bench which had been tucked up against a hedge on the far end of the estate. It was located in a slight maze, easy to solve, but still exciting to duck through just the same. With enough twists and turns to make you feel as though you'd gone down the rabbit hole, but few enough that you could also climb your way back out.

Just a ways away from her favorite bench was a bird bath that in the early weeks of her stay here had been alight with the flutter of wings and happy chirping of bathing birds, but now the water had gone and the birds had disappeared with it.

Content to have the fresh air on her face and a moment to collect herself, Addison dropped unceremoniously down onto her bench and pulled her dark grey wrap more tightly around her shoulders to fight off the chill. The hedges kept most of the wind from sweeping through and overwhelming her, but occasionally the breeze would creep up through the maze and catch her off guard.

She closed her eyes into the sensation of the cold on her skin, letting it refresh and reawaken her. The fire-lit hearth in the drawing room had combined with the tension in the men around her, and the air inside of La Ithuriana had become temporarily stifling.

Some days, her mind felt as though it was on the verge of unraveling. Like a bad game of Jenga, she was waiting for the wrong stack to be pulled or for something new to be piled on top of her in just the wrong way. Sending her carefully constructed walls tumbling to the ground as it did.

She had Sorley now, and though he was called Eric, she felt better to know he was here. His presence confirmed what she'd wanted to believe. His closeness with Hugh and Fernando and Idir told her that her closeness to those same men would more than likely end up in her favor rather than to her cost. He confirmed that she was safe.

But she was still a lost girl among wealthy, powerful men.

She didn't know if she could ever fully feel settled with them. Not when they changed their names and changed their languages at the drop of a hat. Not when Eric was Sorley, but not Sorley anymore either.

She knew she was in the dark about something, but she couldn't put her finger on what that something was.

With another deep, freezing breath Addison opened her eyes again to stare up at her new temporary home. La Ithuriana was a masterpiece. Sturdy and strong and warm. She was made of the mountains and the mountains somehow seemed to be made of her in turn.

Addison loved La Ithuriana.

But sometimes, she thought, even the house was keeping secrets from her too.

Shadows that stretched too long.

Silences that lasted beyond the space of a single held breath.

Time lapsed oddly in the old manor house.

Sometimes, she could swear, she felt like the house itself was watching her. Eyes through her window while she slept in the black darkness of a wild, alpine history. She could feel something lingering in the branches of the trees outside her window, boring through the darkness and the thick fabric of her curtains to look upon her while she slept.

She felt it in the way the floorboards creaked only for her. As though La Ithuriana sensed her presence more so than Hugh or Fernando or Gallowglass who ghosted along the hardwood floors as though nothing but a breeze had passed through.

Silently they moved through the house.

Silently, the house let them.

But Addison was breath, and steps, stumbles, coughs and sneezes, growling stomachs and creaking floorboards.

In the quiet of La Ithuriana, Addison felt so impossibly loud.

A curtain moved in one of the windows, just barely, but Addison sat a little straighter on her bench at the sight of it. Tilting her head and squinting to try to see who was looking down.

Tired eyes, and a rumpled tunic.

Hugh.

She offered him a small smile, but it did nothing to hide the curious look on her face.

What was he looking at?

Her?

It was hard to tell from so far away, but he seemed grim.

Concerned, Addison looked around herself, finding that she was still very much alone. And unsettled by the look on Hugh's face, she stood from her bench, dusted off her skirts and pulled her wrap even more tightly around her person until it felt less like a limp piece of fabric and more like a hug.

Drawing on her courage, she made her way back through the maze. Telling herself that she was just catastrophizing. That nothing was wrong. That just because Hugh had looked out on the gardens did not mean that anything was wrong.

But she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Very wrong.

Suddenly, she couldn't breathe for the want of being inside.

For the want of Eric.

For the warmth and the solidness of La Ithuriana's sturdy walls at her back and around all of her sides.

She hastened her step. Near running now as she twisted and turned and weaved her way back through the maze. But she turned and made another turn and instead of an exit she met a dead end.

No.

That couldn't have been right.

She'd walked this path a million times since she'd come here.

Addison stared at the hedge wall, confused and cold and wanting desperately to be inside.

She felt the hair on her arms stand on end. The unsettling itch of eyes on the back of her neck, and she whipped her head around to catch whoever was behind her. But Addison was alone.

No one was there.

No one was watching her.

But her heart pounded in her chest, and her throat. Her fingertips pulsed with the urge for flight. To run. To flee. To escape this place. Now.

She glanced back up to the windows where Hugh had stood, but the curtains were open, and no man was in sight.

This did little to comfort her.

The window was empty.

Hugh was gone.

Addison was alone.

A twist in her belly. She turned on her heel and scrambled to escape. Tried to retrace her steps but suddenly she couldn't remember if she'd taken a left or a right before. Couldn't remember where she had come from.

She thought maybe she'd taken a right, so she went left.

She just needed to get back to her bench.

Fernando would know that was where she'd gone.

He would find her. Right?

Of course, he would. Someone would find her. Hugh saw her from the window. He would come for her. Eric would. If anyone in the world would come looking for her it would be him, Addison quietly assured herself.

It was just a silly maze.

But that did nothing to stop the blood from rushing through her ears in a deafening roar. Her breathing had shallowed, and it felt as though she'd gone black around the corners of her eyes. Like she was seeing through a tunnel as the evening grew dark, and the sun disappeared below the horizon.

The maze fell into shadow, and Addison could see her breath puffing out fast and cold as she turned. And then another turn. Right, she went to the end. And left. Another dead end.

A small cry of alarm, she turned back.

Retraced her steps again.

Picking up her pace as she did.

She wondered if she just started calling out for help if someone would hear her.

Her foot caught something heavy. Addison stumbled. Pitched forward and hit the ground hard. On her hands and knees, scraped and bruised and bleeding a little through the holes she'd ripped in her dress, Addison crawled a few paces before turning around to see what it was she had stumbled on.

What little air she had been able to take and keep in her lungs gave out in one terrible rush of a scream.

A leg.

One leg.

Still in its boot.

And just beyond that, in the bushes, obscured from view, two eyes left open and unseeing, stared back at her from a face that had gone blue in the cold.

Frozen.

She felt that little spool low in her belly begin to whirl and spin, loose and wild outward toward some great terrible unknown. She felt strung up tight and deflated and flat. Her eyes stared at the leg and the pool of blood that had coagulated on the dirt path around it. And at the eyes that refused to release her from their hold.

She felt like she was seeing things from far away again. Higher up and further back. Disassociating. She was disassociating again.

She felt nothing but a throbbing in her hands and knees as she bled all over the dirt that sat between her and the abandoned limb.

Suddenly hands came down upon her. Addison screamed and thrashed and couldn't hear the raised voices over her panic. She was lifted off the ground, despite her struggling and turned abruptly to look into the hard eyes of Fernando. His lips were moving but she couldn't hear him. She felt as though she'd been submerged under water. He gave her a gentle shake to jolt her from her panic and a growl erupted from somewhere behind her. Like a lion or a bear. Some great beast let out a roar. Fernando dropped her in an instant. Backed away. And looked at whatever was over her shoulder.

Addison felt her whole body begin to shake as the world came back to her in a rush of noise. Hugh was behind her. Speaking in a stern, but soothing voice to someone else she couldn't hear or see. Idir was questioning the stablemaster who had also arrived at the sound of her scream. Fernando was in front of her. The only one she could see. His eyes were over her shoulder, hands outstretched in a gesture of peace.

The growling died down, and she heard Hugh say something to Fernando in Portuguese. The man she had adopted as her father looked back down at her. He took a tentative step forward, eyes flickering over her shoulder once more to whatever he had been staring at before. He held out his hand and she snatched it up quickly, allowing him to pull her further away from the scene behind her. He took her wrap and set it more firmly over her shoulders, pulling it tightly around her and rubbing his hands over the fabric to warm her.

"You're alright," he was muttering, eyes grim as his hands tried gently to stop her shaking. "You're alright."

"There was a—" She started but stuttered around the word. "There's a— someone—"

"I know," he hushed her, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her into a hug, still trying desperately to keep her warm.

Shock.

She was going into shock.

"It's alright," he said again. "It's all going to be alright. You're okay."

She turned her head from his chest to look back behind her, and was relieved to see that Hugh, Idir and Eric had completely blocked her view of the severed limb. The stablemaster stood off to the side, his face just as grim as Fernando's, as he spoke in hushed whispers with Jean Luc.

As though he sensed her eyes on him, Eric turned back to study her. His eyes were dark and feral. And she felt cowed by the sharpness of his gaze. She flinched and jolted back further toward Fernando.

Eric's face fell.

Stricken by whatever it was he saw in her eyes.

He took a breath. And slowly she watched as he shrunk himself back down to size. Made himself smaller in a way she never thought she would want to see him do. But she wanted that now. She wanted her Sorley back. She wanted Sorley and the little village at the edge of the woods. His eyes looked so torn now as he studied her. At some point while they had been apart a weight had settled down on his shoulders, one that drew him up somehow inside of dragging him down. Made him harder than he had once been, and here she was asking him to pull himself back down for her. To scale himself back to make room for her fear.

She felt her nose burn as she watched him do it. Eyes welling with unshed tears she didn't know whether to press further into the safety of Fernando's embrace or pitch herself back out into the cold to hold onto this new version of the man she had wanted once so desperately to love. Her lips pressed together to hold back a rather pathetic sound and she tracked Eric's eyes as they drew down to her trembling lips and hands.

"Gallowglass," she said, and her voice cracked around the word. His eyes snapped back up to hers, watching as the tears finally began to fall.

He stood.

He made his way to her and Fernando, closing the distance between them as he did. She watched his face for any sign of who he was, any sign that Eric was one in the same as the man he had been before. But her mind was spinning, and too much had happened. Addison couldn't tell which way was up or who was who, or when she came from or where she'd been. The whole world was spinning, and it had kicked Addison when she was already down. Fernando didn't loosen his grip until she began to push against it.

When Eric was close enough to touch, Fernando finally let go and stepped away. Addison pitched herself into Eric's arms, buried her face in his chest, and let herself cry. His arms wrapped tightly around her, he buried his head in her hair, and took a deep steadying breath.

"You must not fear, mo chridhe," he rumbled lowly for only her to hear.

She sniffed and pressed herself more firmly into his embrace. He squeezed her tighter in response.

"You must not fear," he said again.

And here, like this, with his arms wrapped around her and his face pressed firmly into her hair, she could tell herself that he was Sorley again.

---

She had always wanted a four-poster bed when she was a little girl. She thought that it would make her feel like a princess, but she'd never gotten one before.

Addison wondered how Lala was doing back at Meadowbrook Home. If she'd had any more incidences of remembering. If she'd thought of Addison at all and wondered where she was.

She was laying in her bed, in a large room with a hearth and a vanity, a great high backed leather chair and a footrest, a window seat and great clear glass paned windows that overlooked a vast and rapidly cooling mountainscape.

It was dark now. The curtains had been drawn, and Addison felt her stomach twist at the thought of eyes looking in on her from the trees.

The fire crackled in the hearth, and Addison suddenly realized that she had a four-poster bed.

Like she'd always wanted.

She hadn't noticed before now.

But she was on her back. Under the covers. Jacqueline had put a warming pan at the foot of her bed to keep her toes warm and piled on an extra quilt to beat back any lingering chill.

A steaming cup of tea sat on her bedside table, untouched.

Addison had never noticed that the ceiling was equal parts wood and stone. Equal parts warm and cold. She wanted to reach out and touch it. Would have tried once — she thought — but even in her best attempts she could tell looking up at it now that the ceiling was too tall to touch. Too high to reach out and brush her fingers against.

Her eyes drifted from the ceiling back to the curtains on her four-poster bed.

She could draw them closed around her.

It would be like a tent. Or a cocoon.

She supposed it would feel quite cozy.

But her arms were flat by her sides. And her blankets were tucked just right. And she felt that if she moved now, she would lose what little grasp she had on her emotions as it was. So, she just laid there and thought about the ceiling and Lala and her four-poster bed that she would have killed for once when she was a child.

A gentle knock, and Jacqueline shoved in.

"Hello, my lady," she said in her same old efficient way. "How are you feeling?"

Addison tracked the maid's movements with her eyes, watching her set down a mended dress on the back of a chair, and set out a tray with a series of combs and ribbons to do her hair with, but she couldn't open her mouth to speak. She knew she was being incredibly rude, but it was like her mouth and her brain had frozen with the shock and had yet to thaw there beneath the blankets. It felt wrong, somehow, to open her mouth now.

God how she missed being Malvina, the mute. No one ever asked her how she was feeling when she was her. She could just be. No questions asked. No answers needed. It wasn't Malvina's job to feel. And it wasn't anyone else's job to care.

But Fernanda, Addison sighed, and turned away from the maid. Fernanda was expected to know what she was feeling. She was expected to answer questions about her well-being. Here, people cared. Fernando cared. And Hugh did too she supposed. And Eric...

Here, people like Jacqueline were paid to care. Or maybe they weren't paid. Addison had never seen a single coin in all her time as Malvina. And only now was she realizing that she hadn't seen any as Fernanda either.

"Do they pay you?"

Her voice came out rough and scratchy. Jacqueline froze. Turning away from the fire in the hearth to face the younger girl who looked back at her, lying numb and tired in her giant four-poster bed, like a sickly little princess. Like a frozen fairytale. Like a—

"Of course, my lady," Jacqueline said slowly. Bringing her hands to clasp in front of her politely. "Does this displease you, my lady?"

Addison scrunched her eyebrows at that. It hadn't occurred to her that she could make Jacqueline nervous. She was always so confident and strong and perfect. She hadn't even realized she was going to ask the question of the other woman let alone stopped to consider how it would be perceived.

"What? No— no, it's good that they pay you. I was just thinking about when I was—" she stopped. She was about to say when she was Malvina, but even though Eric was here, and he had once been Sorley... she wasn't sure how to explain her time as Malvina to people yet. If ever. "I was just thinking that I hoped very much that they paid you. You've been so kind and helpful to me, you know. I'm really grateful."

Jacqueline stared back at her with wide all too familiar eyes. Addison knew that face. She made it every day.

"Of course, my lady," she said and dropped down into a slight curtsy. "Now, if you are feeling much better I've come to dress you for dinner."

Oh. Addison cringed inwardly. She had forgotten about dinner. Her voice felt raw, and her body felt tired, and she really, genuinely didn't want to move.

"I'm... not really hungry tonight, Jacqueline."

The maid froze and looked back up at her.

"My lady?"

"If you could give my apologies," she said and pulled her covers more tightly around her body. "I don't think I will be joining them for dinner. Could you let them know?"

"Yes..." Jacqueline said sending the younger girl a peculiar look. "Of course. Right away, my lady." She said and bustled quickly from the room, closing the door quietly behind her as she did.

Addison closed her eyes against the odd feeling in her chest and curled onto her side, allowing herself to drift back into a restless slumber. Lulled by the crackling flames in the hearth at the other end of the room.

Sometime in the night, as Addison drifted in and out of consciousness there was a knock at her door. Distantly she heard Jacqueline's whispered voice announcing her presence, and the murmured voices of the maid and another person.

She felt the presence of a figure at the edge of her bed, and a gentle hand that came down to rest on the back of her head.

Then the figure and the maid left as quickly as they had come. From the doorway, Fernando's voice quietly filtered into her ears, as he asked the maid to inform him when Fernanda woke once more.

The maid murmured her understanding, and they closed the door behind them, disappearing off to do whatever it was they did in the evening.

---

The doors to the dining hall opened wide and the men around the table stood automatically to greet the final member of their party, only to look on curiously as the maid, Jacqueline, walked tentatively into the room instead. She ducked into a deep curtsy before finding Hugh's eyes at the head of the table.

"Sieur,' she said politely in Occitan. "Lady Fernanda has asked me to send her apologies. She will not be joining you for dinner this evening as she is still very fatigued from the events of the day."

Hugh traded a concerned look with Fernando as Eric made to leave the dining hall and check on his mate.

"Take me to her," the young vampire said to the maid. Jacqueline curtsied and sent a wide-eyed look to Hugh as she turned to do his son's bidding.

"Wait," Hugh said, returning to his seat and gesturing for the others to do the same.

Across the room Eric tensed but stopped at his father's command.

"Come back to the table Eric," Hugh said. His voice easy as always. "Before your dinner gets cold."

Eric turned to face his father but did not move to take his seat.

"My mate is unwell," he said, keeping his voice as deliberately calm as possible, but Eric felt the influx of emotions that Fernando had been worried about weeks ago when he'd first arrived home.

Overstimulated, angry, concerned. Eric's mating instincts were mixing with his protective instincts and the need to find whichever vampire was hunting illegally on Gonçalves de Clermont land. He had not hunted in a significant amount of time what with his unwillingness to leave Fernanda behind while he did so. Suddenly that impeccable control he'd always thought he had was slipping and he felt irked to no end that his father would come between him and the woman he loved now of all times. Now, when he needed to see her and make sure she was okay.

She never lacked an appetite. She never skipped a meal. This was unlike her. Surely, they could see that he needed to check on her.

"She is tired," Hugh corrected. "Not ill."

"You know very well that she is experiencing more than a lack of sleep. She is unwell. She could have—" he bit back a growl and felt his hands shake with the urge to rip something apart. An out-of-control vampire had been close to his mate, and he hadn't been there to protect her. "She could have—"

"Been killed," Hugh said, his voice calm and easy and aggravatingly aware of what his son was going through. "You're right. But she wasn't. And she is safe now, up in her room. Where she has asked for time away from this family so that she can rest."

"She didn't—"

"She did." Hugh said. "For now, her refusal to come down to dinner is a rejection of our company. Allow her a moment's peace. She needs rest."

"She needs to know that she is safe."

"Yes, she does," Hugh agreed. His voice hardening around the edges. "More than that, she has need of actual safety. So, you will sit down and join us for our meal. You will collect yourself. And in the morning, you and I will go hunting. I've let you put it off for far too long."

Eric bared his teeth at his father and refused to budge.

Idir and Fernando looked on the exchange with bored expressions.

"You may go, Jacqueline," Hugh said to the maid who was standing awkwardly in the doorway. "Our apologies for keeping you."

She ducked back down into a curtsy and backed away. "My lords," she said. And then just as suddenly as she appeared, the maid was gone.

Hugh turned his attention back to his son. Eyes hard and knowing. He said not another word, and no one moved or breathed in the silence that stretched between father and son.

Though he did not speak again everyone heard the order for what it was.

Sit.

Eric walked stiffly back to his seat. Ripped back the chair, cracking the wooden backing, and dropping down into it like a man on the verge of snapping. He picked up his fork and stabbed at a rare cut of venison, snatching up his goblet of wine and knocking it back in a bout of immature rage.

He ate like a child. And the three older vampires allowed it to go on as though it was not happening at all, making polite conversation as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, and there wasn't an eighty-year-old man throwing a hissy fit in the chair across from them.

When the meal ended, Eric tore his way out of the dining hall and made for the stables. His father, calmly stood and nodded at the other two men, before slowly stalking out after him with a silent assurance that this behavior was about to be rapidly corrected.

Idir sent Fernando a grimace and the other man snorted.

It had taken the boy longer than he thought, but this had been an inevitable loss of control.

"I'll join you in the gardens," he told Idir. Speaking of their hunt for whoever killed the farmer and left him in the maze for them to find. "I'm going to check on Fernanda and then we can begin."

---

She stayed in her chambers for days. No one in or out but Jacqueline. And, on occasion, Fernando. Eric had been frozen out entirely. Forbidden from even entering the hallway that led to Fernanda's stairwell. Part of him resented this separation, but another part of him — a quieter part of him — the one that knew in his gut that he and Fernanda were meant to be together, also knew that his father was thinking more clearly than he was. That this separation was for her benefit, and not his punishment. This was a matter of her well-being. And, for now, he could see to that better from afar.

Eric was not in control.

He'd taken a down a stag very quickly in his hunt.

And then in a rage, he had tracked down a bear and drank his fill too.

And then a fox.

And then a rabbit.

It was only when his body could drink no more that he realized he had lost control.

He'd dropped the rabbit's carcass down onto the ground and turned about himself in horror. Taking in the mountainside and the unfamiliar terrain. He knew how to get home of course, that was instinct.

But he knew not how he had come to be here.

It was as though his mind had gone black.

It had been only him and the darkness.

His father shifted imperceptibly behind him, and Eric's eyes snapped to Hugh's automatically.

The other man watched him knowing and weary and not at all concerned. He had known this was coming. Had watched Eric carefully for days and weeks for the inevitable snap. And Eric was only now coming to realize why.

Dawning horror came upon him, and he fell hard to his knees.

He could have killed her.

He hadn't been in control, and he could have— while she was sleeping. He could have been the horror that took her from the world. He— he didn't know what to think. What to do. His hands were covered in blood.

This hadn't bothered him since he was a fledgling. And even then, such a thing had never bothered him long. He'd always been stained with the red color of death. But now, the red on his hands mixed with unwelcome images of Malvina. Fernanda. His mate. His love. The rabbit. The fox. The bear. That could have been her.

His father stepped forward.

Shaking, Eric stepped back.

"Don't," his voice was rough. He shook his head. "Don't come near me. Not when I'm like this."

Hugh scoffed and took another step forward. "We've all been like this, my boy."

"No—" Eric's voice cracked; he blinked his eyes rapidly to clear away the images of Fernanda's lifeless form. "No— I'm a monster. I'm a— am I sick? Am I like Matthew? Am I truly a danger to her?"

Hugh was close enough now to grab hold of his son. A strong hand came down to settle on the back of his head, he pulled him in, pressed his forehead against Eric's and looked him sternly in the eye.

"You are not a monster," he said.

Eric shook his head, but Hugh hushed him before he could speak.

"Listen. Listen to me. You are not a monster. You are not sick. There is no blood rage inside of you."

"You cannot know that. You do not know. I could be— I could be like him. I could kill her."

"You are not like Matthew. I swear to you. I would have known immediately. You would have too. And Philippe would have known as well. Eric, my son, you are young. That is all. You are a young manjasang."

"I'm not—

"You are. You have no idea how young you are. Eric— Sorley— my boy. You have done remarkably well. With so much on your shoulders. With so much to weigh you down. You have done so remarkably well. But everyone cracks eventually. You are no exception. Better now than when there is no one around to guide you through it."

"You don't crack like this. Fernando—"

Hugh released him and let out a long, bellowing laugh that sent birds flying from trees. Vaguely Eric was reminded of Philippe, and suddenly he could see how his father was the older man's heir.

"Fernando and I have been around a good deal longer than you have. And we have both had our fair share of moments like this. Everyone cracks. I do. Fernando does. Even your grandfather."

"Philippe said—"

"To show the world even a crack, is to reveal a chasm, yes I am aware. It's one of my father's more preferred pieces of wisdom."

"I don't understand."

Hugh sighed and gave him a considering look.

"A de Clermont does not show cracks. Not where the world can reach in and rip them open wide for all to see. That is true. I'm sorry that I could not have brought you into a different family, under a different name, with a different purpose in this life. I wish I could change that for you, but I cannot."

Hugh looked away for a moment to collect his thoughts.

"All that I can say is you have done remarkably well in all that I have asked you to bear, but just because a de Clermont cannot expose weaknesses to the world, does not mean that we cannot reveal them to those we trust within our family. Most of us would have cracked by now at your age. I most certainly would have lost control under the weight of everything that you have carried these last few weeks. Your control has been commendable. But now it is time to wade through the loss of that control."

Eric shook his head, staring at his father in disbelief trying to reject the kindness he was given in the face of his blind savagery. And recklessness. Where was the discipline? Where was the flash of warning in his father's eyes? Where was the sharp sting of teeth piercing the skin of his neck?

Hugh just smiled serenely at him and shook his head in an omniscient kind of way.

"Now it is time to sort through your prey drive and your protective instincts, your mating instincts, and your grief. I think you're ready. And I think circumstances have made it so there is little choice in the matter. Whoever killed that farmer, left a message for you when he dropped his severed leg in your mate's path. Tucked his body away in the hedges for her to see when she hit the ground. It is a direct threat, Eric. You don't need me to tell you. I believe you already know. And you will need your wits about you if you are going to bring the killer to justice."

It had been days. And she would not eat. She would not leave her room. He could feel it right at the very heart of him. Fernanda was wasting away.

At night, he paced. The sun would go down. The warmbloods would turn to their beds, and Eric stalked the length of the manor. Over and over again. And then he went outside, and he walked the length of their territory and back again.

Nothing could calm the restlessness inside him. The all encompassing need to move. To be anywhere and everywhere. To be by her side. To give her space. And then there were times when he sat still. Impossibly still. Preternaturally so. On the command of his father to rein himself in. To calm himself and sit still in his discomfort until it came naturally to him.

He had learned in days what it took others to learn in whole lifetimes. He was standing now. Still as a statue in the drawing room. Eyes turned ever outward. Taking in everything that moved through the woods there. Listening for even the slightest disturbance.

Waiting. Watching. Breathing—

A knock on the drawing room door. His head didn't so much as twitch. His eyes didn't flicker in recognition. Only his mind registered the noise. Another breath.

Idir entered with a torn cloth.

A piece of the deceased farmer's clothing.

Eric's nose twitched at the stench of death that clung still to the cloth in Idir's hands.

It had been days, but murder clung to the land, the fabric, the air itself like a shroud.

"Eric," Hugh's voice cut through the noise he was filtering. "That's enough for today."

Another breath. He blinked. Flexed his hands. Rolled his shoulders.

The beast inside of him felt quieted. Tempered. He turned to his father and Idir. His body buzzing with the sensation of control. He was in control. If he were human, this feeling would have sent chills up and down his spine. Erupted his skin in gooseflesh. But Eric was no longer human. He was something more. So, he came back to himself as though he'd never left himself. Joined his father and Idir by the fire and accepted the cloth when Idir held it out to him.

He brought it to his nose though he could smell it from across the room.

Beneath the stench. Beneath the murder. Was another scent. Subtler. There were notes of dirt, earthen tones sunken into the fabric that spoke of the place where the man had surely been killed. He could pinpoint the spot in his mind's eye even now. And one unfamiliar scent. Unfamiliar and yet... he felt as though he knew it somehow. It was strong. Feral. Sick.

Blood rage.

His eyes snapped up to meet Hugh's. Disbelief clouded his features. It wasn't Matthew. He knew his uncle's scent, and this wasn't it. But whatever he was picking up on held similar traces that Matthew's scent had. He shook his head at his father, not understanding. Hugh's eyes were grave. Like he already knew what Eric himself was just registering. Like he'd been trying very hard to spare his son this knowledge.

A small pocket of rage opened up inside of him at his father's keeping of secrets. At his father's deception in the face of his mate's danger. This should not have been kept from him. He felt the urge to hunt come over him and he shut it down. Fell still and forced his slow breath out through his nose. Focused on the shuffle of the small creatures of the forest as they picked their way through the darkness. Focused on the clatter of the servants bustling about downstairs and in the empty rooms of the manor. Caught the scent of wine in the air and sourced it as one from the south of France. Caught the sizzle of meat on an open flame and knew the cook was preparing yet another meal that Fernanda would refuse to touch in the deepest throes of her melancholy.

When the urge to hunt had left him, Eric came back to himself once again. His father looked on him proudly despite the grim set of his features. He accepted the cloth when Eric handed it to him.

"What have you not told me?" He said, keeping his mind open to his father's explanation. Hugh rarely did anything without good reason.

"We will wait for Fernando," Hugh said. "So that I only have to tell the story once—"

"He doesn't know?" Eric's voice rose in disbelief.

Hugh shot him a dark look that told him not to push it, and he quickly scaled himself back down for his father.

"I did not say that," Hugh said. "And it is none of your concern what I tell my mate."

"Of course," Eric grimaced. "I apologize."

The door opened and Fernando walked in, looking around at the gathered faces with a searching expression as though he was trying to gauge the state of the room before fully entering. It was odd, Eric thought, tilting his head curiously in his stepfather's direction.

"Good, you're here. We have much to—" Hugh started but Fernando gave a slight shake of his head. Stepping fully into the room, he turned back and held out a hand.

Eric stood. Hands falling to his sides in disbelief. The tether right at the very heart of him giving an eager tug when a tentative hand accepted Fernando's, and Fernanda walked nervously into the room.

She was thin. Her eyes had sunken a bit, her cheeks a bit sallower than they had been when he'd last seen her. And her head was ducked low as if she didn't quite know if she wanted to look anyone in the eye.

But when she did look up—

Eric felt the world start to turn again. He couldn't keep the smile from his face at the sight of her liquid metal eyes. She met his eyes briefly before averting her gaze to the wall over his shoulder. But her lips quirked a bit. Softly, as though she was too tired to smile and too tired to suppress it too.

Hugh tucked the cloth away into a drawer and stood from his chair, gesturing for her to take his seat. Fernanda picked her way through the room and accepted, preferring to stare into the fire instead of saying anything to anyone who had gathered there. But when Hugh dropped a hand down onto her shoulder, Eric was heartened to see that she reached up to keep it there. Leaning closer to his father when the older man gave her a supportive squeeze.

The conversation turned around her with ease as though nothing had been interrupted and they had spoken only of lighthearted things in her absence as well.

---

Days had passed and Addison felt herself slowly returning to the land of the living. She had spent too many days and nights preoccupied with the state of the dead, and her mind finally itched to be back in the present moment.

It had been hard at first to follow Fernando out of her chambers and back into the world. Had been even harder that first evening, when she'd stepped into the drawing room and shrunk under the weight of so many eyes turning in her direction.

But it got easier with time. She didn't know what was happening to her sometimes. Things would happen — bad things — and Addison felt like her mind and body would just shut down. It had happened as Malvina, after Rupert— well, after he'd done what he did. And it had happened when she'd run from Ailios's hut at the edge of the woods, when she'd been ripped back through time and tossed out onto Lala's old linoleum floors. She felt tired. And cold. And hungry.

She could feel the weight of people's eyes on her as she slowly dragged herself back out of her shell, and it was all she could do to keep her chin up and level with the ground. It was all she could do to keep her eyes ahead of her instead of staring at the floor.

Addison stared at shoes that passed her on the dirty bus floor when she rode back and forth from Meadowbrook Home in another life. And now it was all she could do to keep from doing the same with boots and slippers on La Ithuriana's immaculate stone floors as well. This time, as Fernanda, the girl who liked to hide away in her four-poster bed.

Either way, Addison felt frailer than she had felt in quite a while. Like her bones had turned brittle in the cold of the maze. Like they had taken on the blue quality of the corpse she'd found there buried in the hedge. Like even the weakest among them could reach out and snap her wrist with barely any pressure at all.

She knew she was unwell.

She didn't always have the words to explain how she was feeling though and so had quietly asked Fernando to discourage questions about her wellbeing. Her adoptive father had given her a long searching look before silently acquiescing. Everyone had stopped asking after her after that. No more, "Are you well, my lady's," or "How do you fare, child's." In an instant, the whole world had gone back to acting as though nothing out of order had happened at all.

And instead, she and Fernando had quietly developed a system for them alone. If ever she were to feel tired or overwhelmed or perhaps too overcome with some unexplainable sadness, Addison need only tap her fingers on her arm three times in a specific rhythm and Fernando would make her excuses and lead her off back to her room.

She didn't fully understand how he knew. He wasn't always looking at her when she signaled that she'd had enough, but instantly his eyes would find hers and he would respond to her cry for help in kind.

She didn't understand how he did it, but she was grateful that he did.

Idir was showing Addison an old sketchbook he'd kept on his person during his travels. Flipping the pages for her as he showed her the many landscapes and characters he had captured likenesses of in the years he'd spent wandering the world.

They were in Fernando's study.

Eric was away with Hugh again.

She'd seen less and less of them since she'd come back to the land of the living. She had tried to ask a couple times where it was that they were, but her questions were always politely brushed aside, and the subject was always quickly changed to something else entirely. She could only imagine that this meant they were off seeing to the murder that had occurred the week before, and that no one wanted to bother her with the details. She didn't know what she thought about that really, but she was tired and found she didn't care enough to explore it much more.

She and Idir had taken up their perch on the sofa in the corner. Addison was curled up beneath a knitted blanket as he flipped through pages upon pages of sketches. They really were quite amazing.

Jean Luc and Fernando were going through paperwork at Fernando's desk, their hushed conversation floating back to her in the common tongue which Addison herself did not speak and didn't currently feel like trying to learn.

She stopped Idir and pointed to a landscape.

"What is that?"

"These," he said with an approving nod. "These are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon."

"The Hanging Gardens of Babylon," she murmured quietly to herself as she leaned forward a bit to get a better look at the details. "They're beautiful."

"Yes," he agreed. "Even more so in person."

"I can imagine." She sent him a small smile.

"It is said," he continued. "That before the times of the prophets Muhammed and Jesus and all the rest—" he waved his hand dismissively at the mention of these figures as though they were lesser beings to whatever else he had encountered in the world.

Addison raised her eyebrows, what an odd thing for a someone to say in this time and place. She wondered if people were more casual about religion these days, and then scoffed internally. Not likely, she thought. You didn't get crusades and witch burnings from religious apathy. She filed Idir's nonchalance away for later.

"—that King Nebuchadnezzar II built these gardens for his wife, Queen Amytis," he said. "Because she missed the green hills of her homeland."

Addison nodded and leaned back against the sofa, settling in for another story, looking forward to being swept away back to some other more archaic place in history. Somewhere distant and safe and fully embellished by Idir for the sake of entertainment alone.

"But others have contested this. They say they were designed for another queen."

Addison arched an eyebrow.

"Queen Semiramis," he supplied, eyes distant with memory as though he had lived through it himself rather than read it in a book somewhere.

After a long pause, Addison tilted her head at the reminiscing man curiously.

"So..." she said slowly. "Which is true?"

He snapped out of his reverie, looking back down at her with a small smile as though he'd just remembered where he was and who he was with.

"Now that," he said with great flourish. "Is one of the greatest mysteries of our time."

"What?" Addison asked him, laughing and incredulous. "You can't begin a story like that and tell me that you don't know the ending."

He laughed with her, shooting her a look that she couldn't quite pin down.

"Some stories are not meant to be known, my lady."

"That's—that's not—" she stuttered and shook her head at him. "Come on, Idir, you have to give me something."

"As my lady wishes," he said with an exaggerated sigh. "Alas, neither are true. These are myths created by the Greeks and the Romans, romantic old imperialists that they were."

Addison's jaw dropped at him, a small, affronted sound escaped her, and she resisted the urge to shove the older man in exasperation.

"Take that back," she said.

"I'm afraid, I cannot."

She shot him a look and sat forward in her seat, gesturing dramatically for him to flip the page.

"Let's just move on then if you're not gonna tell me the story," she said and tried not to be too disappointed that he decided to keep what he knew to himself.

He cleared his throat around his amusement, and silently allowed her to move them along to the next sketch in his book.

Fernando and Jean Luc switched languages again, and she couldn't help the way her brain picked up on the change in tone as the two men conversed across the room.

She kept one ear turned toward them even as she watched Idir show her the Temple of Athena.

They were speaking her French again. Not the one Hugh spoke with the servants. The one she'd learned in high school. It was harmless really, she thought, her eavesdropping. She'd gotten better at it since she'd been listening in, and she supposed if she kept it up, then she would have to tell them eventually that she knew what they were saying.

To be honest, these people seemed like the types that had secrets she didn't want to keep. But for now, the occasional avec, toujours, and alors was hardly anything to write home about. This time they unintentionally sent her a soft ball as they were talking about something to do with the village. Village being the same in modern English as it was in French. She had picked up on a couple mentions of manger once and had wondered what could possibly be so secret about eating food. But then told herself that maybe it had only been a diversion — a brief reprieve from the rigors of work to talk about sweets or something.

Now though, her eyes were drawn to the window where a light snow had begun to fall. It was so soft that she doubted it would stick, but still it harbingered the inevitability of winter, and she wrung her hands together to beat back the memories of an old chill that never left her.

Idir turned the page and now she was looking into the eyes of a gypsy woman he had captured the likeness of some time when he was on the road. And her ears picked up on the word again. She tried her best not to react. Manger. They said it again. And then again, a few minutes later, Manger.

Manger— manger— something.

Manger... and then song.

Song.

Addison couldn't stop her eyebrows from dragging together at the word. The modern English word that didn't exist yet. Song.

Why did it keep cropping up every time they spoke French? What could they possibly be saying, if not song?

Idir waved his hand jokingly in front of her eyes.

"My lady?"

"Huh?" She said, jolting out of her reverie. "Oh, right, sorry."

"Are you—" he began and then stopped himself from asking her if she was well. Though he kept his voice light and easy, his eyes studied her as though he was unsure how best to proceed.

"Yes," she sighed and pushed back from the table. "Thank you for showing me these Idir. They're really lovely. I'm just going to go to my chambers for a moment, I'm feeling a bit chilled."

He studied her a long moment before giving her an understanding nod.

"Of course, my lady."

Addison stood from where she had been seated next to the Berber warrior and smiled softly at Fernando when he caught her eye. He watched her with an unreadable expression on his face but nodded when she gestured that she was going to step out for a moment. He had probably heard her conversation with Idir from across the roon. The man had ears like a damn bat she'd recently discovered. Nothing ever got past him.

She left Fernando's study at the far end of La Ithuriana and entered the brightly lit corridor just outside. She made her way to the grand staircase that overlooked the entrance hall. Addison didn't know what was behind most of the doors that lined the hallway leading to Fernando's study, but she imagined he slept behind one of them. And that others did to. In her mind the walls were lined with rows and rows of bedrooms, and she wondered how often if ever they were put to use. She descended the staircase, holding her skirts in one hand as she did. And she smiled softly at maids and footmen who paused to curtsy and bow to her. Trying her best to go unnoticed by the others as they went about their work.

La Ithuriana had eyes of her own, much like Castle Sween once had. Though these seemed less vicious than the eyes of the world that had looked upon her when she was Malvina. These seemed accommodating, and kind, and polite. She wondered in the back of her mind if the maids were safe here. She liked to think that they were, but she didn't know how to find out. She wanted to believe that Hugh would keep a house where none would go hungry or get attacked or have horrible things done to them by those in power, but she didn't know. Maybe things were the way they were for her simply because of who she had once been to Sorley—err—Eric. Or perhaps because of who she now was to Fernando.

She made the long trek to the other side of the manor, to her small private staircase, and her own corridor with a room that had been built for a queen.

The world parted for her as she moved through La Ithuriana, and she tried not to let it unsettle her. People were kind. And she wasn't Addison anymore. She wasn't Malvina. Here, she was Lady Fernanda Gonçalves. Here things were different for her. And that was okay.

When she entered her room, she was happy to see the maids had left it already. She closed the door behind her and bolted it tightly. Giving it a slight tug to make sure that it was in fact locked. Then she went over to her bedside table, snatched up the letter opener and dropped down onto her belly.

As she had done every night now for the better part of a month, Addison carved the letter opener into the wall. But this time, instead of a tally mark to keep track of the passage of time, Addison wrote down the odd word. The new word she couldn't quite wrap her mind around.

Song.

That couldn't be right. That wasn't French. She was thinking in English. How could she make it French? What would turn Song into a French word.

Frowning, she stuck her tongue between her teeth as she concentrated on carving the wall neatly into a new word.

Songe

Well, she scrunched her nose, that was neither English nor French. Addison groaned and dropped her head down onto the dusty stone floor.

Maybe if she wrote down everything she had picked up from their conversation then context would allow her to fill in the blanks.

So, she did exactly that.

Meticulously writing 'village' 'avec' 'pain' 'homme' 'manger' and lastly 'song,' which she crossed out and tried to reconsider. Tentatively, she instead wrote down s'en or sens, and stared hard at them but couldn't make them make sense.

It just didn't feel right.

Sighing she gave up for now and dragged herself out from beneath her bed. Dusting herself off. She deposited the letter opener onto her bedside table, grabbed a wrap to keep herself warm, and made her way back out of her room into the dark of her empty corridor, back down the stairs and into the entry.

There she found herself quite alone.

She knew she could go all the way back to the other side of the manor, up the stairs and retreat once more into the quiet of Fernando's study. More than that, she knew she was expected to do so. But Addison was bored. And she was confused. She'd always hated when they switched languages on her and talked around her as though she wasn't in the room. And she now had this word puzzling over in her head.

She didn't know what to make of her mind these days. Too much had happened. She felt like she was drifting through a brightly colored dream. Everything was light and warm even in the coming winter. People everywhere were kindness and smiles. And she had no reason to feel unnerved.

But there had been a severed leg in the garden.

And a body, it turns out, buried in the hedge.

She had no reason to feel unnerved.

But Sorley was Eric now.

And he was always gone.

And he seemed different somehow too.

And more and more often, in the company of these strangers who had been quick to pick her up off the ground, wipe up the blood, and call her family she felt as though they were hiding something. A bunch of things really. And the more they switched languages on her. The more they skirted around her. The more they disappeared she felt even more and more unsettled.

La Ithuriana had quickly become her sanctuary.

But now, as she looked around the entryway, polished and swept, cleaner than any other home she'd ever seen in this time period or the twenty first century, with its great chandeliers and its long corridors of empty rooms full of beds that no one ever seemed to sleep in... Addison wondered if it was not more applicable to call it a gilded cage.

She wandered over to the window that overlooked the courtyard.

The blacksmith's fire was blazing hot down the way, she could see the smoke stacking out of an open chimney and hear the metal carrying up toward the house on the northern wind. A couple servant boys skittered across the cold cobblestone ground with packs of something heavy on their backs. A maid paused by a stableboy and offered an apple to a horse.

Life was being lived all around her, even as the snow fell down hard, but Addison felt removed from it. Suspended still, somehow, despite her full belly and her warm bed. Despite the warm hearted, if curmudgeonly man, who had brought her into his family and made her one of his own, and the presence of Eric in the manor as well.

If anything, their kindness was the suspicious thing. And she felt horrible for thinking it. She would have felt less unnerved if she was downstairs getting the switch to her hands for spilling a chamber pot or burning a fur pelt. She would have felt more comfortable if she spent her days cleaning.

But Addison was idle. Idle and too consumed with the thoughts in her head to figure out how to really live her life here. She needed something to do. Something to occupy her thoughts and her mind.

She couldn't clean.

She'd actually tried that once before when she'd been feeling this way.

There had been an outcry. A scandal. The maids in one mass horde had rushed forward in a desperate attempt to get her off the cold hard ground. The brush had been pried from her hands. And for the next hour they had taken shifts examining her knees for permanent damage. Much to their dismay there was permanent damage, bruises that had bruised over one too many times, indents where the stone floors of Castle Sween had pressed into her bones for months, scars from scuffs and scratches that she'd gathered along the way.

Addison was only Lady Fernanda Gonçalves, idle and proper, when no one could see the evidence of Malvina carved into the skin on her hands and knees. The calluses on her hands and feet spoke of the hard kind of labor that never truly left a person's body.

No.

She couldn't clean.

Not without causing another outcry.

Glancing around her at the empty entryway and the footmen who skillfully saw everything and nothing all at once, Addison decided that she wouldn't go back to Fernando's study as she was expected to.

She turned on her heel and made her way back into the corridor that led to her private stairwell. Stopping at the first door on her right, one of the many doors she'd never seen inside of. She glanced over her shoulder to check that she was still alone, and finding that she was, Addison reached out and nudged the handle, pushing the door open just a tiny crack.

Inside was a modest bed, spartan compared to the one she slept in, but still of a nicer quality than those of Castle Sween. There was a small table and chair next to it and a closed chest. Bedroom, her mind supplied, and she quietly closed the door. Then she moved on to the next one, doing the same thing and quickly moving on when she found it was another bedroom. The third door she knew to be Idir's as she had seen him going in and out of it on more than one occasion. She left it alone.

The fourth door, she pushed open and gasped.

Inside this room were weapons. On every surface, stored in some sort of system she couldn't even begin to describe, sheathed swords, crossbows, bows and arrows and daggers— so many daggers. Heart pounding at her discovery she pulled the door hastily shut.

"Fernanda?"

Addison yelped and turned around at the sound of Hugh's voice. He was standing across the way, leaning out of the iron gated entrance that led into the library. A place that was always locked. A place she hadn't seen but for in passing.

His eyebrows had scrunched together in concern, and not for the first time Addison wondered if he got enough sleep. He had a sleepy, spacy quality to him that often had her worried. But the whole of La Ithuriana deferred to him on everything, so she silently reminded herself that of the two of them Hugh de Clermont was not the one in need of someone else's concern. Especially not hers.

"Hugh," she said, clearing her throat and trying not to fidget under his gaze.

"Can I help you find something?" His eyes flickered past her to the door she had just slammed shut.

"No," she said. From the way his eyebrow lifted skeptically, her reply had been too fast for his liking. "No," she tried again. "I just— was bored. And I don't really know what most of these doors are for," she grimaced. "Sorry."

His eyes relaxed a bit in understanding, he fixed her with a reassuring smile.

"I believe it is I who owes you an apology," he said, stepping further into the corridor, closing and locking the library gate behind him. "Over a month at La Ithuriana, and we never even gave you a proper tour."

"Oh no," Addison said feeling suddenly awkward though her curiosity was still burning. "I wasn't exactly... expected..."

Hugh threw his head back and laughed as the girl in front of him fidgeted with her dress sleeves.

"No," he said and shook his head at her. "You most certainly were not."

"Sorry," she cringed.

"Whatever for?" he asked, sounding both amused and scandalized, he offered her his arm and she hesitated before slipping her hand into the crook of his elbow. "You were a most welcome surprise."

Addison snorted.

"You don't believe me?"

"I fell on my face in your courtyard, scared your servants, and now I eat all your food."

"Servants tend to be an easily startled bunch I have found," he said and waved his hand dismissively.

Addison didn't know about the veracity of that statement, but she didn't think Hugh cared either way.

"And if you didn't eat all our food then I'm afraid we would just have to find someone else to feed it to. And I assure you they would not be half as enthusiastic about it as you have been."

Addison scowled up at him, but he just smiled and patted her hand good naturedly.

"I'm a total freeloader."

"Freeloader?" He asked, trying to wrap his mind around the odd word.

"You know... I show up. I don't do anything that's worth anything and I waste all of your resources."

Just as quickly as Hugh had appeared in the corridor moments before, he jolted to a stop. Quietly bringing her to a stop next to him as well.

"Fernanda," he said and looked down at her, alarmed. "Why would you say such a thing?"

Addison shrugged, looking back up at him perplexed. "It's true."

"It couldn't be further from the truth!" he exclaimed, dropping his arm so he could turn and clasp both of her hands in his. "You are Fernando's daughter. You are a part of this family. I admit we are a rather ragtag bunch, but I assure you, no one here thinks you to be worthless. And you most certainly are not wasting resources."

"But—"

"No," he said. His voice stern. Addison felt for a moment like a scolded child. "I'll not hear another word. Cast such thoughts from your mind. I'll not have you believing such things while you live under my roof."

She opened her mouth to counter, but he shot her a look that had her holding her tongue. She nodded awkwardly instead and allowed him to tuck her hand back into his arm again.

"Now," he said, recovering his lighthearted mood rather quickly. "How about that tour?"

He glanced down at her with a mischievous look. Addison tentatively grinned up at him.

"I'd love a tour," she said but then hesitated and looked back at the door he'd caught her opening. "But... I think you should probably lock that door."

Hugh smiled at her.

"Come with me," he said and waited for her to take his arm again.

When she did as he bade her, he led her back the way she came. They stood at the center of the giant entrance hall. Hugh gestured to the great oak doors that towered high above them. And the footmen who seemed always to stand perpetual guard there.

"You see those doors?" he asked.

"I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who could miss them," she mumbled and bit down on her cheek to hide her smile when he shot her a wry look.

"Anyone who has made it to those doors, is not a threat to you or to me."

"That's... quite the statement to make," she said, not quite believing him.

He smiled and did not look offended by her doubt.

"I assure you," he said. "Nothing gets past those doors without my leave to do so."

She stared up at him for a minute, wondering how anyone could ever make such a claim when the world was such an uncertain and dangerous place.

"But," she said and did her best not to avert her gaze when he caught her eye. "There is a killer on the loose, isn't there?"

At this he took a deep breath and released it in a long sigh. He suddenly seemed much older than his years and Addison found herself feeling marginally guilty as though her concern had burst his bubble.

"There is," he said. His voice thoughtful. "There is a killer on the loose, but—"

He looked down at her with an air about him that reminded her suddenly of Eric. Of Sorley. He had the same way about him, Hugh did. Like the ground that was beneath him was his to command. Like the ground that was beneath her was his as well. And she had that same, quiet assuredness wash over her that she felt when she was in Eric's presence. The one that said no one can knock you down while I am here.

"—the killer will never, ever, get through those doors Fernanda. I give you my word. As long as you are a resident in my home nothing in the world will touch you here."

And Addison for all her doubts and uncertainty, for some reason, was inclined to believe him.

---

He showed her everything. Well, almost everything. All but the armory — which was apparently a thing they had on the property — the library and the distillery. It was Hugh's humble opinion that these spaces were not meant for women.

When she'd grumbled about it in passing to Jacqueline, the maid had quietly assured her that she agreed with his lordship and that it would have been highly irregular to introduce her to those places. That they were not feminine spaces.

But Addison called bullshit.

She kept her opinions from Hugh though.

It had been a good way to spend the afternoon. She liked Hugh, even if he was a bit flighty. He was the first person she'd met in this new life and she could admit to herself that she had missed him a bit. Sure, she had seen him around. La Ithuriana was not so big that they could ever avoid each other. But it was like Eric had showed up, and Hugh had quietly faded into the background. Like he had stepped back to make space for other people to fill her time.

Nowadays, Addison was far more likely to find Jean Luc if she went looking for Hugh. It had been subtle enough that she'd not felt slighted or anything, but now that it was just her and him, she could admit that somewhere inside her that she had been missing his company.

As he showed her the different spaces that made up La Ithuriana, Addison felt she could almost forget about all the complicated rest. She could forget about dead bodies in the hedges. And severed limbs in the garden. She could forget that Sorley was now Eric. And that Fernando was now her dad.

Which was fine, but odd.

She could forget all of these things and just feel okay. Hugh had that affect on people she'd noticed. Like the whole world relaxed into his presence. Like, how she used to think that if she had Sorley with her then everything would be okay... but more somehow. With Hugh, it was like the whole world felt that on a macro level. Like the cogs kept turning because Hugh said that it would be alright to do so.

He left her at the entrance of Fernando's study, patted her affectionately on the head that had her shaking him off and sending him a glare. He departed, laughing, and assuring her that he would see her for dinner.

Addison turned away from Hugh and made her way back into Fernando's study and paused.

There was no one inside.

It was empty.

Slowly she drifted in, wondering if she should be there while Fernando was away. She drifted further in. The fire had died down. The windows were closed, blessedly, so the warmth remained inside the sturdy walls of her new temporary home.

Deciding that she didn't mind following the theme of the day, Addison decided to snoop.

She made her way over to the small shelf at the far end of the room. There was a metal weight on it, that reminded her a bit of a paperweight. There was a coat of arms, at the center of which was a knight in his helmet, holding up a shield, and across the very heart of the shield were two lions standing up on their hind legs, braced for a fight and facing the same direction — the same enemy she supposed. She reached up and ran her fingers over the rough wood and metal surface, marveling at the grooves and indents that had been carved into the crest where it stood on display. Turning from the shelf, Addison ducked down and picked up a book, opening the first page and quickly putting it down again. She didn't know what language it was in, and decided it wasn't worth the headache.

She brushed her fingers over a fur pelt that sat draped over one of his chairs and poked at an unsheathed sword that sat mounted over the hearth, hissing when the too sharp blade pricked her skin and drew a drop of blood. She stuck her finger in her mouth, sucking lightly on the wound, while she moved over to his desk and peered at what he had there. Glancing over her shoulder guiltily as she did to make sure she was still alone.

There were maps with various markings on them as well as pawn-like figured spread out across the surfaces, like a chess board made of countries rather than black and white squares.

There was a goblet on the desk as well.

Her nose scrunched.

It must have been old. There was a stench. Taking her finger out of her mouth, Addison reached over and plucked up the cup. Intending to take it over to the window and toss it out but froze.

She looked down at the odd liquid inside and realized rather detachedly that it was not wine.

It was red.

But it wasn't wine.

She brought the cup up to her nose and sniffed. Gagged. She knew the smell. She knew it well. Anyone who'd ever had a period while trapped in history could tell you that smell.

Old blood.

Addison heaved.

Hands shaking, she made to put the goblet back on the desk and leave, but she missed the surface, hit the corner and watched in horror as the goblet clattered to the floor. Blood splashing out all over the maps, the desk, the floor.

Addison drew back in horror, but too late.

Her dress was covered in the old, bloody, coagulated mess.

Like she'd been struck physically across the face, the words she'd carved into her wall came hurtling back at her.

Manger. Song.

But not song.

They were saying Sang.

Blood.

She'd wondered time and again what could have been so secret about eating.

But eating wasn't the secret.

What they were eating was the thing they needed to hide.

Everything fell into place like the horrid pieces of some horrible puzzle. The body in the hedges. The severed limb. Sorley as Eric. Jacqueline knowing the moment Addison was awake even though it would be hours before the sun rose. Hugh and Fernando always popping up at the most opportune moments. The horrible screeching sound she'd heard that day in the woods with Idir. Fernando always picking up on the slightest shifts in her mood. Hearing the signal, she tapped out on her arm, even when there was no possible way it had been loud enough. Even when he wasn't looking at her.

All of it.

Everything clicked into place and sent Addison hurdling from the room.

She hit the door. Hit the wall.

Tore down the stairs.

She needed out of here. She needed to go.

Fernando. Her adoptive father, Fernando— he— he drank blood.

From a cup.

Hugh— why else in the world could they have possibly accepted someone like her so quickly into their family. Into their home.

Someone who just fell out of the sky. With no home or family to speak of. With no one in the world to know that she was gone. No one to report her missing to anyone. No one would know.

They knew that no one would know.

Fernando had confirmed it when he asked her to be his daughter. He'd confirmed that she had no one wondering where she was.

Addison couldn't breathe.

She gasped but she couldn't— she couldn't breathe.

She wasn't special. She wasn't Fernando's daughter.

Another gasping breath. She let out the most wretched sound.

She was lunch.

They were fattening her up.

La Ithuriana with eyes that saw everything and servants who were too kind to be true, too happy to be real, and these men who were so excessively kind.

A room fit for a queen.

Or a sacrificial lamb.

Addison hit the bottom of the stairs and gave a cry of alarm when the footmen pulled open those great oak doors that Hugh swore no one went through without his leave. That she would never get through without his leave.

Fernando and Idir stood in the entry, faces grim.

At the sight of her, both men had frozen.

Taking her in with mixed looks of horror.

But Addison didn't stop to consider why that was. She threw herself back against the railing, heart pounding hard in her chest, as she tried to come up with a way to escape now that she'd been seen.

Fernando, brow furrowed, stepped forward, hand outstretched. His lips were moving. She could hear him, but she shook her head and begged him to stop.

"Please," she begged, breathless. "Just let me go."

Fernando who had been slowly advancing on her, stopped in his tracks at her choice of her words.

He took in her dress, stained with old blood that had long since gone rancid. The crazed look in her eyes. The pounding of her heart. The stench of her fear. And found himself for once at a loss for what to do.

She stumbled out to the side. Never taking her eyes from them as she moved.

Idir looked sad.

She didn't care.

She didn't care that Fernando looked stricken or that Idir looked sad. They were messing with her mind. That was all this was. That was all this had ever been.

When she'd put some distance between them, she turned to run down the corridor but yelped when she ran into a great behemoth of a man. The impact nearly knocked her back onto the ground, but strong hands caught her and she looked up to see the gentle, concerned eyes of Eric looking back down at her.

"Are you alright, mo chridhe?"

She ripped her arms from his grasp, he looked for a moment as though he wouldn't let her go, but he released her, and she flew back with the force of her resistance. He held his hands out before him like he was trying to calm a startled animal, but Addison shook her head and crawled away, letting out a terrified moan that had him too falling still in dawning realization.

"You're not him," she said. "You're not my Sorley."

"Mo chridhe—" his voice was rough as he knelt down in front of her.

"No—" she keened putting her hands over her ears. "I'm going insane. I'm crazy. This isn't real. You're not— you're not Sorley and there's no such thing as— as—" she shook her head. "No. it's not real. It's not real."

"Fernanda," he tried again but she refused to hear him. "Malvina," he snapped, desperate to break her out of her daze.

Her eyes opened again, she looked up at him and all he saw was the only thing he'd ever dreaded. Fear. There was nothing in her eyes for him now but fear.

"No," she cried out, scattering back when he reached for her again. "What year is it?"

"What—"

"What," she bit out, throat constricting around her panicked tears. "Year?"

"It is the year of our lord 1219," he said, his voice laden with unspoken emotion.

"And what year did we meet?"

"Mo chridhe—"

"Tell me." She heaved, clawing at her throat in some desperate urge to rid herself of this emotion.

Eric closed his eyes, shaking his head, his shoulders dropped low.

"We met in the fall of 1170," he said, looking down at his hands unable to meet her eyes.

"How long?"

"Fifty years, mo chridhe."

She let out a sob. "Please just let me go," she whispered.

"The snow has fallen on the mountain," he said and shook his head sadly at her.

But she wasn't listening. She was picking herself up off the ground, shaking so hard it was near impossible to do so. Trying desperately to figure out a way to maneuver around Idir and Fernando who looked on the exchange in silence.

"I want to go—"

"You cannot go—" Eric tried.

"Please," she begged, turning back to him. "Please don't hurt me."

"I couldn't—"

"Don't lie—"

"I swear it—" his voice cracked.

"I want out—"

"Fernanda," it was Hugh who was speaking now, her head snapped wildly up to the top of the grand staircase where the older man looked down at her with stern eyes. "There is nowhere for you to go while the snow is so high. You would freeze before you reached civilization."

"Why are you doing this to me?" She asked him, somehow feeling most betrayed by this man out of them all. He was the one who had brought her into this home. He was the one who had given her a family. And now he was taking it all away.

"No one is going to do anything to you," he said, and his voice was unnervingly calm.

She sniffed and shook her head.

"I don't believe you," she whispered.

"I know," he said, and he offered her a small sad smile.

"I want to go."

"I will take you wherever you want to go—"

Eric behind her let out an aggrieved sound but one look from Hugh cut him short and silent.

"—when the snow melts and it is safe for you to travel. I will find you a good home, somewhere you will be safe and well cared for. I give you my word. You are free to go. But not while leaving would be a danger to you. Do you understand?"

Addison was shaking so hard now she couldn't actually open her mouth to respond without her teeth chattering. She wrapped her arms tight around her torso to keep out the shivers, but she feared that this time the cold inside her bones really would kill her.

Betrayed.

She felt betrayed.

"Stand aside, Eric," Hugh said.

Addison didn't hear Eric move or say anything but one moment he had been behind her, blocking her path to her room, and then suddenly he was across the hall, two steps behind Hugh and staring blankly at the wall. Like he had completely shut down to the world around him. He was so still, if she hadn't known him and held him and seen him move, she would have thought him a statue instead of a man— or a— or one of them.

And then, without so much as another look in any of their directions, Addison turned on her heel and fled.

Slamming into her room with the force of an animal that had no where to run but back into her cage. She twisted the latch on her door and pulled on it to make sure it was bolted shut. Then she raced over to her curtains and pulled them tightly closed.

Grabbing her letter opener, Addison dropped down onto her stomach and curled up under her bed.

She closed her eyes to block out the shadows that stretched out too long in front of her. The oddly shaped figures that tucked themselves away in the corners of her room.

La Ithuriana was silent.

Too silent.

And now she knew why.

The house itself was suspended in the space between life and death.

La Ithuriana lived but she did not need to breathe.

Now Addison knew for certain that the old manor house did have her own secrets too. Now, without even a shadow of a doubt, Addison could say that the house was watching her. Eyes wide and owl like, she flitted her gaze about her room, waiting for one of the monsters downstairs to appear before her. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for the creak in the night. Even through her curtains, Addison could feel eyes on her still. In the black darkness of a wild alpine history, she knew now that the eyes she'd felt on the back of her neck were those of a vampire perched on the branches of the trees outside of her room. Watching and waiting for her to reveal herself. Waiting for her to show her losing hand.

Now she knew why the floorboards creaked only for her

She and La Ithuriana were the only living creatures here, tucked into a quiet little hillside just beneath the peak of some terrible mountain.

Hugh and Fernando and Eric had always ghosted along the hardwood floors as though nothing but a breeze had passed through.

Silently they moved through the house.

Silently, the house let them.

In the quiet of La Ithuriana, Addison felt the illusions the house had cloaked herself in slowly begin to shatter and fall. A strong northern wind swept through the mountainside and shook the trees. A scratching sounded at her window and Addison could not move an inch from her fetal position beneath the bed to even block her ears.

In a room built for a queen, Addison couldn't deny the dawning horror that crept upon her still. She was locked in a prison. She had nowhere to go.