Sons of Devils by Alex Beecroft

Author:Alex Beecroft [Beecroft, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2017-02-22T16:00:00+00:00

Mirela had spent her first week at the castle too busy to think about her family. Anca, the housekeeper, had put her through a whirlwind training plan on how to properly scrub floors and tables, build fires, black boots, polish silverware, and remove stains from carpets, upholstery, and linens. She had been given a bed in the girls’ dormitory in the cold attics of a tower turret, five other iron bedsteads radially arranged around the walls, and five other girls trooping up at the same time each night. There were many crucifixes in that room—rosaries looped over the headboards, garlic and salt on the windows and doors. Seeing the defences, Mirela concluded that the girls didn’t believe they were safe at all.

That first night, she sat on her thin mattress as the others undressed, and bounced, testing the creak of the springs beneath. What if her form reverted to its natural state while she was asleep? While she had waited to be chosen, she had been treated as a potential mistress of the house, and locked in a room of her own. The sound of a key in the door had woken her in time to be sure she was presentable. Here she was under constant scrutiny and would get no such warning.

One by one, the other servants had fallen asleep around her. Could she somehow ensure she would wake up first, so she would be in control of her appearance before they opened their eyes?

That made her think of the back of her parents’ wagon—mother and father in the shelf of their bed, Danior, Kem, Kisaiya, and herself in a warm pile of quilts beneath. Always the earliest to get up, Kem had once trodden on her arm without waking her.

Her heart gave a great wrench of longing and fear for her brothers. Had the villagers done as they promised and let them go? Told to sacrifice one of their maidens, knowing Mirela’s talents, the villagers had taken her whole family captive, hostages for her good behaviour. And she had been good, hadn’t she? She had kept to her side of the bargain. It hadn’t been her fault that Radu Văcărescu had seen through her guise, had seen her as she was.

Why hadn’t he given her away?

She shook herself—that was a question for another time. Right now, she needed to concentrate on making it through the night. Careful not to wake her bunkmates, she rolled up her thin mattress and blanket together, picked it up, and padded back downstairs. In the service way behind the dining room was a huge cabinet that held cleaning supplies. She cleared a space in there, set down her mattress bent in half, levered off the top of a can of beeswax and turpentine to conceal her smell, closed the doors, and curled up there.

The swoony smell of furniture polish soon filled the cupboard and seemed to slick the inside of her mouth and lungs, but the closed wooden doors felt familiar and comforting, an echo of home.

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