Petra by Cheri Lasota

Author:Cheri Lasota [Lasota, Cheri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical fantasy, Vampires, Immortals
Publisher: Ever-Sea Press
Published: 2019-04-02T22:00:00+00:00

V. The Novitiates

Genoa

August 13, 1345

“Madame?” Adélaïs whispered, entering the study where Petra was writing out a new account for the Immortal Codex. Her servant Dimia had already dressed them both for tonight’s rituals. Since Adélaïs would be the first female she would ever turn, she decided to have her dressed in a form-fitted white chemise with a subtle red dagging at the sleeves and a golden girdle with ruby accents at her waist. For reasons of practicality, an overdress and long sleeves would be cumbersome when they entered the ritual pool during the Vellessentia.

The Essentiae and Sanguinea eternae would both have elements of symbolic red in their costumes, a stark reminder of Petra’s blood sacrifice for each of them. For herself, she reserved a finer dress of shimmering forest green and gold silk brocade with a massive ankh made of soft gold looped around her neck alongside her ever-present phial of mortanine, a far more expensive bottle than the first she had had in Tibur, Italy back in the old days.

Dimia had parted her hair into elaborate loose braids on either side, complete with spirals of mortanine leaves woven throughout. The final touch was a gold and ruby circlet made of ankhs around the crown of her head.

She and Adélaïs had already started work on developing a system for encrypting her daily musings during the month they had been back home in Genoa. The girl had a great deal of work ahead of her, given the vast library of histories Petra would soon have her working on. Even in such a short time, she knew she had made the right decision to bring Adélaïs with them. The girl’s intelligence and skill had already proven to be invaluable.

“Yes?” Petra finally looked up from her work and dropped her quill into the rapidly dwindling ink in the well. She already knew what the girl would say.

“The servant bid me tell you the Sanguinea have arrived.” Adélaïs’s voice belied her fear.

They would begin the Vellessentia within the hour. The first for Adélaïs as well as Clarius’s mysterious novitiate. This would be the first ritual ceremony with two novitiates to be turned. Petra hoped she was up for the challenge. The Vellessentiae were always a difficult time of year for her, but those with a novitiate turning weakened her the most. It would take days for her to recover.

Petra worried, too, that Adélaïs’s fear of death would make her refuse immortality in the end. It wasn’t every day a girl knew the exact hour she would take her last breath. It had been a great many years since Petra had witnessed Nicon, the second Sanguine she had turned, dying from mortanine poisoning. Even for someone like her, who died every year without fail, it was still difficult to watch.

“How many have come?”

“Caelia said there are four, Madame Petra.”

“Good.” Clarius, thankfully, had not added more novitiates without telling her. “Have you seen our guests yet?”

“No, Madame.”

“Remember not to be alarmed by their appearance. They will have silver eyes and dark veins now that my blood is ebbing from their bodies.

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