House of Hunger

by Alexis Henderson

Marion saw little difference between the two. Both the act of becoming a bloodmaid and the act of becoming a wife were a kind of amalgamation of fealty and flesh, blood and fidelity. And why sell yourself to a penniless man when you could sell yourself to a lord of the North?

Facts

I’d rather bleed to sate the appetite of a night lord than bleed on the birthing bed, bearing the children of a man I hardly love.”

Facts again

There was an iron bed pushed against the far wall, the same one that Marion had been birthed in, and that her parents had died in just a decade later.

Ok damn

“I’ll let you in on a little secret that will serve you well in the North: The whole world runs on blood. Who has good blood. Who has bad blood. Whose blood is shed and whose isn’t. That’s what it all comes down to in the end. And you southerners like to pretend that isn’t true, but you’re just as bloodthirsty as the rest. Blood is everything in the South. It’s everything everywhere.”

“You’re of us and we’re of you, now. We’re bloodmaids and that makes us as good as family to each other.”

She’d never been able to understand why people who had so much fought over so little. What was the point of war when everyone had full bellies and more money than they could ever spend? What more could they possibly want? As far as Marion was concerned, they were simply too rich and too bored and looking for violent ways to pass the years.

“Do mind yourself in these halls, Marion. In some ways, this world is just as cruel as the one you left behind.”

Marion had always found it odd that someone would go through the trouble of killing a creature only to make it look alive again. It seemed somehow perverse.

This time the Countess didn’t bite her and, strangely, Marion wished she would’ve.

Oh???

“No need to cry,” said the Countess, stepping out into the corridor. “He wasn’t worth mourning anyway.”

She barely knew Lisavet, and yet already some part of her longed for her fidelity . . . or worse than that, love.

I can’t continue to fight my hunger for you, Marion. I want you near me. I would give you everything. All of me, if you’ll only let me have you.”

Mother

“Tell me, Marion, do you hunger for me?”

*gulp*

“You wound me,” said Lisavet. “I thought we were lovers in every sense of the word.”

“If I were to make you a promise like that, what would you want it to be?” Marion thought on the question for a long time, turning it over in her head. “I’d want you to say that you belong to me as much as I belong to you.” “I do.” “You don’t mean that,” said Marion, turning away as her mood soured.

Tutor Geoffrey swallowed hard, collected his papers hastily. “It’s been an honor,” he said to Marion, and that was to be the last she ever saw of him.

A dark and terrible thought surfaced at the back of her mind: What if the letters had never been sent because Cecelia had never left?

Oh hell

Fingers, human fingers, floating suspended in dark pickling juice. Stunned, Marion staggered back, crashing into a shelf. One of the jars pitched forward—brine sloshing against its glass walls—and plummeted to the ground.

EXCUSE ME

“I am called the Wretch,” she said, and Marion stopped dead.

“No, not a bloodmaid. A Wretch’s blood is not fit for drinking. It’s barely fit for bathing.” “But you have needle marks on your arms.” The Wretch gazed down at her ragged nails, chewed on one of them. “Not a bloodmaid . . . now. But that does not mean I was never a bloodmaid.” And then it hit her. The truth of the creature, the woman, crouched before her. “Oh my God. Cecelia—”

W T F

Lisavet wasn’t just draining Cecelia of her blood, she was draining her body of its very soul.

I belong more to her than I do myself. Is that not love? —the Wretch, formerly Cecelia, First Bloodmaid of the House of Hunger