Court of the Undying Seasons, page 1
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Some of the thematic material in Court of the Undying Seasons involves child neglect and abuse, issues of consent, violence, including blood drinking and murder, and substance use. For a more detailed description of sensitive content, please visit adriannestrickland.com/court-of-the-undying-seasons.
To my mama, Deanna, for showing me the strength of a mother’s love … and for failing to notice when I read Interview with the Vampire far too young.
RIP, Anne Rice. Thank you for helping me realize how delightfully weird I am.
THE UNDYING HOUSES
THE BLUE COURT,
aka the House of Winter Night
MOTTO: Revel and Remember
SPECIALTIES: revelry, masking, shapeshifting
THE RED COURT,
aka the House of Spring Dawn
MOTTO: Blaze and Bleed
SPECIALTIES: weapons, seduction, the arts
THE GOLD COURT,
aka the House of Summer Day
MOTTO: Shine and Steward
SPECIALTIES: governance, mind reading, enthrallment
THE SILVER COURT,
aka the House of Autumn Twilight
MOTTO: Protect and Preserve
SPECIALTIES: the sciences, healing, preservation
THE BLACK COURT,
aka the Nameless House
MOTTO:—
SPECIALTIES: hunting, shadowstepping, mistwalking
I
BEGINNING
1
I wasn’t born a monster.
As a child I had no bloodlust, no desire to manipulate or control. No dream of immortality. I wanted to survive the long winters. I wanted my mother back.
But now I must face them as my mother did. Now I feel as murderous as a monster, as cold as one of their walking corpses.
They arrive in our village like a funeral procession in an enclosed black carriage drawn by a matching set of four horses, with two more following, just as the first snow begins to fall.
It’s risky for a carriage not to carry skis at this time of year in case of deep drifts, but the wheels and horses look to be in fine condition. Better than fine. The stallions in back have no leads and yet no one astride the polished leather saddles. Eerier yet, there’s no one atop the driver’s seat of the carriage.
The horses seem to halt on their own. The carriage rolls to a stop at the edge of our village square, a stretch of frozen dirt with a dry basin of rough-hewn stone in the center that the headman generously calls a fountain. The square still smells of fish, offal, and dung—the remnants of the market, packed away for the occasion. Now the space only serves to make the clomping hooves echo forlornly in the late autumn air.
The carriage sits, gleaming and malignant in the dying light, an ill omen made real. As we all wait in a line, shivering, I wonder without hope if it’s empty.
Of course, it isn’t.
Only when the snow-shrouded sun finally drops behind the mountains do they flow like water out of the carriage: one male, one female, and one seemingly neither, all clothed in finery. Long velvet cloaks, gowns, and robes in deep red, black, and silver. I’m wearing whatever scraps I could find, though the scarves and shawls wrapped around my neck and waist serve a dual purpose, hiding what I want hidden.
Showing your neck to them is bad luck. Showing what’s at my waist would be a death wish.
They clearly have no such concerns. Their skin flashes everywhere despite the cold, their complexions and hair as varied as their clothes. The female has fair skin, perfect brown curls that fall to her waist, and full crimson lips to match the color of her eyes and her plunging gown. The male has light brown skin, black hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and a black silk shirt crisscrossed with knife belts over dark leather pants. The third is remarkably pale, with snow-white hair, silver eyes and robes, and no telltale signs of being male or female. I’ve heard they can be like that, among the many ways they can be—live however they want, at seemingly no cost to themselves.
The only similarities among these three are their unnatural eyes and flawless faces, not a wrinkle or pockmark in sight. They all look to be in their early twenties, late twenties at most, but I know they’re not. The creatures’ faces never reflect their true age. Despite their seeming youth, they’re long dead. And despite their cold limbs, they move like stalking predators.
They are predators. Predators that glow like lanterns in the darkness, inviting their prey to be consumed like moths to flame.
I want to back away. Only Silvea standing next to me in line holds me steady. She’s my only friend. And maybe more than that, if only on my end. I need to make sure she’s safe, and a place at her side is more appealing than these creatures will ever be. Far more tempting than becoming one of them.
Even when I’ve been starving, lying awake at night getting gnawed at by a nameless longing for something, someone, someplace I don’t know, I’ve never hungered for an endless existence sustained by the blood of others. Never for shadowy figures with gleaming eyes and red lips and mocking laughs to haunt my waking hours as well as my dreams. Never for luxurious, frozen courts that never sleep, cloaked in garments of scarlet and gold, silver and midnight.
I’m the child of a dead fisherman, and I lost my mother to them. They are the enemy: overtaking our lands, usurping our gods, terrorizing our nights.
Drinking our blood.
To want to be like them, to live a richer life despite being dead, to share their hideous craving, would be worse than a foolish dream. It would be deplorable.
But that’s why they’re here.
The male holds out a black bag, his lips quirked, while the female says in a musical, disinterested voice, “Is this all?”
It’s quiet enough to hear the falling snow, no one brave enough to speak. But it is all, according to their terms: all the children I’ve grown up with and have mostly hated and occasionally tolerated, now on the cusp of adulthood, standing before them.
Silvea shifts in place, and her shoulder presses against mine, startling me. I immediately tilt away, assuming it was an accident, but she leans closer. I stay exactly where I am, hardly daring to breathe. She never usually touches me. I let myself lean back into her, just a little bit.
Even now, I wish she were somewhere else, but “wishes won’t feed you,” as my father used to say. This is our first Finding ritual, but the rules have been in place since before anyone can remember: Once per year, these creatures come to six different villages, and all youths aged seventeen to nineteen must gather for a drawing, like children at the Midwinter Festival lining up to receive a hotcake.
The only gift we’ll receive here is our lives, if we’re lucky. And if we’re unlucky, death. If you choose the wrong lot, the creatures give you a new life that’s no life at all—and you’re supposed to thank them. To revere them.
I hate them.
They must not be too impressed with us, either. Or at least the female isn’t. She glances at the male, her red eyes shining like wet blood. “Nothing to pique my interest here, Maudon, but let’s get on with it.”
The male—Maudon—drinks us in with his dark gaze before he moves to the head of the line. His eyes are completely black, I realize, the pupils indistinguishable from his irises. As he stands before each of us, holding up the bag, his stare could swallow me whole.
I suppress a shiver. I don’t know why he seems so interested. The others who have come for past Findings usually seemed bored. Never mind that this seemingly mundane task determines our fates.
And yet, no one in our village would dare defy that fate by hiding or fighting. No one does anything but the role that’s assigned to them. For me, it’s all the same:
Listen to your father or be beaten.
Gut fish for pennies or starve to death.
Gather in the square when the creatures tell you to or be hunted.
Even their bag is luxuriant, its black silk gleaming like Maudon’s clothes. They make all of us standing in the line seem dull and lifeless in comparison. And especially pungent, in my case. Odd, since they’re the ones who are dead. Dead things usually sag and smell.
While I haven’t dreamed of becoming one of them, I have fantasized about killing them when making precise slices into cold fish bellies with my fillet knife. It wouldn’t be murder because the creatures aren’t alive, or so I tell myself.
Maudon steps in front of me and Silvea. He spares me only a glance, taking in Silvea like he wants to eat her. She pulls away from me, straightening her shoulders to bravely meet his gaze. He pauses before her longer than he has any others, tipping his head as if listening to something. For some reason, the female is staring fixedly at
But then Maudon reaches out and brushes Silvea’s cheek with one light finger, almost a caress. She shudders, and I want to smack his hand away.
Maybe they think Silvea’s pretty, not just delicious. Under her patchy fur hat, her hair is a flowing blond, compared to my lank, dull locks that I keep hacked short. The better to keep clean—as clean as possible, given what I do. My hair always smells like fish. Silvea smells like herbs, her skin is washed and clear, and her blue eyes are bright and determined.
The creatures like pretty people. At least, they’re more likely to steal pretty humans. I wonder why they even bother with a Finding when they can just snatch anyone they want in the night.
As Silvea reaches into the bag, I twitch, wishing I could stop her. It almost seems to swallow her hand.
A smile grows on Maudon’s face.
This can’t be good.
Before Silvea can withdraw, I glimpse a white feather between her fingers. I know what it means—it’s the only white one among dozens of black. It signifies who they’ll choose. The sacrifice. The foundling. The one they take to Castle Courtsheart, their horrible fortress. The one they take everything from.
Only I see the feather’s color because of how close we stand. Silvea’s the only one among the group who would let me draw so near with the stink of fish about me. For that alone, I would do anything for her.
But she saved my life once. I was seven, and I got a fever after cutting my palm on a fillet knife just after my father fell into the sea while fishing—probably drunk—and drowned. She took herbs from her mother, the healer, drew the poison from my wound, and brought down my fever. Like I was worth saving.
I’ve loved her ever since, desperately, hopelessly, and she let me stay close. She taught me how to read—as a healer-in-training, she had to learn to follow herbalists’ and anatomists’ journals—and she often shared what little food she could from her own meager plate. She’s been one of the few people in the village to show me kindness. To not look away from me. To see me as more than a half-starved, walking pile of fish guts.
Perhaps now she sees me as someone worthy of standing beside her.
And for that, I would die for her.
I move faster than my sense of self-preservation can. I stuff my hand inside the bag, over Silvea’s, nudging her aside before she can reveal the feather.
“Let me go first,” I breathe in a rush. When everyone stares at me, I blurt, “I’m older.”
It’s true, even if I don’t look it, standing shorter than Silvea and far scrawnier—and barely older, a fresh nineteen years to her eighteen.
“No, Fin—!” Silvea tries to pull away, but I wrench the feather from her fingers under cover of fabric, unseen by any of them standing in front us. “Stop!”
She must have glimpsed the white feather, too. She’s trying to save me again. But it’s my turn.
And even if it kills me, maybe I can make my dreams come true at the same time: A knife against cold flesh. Revenge against them, for taking my mother from me. I’m prepared. I have my fillet knife strapped to my waist, buried under the folds of my dirty shawl.
The smile vanishes from Maudon’s lips. His pit-black eyes widen and his nostrils flare, giving me the barest glimpse of outrage lurking behind the smooth mask of his face. Even the female hisses like a cat.
Blood and piss, I curse in silent fear. Somehow they know what I’ve done.
They wanted Silvea. Not me.
And now they’re going to kill me where I stand.
But then the pale, silver-clad one arches a brow as fine as frost. “Age is about the only thing we honor as you humans do. Don’t you agree, Maudon? Claudia? It is the filthy one’s right to go first.”
I can’t help but wonder what the creature means. Do they not respect wealth or social standing or husbands or fathers—what humans seem to honor most and all of which I lack? Does that mean I won’t be less than nothing among them, like I am here?
Before I can help it, my chest clenches around something other than fear. I don’t want to know what the feeling is.
“Are we going to let them all start doing that now, Revar?” Maudon asks with the suggestion of a sneer. “Next they’ll be shouting over one another who is the oldest or the youngest instead of waiting in a nice line.”
Revar shrugs. “In any case, the claim has been made. I will honor it, as you should.”
The female, Claudia, watches Maudon until he grudgingly nods. After that, the anger in both seems to subside—clearer by the feeling in the air than their expressions, which haven’t changed all that much.
Silvea withdraws her empty hand, but I don’t yet reveal the feather. I stare back at them over the top of the bag, my heart pounding against the walls of my chest like a fist. As if I can fight this. But I can’t fight. Not them.
Not yet.
A horse paws the frozen earth, breaking the silence. I still can’t move, and yet those three perfect faces, too smooth and still, watch me patiently. Like they have all the time in the world. Or they’re bored again, now that the moment of drama is over.
So be it.
Silvea’s sob cuts the heavy gloom as I pull the white feather from the bag. It looks so clean next to my hand. Revar was right. Dizzily, all I can think is, I am filthy.
“You got the white feather!” the baker’s son shouts in horror. As if he cares. As if he never threw rocks at me.
My eyes fill with tears, my throat too choked to respond. This was my choice. I knew what would happen. But Silvea’s grief slices me like a knife I wasn’t expecting.
All the more reason I go in her stead. Besides, she’s the healer’s daughter. I only gut fish. Even from a practical standpoint, it’s better she stay and I go.
“Finally,” says Claudia. “We have our chosen one. The wait was killing me.” There’s a spark of humor in her voice, but it dies as her red gaze passes over me.
Her look is murderous. She obviously resents me for taking Silvea’s place.
Already two of the creatures hate me, and I haven’t even left with them yet. An unfortunate beginning to my ending.
Their horses’ breaths send great plumes of fog into the air. The beasts’ eyes gleam with an eerie yellow light, like someone lit a candle behind them. Save for that glow, they’d only be dark, empty windows.
Enthralled, then. Forced to do the creatures’ bidding. But still alive.
Still alive, I tell myself, swallowing my tears. I’ll still be alive. Though I doubt I will be for long. I want to believe I can fight or flee later, but I know the truth. Soon, I’ll be as cold as the creatures before me, whether I have strange eyes and flawless skin or empty sockets and worms riddling my flesh.
Or, maybe worst of all, I might be warm and alive but have someone else’s will shining behind my eyes. They need servants, after all. It makes me think having my blood drained might be the preferable end.
My only comfort in going with these creatures is in the possibility I might understand how they live—and see if I can end them forever. This is the best chance I’ll ever have.
Sighs rise in the village square, likely only in relief. No sadness. Few will miss me, and none would even think to help me. We used to be a fighting people, great warriors and raiders. But that was before they came. Now, at most, there might be an embarrassingly quick scuffle and a river of blood splattered across the snow.
Not everyone would even want to resist. Some view being selected as the highest honor. An incredible chance to escape this life.
The creatures certainly see it as a gift. The vampires. I might as well let myself think the word, if not say it. I’m about to join them, after all.
Maudon smiles again, showing fangs of pure white. “Welcome to the start of your first undying season, young one.”
“What a marvelous season it will be,” says Revar. “Your name is Fin?”
I manage a jerky nod. I don’t want to tell them the name started as a mocking insult when I began carrying buckets of cast-off fins and guts to the village cesspit as a tiny child. It ended up sticking, like a stench. Even my father was calling me that before he died. Now no one remembers my original name. I’ve gotten so used to Fin I don’t mind it.
