Chapter 5: "Thorns of Legacy and Silent Bloodlines"
Part 1: The Barren Manor
The Vincente manor swallowed twilight like a starving beast. Tasiya's mare snorted at vegetable plots encroaching the riding path—cabbages where peonies once bled crimson.
"Even the earth starves in your absence," she murmured, eyeing the naked trellises.
The guards' whispers chased her through the gate:
"Third Lady's eyes... like obsidian arrowheads..."
"...still wears that demon's hair..."
In the library's moth-eaten gloom, shadows birthed a gaunt specter. Vincente III clutched a ledger blotched with wine stains. "Your sisters bought us three years with their marriage prospects. Now it's your turn."
Tasiya's finger traced a fresco flaking from the wall—a maiden offering wheat sheaves to the Bargain's Eye. "You want me to auction myself like winter grain?"
"Call it... strategic consolidation." The Marquis' cough rattled. "The Diaz incident proved nobles still fear our bloodline."
"Fear?" She whirled, violet skirts hissing. "They smell carrion. Why else plant surveillance crops in our gardens?"
Moonlight through broken panes slashed across an open ledger page: "Protocol 16: Heir's Blood Tithe to Sustain..."
The bedchamber still reeked of childhood—dried lavender under floorboards, charcoal sketches of armored women on the walls. Tasiya pried loose a floor tile, revealing her twelve-year-old scrawl: "LIAR" scored deep into stone.
Footsteps pattered like mice. A maid's tremulous voice:
"Third Lady... your bath..."
Steam coiled from rosewood tub waters dyed indigo. Tasiya's laugh cracked the silence. "Using sacred pigments for bathing? How desperate has this house become?"
"T-the Marquis insisted... purification ritual before tomorrow's..."
Ice flooded Tasiya's veins. She surged from the water, dripping azure droplets that stained rugs like witchmarks. "Where is he?
Interlude: The Oath Breaker's Sanctum
Raynel's knife glinted above Melada's bare sternum. The bound nun's muffled screams syncopated with chanted Latin.
"Mark the seventh rib," hissed an elder sister. "The Bargain demands nine scars before moon zenith."
Melada's thrashing upended the copper lamp. Flames licked at herloose braid—hair suddenly blazing crimson where dye burned away.
"Madness!" Raynel staggered back. "This one's hair... it's been treated with..."
The door exploded inward.
"Sacrificial ash?" Tasiya's shadow swallowed the room, wet hair dripping indigo puddles. "How careless, Mother Raynel—leaving your torture chamber unwarded."
Part 2:Cross-Species Love and Veiled Truths
Dawn bled through rain-streaked windows, staining Tasiya's childhood bedchamber the color of tarnished silver. She pressed a palm against the fogged glass—the skeletal rose trellis below resembled her father's arthritic fingers clutching empty air.
The library's third shelf yielded a leather-bound anomaly among pastel romance novels. "God and Demon" glowed in fresh gilt, its pages reeking of monastic ink. Tasiya's nail caught on an indentation—someone had traced the author's name Iblis repeatedly in the margins.
"Demons crave salvation through paradox," she read aloud, rainwater murmuring counterpoint. "If God loves sinners but hates sin, does He love demons while abhorring evil?"
A water droplet splattered the blank verso. The stain spread like a Rorschach test, morphing into her mother's face in the ossuary flames.
Scene: Breakfast of Lies
The dining hall smelled of burnt toast and unspoken accusations. Marquis Vincente's knife sawed through sausage with surgical precision.
"Your sisters' dowries could feed Ognivo's furnaces for a decade." He gestured with a fork at the barren garden visible through rain-lashed windows. "Yet you insist on chasing phantoms."
Tasiya caught the thrown letter mid-air. The Diaz seal bled wax onto her thumb—identical to the "blessed" carriage curtains Mary had embroidered.
"Funeral procession leaves at noon," her father said. "Shall I have them reserve a mourning veil in your size?"
The dropped books scattered like wounded birds. "The Tyrant Elf King's Captive" landed face-up, its lurid illustration mirroring the Marquis' skeletal grip on his goblet.
The trembling man reeked of wormwood and cowardice. Tasiya circled him like a hawk, her shadow merging with the rain-smeared window's crucifix pattern.
"She... the girl clutched a violet sachet," the coachman stammered. "Kept whispering about fireflies in winter..."
"Fireflies?" Tasiya's mother's obsidian pendant grew cold against her collarbone.
"Then the carriage passed Three Martyrs' Creek... and she started screaming." His pupils dilated. "Screaming about eyes in the water... hands..."
Marquis Vincente's cane struck oak flooring like a gavel. "Enough! The child's with her new family now—"
"Family?" Tasiya's laughter cracked the room. She threw open the ledger from last night's reading—a pressed madder flower marked the page on blood tithes. "Shall we ask Diaz's 'mother' why she needs sacrificial ash with her medicine?"
Lightning illuminated the garden's surveillance crops. Their leaves shivered like a thousand watching tongues.
Climax: The Bargain's Echo
In the ossuary's rain-flooded undercroft, Tasiya pried open her mother's sealed trunk. Water sloshed around her ankles, revealing:
A violet-stained birthing gown
Nine copper vials labeled "Protocol 16"
A miniature portrait of Raynel smiling beside a pregnant woman
The final item stole her breath—a child's woolen glove embroidered with the Diaz crest.
Thunder shook the ceiling. Above the roar, Tasiya heard her father's voice from long ago:
"Some contracts require three generations to mature."
Chapter 6: Love Across Bloodlines
Part 1: Dawn in Ashen Light
At 5:03 AM, the scent of wet loam seeped through the library's warped window. Tasiya pressed her palm against the glass, watching raindrops distort the Vincente crest carved into the courtyard flagstones—the three-eyed wolf now weeping azure tears.
She traced the fresh gash on her palm. Sacrificial ash in the bathwater, surveillance cabbages in the rose beds... What else has Father been brewing?
The stolen novel fell open to a dog-eared page:
"Do you love your demons, Lord?" the fallen angel pleaded, wings bleeding starlight onto the altar.
The Creator remained silent, but His sword trembled.
Tasiya snorted. "At least someone's asking the right questions."
A shadow rippled across the rainwater pooling on the windowsill. Outside, two groundskeepers dragged something heavy through the mud—a sack leaking strands of fire-red hair.
Scene: The Banquet of Lies
Marquis Vincente's knife screeched across the porcelain plate. "Your sisters' marriage contracts bought us ten thousand bushels of wheat."
"Enough to fatten your precious surveillance cabbages?" Tasiya swirled wine that smelled suspiciously of sacramental vinegar.
The Marquis' skeletal fingers tightened around his goblet. "We need leverage against the mountain dwellers. Those vegetables..."
"Are laced with tracking herbs. I read Mother's old pharmacopeia." She leaned forward, her violet sleeve dipping into the gravy. "Why do you think the abbess let me take Mary?"
Silence clung to the chandeliers.
"Because," the Marquis whispered, "Raynel knows what happens to girls who reach sixteen unscarred."
A maid dropped a tureen. Pumpkin soup bled across the tablecloth, forming a perfect Bargain's Eye.
Part 2: The Crimson Ledger
Midnight found Tasiya knee-deep in the ossuary, her stolen ledger cracking in the hearth's maw. Flames devoured damning entries:
"Year 329: 16 lbs madder root = 16 pints blood (Third Daughter's Coming of Age)...
A hand emerged from the smoke.
"Burning evidence?" Sister Melada's scarred lips twisted. "The Bargain always collects its—"
Tasiya plunged a fire poker through the nun's palm, pinning her to an ancestral urn. "Tell Raynel her little hair-dye trick won't work on me."
Melada's scream harmonized with the storm outside. "You don't understand! The mountain clans have your—"
Thunder drowned her words. When lightning struck, the ossuary held only swirling ash and the echo of Tasiya's vow: "I'm coming for your false gods."
Chapter 7: Blood Debt and Blazing Truths
Part 1: The Sacrificial Calculus
The dining knife trembled in Tasiya's grip, its edge kissing the linen napkin stained with her blood. Marquis Vincente's smile widened—a crack in the oil painting of paternal decorum.
"Let's play a riddle," he said, swirling wine the color of clotting blood. "If a carriage halts for a stranger on a barren mountain path... what does the silence inside signify?"
"That the passenger either can't speak..." Tasiya's thumb pressed into her fresh wound, pain sharpening her voice, "...or was never there to begin with."
The Marquis applauded softly. Beside him, the coachman shriveled like parchment in flame.
"Mary chose the Diaz family herself," the man crooned. "A starving child offered honeyed bread—who would refuse?"
Tasiya's chair screeched backward. "You drugged her."
"Merely chamomile tea for nerves," the Marquis tutted. "Our Mary even giggled about playing 'hide-and-seek' with her sisters one last time."
Rain lashed the windows. Somewhere in the storm, a memory surfaced—Mary's small hands weaving firefly crowns, whispering "Sister Tasiya's eyes glow brighter than any lantern..."
Part 2: Sixteen Winters' Toll
The coachman's whimper cut through the downpour. "B-but when Miss Mary saw you that day, she made us turn back! Said she wanted to say goodbye proper-like—"
"Enough." Tasiya flung her knife. It quivered in the oak paneling beside the Marquis' head, slicing through a portrait of her mother. Canvas peeled away to reveal brickwork scrawled with equations:
16 winters = 1 soul debt
Sacred madder root × blood tithe = Bargain's renewal
"Still playing the oblivious patriarch?" Tasiya ripped her cuff, exposing the scar circling her wrist—nine overlapping crescents. "Why do you think Raynel starved me for three winters after Mother disappeared? To keep my blood thin enough for your calculations?"
The Marquis rose, his shadow swallowing the ruined portrait. "You've always been special, Tasiya. The mountain clans haven't taken a bride in eighty years... until you."
Lightning flash. Through the cracked window, the surveillance cabbages writhed like grasping hands.
Climax: The Bargain's Price
Rainwater bled through Tasiya's bandages as she backed toward the terrace. "So I'm your blood tithe to appease some mountain wraith?"
"Appease?" The Marquis laughed—a sound like rusted hinges. "They'll crown you their fire-bearer! Your heathen blood mixed with theirs will—"
"Burn brighter than hellfire?" Tasiya snatched the fire poker from the hearth. "Let me show you what Mother's blood truly ignites."
The first strike shattered the ledger cabinet. Flames bloomed across generations of lies:
329 A.C.: Third daughter stillborn. Switched with mountain clan infant (black eyes noted)
347 A.C.: Tasiya's menarche delayed via sacramental herbs. Prepare Protocol 16
The Marquis staggered through smoke, his velvet sleeves ablaze. "Fool girl! The Bargain demands—"
"Demand this." Tasiya hurled a copper vial into the flames. The explosion painted the rain crimson—the exact shade of Mary's stolen hair.