Page 65 of Commanding Blood And Bonds

“Sure, I get that. I meant—why here?” I gestured around us. “This place. Surely the irony isn’t lost on you. Frankly, it gives me the creeps.”

“The irony,” she said without turning, “is exactly why I’m here.”

The Greeks had hinted as much, but I needed to hear it from her. I wanted a crack in the armor. A reason behind the woman everyone feared. I wanted to understand.

“Explain.”

She stopped so abruptly, her hair whipped around her shoulders as she turned on me, expression cool and blazing all at once.

“I don’t owe you that.”

“No, you don’t,” I agreed, holding her fiery gaze. “But I’m asking anyway.”

Her jaw flexed. For a long moment, I thought she might just walk away.

Instead, she said, “My first life in the Americas was spent on this very plantation—serving a master more animal than man. My parents bartered their way here from Ireland, hoping the new world would treat us better than the old. But the terms of their servitude...kept extending. A dropped plate. A doctor’s visit. Convenient debts.”

She looked away, voice still calm. Almost clinical. But rage sparked behind her eyes.

“He took a particular interest in me when I was young. Raped and beat me through my teenage years. Then he caught me trying to flee.”

My stomach twisted. I couldn’t breathe.

“That monster beat me to death in the yard beneath the mossy oak. I was too young to ascend. I bled out before anyone found me.”

Her tone was flat, but her eyes were flint. Controlled. Burning.

“When I recirculated, less than thirty years had passed. That cruel bastard still drew breath when I found my way back here, but his wife had died. So I used the vessel I was born into to do what it was clearly designed to.”

She turned her gaze out the window, distant now.

“I seduced him. Slowly. Carefully. Preserving my honor. And when we finally stole a moment alone—scandalous, of course—I slit his throat with a letter opener he’d gifted me.”

I swallowed. Hard.

“I generally prefer cleaner methods. But his blood on my hands? That gave me closure.”

She straightened, spine aligning as though bracing against memory. Her hands clasped neatly in front of her. Somewhere in the distance, a bird called. Otherwise, the estate held its breath. My heart, too.

“From there, I turned my efforts to freeing as many souls as I could. Evil only holds the power we lend it. So, I took his life. Then—with Bellaton’s help—I took his land. And since then, I’ve made a mockery of his legacy. This place? This house? It’s freed a hundredfold more than he ever had the right to harm.”

My mouth opened and closed twice.

There were no right words.

Then a sliver of a smile—sharp and dry—ghosted across her lips.

“I recognized a past-life vendetta, Miss Porter,” she said. “Because I’m still living mine.”

THIRTEEN

OLD HISTORY

AUGUST

Alvara spilled out everything we knew—and more pressingly, everything we didn’t—about what was coming for the world. A hefty silence settled over the four of us as we finished our plates, still gathered around Kingsley’s too-small table.

He shook his head, rubbing his thumb and forefinger across his brow. Rosaleigh watched him warily, her lips pressed into a flat line.