“Your owned creature is singing again,” Aetha said, but Eiri’el had fallen asleep on the daybed nearest the window. The room’s vastness was closed in by curtains of shining lace and partitions with murals of the ocean and of shining suns. Setting the two vials of beastly blood on a table beside the daybed and climbing over Eiri’el’s dozing sprawl – how fragile she looked in her thinness, like some kind of discarded puppet of aspen wood and white yarn – Aetha leaned to look out the window.

On the great promenade before the palace gates, in the shadows of the archways cast by the moon, a troupe of musicians played soft string music and a lovely man sang soft ballads and lullabies. He was a sable-furred anthral, luxurious brown hair around his face, his tail like a banner keeping time as it swung behind his rhythmic sway.

Years back, a younger Eiri’el had glanced out of a shadowed carriage in the high class market, seen the soft-furred man singing on stage at a café where once the nobles had supped on the blood of conquest. She’d said, “All the blood in the world at my lips, and sometimes I want to rush him down and drink him dry.”

Aetha had smiled at her, “If it’s power over his voice you want, perhaps he can be the first you own?”

Ever since, the gleaming collar on the singer’s neck had marked him as a creature owned by Eiri’el, afforded privilege in the streets and safety from the hungers of the sanguinates as long as he continued to win her approval. A few nights a week, his troupe would gather on the steps to serenade Eiri’el. She slept so well on such nights.

Aetha relaxed and looked down at Eiri’el on the daybed, ran a hand through her pale hair, whispered, “I’m still so sorry for everything.” Aetha lay down against her and glanced at the vials of blood waiting patiently nearby. But for once, Aetha was not hungry. Where her body pressed against Eiri’el, she felt the remembered heat of the beastly woman’s touch. Closing her eyes, Aetha fell asleep thinking about it.

*

Groaning wood swayed as the surf moved beneath it, casting strange shadows in moonlight. Waking with her face half in sea water, Yven’ul’aro coughed and spat salt. She ached. As Yven struggled weakly to push herself to her knees, pangs of stabbing pain shot through her arms, her shoulders, her back, the base of her thin tail. She grit her teeth and let herself wail in confusion. Burning sensations racked her body in lashing tides, as though a whip were peeling across her skin. She mistook the roving shadows for angular assailants and cried out, throwing herself to her feet, and tried to flee.

“Yven!” A man shouted at her, caught her salt-wet hair, pulled her back and threw her down. “You fucked it up, didn’t you?”

Curling up around herself, Yven tumbled back into the surf. The little, dilapidated boathouse channeled the gentle waves of the surf toward her and salt water rushed over her. She rose coughing again, hitting her back against the shifting longboat behind her. “I didn’t!” She shouted, voice small. “What did I do?”

“Don’t fuck with me!” A furious foot knocked her back into the water. The surf tried to pull her out. She scrambled and grabbed at the boat, getting her knees under her and lifting her head. Shaking water from her white fur, she squinted into the dark and finally recognized her assailant: an older anthral that resembled her: white fur, gray-blue hair curled in the humid night, long narrow tail flicking with anger. But the fury in him was an aberrant thing Yven had never understood, burning out of his mouth as he growled, “You had one chance. One chance! Now it’s over!”

“I’m sorry,” Yven croaked on instinct, retreating back into the water. “Gauv, I don’t know what you’re talking about! What did I do?”

“They’re gonna come for us now. Don’t you get that? Don’t you?”

“I don’t…” Looking around at the boathouse, the weathered old longboat beside her, the bright lights of the city and the palace across the strait, she strained, “Did I forget something? Lose something? Gauv, tell me!”

“Maybe you should just go for a swim.” Gauv stood tall, his two curving horns casting terrible shadows over his face. He approached, Yven flinching at each step he took forward. He made a shooing gesture, like he was going to push her out to sea, and she backed away as he said, “Just get out there. See how far you can swim before you sink. See how…” He glimpsed something behind her, paled, backed away quickly. “No. That’s impossible.”

A huge weight crashed into him, a beast pouncing out of the dark. Gauv hit the old wood floor so hard it broke down to the earth. Then great arms lifted him, pinned him to the ceiling. The huge creature tore a rotted wood beam from the wall and shoved it through Gauv’s body. It was a slow, painful, loud moment. Gauv writhed and shrieked. Red blood sprang from him like an overturned fountain. But he quickly went still, nailed to the ceiling by that great stake.

Yven stared, frozen, as the huge being turned to face her. Gray in the moonlight, red in the flashes of yellow city light reflecting off the water, this was no animal: it was a woman, large and powerful beyond reason. Scales across her body, bloodied wounds fresh all over, wearing nothing but heavy boots and a helmet like a blade over her face, she turned to face Yven. She growled.

With a scream that woke the rest of the island, Yven threw herself out of the water and dove through a rotted hole in the wall of the boathouse. She ran toward the sugarcane fields, the long low wooden buildings surrounding them. Lamps flicked on, confused voices awoken by Yven’s cries. The beast did not pursue her.

*

In the palace, Aetha bolted upright on the daybed. She was still warm from Eiri’el’s touch, but Aetha was alone. The night wind blew out of the dark through the window above her, stirring golden curtains. Heart beating with urgency, fear tense in her muscles, Aetha cast about in confusion. She noticed the two vials of blood on the table were both empty. Then she heard screams in the palace, in the halls outside. Aetha threw herself to her feet, tearing down a curtain and wielding its brass rod as a spear while she charged into the halls.

Aetha followed the screams, passing the bodies of her sister’s servants torn open and thrown against the walls. She ran past a body here and there, and then a pile of them in the foyer before she followed the screams onto the promenade in front of the palace. Aetha was not the only person to run out onto the promenade. The balconies and walkways above her were full of nobles in their sleep-clothes, fearful servants, golden guards staring helplessly. Aetha descended onto the promenade at a full charge, then staggered to a stop to stare down at blood strewn from one side of the road to the other.

And Eiri’el crouching in the middle of it. The young woman rubbed at her bloodied face with bloodied hands, drenched in red. All around her were broken instruments and torn open bodies. From the looks of it, not a single member of the troupe had survived, though some had fled, their bodies dead against the edges of the promenade. None of this bothered Eiri’el. She hummed happily to herself, smiled at the shocked faces looking down at her. She waved and said, “Sorry about the noise.”

Aetha let the curtain rod fall from her hands. “Eiri’el’al’ain. What did you do?”

Eiri’el stood, easy and strong in a way that Aetha had never seen her stand. “Oh, sister. I was drinking that blood and suddenly thought, you know. He probably tastes better than he sounds.” With a small chuckle, she held up the golden band that had once wrapped the sable singer’s neck, now stained red.