Excerpt: Roses Are Red
An excerpt from Roses Are Red, Violence Is Blue by Liz Shipton
(Holiday Remix Series)
Chapter One
Xyran
…to wit, the Viradellis and the Botaccinis. After that long and violent Blood Feud was ended, the law was established, in year 576, that before any fae Don could succeed to head of his household, he must first take a wife. The Blood Law was amended in year 875 to include the caveat that—
Xyran Rossi sat back in his chair. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them with his thumb and forefinger. He rubbed one hand across the top of his crew cut head. He cracked his knuckles and turned the thick rings on his fingers and examined the tattoos on the backs of his hands. He tilted the stiffness out of his neck.
Outside the open window, sunset was sweeping over the hills of Ravenna, and the light was getting too dim to read by. Xyran sent a spark from the tip of his finger to the filament of the bulb in his desk lamp, and the room slowly filled with soft, warm light. Three floors below, he could hear servants in the kitchen, banging pots and pans around.
“Xyran?” His mother’s voice floated to him from somewhere in the villa.
“Yes?”
“Are you coming down for dinner?”
Xyran watched the orange hemisphere of the sun sliding into the hills on the other side of the valley, where the vineyards of West Ravenna had just been blanketed by the creeping shadow of night. The red tiled roofs of East Ravenna spilled down the hillside below him, still golden in the last pink rays of the sunset. He sighed, laid a length of red satin along the inside spine of the book, and gently closed it.
“Yes.”
Donna Lucia Rossi sat at the head of the long, polished dinner table, where Xyran’s father usually sat—or where Xyran’s older brother Marco sat when his father wasn’t there. A silver knife, fork, soup spoon, dessert spoon, folded white linen napkin, and long-stemmed crystal glass, half full of wine, sat before her.
Xyran took up his seat at the only other place setting—halfway down the table, on his mother’s left. A servant appeared at his elbow with a jug of wine.
“Father and Marco aren’t back yet?” Xyran asked as the servant poured.
His mother picked up her napkin. She shook it open and laid it on her lap. “Your father sent a message. Negotiations ran long.”
A second servant appeared and set a covered silver plate down between her knife and fork. His mother turned the servant translucent with a flick of her finger and spoke through him as though he wasn’t there.
“They’ll spend the night in West Ravenna and be back tomorrow. And then, molti dei willing, we can put this Taglioni nonsense behind us.”
A merchant in East Ravenna had stopped paying his protection dues to Xyran’s family. Usually, that was no problem—usually father would just take Marco and a few of the bigger Rossi cousins over to sort it out. They would gently remind the merchant that in return for those dues he paid, the Rossis provided a valuable service: protection from criminals and other unsavory types. And if the merchant needed his legs broken to fully understand that gentle reminder, well, that’s what Uncle Buggio was for.
But this time, Father had learned that the reason the merchant had stopped paying Xyran’s family was because he had started paying the Taglioni family instead. And that was a problem. The Taglionis weren’t supposed to operate on this side of the valley. Their territory was West Ravenna—the human side of the city.
“It really is contemptible,” his mother said. “So bold. Especially for a human family. I didn’t think they had the stones to come to East Ravenna.”
Xyran studied his wine glass. “Well I’m sure once Dad and Marco are done shaking them down, they’ll think twice about it.”
“Don’t say shaking them down. Your father is not shaking down anyone. He is explaining to the humans how protection dues work.”
“You mean he’s explaining how extortion works,” Xyran muttered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing. I didn’t—”
“Donna Lucia!” The dining room door burst open. A messenger fell across the threshold, sweating and wild-eyed and covered in blood. “There’s been an attack!”
Xyran’s mother leapt to her feet. “Where? Who?”
“The Taglionis.” The messenger looked at Xyran. “They killed Marco. And your father.”
The news of the attack shook the Rossi household to its core. Don Carlo and Marco weren’t the only ones to die; it had been a bloodbath. The details were vague, but the rumor was that a member of the Rossi clan had stepped out of line with the wrong Taglioni woman. A fight had broken out and Griggio Taglioni—the family’s eldest son—had killed Marco and Don Carlo in the chaos.
Xyran’s mother took to her bed. Uncle Buggio arrived and spent three days storming around the villa like an unhinged madman, cursing the Taglionis and vowing revenge upon their entire family. Servants ran, or glamored themselves into near invisibility and went about their tasks on tiptoe.
Uncle Buggio was a squat, wrinkled troll of a male. He wasn’t actually Xyran’s uncle—he bore no blood relation to Xyran’s father or mother. He was an old friend of Father’s and had been inducted into the family when Xyran’s father had ascended to Don. There had been a blood ritual. Buggio had sworn an oath. He’d been named “Uncle” affectionately, but Xyran saw little affection in the male. He was troll in look and manner. In fact, it was speculated by many of Xyran’s female cousins that Buggio’s mother had actually been a troll.
With his mother grieving and his uncle raging about like the Monster of Ravenna, Xyran retreated into his study and found solace in the pages of his history books. He found it difficult to summon much grief. His brother had been a bully. His father had been a brute. Old school. Womanizers. They had spent time in prisons both Fae and human and were proud of it. They wore their tattoos like tribal marks. Xyran had never understood either of them and had never felt they understood him.
Five days after the attack, his mother emerged from her room, pale and watery. She stood in the doorway to Xyran’s study in her long, white nightdress with her silver hair piled on top of her head and her arms folded around herself. Somehow, even though she was thin and white and had clearly been crying for days, she was still terrifying.
“You’ll have to take a wife,” she said.
Xyran kept his eyes on his book, open on the desk in front of him.
“If you’re to become the new Don,” she continued. “According to Blood Law—”
Xyran quietly turned a page. “I know what the law says.”
“We need to find someone soon. We need to show strength. It looks weak, a family without a Don. We can’t show weakness in front of the other families. More will try to encroach on our territory.”
“I don’t want to be Don,” Xyran said to his book.
“Well, I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.”
“If you want to show strength, why don’t you ask Uncle Buggio? Or Cousin Alessi? They’re violent. They know how to be thugs.”
“Don’t you dare say that! There is more to being Don than violence. Your father was not a thug.”
“Well, neither am I.”
“Believe, me Little Blue,” his mother snapped, “if it were up to me, I wouldn’t choose you either. But it isn’t up to me.”
Xyran flinched at the sound of that nickname. Blue. The opposite of red—the opposite of Rossi. Because, according to his family, Xyran wasn’t fit to be a Rossi. He wasn’t a red-blooded leader like his father and Marco. He was a coward. A weakling. A small, skinny boy who cried too easily and preferred books to battery.
Not a boy, he reminded himself. A man now. For a long time. For almost a thousand years.
Still, it had never really felt that way to him. Not around Marco and his father, at least.
“I’m sending word to the surrounding provinces,” said his mother from the doorway. “The females will be here for you to view in a few days.”
Xyran considered his views on females quite progressive—compared to Marco’s and his father’s, anyway—but even he struggled to form a positive opinion about any of the wan, vacuous specimens that drifted into the dining hall every night for dinner over the next week. Females who seemed only half there. Who answered questions without seeming to hear them and spent a lot of time gazing vaguely out the window. They all smelled faintly of lemongrass and lavender and they were all…fine.
They were all Fae, like him. That was the problem, Xyran realized. All of them were glamored, like him. All close to a thousand years old, like him. Old enough to have become as bored with the world as Xyran had. To have become copies of themselves, repeating the same talking points they had been repeating for the last thousand years and would probably continue to repeat for the next thousand years. Xyran couldn’t stand it—seeing the worst parts of himself reflected back at him so nakedly.
“Are there none that aren’t a thousand years old?” he asked his mother over breakfast on the morning of the seventh day. “Five hundred, maybe? Three hundred? Someone with a little spirit left in her?”
His mother tsked. “You should be grateful that any of these families are even considering you. You’re not Marco, after all.”
That night, before dinner, Xyran stood before the mirror in the washroom and glared at his reflection as he knotted his tie. His mother was right: even glamored and in his best, sharpest jacket, he wasn’t Marco. He wasn’t unattractive: he had his mother’s high cheekbones and his father’s strong, sharp jaw. He had his grandfather’s storm-blue eyes and thick, golden hair. Or at least, he’d had thick golden hair before it had been shaved down during his initiation. His left eyebrow was divided by the same white scar that Marco bore. Another part of the initiation—all the males in the Rossi family had one. But it didn’t matter. Xyran was Rossi in name only. He was small. He was weak. Had never even been in a real fight. Never beat anyone up. Would never be the Don his father had been. The Don Marco could have been.
He finished knotting his tie and put on his rings. Took out his earring because his mother hated it. Went downstairs and took his place at the table, halfway down the long side to the left of his mother, across from the empty seat that tonight’s girl would occupy. A servant appeared to pour the wine. As Xyran picked up his glass, the dining room door banged open.
Xyran jumped and dropped the glass as the door bounced off the wall behind it and swung back the other way. A hand caught it on its backward trajectory and slammed it open again, and through the door strode Uncle Buggio and Cousin Alessi.
Between them, they were dragging a girl.
Chapter Two
Cirella
Cirella had never flown anywhere before.
So on top of everything, she was nauseous. On top of the bloodbath she’d endured last week, which she was still recovering from, and on top of the fact that she had just been dragged from the Taglioni family home, and on top of the fact that she really needed to pee, she was also fucking nauseous from flying.
Twenty minutes ago, these two hideous Fae had shown up at the Taglioni house, claiming to be members of the Rossi family. The little one that looked like a troll had inspected her—grossly and intrusively—and then the big, brutish one had removed his shirt, hoisted her under one arm, produced wings from nowhere, and just launched into the sky like some kind of monstrous bird. Cirella had dangled helplessly under his arm for twenty minutes while he flew them across the valley between West and East Ravenna—a terrifying chasm that would have ended her life had he let her go and she had fallen into it.
And now here she was, being dragged through some gaudy villa by these creatures because her knees were so weak from that terrifying ordeal that she could barely stand up.
They dragged her across the threshold of a tacky dining room and stopped at one end of a long table and flung her to the floor. Cirella dropped to her hands and knees on hard, cold marble and remained there, gasping, as the little one who looked like a troll addressed the room.
“We’ve come to an arrangement with the Taglionis,” he said, in his thick, wet, disgusting toad voice. “An exchange.”
Cirella looked up as, at the far end of the table, a woman stood. A tall, terrifying woman with a mountain of thick silver hair piled on top of her head and secured with a ghastly brooch. Her features were somehow elongated, refined. Slender nose and eyebrows. High cheekbones and slightly wing-tipped ears. She had a black scarf around her shoulders and wore a long, indigo gown that glimmered like the night sky as it shifted around her elegant frame. This wasn’t a human woman—this was a Fae female. Very likely, this was Donna Lucia Rossi.
She surveyed Cirella with cold, cruel eyes. “What kind of exchange?”
“Don Leonardo Taglioni’s daughter,” said the troll, flicking a hand at Cirella on the floor. “Sister of the man who killed your Don and Marco.”
Donna Lucia’s eyes flickered. “In exchange for what?”
“Peace. The Taglionis hope to avoid any further bloodshed. They know we seek a wife for Xyran. Don Leonardo claims to have had nothing to do with the murder of your husband and Marco. It was his son, Griggio, who was responsible. The Don offers his sincere apology and his daughter in exchange for his son’s misdeed.”
“I see.” Donna Lucia remained perfectly still. Rigid and severe. Only her eyes flicked up and down as she took in Cirella’s face and form. “Get her up.”
The troll and the big winged brute grabbed Cirella under each arm and hauled her to her feet. She struggled, baring her teeth at the brute, wrenched her arms free, and spit in the troll’s face. The troll grimaced and wiped himself, then cuffed her around the face with the back of one hand. Cirella felt the sharp, cold sting of his rings against her cheek. She grit her teeth and fixed her gaze on the floor.
“Spirited,” she heard Donna Lucia say. “Wouldn't you say, Xyran?”
Cirella lifted her eyes. At the near end of the table, a young male was watching her.
Xyran
Xyran could smell the funk of this human woman from halfway across the room. Smell her fear and anger in the sweet, sharp sweat dappling the back of her neck. He could smell the blood roiling in her veins like strong, black, bitter morning brew. Like fire and vinegar. Fury and ferocity. This was not a girl who smelled like lavender. This was something different. And it was doing very strange things to his insides.
“Spirited,” he heard his mother say. “Wouldn’t you say, Xyran?”
The girl’s eyes lifted and met Xyran’s from under a wild mane of raven hair, and something like the spark from a filament spell went through Xyran. A disorienting mix of arousal and revulsion. Her scent was too much. It was overwhelming him. Her eyes were too brown—dark and bottomless. Her skin was too rough. He could sense the callouses on her fingertips—the way they grated the edges of the air. He could feel every shallow rasp of her breath against his own ribs, hear her heartbeat—so much faster than his—like a hammer on his own sternum. He could taste in the air the fruity tang of the skin on her cheek, bruising where Buggio’s ring had hit her. She was scent and noise and flavor, and coarse, filthy edges.
He cleared his throat. “Spirited,” he managed to say. “Yes.”
“Well, isn’t that just what you were looking for?”
He looked at his mother in alarm. “Not this spirited.”
“Oh, come.” His mother waved an impatient hand and addressed Buggio. “She’ll do just fine. Tell Don Leonardo we accept his proposal.”
“What?” Xyran felt his stomach lurch halfway into his chest. “Mother, she’s foul.”
“Find her a room,” his mother continued, as though she hadn’t heard him, “and have the servants make her some clothes—and per l’amor di molti dei wash her—and we’ll begin preparations for a wedding. La Festa Degli Innamorati is in two weeks. I think that would be the perfect day for it, don’t you think, Xyran? The day of love?”
Xyran was staring at the human and was aware that his mouth was open in horror. He was aware of this because he could still taste her bruise on the back of his tongue. He shut his mouth and swallowed.
“Mother, please. She’s human. Her brother killed Father and Marco.”
“Oh please.” His mother gathered her scarf about her shoulders. “Don’t try to pretend to me that you give one shit about your brother or your father.”
“You’re going to invite this…Taglioni scum into our home? What about our honor? What about—”
“I’m tired, Xyran!” his mother snapped. “I’m exhausted. We need a Don. You need a wife. The Taglionis need to make their peace.” She stepped away from the table and waved a hand to shove her chair back under it. “It’s done.”
Xyran turned his horrified gaze to Cousin Alessi and Uncle Buggio as his mother swept out of the room. Cousin Alessi was barely restraining his laughter and Uncle Buggio was leering at Xyran like a jackal-faced Babau.
“What’s the problem, Blue?” he sneered, and he grabbed the girl by the chin and squeezed her lips into a pout. “I think you two are a perfect match.”