7 Deadly Instincts (The Sinfire Chronicles Book 1)

That night, Midj revealed what most people did on Yullolly Eve. “Now, I have everything, but what my family always do, is to build and decorate the Yullolly House. Now, Yullolly Eve is also Last Day, so we put things on the house that represent things we’d rather forget. Or things we’d like to see happen. You don’t need to tell anyone what you want. You can write little notes, or paint little pictures, but before First Day, you have to either eat them or destroy them to start the new year fresh. Which is why I make my little Yullolly momentous edible. This does have a history that’s important—we make the house because the gods made our world as their love nest. Lust and chastity were the first here, or so the story goes. Chastity was shy, and he needed lots of privacy to get, uh, ready, with a stiff…well, you know. Anyway, lust figured she’d create a whole world for him. And the rest is history—and it’s our world where we live. Crown and heaven up top. Belly and hell down at the bottom, where we are now. A bit too close to hell if you want to know the truth.”

They had found a big table and put it in the main parlor area, so they had more room to do all the things that Midj had planned. She couldn’t be with her family, but that wasn’t stopping her from trying to have the best Yulolly ever.

Settie stood back, watching them, as they built the house, which Midj did most of the work, since she had grown up making the houses. Ames said their servants did all the work at Castle Winedark.

Tomi mentioned something about a Yullolly carousel but didn’t go into detail.

When Rynn talked excitedly about the vendor she’d seen in the market, Tomi just snorted and shrugged. “It’s kid stuff. I didn’t get much of the kid stuff when I was a kid so why should I start now?”

Rynn, though, jumped in with a smile on her face and helped Midj, as did Lilian, who talked about building a dollhouse when she was little. Of course, she had help, but she also liked crafting things.

Pinch sat back and watched with a mean look on her face. She was drinking hot spiced wine, manafied of course, and on her lap was a book from the archive. It was all about tragic Yullolly love stories, and she confirmed that Tomi’s story of the island’s civil war was in there. But in that story, the bond between the man and wasn’t broken but perfected, and because of the blizzard, they learned to love each other to survive in a house they built together. On Yullolly of course. Too bad their families weren’t so healed. In the end, the families murdered the couple, to keep the fighting going. Eventually, the angels came down to put an end to the violence—by massacring every man, woman, and child on the island.

As Pinch told them the story, both Midj and Tomi stopped her. But for every different reasons.

Midj was wiping frosting off her fingers when she finally stopped her. “Can we not have happy stories? Mother’s oven! That’s even more depressing than the one that Tomi told us about!”

Tomi simply shook her head. “That did not happen. Several writers documented my version of the story.”

Pinch sipped wine and hissed at them. “It’s fucking idiocy that every story have ten different versions. All of it is shit.”

“No,” the cat girl protested. “It makes it interesting. Finding the truth, by comparing different accounts, that’s where the fun is. How about a happy story from your book, Pamalee.”

Pinch wrinkled her nose. “I skip the happy ones,” she said sullenly.

Settie laughed. “On that, Miss Thornpinch, we agree.”

Ames had a needle and black edible ink. Taking a candle, she inscribed words on the candle, but in elvish. She put the candle in the main house. “That will be Gray, lighting the house. For it’s not a ruin anymore. It’s Sunreach.”

Pinch grunted. “Still a ruin, but it won’t be, if I live until spring. Then I have all kinds of plans to repair this shack.”

Midj frowned. “You are good at building things, Pamalee, I’ll give you that. Where did you learn all that?”

“The Freckle Islands,” the fae girl said. “If I hadn’t built our home, we would’ve froze to death. Mother and I.”

“Gosh, sorry,” Midj said with a little wince. “Sounds like you had it bad.”

“Our house was very fine in the end,” she said. “It took a bit, but I liked the work.”

“Then why aren’t you helping us with this?” Midj asked.

“Because I’m not a child.”

Once they finished the house, they each put a little memento in the house around Ames’s candle.

For Gray, it was a little black big of licorice. For him, it was the death of Ames that he wanted to forget. And the death of Blind John, though he might still be alive. He believed Lilian when she said she didn’t know what happened to him.

It was late when they finally went to bed. Gray knew they weren’t doing to do much sleeping but he wasn’t prepared for what was to come.

They talked more and Gray enjoyed the banter until it was time to go to bed.

Not that he got much sleep.

While Midj had created the Yullolly House and talked about new starts and having hope, there were others who saw Yullolly very differently. Ames was one of them.

He wasn’t sure why she was so randy, but she stripped him, stripped herself, and mounted him with Rynn watching with glittering eyes.

Then it was a night of magic with his wives.

Gray woke to smells of charbrew and bacon frying. It was late in the morning. for once, they weren’t rushing out of the house to get to the canteen before Dame Blackpaw closed the breakfast down.

Rynn smiled and got on top of him. “One more time. Ames is still sleeping. It will just be the two of us.”

Gray kissed her. “Normally, I’d say yes, but I have a surprise for you. But after breakfast, we’ll come back our room. Today is Nesting Day, right? We’ll nest.”

Rynn rubbed her nose against his. “That’s right. We’ll nest our brains out. We’ll nest like crazy. We’ll nest until we’re both too sore to move. What’s my surprise?”

Their quiet talk had woken Ames.

The Quelling girl smiled. “Just until you see it. I think you’re going to love it!”

Gray hoped so. Between he and Ames, they spent most of their stipend money. Gray would’ve gotten the price down but he’d been distracting Rynn, and so Ames had done the bartering. Being the daughter of a very rich man, who owned his own cattle, she didn’t have the talent for it.

It didn’t matter.

When they led Rynn down the steps and showed her the Yullolly candle carousel, with the candles glowing, and the whole thing spinning, she began to cry. she kissed Gray over and over, and then moved to Ames, who got a ton more kisses, and then she sat, at the table, watching the carousel turn. It was right next to the Yullolly house, which most people thought was funny. It was north meets south.

Midj had cooked a Nesting Day feast which only started with charbrew, bacon and eggs, but there were any number of special foods—Backbone Island pancakes, suncakes, a meaty Yullolly pie which was basically all different kinds of spicy sausages covered with cheese in a flakey buttery crust.

Midj had also made them each a little gift of sweets—most were a mixture of chocolate and nuts, wrapped in ribbons, but she gave Pinch a fruity concoction of jellies, which the fae girl clearly appreciated it. She even smiled, and though it was weary, she was happy.

It was a day of eating, drinking, and sleeping. Not that when he was bed, he did much sleeping with Rynn and Ames around.

Tomi did, however, and they barely saw her. Settie was also mostly absent, up in her room, with her wine, though she promised to go with them to the Yullolly Night dancing in the market near the Wrath Tower memorial.

Gray knew he had one thing to do—other than eat the black licorice that represented death. At one point, while his elven girls were sleeping, wrapped up in each other’s arms, he went to Lilian.

She was at the fire, alone, staring into the flames. She had a glass of wine next to her, but it was mostly full.

He sat down across from her. “Hello, Lilian.”

She looked at him. And at first, she seemed annoyed, but she gave him a very tentative grin. “Hello, Gray. Happy Yullolly, or whatever this madness is. I have to admit, I’d rather be at First Field, training. But I guess rest is a part of the training, or at least that’s what your little girlfriend says.”

“Do you mean my wife?” Gray asked. It was his turn to be annoyed.

Lilian shrugged. “Wife. Girlfriend. What does it matter what we call her? She’s just another harem girl for you.”

Gray wasn’t going to let himself get sidetracked, but this was exactly why he hadn’t wanted to try to connect to Lilian’s blood-red core. Or talk to her in any meaningful way. She across as pleasant until you listened to the tone of her voice or deciphered the things she actually said.

“Settie said I needed to connect to your core, so I can be sure to channel mana to you. We’ll need that for the Redemption Midnight, which is less than a week—”

She cut him off. “I know. You don’t have to tell me. It’s all I can think about. That and the Reckoning. People die. It would be awful if I finally escaped to a magical world and then I suddenly die. Pamalee might love it because it’s as tragic and ironic like in those stories she’s reading, but still…”

“No one is dying,” Gray said. “So you know it’s important that—”

Again, she didn’t let him finish. “Let me have this day. It’s Nesting Day, whatever that means. I think that means no work. So no work. Resting, remember? Nesting and resting is what we’re doing today.”

He got up. “I’ll tell her I tried. Then you’ll have to deal with her.”

Lilian raised her glass. “I’ll do just that. I’ll drink up and get a bunch of courage and then talk to her. She is a dragon, no doubt. Just another kind of monster, but I can handle monsters. I dated you.”

She laughed at her own joke, though Gray didn’t think it was funny.

Time passed, and before he knew it, it was time to get ready for the Yullolly Night’s dancing.

That was when Lilian decided to have him connect to her core. Like always, her timing was terrible.