Chapter 3
I didn’t dare see Maxus.
But he certainly saw me when I peered through an emerald window on the second floor. As if he’d been waiting for any of the velvet drapes to move, he stared up at the palace from the weed-crusted drive.
I didn’t look because of him.
I didn’t even meet his eyes. I peered out the window because it was right there—a glimpse of what I’d left behind.
As the assembly of uniformed men filed into carriages led down the drive by my father and Maxus, I lifted my hand to the stained glass.
I reached for my old life. One spent under the sun while most of the isle hid from it.
One spent dancing, gossiping, laughing, and fine dining. A life spent however I wished.
A life.
But there was no going back. I was certain that, even if I could, it would no longer feel like it once had. So I let the drapes fall closed.
Later, as the deep dark began to fray, Hanna rushed into the dining room where I ate alone.
Stricken, the cook screeched, “Stop!”
With my spoon poised before my mouth, I frowned.
Blue eyes bulging, she hurried over and smacked the spoon from my hand. Stew splattered her chestnut ringlets and the lace table linen. While I gaped, she explained, “The latest arrival’s blood is riddled with lavender.”
Vexaya squash me.
I’d nearly been fucking poisoned.
And by Grivanya. The feeder I’d wanted for moons. My own feeder. One Brey wouldn’t feast on in every heart-wrenching way.
Hanna collected the bowl of beef stew, which, like many of her meals and toppings, had been prepared with blood. Her hand shook as she reached for the spoon. “I’m sorry, Majesty. I cannot believe—”
“How were you to know?” I asked, perhaps a touch bitterly.
But now I would need to use one of Brey’s feeders. That and I hadn’t eaten this evening. My father’s visit had ruined my appetite, as well as my desire to leave my tower.
Shouting echoed down the hall.
My chair scraped over the tiles as I stood. Silk skirts in hand, I ran out of the dining room and almost touched Groth.
The ghost bobbed backward, then trailed me down the hall to Brey’s tower. “He’s been poisoned, Majesty.” Distraught, he whined, “Poisoned.”
Ignoring him, I pushed open the steel door and hunted the sound of groaning up the stairs to my husband’s bedchamber. Not groans of pleasure. I knew exactly what those particular groans sounded like.
Though I heard two pounding hearts, the bedchamber was empty.
The other two feeders—now more commonly known by me as Brey’s pets—stood naked on the stairs to the sitting room, features pale as they peered over the railing. Sheeya, or maybe it was Sheya, pointed behind me. “He’s in the bathing room, my queen.”
Groaned retching came right after her shaken words.
I stepped over boots and around the frilly, silky, and leather clothing strewn across the bedchamber floor. Bracing myself, I pushed the cracked bathing room door wide open.
Brey was on the tiled floor, shirtless and curled over the chamber pot.
Maybe I should have, but I didn’t hesitate. I walked in and crouched beside him to gather his soft hair away from his face. My finger encountered something wet, and I winced.
Vomit.
Then his typically intimidating frame hunched, muscle seizing as he retched.
Gripping the porcelain pot, he heaved and heaved, then spat and rasped, “Fucking lavender.”
Groth had likely told Hanna that the king had been poisoned before she’d come to my rescue. But I didn’t bother telling Brey that I was fine. I doubted he cared, and I doubted it was necessary.
I just held his elbow-length hair at his back as he expelled more stew into the chamber pot.
Sweat dribbled down his spine and beaded on his clenching biceps. Usually sun-kissed, as he adored lying out on his balconies while most of the isle hid indoors, his damp skin had taken on a milky pallor.
I’d witnessed lavender poisoning just once before.
Though I’d been quite small, I could still recall the fretful look on my mother’s face as she’d waited for my father to vomit up every morsel of the plant. Lavender was the only way to poison a vampire, both born or made.
It wouldn’t kill us. But if a large dose had been consumed, usually via a human who’d ingested it, it could incapacitate for hours and weaken for nights.
Which made it much easier to kill us.
Whoever poisoned my father hadn’t lived long enough to truly worry about their failed attempt to kill him.
Mere evenings later, my father had returned from the stables with clothing so bloodstained, my mother had told the staff to burn it.
One whiff as they’d passed me, and I’d known that vampire blood hadn’t been my father’s.
It didn’t need to be said, but it certainly couldn’t be ignored. “Someone has contaminated Grivanya. Possibly the others, too.”
Like Hanna and some of the royal guard, our feeders lived in cottages on the palace grounds, but they were permitted to come and go as they pleased after they’d seen to their duties.
I highly doubted someone had gotten to Brey’s pets.
Not only did other vampires and the growing unrest in the city terrify them, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen them wear clothing.
Which meant it was probably just Grivanya who’d ingested the poison.
Brey swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Your father.”
I was tempted to refute that, yet I couldn’t.
Finding a feeder was no longer so easy. Made vampires were starving because humans were seldom paying their blood tithes at the bloodstores throughout the city. They weren’t paying them because they scarcely left their lavender-covered dwellings, fearing the starving made vampires.
Utter madness.
My father was the reason I was able to get Grivanya.
Not wishing to drink from the same humans Brey played with, and knowing they’d still have many feeders, I’d written to my parents last moon to request another.
Grivanya knew my family, making it easier for my father or anyone on his payroll to get their hands on her.
It was possible he was trying to scare us into feeding these wards faster.
Still, I wondered aloud, “But how can we feed the wards if we’re weakened?”
Muscle spasmed in Brey’s back, and he vomited once more.
I knew little about these wards.
My father had told me about them after agreeing to give me to the vampire hurling the contents of his stomach into his royal chamber pot. Pity I hadn’t listened. In my defense, listening to my father’s dreary drivel was never enjoyable.
But I knew there were three wards located on tiny islands surrounding Saltblood Isle. Upon each were wells containing blood from a long line of kings and queens, and goddess only knew what else. Truly, I thought with a shiver. Such lengths for protection was Vexaya’s doing after all.
The Unmerciful Mother’s blessings were costly, and the price was always blood.
Tales of our origins had been written, sung, and told in countless differing ways.
All of them included similar ingredients—that Vexaya had been shunned by a god of mortals because his divine kin had claimed that no god could bind themselves to one soul, be it human, divine, or otherwise, unless they wished to lose their connection to mortals.
Vexaya had been willing. Her lover had not.
So the lone goddess among gods had fled to a forgotten crumb of land in the South Sea, where she unleashed her anguish.
Some claimed the sea beasts and winged creatures came first, who sank mortal ships and ate trespassers.
Others claimed that the vampires were first to be spawned from her grief.
Beings who could sample the divine’s immortality as well as bind themselves to one another.
Beings who preyed upon the mortals her once-beloved god had refused to leave—by hunting them, feeding from them, and turning them into vampires.
Vexaya was once known as the goddess of miraculous creation. Now, she was known as the vengeful mother of bloodthirsty monsters.
Brey spat again, then croaked, “He wants to see us fail.”
I couldn’t refute that either.
Maybe my father wished for an excuse to take the Saltblood throne. Or maybe some of these plotters he’d mentioned had learned Grivanya worked for us and had somehow snuck lavender into one of her meals. Surely, she hadn’t knowingly consumed it.
Not when there was a good chance she’d be executed.
That, and in the weeks since Grivanya had arrived, she’d taken a liking to me. Certainly to the gowns and shoes I’d decided I didn’t want.
Apparently, Brey’s stomach had settled enough for him to remember he loathed me. Still clutching the porcelain pot, he grumbled into it, “Stop that.”
It was then I realized I hadn’t just been holding his hair but running my fingers through the silken strands. I snatched my hand back and hid my mortification by saying, “The tangles were bothering me.”
“Your presence is bothering me.”
I supposed I should have seen that rebuttal coming.
Sighing, I gripped the stone washbasin and rose to my feet. “I find it interesting…” I rinsed my hands. “That your companions are nowhere to be seen in times of trouble.” Then I patted my hands dry upon his plush towel, tossed carelessly beside the basin.
It was hard to believe this king had once been tidy. He’d likely been trying to make a good impression. To further fool me into surrendering to him.
“And where is yours?” Brey asked, then coughed and groaned. “I’m certain I saw him leading your father’s pompous parade to the gates with nary enough time to have blown you a kiss.”
He’d been watching, then. Waiting to see if I’d go to my ex-lover.
That pleased me far more than it should.
Leaning against the arching doorframe, I returned the sting he’d given me minutes ago. “I can be quite quick, husband.”
Brey huffed. “Unless you’re spending coin, you do nothing in a hurry.”
I lowered my voice to a dragging lilt. “We both know that’s not exactly true.”
His entire body tensed.
Breath held, I waited. My teeth captured my lip.
He just grunted, “Leave, Ethel.”
Ethel.
My own name shouldn’t have felt like the worst thing he could say to me. My shoulders slumped, and my hand slid down the stone. “Gladly. It stinks in here.”
As I left him hunched upon the cream tiles, Brey cursed, then proceeded to vomit again.