Chapter 25 #2
“You’re incorrigible.”
“I’m realistic.”
Rolling her eyes, she clucks her tongue at me.
“What made you fall for Stuart?” I ask, suddenly curious. “Besides him being the most handsome of the new recruits.”
Her expression softens as she thinks back to their courtship.
“I always felt safe with him. Comfortable. We were here, in this new place, doing and seeing all these new things…” A smile brightens her face in the lanternlight.
“But with him, I felt at home. He was home. I didn’t regret leaving anything behind because I already had what I needed. ”
“Home,” I echo wistfully. I’m thinking of my room several levels up from here, but when I close my eyes on a blink, I see a mountain.
It’s a high peak that sits at the intersection of Torridaig, Fanghaven, and Bloodwold, the last in the chain of the lush and river-gorged Silver Moon Range that runs the length of Torridaig’s border with Fanghaven.
Shaking off the odd vision, I say, “I think that’s Drayke Mountain for me. ”
“Not Glarraden House?” she asks.
I shrug. “One day, maybe. Not now, though.” Bale’s burning eyes and his warm, strong arms around me suddenly burst forth like the most vivid memory.
Woodsmoke and wind tease my senses even though there’s only cold rock down here.
I look over my shoulder, half expecting to see Bale striding toward us, but there’s only darkness beyond my phoenixes.
“Here’s the vampire section. Anything to look for in particular?” Sybil asks.
“Old?” I hazard a guess. “Since no one seems to have heard of sunbloods.”
She rubs her gloved hands together, her eyes already searching the shelves. “All right, then. Let’s dive into some old books.”
* * *
We search for more than an hour before I hear Sybil’s teeth start to chatter. I’m frozen to the bone, too, and barely hide it better. My thoughts start to stray as the texts blend together. Why did Rexton Hale bother coming early to warn me? What’s it to him?
Clearly, he wanted a taste of me. Only to verify the rumor? Or because he wanted his turn with the sunblood? Or something else I haven’t thought of?
And what would he have done next if I’d let him bite me and he’d found me delicious? Try to convince me to become his blood buddy? Attempt to sweep me away to Fanghaven to live with him and his dark, brooding eyes, and show me what consensual bites feel like?
The thought isn’t as repulsive as it should be, though my scars still prickle.
But then—not that it would ever happen—we’d both be a target for the Vampire King.
There’s no way the pretender to the Fanghaven throne would risk that, not even to get himself a sunblood.
If sunbloods even exist—which no book in the vampire section has proven so far, and we’ve paged through most of them.
Admittedly, we’re going quickly. It’s cold down here.
I close another old, fragile tome and gently slip it back onto the shelf. “Nothing, either?”
Sybil shakes her head. “Though this is interesting, and I didn’t have any idea.” She points to a passage in the volume she’s holding. “Then again, I don’t meet enough vampires for the conversation to turn to child-rearing.”
“What is it?” Frowning, I move toward her. My birds crowd in, too, helping to warm us and brighten the pages.
“This says that vampire babies don’t drink blood right away.
They nurse from their mother’s breasts—or a wet nurse’s, I assume—just like any other people until their teeth come in.
Once teeth are established, it still takes a few months for fangs to be strong enough to descend from the upper gums and pierce flesh.
Once they are, the parents offer up their own veins to tempt the hungry child, the little fangs instinctively pop out for the first time, the child bites, drinks, and becomes a bloodsucker for life. ”
I grimace. “I guess that makes sense about nursing first. But then they have about as much choice in the matter as werechildren stolen from places like Muirvale. Indoctrinated before they understand the implications.”
She nods. “But this is where it gets really interesting.” Her finger lightly traces the tight, angular handwriting on the parchment as she reads: “Until vampire children take their first sip of blood, daylight cannot harm them. Only after drinking from a vein can they no longer behold the sun.”
A chill surges over me. Behold the sun. I inhale sharply, a deep shiver icing my bones. My pulse suddenly racing, I discreetly run my tongue over my upper gums. It does feel like there’s something solid, a subtle something extra I’ve never thought to look for, tucked in there above my canines.
Cold sweat needles my skin as I swallow hard, abruptly nauseous, but also so fucking hungry for something that could finally satisfy me. Most foods make me sick, and it’s even worse when I don’t get regular sunlight.
Mute with horror, I back toward my birds, barely feeling their warmth as shock and panic numb my limbs.
I think I might be a vampire.
A vampire who has never tasted blood.