Chapter 2 #2
The shock sent her body into an early labor.
My father wondered if the Turning would take her before her injuries did.
He worked quickly to deliver me into the world.
While the town around her echoed panicked screams, she lay on the floor of our home wailing, begging for her child to be saved.
With time running out, I finally made my way into the harsh light of reality.
My father had nervously placed me in her arms as she’d demanded.
Mercifully, mortality took her before the Turning could.
Her dying breaths were spent holding me close.
The townspeople, many of whom were focused on addressing the damage that had been inflicted, encouraged my father to make peace with the idea that I was unlikely to survive.
But the chemist in my father rejected that.
For every problem, there is a solution—if one is willing to seek it.
And he did. Monitoring my cardinal signs constantly, taking meticulous measurements of my growth and foraging rare flowers and roots, which he then ground into experimental poultices to bolster my endurance.
In the wake of his grief, he found a way to raise both a newborn and a young boy while navigating the complexity of Leto’s situation.
A prideful community, for years Leto tried everything possible to avoid yielding to Vampyr influence.
Our people fortified their walls, trained and armed every young man and woman strong enough to fight.
For a time, Rabid attacks became less frequent; our leaders grew negligent in their recruitment and defense.
While those in power basked in complacency, a steady infestation rose to a fever pitch during the waning years of my youth.
While other girls my age sought marriage and motherhood, my brother and I turned our focus toward self-defense, preparing for the day it might become necessary.
If my father’s plan didn’t work, that grim reality would surely descend upon us.
Ultimately, the decision to bend the knee and cooperate with the Vampyr was the only way to guarantee our survival and buy my father the time he needed to craft their demise.
Ari’s voice brought my thoughts back from a well of distraction. “Father will succeed. I know it, Es. We just have to stall a little longer.”
“What if the latest formula doesn’t stabilize? And more importantly, what if the Vampyr Watch discovers what you’re up to?”
“Stick to the plan,” Mes encouraged me, sternly. “You will sit atop the throne. Miles and miles from Leto. They’ll have no reason to believe you’re involved; deny it until your death, if you must.”
“That’s what I’m worried about!” I snapped at them both.
“They couldn’t care less if they have to kill a human queen.
” I throw my hands up in exasperation. “They’ll just Harvest another.
It’s been well over a hundred years, and still, none of us knows exactly what happened to Queen Kesna.
I don’t believe a word of what the Vampyr say on the matter. ” Which, admittedly, wasn’t much.
“Es, snap out of it. You’re being paranoid. Don’t you believe this will work?”
I wanted to. Desperately. I wanted to believe the time and effort that went into staging me as the next queen meant we were one step closer to taking down the Vampyr once and for all.
The nobles, royals, and Rabid alike. Just because one drank blood from a cup and the other from the vein made no difference to me.
They were all beasts, and as long as they existed, humans would never know true freedom.
I wanted to do this for my people, my kind.
This was for all the territories, not just Leto.
The leaders of each territory had complied with my father’s plan to orchestrate the outcome of the Harvest. It’s not as if they truly wanted to send their daughters off to marry the Vampyr King.
My father offered them a potential solution to more than one problem.
Instead of sending their best, brightest, and most beautiful, they would send slightly less desirable candidates.
Those offered as Tribute would be instructed to intentionally flail or fail any tests bestowed upon them, making me appear the obvious choice.
They acquiesced only because they were either confident or desperate.
The Hive of the Forlorn, while distant from my homeland, was much closer to Lyr, Enud, and Muir.
Nests were continuing to spawn all over the kingdom.
More Rabids attacking necessitated more Vampyr enforcers.
And, since it was illegal for the Vampyr to turn more into their kind, their population was shrinking.
The Rabids didn’t discriminate with who they ravaged, making them a mutual enemy.
The raucousness of the pub grew louder, inhibitions of the guests weakening with each passing moment.
I rested my chin on my hands, sitting at the edge of our table, staring at the firelight as it shone through the amber liquid before me.
Hundreds of tiny bubbles fizzing and rising in the clear glass.
Ari must have noticed my daydreaming, intervening before I could down another beverage, clearly fearing the libation might condemn me to a regrettable state tomorrow.
“Come on, sis, let’s get you home,” he said, standing alongside the booth while trying to lift my arm and whisk me away. “Father will be furious with me if he discovers we were out this late.”
I stood reluctantly, trying to steady myself, feeling a bit woozy from the drinks.
Mes approached, putting his arms out to embrace me in a farewell hug.
He pulled my sluggish body into his chest and squeezed tightly.
“I’ll see you soon, okay? You will be a beacon of hope, so stay the course. You can do this,” he said.
I pulled away and looked at him skeptically, trying not to slur my words.
“Next time you see me, you’ll be bowing at my feet.
” I smiled wickedly, trying to find humor in becoming my dear friend’s queen.
He did not find my joke amusing, but I didn’t care.
Everyone was being so Gods-damned serious when they weren’t even the ones being sent away with the Vampyr.
Ari made sure we arrived home safely. The Watch were scattered about the outskirts of the village, their torches like promises of protection in the gathering dark.
Only territories that participated in the Harvest were granted protection, and now that we had declared our allegiance to the King, he dispersed his silent sentinels. But payment would come.
At dawn.
That night, I lay in bed thinking of the king, the wedding ceremony, and what it would be like, parted from my family and surrounded by their kind.
Was the king doing the same? Granted, he could not know which of the four he’d choose, but a curious part of me itched to know how one so old, who had taken many wives, felt the night before he would do it again.
Would he seek out someone similar to Queen Adria?
Or, after all that time, was he looking for the opposite?
What does someone even consider when seeking a partner to fulfill a duty, rather than for love?
I knew nothing of King Vastion beyond the fractured truths of the histories.
He had brokered a fragile peace between the living and the dead, though the cost was written in his own father’s blood.
Scribes and historians still spoke of the darkness that followed the initial Rabid nests; the day the affliction of the blood began.
King Istvan had been among the first to succumb, yet he refused to relinquish his crown or his kin.
Instead, he chose a darker path, turning his entire lineage and suspending them in a hollow eternity.
They say he ruled with an iron fist, but his true madness only bloomed when the Rabids tore Queen Valeria from his side.
Henceforth, his reign became a fever of vengeance and bloodlust, a corrupted, unsustainable nightmare that only ended when Vastion took his father’s life.
I don’t know why I bored myself with these dusty texts. Perhaps I was searching for a weakness in the monsters I would soon be forced to call family. But would they even care if I knew of the ghosts that stirred in their past?
A yawn escaped my mouth, and despite my desire to stay awake, I finally surrendered to my fatigue. Contentment washed over me like a heavy blanket placed by the hands of a loved one.