Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
IN THE EARLY HOURS of morning, when most of the survivors were falling asleep in huddles around the castle, Raleigh gave me my first lesson in vampiric pragmatism.
One by one we carried eighteen bodies down into the lab and he showed me how he drained and preserved the blood from those he fed from to add to his stockpile in the cellar.
The taste, I soon discovered, bordered on rancid compared to how Raleigh’s blood had tasted in the brief moments he’d been alive.
‘They’ve been dead for too long,’ he said once I told him. ‘Fresh blood is always better, but you’ll have to put up with this for a while. Another life isn’t worth a better meal.’
The only one we didn’t drain was my father. That was a step too far for both of us. As the years bled away and subsequent faces blurred together, I’d never forget those first eighteen. It was the worst thing I’d ever done. And I had an eternity to get used to it.
We burnt the drained bodies the following day.
No one spoke of what we had done, but I suspected everyone knew.
They all knew what I’d become by then – I wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding it – but they didn’t seem to care.
In the aftermath of battle, no one from Orlfen could deny that we were on their side, and the worst threat they’d ever known lay on the pyre himself.
Simply being undead was no longer a crime worthy of execution.
The remaining vampires kept their distance from the humans of Orlfen after the battle, lurking in the crypt during the day, among the fallen ashes of their Queen, while their mortal sires tried to ingratiate themselves with the townsfolk.
When Yann finally led the survivors back down the mountain, half the cured humans decided to go with him.
There were enough abandoned homes scattered through Orlfen to house them all, and the farms could use the extra hands.
Others filtered further afield – to Triz, to Salzburg, wherever they had called home before coming to court.
And some remained with us.
In killing the Queen, Yann, Raleigh and I had secured a reverence we never expected.
Many of the new humans had been changed so long ago that their homes had fallen to ruin, the kingdoms they hailed from dissolved into memory.
Life before court was a distant dream of another world.
For a while Raleigh resisted, but eventually he stopped trying to make them leave.
They became his new court. Our new court.
They divvied up roles among themselves that Raleigh had long since neglected, slotting around Moira and Enrique.
An ancient merchant became the treasurer; a former seamstress declared she would take care of exports.
Others negotiated salaries for less glamorous roles as castle staff, and Raleigh let them think he didn’t know how much their wages should have been.
Gradually the castle became a bustling hub of activity again.
And Rostenburg slowly came back to life.
We convinced the remaining vampires to take up residence in the Queen’s now abandoned palace.
They didn’t take much convincing. The Queen had always held control through fear.
She was untouchable, but I as a human had stood up to her, stolen her prince, fought her, led a coup against her and ultimately killed her.
Never mind that I had barely survived, nor that I’d had no input in the coup and had been a child when Raleigh left court.
My reputation solidified before I realised what was happening.
When Clara von Rostenburg gave an order, no one argued.
But all of that was to come.
On the evening after the Queen’s fall, Raleigh and I woke early to watch from the tower as the humans returned to Orlfen.
We had fallen asleep on top of the sheets, too exhausted even to change out of the clothes we’d died in.
The enormity of what lay ahead was unbearable, but as long as I took every step with Raleigh, it became somehow manageable.
‘So what’s next?’ I asked, watching the last human vanish into the trees.
‘We have eternity,’ Raleigh said. ‘We can do whatever we wish.’
‘What should we do first, then?’ I asked dryly.
He pretended to think about it. ‘First,’ he said, ‘I’d like to kiss you.’
And he did.