CHAPTER 15 #2
Sometime during my shower, Nella knocked on the bathroom door and entered just to leave me a set of clean clothes, instructed most probably by Killian. She left without saying a word, and I’m thankful for the petite human’s knack of sensing my moods, and acting in consequence.
I take on the simple white cotton nightgown and the cream velvety robe, weaving my damp hair in a messy side braid.
I take one last deep inhale to steady my nerves before I enter my bedroom, barefoot.
Killian is sitting leisurely on the edge of my bed, all cleaned up and gorgeous. He changed into a fresh pair of trousers and a loose black shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, freeing his muscled, veiny forearms for me to gawk at indiscreetly.
His wet hair is slicked back from his face, with only a few unruly strands curling slightly around his temples. He stands up from the bed, gauging me in that mindful way of his, assessing what’s the best way to engage.
I swallow the lump forming in my throat and move to sit on the carpet, next to the roaring heat of the fireplace.
He approaches, treading carefully, and sits down in front of me, cross-legged.
I bring my knees near my chest, circling my arms around my calves in a protective manner.
I want to have this conversation, but I am not open to a repeat of what happened earlier in the shower.
No matter how much my body might yearn for his touch.
He points towards the low wooden table near us, where a silver tray sits, with several bottles of wine, a crystal carafe of water, a steaming teapot and a decanter of what I presume is blood.
“The strongest wine, please.” I need to numb myself just a tad, not enough to cloud my judgment, but just the necessary amount to get me through the night.
He fills a glass for me. The gurgling sound of the liquid and the crackling fire resonate in the stifling silence between us. I take it absent-mindedly and take slow sips, watching as he mixes blood and wine in a black goblet for himself.
“Right,” he says in a soft voice, drumming his fingers nervously on his bent knee, “I’m not even sure where to start.”
“Start at the beginning, Killian,” I say, wincing at the harsh tone of my voice. “Who or what was that creature? He seemed one of your kind, yet different somehow.”
He nods, seeming to gather his thoughts.
“That was Vladymyr. He used to be a vampire. A friend even.” My eyes widen at his admission, but I urge him to continue.
“He used to be a vampire in my court, one of Blaise’s spy-soldiers.
One of the best, if I’m being honest. We knew him for four hundred years.
Fought together, celebrated together. There was a time I would have trusted him with my life, so to speak, just as much as I trust Blaise. ”
“What happened?” I ask, my voice above a whisper. I see the corners of his eyes crinkling downwards with sorrow. He didn’t kill just any prisoner in order to save me. He killed a friend turned foe.
“My kingdom is under a terrible scourge, Aimee. We keep it hidden from the Faes, because we don’t quite trust the peace treaty. I can’t risk them knowing that we are at war with our kind, lest they take advantage of the situation to attack us as well. We are at our weakest.”
“You have my word that I will keep your secret. Who would I tell anyway?” I attempt a weak joke, and wince when he doesn’t even pretend to smile.
“Around seven years ago, something shifted in the far North. Vampires started disappearing from villages near the end of the continent. At first, the vanishings were few and far between, so we presumed they were just coincidences. Vampires leaving their partners or picking up and leaving without telling others. It was not necessarily unheard of.”
He shifts his position, unfurling his long legs from beneath him.
“But then, as the months passed, the disappearing acts intensified, until one night an entire village emptied of vampires without a trace. We sent sentries to investigate the incident, and they came back empty-handed. It was as if those vampires had never been there whatsoever.”
“Did someone kill them?”
“No, not killed. Kidnapped. It took us a few weeks of scouring the North lands until we found a witness. A human living in one of those villages. A girl bonded to one of the vampires that had vanished. You know her.”
“Nella,” I say under my breath.
Killian acknowledges my whisper with a faint dip of his chin.
“Her lover had hidden her in an iron box under the house, and she was barely breathing when she was rescued. She didn’t see the assailants, but she heard the attack, and she said that they were vampires as well.
That they were overpowering and taking everybody prisoner.
They were killing humans on the spot, bleeding them dry and then turning them. ”
I can only imagine Nella’s terror, and my heart squeezes with pain for the poor human.
“More and more attacks followed, but it took us almost a year to catch one of them. And nothing prepared us for the truth. They call themselves onpyr. They are still vampires, with the only physical difference being their everlasting bleeding eyes. But their minds are not their own anymore. They have no free will, no conscience, no nothing. They’re ruthless murderers, killing humans left and right, and kidnapping all the vampires they cross paths with, to drag them to their mistress, an all-powerful, malevolent creature named Morweena. ”
“Another vampire?”
“No, Morweena is not a vampire herself. We came to believe she is a sorceress, capable of mind control over the un-dead.”
I gasp at the realization. “She brainwashes vampires, turning them into that?”
“From what we can tell, she needs to touch one of us for her power to take over and infect us. It’s like a plague spreading through the kingdom.
We already lost the North, one village and town at a time.
And they’re advancing more and more, closing in on the other side of the Saunoque Mountains.
” There’s an almost imperceptible tremble in his fingers as he pours more blood into his goblet, mixing it with the wine.
He motions with the bottle then, and I reach out with my half-empty glass, letting him refill it for me.
Our fingers almost touch, the feeling barely there, but it’s enough for my pulse to speed up.
I push the warmth away, focusing on the ever-growing tightness in my ribs at the horrific image he is painting in my mind.
“She’s growing an endless army of onpyrs; that’s why they kidnap your kind.” He nods in confirmation, his dejected gaze almost bringing me to my knees. “Why?”
“Who knows why villains are the way they are?” he responds, his gaze almost lost to his inner turmoil. “Total realm domination is my hunch.”
I cringe at that idea. Imiryion has enough issues as is; it doesn’t need another creature to subjugate and massacre the beings of this realm.
“What happened to Vladymyr?”
“We lost Vlady soon after we realized what we were up against. He led one of the first missions into enemy territory. We were trying to catch more onpyr prisoners, trying to bring them back and restore them to themselves. His entire detachment was overpowered and turned. We mourned him as we do all our fallen brothers and sisters. I never saw him again until last week, when I led a mission into Valha, the latest town to succumb to their hordes.”
My heart clenches painfully in my chest. He brought him back for questioning, sure, but maybe he still held faith that he could save his long-lost friend. And that will never happen, because of me.
My broken murmur fills in the space between us. “I’m sorry I cost you your brother’s life.”
His gaze levels with mine, and he shakes his head.
“Don’t burden yourself with his death, Aimee.
Vladymyr was long gone before I even slid my knife into his neck.
That creature that was wearing his skin was just a mindless puppet for Morweena to pull her evil strings.
There is no room for sentimentality amid a war. ”
Although I understand his reasoning, I can’t help but feel accountable for what transpired tonight. My recklessness deprived him of useful information that he could have uncovered, and of any chance to redeem the mind and soul of his brother in arms.
“Did you find a cure?”
He shakes his head no, the finality of the gesture sinking into my bones.
“There is no cure, little umbra. Once turned, onpyrs only live to serve the purpose and commands of their mistress. All their previous lives, their beliefs, their dreams and aspirations—everything gets wiped clean. Only true darkness remains. There is no soul left to salvage.” He swirls his goblet of bloodwine and downs it in one go.
“The only thing we can do is kill them. Once beheaded, their eyes turn back to normal, the connection to Morweena severed. But we can’t fight them off forever.
The hordes of onpyr creatures are threatening to subdue our own, our numbers dwindling with each town they empty.
If they reach Drovillan, if they storm the castle and succeed…
” Oh gods, panic prickles the back of my head as I sense where this is going.
“If Sangeries falls, the rest of the kingdom will follow.” I finish the rest of his thought with a trembling voice.
“And if Wrahta falls, Ryawarath and Reweroth won’t stand a fighting chance.” His gaze hardens infinitesimally, and my lungs stop working for a fraction of a second, preparing me for what’s coming.
“The only way to win this war is by defeating Morweena herself. But none of us stands even a remote chance of getting close to her. After all these years, we don’t even know how she looks like, not firsthand.
We gathered scraps of information here and there, and we know she’s a tall sorceress with a blazing red mane, ivory skin and soulless, ash-white eyes.
No vampire who has fallen into her clutches has escaped unscathed.
” His fists clench at his side, and I almost reach to touch him, to soothe his pain away, but I catch myself in time, hugging my midsection instead.
“I’m afraid I don’t even have any hope of defeating her on my own, not even with all the lethal power of my crimson shadows.”
“Not on your own…” I repeat, a cavernous pit forming in the depths of my soul. The wine glass slips from my shaking hand, shattering on the stone floor in front of the fireplace. The ruby liquid spills on the ground, blending with the broken crystals in a foreboding manner.
“That’s why you had me kidnapped, believing me to be my twin. The prophecy… You need Aurora to defeat Morweena.”
Bloody hell! Imiryion is utterly and inexorably FUCKED.