CHAPTER 20
Killian
The city of Dithrau is sleeping wearily under a sanguine moon, the shade quite similar to that of my swirling shadows. Baroque spires and metal-laced towers are gleaming crimson under the moonlight, and the entire city waits with bated breath for the impending doom.
I’m perched on the river stone outer city walls, my body coiled in trepidation, ready to strike at the first glance of the enemy.
Next to me, Blaise sits leisurely, sharpening a wicked-looking scimitar, with several daggers spread between us on the cobbled, frostbitten wall.
They glisten in the moonshine, a kaleidoscope of unforgiving steel and precise, lethal beauty.
They’ve been honed so carefully, so meticulously, that they appear to be brand new, thirsty for their first kill.
But I know how many throats they’ve already slit, how many organs they’ve desecrated, how many onpyr scum have been sent back straight to hell at the end of these blades.
Hundreds.
Even thousands.
Innumerous.
While I am wound tight, drumming my fingers apprehensively on my leather fighting trousers, he is all unbothered ease and vexing swagger. If I didn’t know better, I would say he looks as if he’s preparing for one of the best nights of his life.
I’ve always begrudgingly admired his unfazed demeanor in the face of danger. But after you witness your whole human family slaughtered and raped in front of your very eyes, anything the mocking fates throw your way seems simply trifling.
“A missive arrived with intel from Ryawarath,” my second-in-command says, finishing sharpening his blade.
“The Royal Faes have announced Prince Noahlin’s upcoming marriage to a noble Fae, a certain Loelle Brimms. Rumor has it that King Orgon will step down after the wedding, allowing his son to ascend to the throne.
” His tone is laced with boredom and contempt.
He hates the Fae Royals even more than I do.
Understandable, after what their ancestor put him through, slaughtering his entire human family in the name of a sham of a war.
“Noahlin is a little pampered bitch. He poses no threat to us. What else?” I ask, surveying the white plains before us for any movement.
“A few leads on Aurora from her last known lovers. They are following them, but they seem to be years old, so I wouldn’t get my hopes up. And news about the father. He’s dead.”
“How?” I ask, nonplussed.
“A freak hunting accident, it seems, several years ago. Torn apart by a wild animal in the forests of Amnesnoll. Only half of his face and two limbs were recovered. A gruesome ordeal, from what I gathered.” Blaise answers, focusing his gaze on the snow-capped meadows as well.
From what Aimee told me, he wasn’t particularly a loving father figure. But I can’t help wondering whether she will mourn him.
My little umbra.
My thoughts immediately sway her way, to the last time I saw her, our last conversation.
It’s been ten long—fucking torturous—days since I held her in my arms. Since she laid her warning, telling me in no uncertain terms, that there would be no us.
Ten days of unadulterated yearning.
I want her so fucking much it hurts—an actual ache in my body, like an abyssal cavern burrowing its way through my insides.
When I couldn’t go to her after my return to Sangeries, held busy by the fucking troublesome vampiress that I should have never ever fucked to begin with—the same one that will now rot in my dungeons for all her unspeakable blunders against my little umbra—my shadows went utterly unhinged.
Churning, pulling, writhing against my skin—fighting me over my female.
She’s not really mine, though, is she? Neither is she theirs.
They’ve been quiet—the shadows—since we left for Dithrau the next morning.
Actually, from the night before. They just gave me the nonliteral cold shoulder all of a sudden.
I’ve never had my shadows pissed at me before, not once in my one thousand years.
It doesn’t surprise me, though, that my obsession with the vexing female extends to my shadows as well.
I let out a heavy sigh, tired of waiting for this damn battle, tired of being worlds apart from my craving, tired of waging this relentless war.
“You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?” Blaise asks earnestly, sheathing his blades, one by one.
A gruff “Mmm” is my only answer, but it’s enough. A look of understanding passes between the two of us.
“What will you do when we finally find Aurora?” he asks in a quiet, serious tone, with no trace of his usual devil-may-care attitude in sight.
“What we’ve always planned,” I say, the words heavy on my tongue. “Wrahta comes first. The last time I was selfish about a female, this kingdom suffered five fucking hundred years of war.”
But Akaoridammit, how much I want to be selfish. To let it all burn for the sister that plagues my dreams, and my waking hours as well. The spunky, hard-headed, sharp-tongued Fae that has wormed her way through my soul—that I’m fal…
All of a sudden, a void of blackness swallows the horizon whole.
My eyes focus on the snow-laced fields beyond the walls, the moonshine radiating a muted, subtle silver glimmer against the lands.
I wait for an excruciating heartbeat, but there is no denying the relentless swarm of corruption, more vile than the devil itself, that covers the milky plains in a writhing stain.
“Toll the bell!” I shout, jumping to my feet. “Now!” Every damn second counts more than the last, as the roiling darkness swallows everything in sight.
They are getting impossibly closer now, hundreds—no, thousands—of glowing, numberless eyes swimming in my vision.
No matter how many times we face these hellish creatures, once friends and fellow vampires, my trepidation never subsides.
I can’t seem to harden myself against the total annihilation they represent.
The obliteration of everything our race has achieved through tears and blood, war and sacrifice.
Blaise is gone in a second, shouting commands to our awaiting warriors.
The time-worn bronze bell reverberates through the sleeping city like the mournful cry of a dying ancient being.
I imagine that’s the sound Akaori made before she drew her last breath, holding the limp body of her beloved Aeon in her arms.
The time for reckoning is upon us! We shall die here tonight, defending Dithrau, or the whole realm will perish under Morweena’s sinister claws.
An ear-shattering screech rises from the onpyr horde, not merely a shrill sound but a cataclysmic uproar. The shriek blasts through my eardrums, pounding on my brain ceaselessly, grinding the fucking bones inside my skull.
I draw out my faithful blades, Kadirah and Alnashar, family heirlooms from immemorial times.
My shadows swirl around me rapidly, choosing to end the day’s long silent treatment.
They form my shadow self before my eyes, from blood red mist and violence, all poised for attack.
My trusted shadows have always been able to separate from me completely in battle, as we stand as two entities, one of flesh and one of crimson darkness.
“Give them hell!” I whisper before my shadow double launches itself at the oncoming hordes.
All around me, vampire warriors come running out from the city’s looming towers, hidden catacombs and military barracks, blades drawn, muscles taut.
Mayhem ignites like a deadly fire as the onpyrs surge closer, nearly upon us.
The fight determining Dithrau’s fate has reached a pinnacle—destruction all around.
Grotesque chimera statues, smashed and scorched, weep tears of stone as they crumble to the ground.
Dark smog cleaves through the cobblestone streets like the rotten, foul smell of decaying flesh, thickening with billowy smoke and the pungent scent of spilled carnage.
Vampires and onpyrs clash relentlessly in a cursed dance of death and decay.
The monsters’ gaze glows like smoldering charcoal remains set in rotting eye sockets, the shade of unadulterated insanity and depravity staining their vacant scarlet eyes. They sprint up the stone walls with feral movements, like a blight with fangs and claws.
“Hold the line, warriors!” I bellow towards my brothers in arms. “They will feel our wrath, even if they feel nothing else! Death will come for all of them at the end of our blades!”
The vampire soldiers shout in response, a guttural cry of war and despair, as several chants in Akaori’s praise surge skywards. Our vampire goddess shall bestow her cunning and strength upon us. She won’t let her children perish at the hands of the enemy.
All at once, the vampire army advances on the onpyrs, bones crushing, enemy blood spilling.
The deafening sounds of steel and bone churn in my ears to the point of madness.
I drive Alnashar down into the nearest onpyr, cleaving my faithful blade through bone and marrow in a perfect, bloodthirsty arc. The creature’s head falls with a squelching thud, rolling to my feet, eyes turning back to a dull color.
I spot Blaise in the left corner of my eye, fighting like a storm unleashed, his scimitar glinting like liquid starlight.
He whirls between the onpyrs, slashing through sinew, leaving trails of severed limbs and rolling heads in his wake.
Several creatures lunge at him, mouths agape.
He sidesteps effortlessly, reversing his grip on the scimitar, and slices through one’s neck in a shower of blood.
The second onpyr attacks in a blinding rage, but is no match for Blaise’s fury.
He drives his blade between the monster’s hollow eyes, carving downwards until it reaches his throat, twisting with force and severing the head.
No matter how many onpyrs fall under our blades, hundreds more appear like cockroaches, in a never-ending stream of madness.
“They are overpowering us!” Marhus shouts from my right side, soaked in onpyr blood . Thank Akaori it’s not his own!
“No!” I growl, beheading another filthy creature. “They might be relentless, mindless puppets with nothing but Morweena’s will coursing through their veins, but they are no match for us. We will prevail!” I shout as I swing my blades right and left, leaving a field of corpses all around.
My shadow self is unhinged, disintegrating, swirling, and reappearing all over the city, maiming and murdering hundreds of these empty-headed motherfuckers all at once.
This Akaoriforsaken power has always been my greatest advantage in battle.
No creature, dead or alive, can withstand the raw brutality of my unleashed shadows.
I am Death, in all its frightening glory.
A vampire warrior screams from somewhere close by. His limp body is impaled through the torso, and he writhes under the merciless hold of a crazed onpyr that’s tearing his throat away. I recognize with horror his face. Aydan, one of Blaise’s trained spies.
He fights like hell, pulling his punches, even as his blood pours down his fighting leathers, pooling on the filthy cobblestones. Three more onpyrs jump on him, dragging him fast towards the city gates.
There’s no time to save him; he’s gone now—another puppet in Morweena’s never-ending army.
“Aim for the throats!” Blaise shouts from somewhere near. “Decapitate these shitheads! It’s the only way to end this!”
I spin and turn endlessly, beheading onpyrs left and right, drowning myself in sickening carnage.
My shadow double rains down upon the creatures in crimson barbarity, mist daggers in hand, lips drawn in a feral, inhuman grin.
He enjoys the savagery just a little bit too much.
It’s not only about survival for my sentient shadows. They crave ruination—they thrive on it.
Finally, after hours upon hours of gruesome attacks, the tide starts turning slowly in our favor.
Countless vampires have fallen, but twice as many onpyrs have been defeated.
The toll is haunting, merciless. Decapitated heads line the streets, almost steaming in the frigid winter air.
We can’t even decipher anymore who are friends from foes in the macabre display of mangled corpses at our feet.
We stand our ground, defending our last bastion before the Saunoque Mountains—blades bloody, hearts heavy. I swing my daggers relentlessly, each hit a rage-driven execution. We will not die today! I will not allow my kingdom to succumb to this scourge, this relentless madness.
The onpyrs keep coming in never-ending waves until dawn. The city of Dithrau survives, but barely—crumbling, wailing in ablaze agony, but fighting until its last breath.
As sunrise approaches, its ochre light creeping over the skyline, we push the last onpyrs into an early, well-deserved grave. My vampires, drained and covered in slimy grume, still stand.
Those creatures died by the thousands, but butchered or kidnapped hundreds of our own in return.
This battle might be over, but the war wages on.
Dithrau lives to see the light of another day. Wrahta still has a chance to overcome Morweena’s destruction, and I will never fall quietly into the dark.
The skies weep frozen tears, snowflakes covering the blood-filled canvas of the city’s streets. It’s a heartbreaking painting of victory and despair, of loss and relief.
“It’s over, brother,” Blaise whispers, clasping my shoulder in his gory-soaked grip.
“For now,” I say dejectedly. My shadow self returns to my side—my spitting image bathed in crimson, silent fortitude. It dissolves back into a swirling mist, tendrils creeping up my arms and redrawing intricate tattoos on my chest.
“Time to go home,” he offers, his voice subdued. This war has taken its toll even on Blaise, his easygoing attitude lost somewhere on the battlefield.
“Home…” I murmur, nodding. More than ever, home feels like a person, and not a place. Not my castle, not even my kingdom.
I square my shoulders with steely resolve. I shall return to Sangeries and tear down Aimee’s defenses one by one. Our fate might be gloomy and unclear, but I will not spend another Akaoridamn second without basking in her light. I will get the girl and save my kingdom.
My shadows hum in approval against my cold skin.