A Magic So Deadly (Kingdom of Dark Magic #2)

Chapter One

Samara

I contemplated licking the floor of my cell.

It wasn’t the first time. The crimson splatter in front of the copper door taunted me.

It had dried days ago, soon after I’d flung the goblet of blood across the cell at Demos’s head.

How quickly I’d rejected it, vowing to never taste such a wretched thing, to never betray my true species like that.

But there it was, glistening in the barest light. My mortal eyes would never have noticed it on the dark granite that made up the cavern floor. My vampire eyes couldn’t look away.

I confined myself to the farthest corner of the cell, as if I could ever get far enough away from it. I stared for hours. At times, I’d black out, then suddenly wake with a start. Vampire sleep? Madness? I wasn’t sure. In the first days, I’d raged and wondered how everything had gone so wrong.

Now, I couldn’t do even that. My mind would only let me stare at the dried splotch and consider debasing myself, crawling over and pressing my lips to the ground like a rabid dog that had spotted a puddle of water.

The pain in my throat had spread to the backs of my eyes and the pits of my feet. It was something between thirst, hunger, and crippling emptiness that animal instinct said could all be fixed if I just pressed my tongue to the stone in front of me.

I swallowed, the jagged sensation like a claw down my raw flesh.

I would break soon.

Maybe this was my punishment.

Maybe I deserved it for poisoning the vampire king.

Raphael.

Thinking his name broke through the bloodlust. He’s in a coma, recovering from the poison you put in his veins.

That’s what Demos had told me the first day I’d awoken.

He’d also taunted me with the fact that Raphael would wake.

Would he have admitted any doubts otherwise?

Vampires couldn’t lie, but there was no way to know if the true death had finally come.

The general hadn’t been back since to tell me one way or the other.

Because he was punishing me?

Or because I’d ordered him not to bring me blood again?

My thoughts drifted between the raging thirst and Raphael. A coma? It was unthinkable. He was strong, so unfathomably strong.

He’d be stronger than this hunger.

But I feared I wasn’t.

He’d said all fledglings need to feed, but in what time frame? It felt urgent. Like I’d turn to dust if another minute passed in this state… but it had been like that for hours, for days.

More time passed.

I didn’t turn to dust.

I wished I were dead.

Distantly, I tried to summon that anger, but it was too hard to grasp.

There was only the thirst.

I woke. I slept. There was little different until—

Creak.

My eyes widened. Someone was here. A sliver of light cut through the dark.

Iademos? No. Because there was a sound punctuating through the silence of the dark.

Bu-bump. Bu-bump.

My sharpened senses recognized the pounding of a live heart at once. As beautiful and beguiling as any melody I’d ever heard.

Need.

Before my brain caught up, I was standing, slamming myself against the cursed copper bars of my cell door.

Pain. The metal burned my palms, blistering on contact.

I hissed and withdrew my hands, but I was grateful for the pain.

It chased the thirst back enough that my rational mind could process the sight in front of me.

Amalthea. The one-eyed oracle. Her silver hair with blue undertones seemed to glow with the little light allowed, her dress simple yet ornate.

My new eyes could make out every stitch of fabric.

Her neck was exposed, her arms bare. I could hear the blood running through her veins.

I would have sworn I could see her pulse beating in her wrists, on the column of her throat.

She drew closer, her gray eye surveying my cell. In contrast to her finery, I was still in the same tattered red gown I’d been wearing for however many days.

She was ten paces away when I snarled, “Don’t.”

Gods curse me, I sounded like an animal. My voice was cracked from disuse and the feral need to bite into her neck.

Her steps stopped, but she didn’t withdraw. She simply continued to look me over. There was no way her still-human sight could make out much with this scant amount of light, but I would have sworn they found the spot on the floor where the blood had dried.

Where I’d been contemplating licking the stone for a taste.

And here was Amalthea. Warm-blooded, a witch.

The beast inside me didn’t see a friend. Just a meal.

The rational part of me that fought for control… I wasn’t sure I saw a friend either.

“You need to drink, Samara.” Her words had the same lilting, confident tone they always did.

“And if I don’t?” I rasped. Would I die then? Before, I’d made vows of vengeance. Now, I would welcome an end with open arms.

“You’ll drink,” she replied, not answering the question.

Bitterness coated my tongue. “You’ve seen this with your gifts? Like you saw Raphael biting me?”

She’d made it sound like he was going to bite me at the Tri-Lunar Eclipse Ceremony, which I’d pleaded I didn’t want. Instead, he’d bitten me after Titus stabbed me. Maybe that tricky language was why King Stormblood had hunted the oracles to extinction.

“You know you’re hard for me to see,” she said, her voice betraying no sign of offense. But I heard it—the bu-bump had become bu-bump-bump as her pulse jumped at the accusation.

Or at the realization I was turning into a feral animal, a predator.

“So you haven’t seen me drink,” I hissed. I wouldn’t do it.

“You’re a fledgling, Samara. If you don’t drink, the transformation won’t hold.”

“I could turn back?” I said, feeling hope for the first time in days.

Her eyes softened with pity. “You’ll die, Samara. You’re already dead, on borrowed time. Unless you drink and turn.”

“I’d rather die.” Anything to make this thirst end. Anything but that…

She took one step forward. I wished I could have stepped back, but the predator now within my skin was tracking every step, calculating when she might be close enough for me to snatch.

“You’re not the first fledgling to feel that way.” Her tone was meant to be soothing. I drew no comfort from it. “You must drink. I thought perhaps, with you being so new to the thirst, a friend might be easier to take from. I don’t want to see you suffer.”

“A friend? After I poisoned your king?” My words were ugly. I just wanted her to leave me to the darkness of thirst and silence, before I could hurt her too.

The oracle’s heart was racing now, the bounding rhythm nearly drowning out her next words. “I know you, Samara. I’m sure there’s an explanation, one likely rife with pain. Letting yourself die won’t solve anything.”

She was right, it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t solve the fact I’d fallen for Titus’s ploy and poisoned Raphael, who might well be dying even now.

But it would end the thirst.

She drew a half step nearer. So close. Half-aware, I ran my tongue over an aching fang.

“I could put some blood in a glass and hand it to you—”

“No!” I shouted, then slammed my palms over my ears at the noise. “Just go. If you ever cared for me at all… please, Thea. Leave. While I can still beg you to.”

I didn’t want to be a monster like them. But if Amalthea came near… I remembered the vampire that had ripped my mother apart.

I loathed the creature. But I understood it now in a way that was impossible then. If it had been starved like this—for days, weeks, months—then I understood the urge all too well.

Understood that if it weren’t for the cursed copper bars, I would be ripping her throat wide open. That this monstrous nature was now a part of me, as it was a part of every vampire that haunted Eurobis.

Understood that as the necromancer, it would be my duty to rein them in.

When Amalthea finally left, taking that sliver of light away with her, I held on to that understanding as long as I could. Held on to it as I slumped against the stone of the cell.

Held on to it as the thirst continued to torture me.