Chapter Four
Samara
Everything I feel when he touches me, I’ve always felt . . .
I had to get out of this room. Away from his cedar scent and piercing eyes and the tingle of my skin, as tantalizing as any magic.
I pushed to get out of bed, unsure what to say, what lie-that-wasn’t-technically-a-lie I could tell, only to be saved by a sudden pounding coming from the other room.
Raphael and I both twisted to look at the shut door.
“Stay here,” he instructed.
He disappeared behind the bedroom door. No one was there, so it must have been someone knocking on the entrance to his quarters. Vampire hearing would be hard to adjust to.
On the other hand, vampire hearing meant it was all too easy to eavesdrop. I didn’t need to press my ear to the door to listen in. I simply focused.
“What is it?” Raphael asked from a wall away.
“She’s missing.” It was Iademos at the door. Looking for me?
Raphael confirmed that theory a second later. “She’s exactly where she’s supposed to be.”
“She’s a threat, to you and this kingdom.”
I froze. It was strange to panic without the telltale pounding heart I’d been accustomed to, but the fear that crawled through me left me with clammy palms, tense shoulders, and frozen lungs.
He’s going to tell Raphael I’m the necromancer.
But I had bid Demos to forget that I was able to thrall him. That had worked, hadn’t it?
I wasn’t sure how my magic worked, only that it somehow existed despite everything I’d thought I’d known about myself.
“She’s in my care,” Raphael said, the words unhurried and unforgiving.
I could imagine Demos’s stiff posture. “She poisoned you,” he ground out. “Plotted against you.”
Oh. Right. Raphael had surprisingly not brought that up yet. I didn’t imagine he’d take kindly to attempted regicide, but since he seemed well enough, perhaps he was inclined to move past it to protect his new fledgling. I almost gagged at the thought.
But if he realized I was the necromancer, that he’d made his foe immortal .
. . I stretched and cracked my wrists. I needed to get to the grimoire—my grimoire—soon.
I couldn’t leave the kingdom without it, and I couldn’t stay a moment longer than necessary.
Hopefully soon, if this fledgling bond just required me to choke down blood for the first few days.
I at least needed to put as much distance between us as it would allow.
With the truth compulsion of a vampire, I was in danger of telling Raphael I was the very creature he’d been tasked with hunting.
It would be smarter to avoid Raphael knowing I wanted to get back to the grimoire, to leave without it, but . . . it was my magical inheritance. I had to see what I could learn about this magic, magic I had gone my entire life believing I lacked.
“Do you know what would have happened if you had died?” Demos continued.
An aggrieved sigh sounded through the door. “Suppose we postpone this conversation for a while.”
“Whatever you wish, my liege. I only wish to not see you murdered by some treacherous rat.”
I flinched at the ice in Demos’s tone. The vampire I’d once almost considered a friend utterly despised me.
“Do not call her that,” Raphael snarled.
The conversation continued, too quiet for my vampire hearing to pick up between the walls.
Demos didn’t seem to be leaving. I debated obeying Raphael and staying hidden.
But really, that was only delaying the inevitable.
I ran my fingers through my hair, a fool’s attempt to tame the twisted nest on my head, and walked into the main chambers.
Demos and Raphael were farther into the room. Raphael’s back was to me, blocking Demos from the bedroom. The general looked exactly as he had the last time I’d seen him, his white hair combed back and tied at the neck, not a stitch of his uniform ill-fitted.
“I thought I told you to stay put,” Raphael said with a sigh, not taking his eyes off Demos.
“I thought I told you not to turn me into a vampire,” I retorted.
Demos glared at me over Raphael’s shoulders. “The gift you’ve been given . . .” He shook his head in disbelief.
“Gift?” I scoffed.
I wasn’t sure why I was goading Demos. I never would have before. But something in me had shifted. Maybe becoming what I feared most—or maybe learning I had magic, dangerous magic—had changed more than just my species.
I refused to cower in front of him.
The general’s nostrils flared, and his head snapped back toward Raphael. “Why do I smell your blood on her?”
How acute are vampire senses?
“The natural reason, I suppose,” Raphael replied in a disinterested tone.
“You let her drink from you?”
“It seems I got here just as things were getting interesting,” a new voice said from the doorway.
Amalthea. My heart ached at the sight of my friend. I’d last seen her in the grips of the bloodlust. My memories of that time were increasingly hazy. She’d said I was still her friend, but would she reject me now?
The oracle entered the room as though it was her own, her long, flowing sleeves trailing behind her. I’d never seen the oracle in the same dress twice. This one was a brilliant blue, the fabric shimmering in the torchlight matching a set of silver rings covering her fingers.
“Leave, Thea,” Demos snapped. “You should know better than to flaunt yourself around a fledgling.”
Thea made no move toward the door. “I’m perfectly safe.”
The general looked ready to toss Thea out of the room himself. I watched the exchange. Was it so dangerous for me to be around someone who wasn’t a vampire? Was I that much of a threat, a monster?
Of course you are.
“Don’t be foolish,” Demos said.
“I never am.” Thea, as the only mortal in the room, wasn’t faster than a vampire. But she caught us all unaware when she used a jagged edge of one of her rings to slice her palm.
I scented the blood before I saw it bead on her hand. Gods, it smelled wonderful. I hadn’t felt hungry in the slightest, but now the thirst was back.
“What in the name of blood are you thinking?” Demos tore off part of his uniform, and in a split second captured Thea’s hand to bandage it.
My fangs ached. I wanted to lunge at my prey.
It tastes disgusting. You don’t want her blood.
It didn’t smell disgusting the way the other blood had. No, it smelled like power and warmth and everything I’d ever craved. Not as good as Raphael’s, but tantalizing. Her blood stained the dark fabric of Demos’s uniform.
You could rip it away, the beast inside me coaxed, so much more seductive than the voice that called me a monster. You could sink your fangs in her and drink and drink and drink.
My feet stayed rooted in the ground while the scent continued to taunt me.
Thea snatched her wrapped hand away from Demos. “Look, you lunk.” She pointed her uninjured hand at me.
Raphael was in front of me now. I hadn’t noticed him moving, too transfixed by the scent of fresh blood.
“Samara,” Raphael said quietly. “You don’t truly wish to drink from her in this state.”
I forced my neck to twist away from the oracle and to my sire. His expression was tense.
“Let the thirst go,” he urged. “Ground yourself. Focus on what you feel, where you are.”
It was like telling a starving person not to be hungry. But I concentrated on the room. I felt the plush carpet on my bare feet, sought Raphael’s cedar scent out on the air instead of the copper tang of witch blood.
I blinked once, twice. The thirst had dissipated. It was still present, a slight scratch in my throat, but I could think again. My fangs no longer felt like they were going to fall out.
It was only a matter of seconds, but the entire room stood still until I regained control of myself. Demos had Thea pressed at his back, and there was nothing warm in his gaze.
I’d nearly killed her. I had no control. If I bit her . . . if I used these wretched fangs the way I ached to . . .
Gods stake me in the ninth hell, I was a monster. I’d been about to hurt my only friend.
“Impressive,” the general conceded, before turning around to Thea.
“And unaccountably stupid. What were you thinking drawing witch blood around a fledgling? Do you try to put fires out with vats of boiling oil? After the weeks she spent prolonging the transition, she could have drained you dry without sparing a single thought for your life until you were nothing but a withered husk.”
I’d never heard the general so uncontrolled, so angry. His brow was creased with fury even as he snapped his hand forward, capturing Thea’s hand and pulling it to his mouth. He ran his tongue over it, fangs gleaming, as he sealed the wound.
Shame slammed into me at the mental image of Thea drained dry. I wanted to argue otherwise. Wanted to shout I would never. But I didn’t attempt to voice the words. What if that was another lie that would be unable to pass my lips?
“She wouldn’t,” Thea retorted. “Sam’s my friend, and she’s got a stronger will than your twenty best soldiers combined.”
“Your friend?” Demos scoffed, taking a step back. “Have you already forgotten she betrayed us? She tried to kill our king!”
More shame hit me. I didn’t mean to was a paltry excuse.
“But that did not come to pass,” Thea countered.
Demos scoffed. “Because most of her blood was already gone by the time he drank from her. And where were you in this? You’re supposed to warn us of these threats. Some oracle.”
Thea’s expression crumpled before it was reforged with steel. The statement hung between us all for a second. Demos seemed to realize the weight of his accusation, his lips parting to speak—to apologize?
But it was Thea who spoke first. “I will always look out for the good of the kingdom.”
“And so will I,” Demos growled, any forthcoming apology gone. “Even though you both seem determined to keep a known threat with us.”
The last part was directed at Raphael.
“She’s mine,” Raphael snapped right back, “and if I say she stays, she stays.”
Even after the poisoning?
Demos looked between the three of us, then rolled his shoulders back. “Fools. I’m surrounded by fools. I’m not going to get through to you tonight. The next time you stick your fangs in her and taste poison, you’ve no one to blame but yourself.”
Demos stormed out without waiting for a proper dismissal.
Now it was just the three of us—king, oracle, abomination.
Thea crossed the room and flopped onto the couch, kicking her heels up on the low table in front of it.
“Okay, Sam. Tell us what in all the hells happened?”