C H A P T E R T W O
Altair
Two thoughts keep swirling around my mind.
One, I have found her.
Two, I want to rip apart those who had kept her from me.
The Gods themselves must have finally conspired in my favour. There was an instinctual certainty that it was her. I also knew from the way my most loyal friend and guard, Iolas, watched her, as I realised, he saw too.
Her silver hair, her bright green eyes—they were the markers I had been searching for, the signs that had haunted my dreams. But it wasn’t just her appearance; it was the way the air seemed to hum with energy around her, the way my own power had reacted, flaring for a split second in her presence.
A whisper. That was all I had needed to make my decision to invade Avantra. A scholar who had sworn on the Gods he had met the princess of Avantra before he escaped the city?—a princess that no one knew existed.
I had told my guards that no civilians were to be harmed. The guards in the palace had unfortunately lost their lives once they attacked us upon entry. But they wouldn’t have been the last to die if anyone else had tried to stop me from finding her.
A princess described in a prophecy. Set to end the war that had waged between the two vampire clans for almost a decade.
With silver hair and green eyes.
Silver hair that looked like a cascade of moonlight, shimmering subtly in the flickering torchlight. And how bright those eyes are, even when they burned right through me like a forest set ablaze.
The prophecy had been a shadow over my reign, as short as it’s been, and a constant whisper in the dark that promised an end to the bloodshed and the war between the vampires. A prophecy that many have taken to mean that Olwyn will wipe out our entire existence. The fear of witches magic still runs deep within the vampires.
I took my crown at eighteen, and it had been years since I first heard it—spoken in hushed tones by seers and scholars alike—foretelling a silver-haired human princess, with magic of the great sorceress in her veins, who would bring about the cessation of the vampire’s destruction. I had heard it when I had served the old king, had laughed and dismissed it then as mere myth, a story to give hope to those humans who had none. Because there was no way she was alive. That I would find her.
Until now.
Olwyn’s fear had been obvious, despite the way she tried to suppress the way she shivered.
She was so lean and malnourished she was practically scrawny, and something compelled me to shield her from further cruelties. I would have torn the entire palace down. Ended their lives right then and there if Iolas hadn’t cleared his throat to bring my attention back to the room.
That pathetic excuse of a queen whimpered as her pathetic husband cowered beside her, doing nothing to try and protect his wife and his daughter.
But I also saw that fire in her eyes, that defiance. Heard it in the way she insulted my guard, with a wit almost as quick as Iolas’s. I struggled not to allow my lips to turn up at that, especially when she wasn’t facing Mikael, the guard who delivered her to me.
I’d been a split second away from ripping out the queen’s tongue when she lied, but then I noticed Mikael approach Olwyn again.
My reaction had been rash but justified. Seeing her filthy clothes splattered with Mikael’s blood only intensified my anger. He had touched her, and that was unforgivable. The idea that anyone else could lay a hand on her, that anyone else could even think to harm her, was intolerable.
No one would touch her.
Not whilst she was mine.
But it wasn't just Mikael and the prophecy that ignited my fury; it was something deeper, something primal that surged within me the moment our eyes met and almost took my breath.
I noted her chest heave once I spoke, the sharp, quick scent of adrenaline once she saw my teeth.
Interesting.
She was repulsed by us. She had been taught all the ways in which my kind were horrific. How we were all killers and bloodthirsty, despite us not needing blood to survive. She had been taught that we would use her up for the magic that allegedly ran through her veins.
The magic I knew ran through her veins.
And yet, even with her fear, she stepped forward and tried to save the king and queen from my wrath. Her defiance was a stark contrast to the craven submission of those around her. While the queen and king cowered, Olwyn stood tall, her spirit a flickering flame against the encroaching darkness. This boldness was not only unexpected but electrifying. It stirred something deep within me and plagued me with guilt.
To her, it was a dangerous game she was playing, standing up to me in a way that no one had dared in years. But it was that very courage, that reckless bravery, that drew me to her. It was as if she didn’t fully comprehend the danger she was in—or perhaps she did, and simply didn’t care. Either way, it both angered and excited me in equal measure. It was what caused my shadows to reach out in curiosity.
The king had been foolish. Boasting drunkenly in a tavern with some of his guards that he had been planning to fight back against my kind. It had been the perfect excuse to raid them, and now I had been gifted the perfect way to free her from them. To remove her from their palace, even if she believed it to be in revenge for them keeping her from me.
I couldn’t help the smile spreading across my face as I told them I’d be taking her. As I told them everyone would believe it was pre-arranged, that she joined me willingly, or I would return to Avantra and slay them all. It was a lie of course but would hopefully prevent anyone from entering Noctura to try and ‘rescue’ her.
But I left smiling, because she’d never be kept from me again.