Chapter 34 #2
“Your army is settled on the outskirts of town. No one is permitted in or out,” he began. “Prince Ronan has Erwin and Artorious covering the sky. At the pace set today, we gained two hours. We should reach Danesburg before sundown tomorrow.”
“I want to know about the girl.”
“Lanie? She’s fetching your meal.”
My fingers stilled on the clasp of Nienna’s mantle. I held Fallione’s gaze until understanding dawned across his face.
“Ah.” He shut his eyes and drew a ragged breath. “She is marked from ankle to neck. Her father died protecting her. That left her in her grandfather’s care below.”
“Who?” The word tore free before I could temper it.
Please be Tallon. Elohios, let this be something I can wield against him.
Fallione’s stare dropped to the floorboards. His hands flexed at his sides, restless. “Accounts are muddled—fear does that. But by every report, Egath did the killing and the feeding.”
“Tallon never took from anyone?” I asked. Nienna’s mantle hung forgotten over my arm.
“It appears he hides his heritage. No living witness claims he fed. Yet I struggle to believe the Velli ambassador, with all his restraint, left that trail of bodies alone.”
“They’ve damned themselves,” Nienna said, shaking her head. “They revealed their hand by leaving survivors. No one will rally behind a ruler who allows their enemy to slaughter them.”
She was right. It didn’t add up. There had to be more to this game. The board held pieces we couldn’t yet see.
“I cannot make sense of it,” Fallione admitted. Weariness edged his voice. “We must wait for more to fall into place. If Tallon fed, he left none alive to speak.”
Velli killed when pressed for time. I had watched it on battlefields soaked black with blood.
Their teeth tore through flesh at the throat.
They drank deep and fast before moving on, chasing the next pulse.
It was always a race. How much could they gorge themselves on before they expended themselves?
And when their magic depleted?
Nothing unsettled me more than a Velli forcing their fingers down their own throats to purge what they had stolen. Dark blood splattered armor and skin. Filed teeth flashed with gruesome smiles as they bent forward retching, only to rise and feed again. Hunger without end.
Prisoners were different; a captive meant a steady supply. They kept them fed, tended, guarded. Pets fattened for slaughter. They drank when they wished, savoring the slow siphon of magic.
We knew little of Vellos and their bloodcraft, but we understood enough to know Tallon and Egath’s choices did not align with instinct.
“How many traveled with them?” I asked.
“Twelve. All Velli.” Fallione narrowed his eyes, sifting through memory. “They split. Tallon and Egath travel too fast to drag Radaanians with them. No horse could match that pace.”
Cold settled in my gut. “Then where are Fyrn and Clay?”
“With the remnants of soldiers who vanished.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. Fatigue etched deep lines beside his mouth. “I’ve sent scouts south. Reports are trickling in. I’m trying to stitch them together.”
“We all are.” I laid Nienna’s mantle at the foot of the bed, and she lifted mine from my shoulders, fingers deft at the clasps. “Rest while you can. We leave before daybreak.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” He bowed and turned.
“Oh, and Fallione. Watch Lanie.”
He paused, glancing back. The words landed heavy between us. “I will.”
Greaves opened the door and slipped out behind him. He would map the hall in his mind, test each shadow, inspect the food before it crossed our threshold.
“Do you worry she’ll attack because you refused to promise Tallon’s death,” Nienna whispered, voice thin against the frail walls, “or do you fear she’ll harm herself?”
“What do you know of Velli magic?”
“Less than you, I imagine.” Her palms slid beneath the weight of my pauldrons.
I bent my knees and shrugged free of the mantle. She caught it and placed it beside hers. The bed groaned when I sat. I leaned forward, elbows braced on my thighs, and dragged a hand through my hair.
“We know too little. Few survive long enough to be captured. Trying to seize a creature that draws power from blood on a field where every man bleeds borders on madness.”
My grip tightened in my hair. She lowered herself beside me, her thigh warm against mine.
“Legends claim they are beasts who need blood to live. That’s false. They eat as we do—which is what drove them to Radaan long ago. Blood does something else. Some thread of magic within them filters it, refines it to bolster their own strength or control.”
Her brow furrowed. “Draconis magic does not work that way. We draw from our dragons.”
“Yours flows outward. It shields, it heals, it binds. Theirs hoards it. Once taken, it cannot be shared. That is what makes them ravenous. After tasting that surge, moving without it feels like swimming through molasses. Time crawls. Six years ago, we captured a young Velli. But getting anything from him was futile. He went mad—pacing the cell until his feet bled, screaming that the world had slowed to a crawl.”
“It sounds like an opioid.”
“Stronger.” I stared at the warped floorboards. “Withdrawal kills them if they do not ration their intake.”
“What has that to do with Lanie?”
I rubbed my brow. The air smelled of old wood and tallow. “They do not require blood to live. It brings pleasure. Euphoria. There’s something about hurting others—pain is woven into it. She endured more than his bloodletting. There is cruelty in the act. Torture.”
Images rose unbidden. Filed teeth buried in a soldier’s throat. Crimson slick across armor. Their crazed grins as their eyes rolled back in ecstasy. That was the moment to strike. When they drowned in power, their guard fell.
“Do you fear for her babe?”
My gaze snapped to her belly. Heat surged through me. Not ours—Lanie’s. “You believe she carries one?” No swell had marked her figure.
“You worry Egath lost control in his…” she folded her arms tight across herself, warding off a chill that did not belong to the room, “attentions. That he left her with child?”
I took her hand and drew her against me. “It’s not unheard of. To the Velli, the bloodletting alone is euphoric. Their baser urges are… less of a priority.”
“Have half-Velli children ever been born?”
A flinch slipped through me before I caught it. She felt the shift. My withering eye chose that moment to twitch, and I closed them, rubbing at the irritation. They still burned from smoke and fatigue—a convenient way for me to mask the tell.
“Never?” she pressed, leaning to study my face.
“They’ve never survived,” I bit out.
“Oh.”
My heart ached, though there was enough truth in my words to ease my conscience before Elohios. The mothers didn’t always survive.
It wasn’t the child or their labor that took their lives. It was people: fear, hatred, the terror that others knew what had sired the babe and what future that knowledge promised for the women. The hatred that surfaced after its birth, and the accidents that seemed to follow.
No, it was never the child’s fault. And monsters didn’t always hail from Vellos.
“There is a woman in Glon,” I continued.
“Amren. She bore the only half-Velli known to exist. She hides in a remote village under the Harvester’s watch.
When she chose to keep the child, I shielded her as best I could.
A girl.” My mouth curved despite the weight of it.
I glanced at Nienna’s belly, wondering who stirred there.
A son? A daughter? “The babe was healthy. Strong. Flat teeth.”
Just like Tallon.
Ice crept along my spine. I straightened. “Tallon is a halfbreed.”
“Does that condemn her as well?”
“No.”
I held up my hand, trying to let my mind settle the pieces into place.
Tallon was a Velli bastard. He relinquished all claim to Radaan if he revealed that.
Did he purposefully leave bodies behind, or was that Egath?
Had he grown that unrestrained, blood-slick and reckless, or was the ambassador that poor a teacher?
Or was he hiding something beneath that careful quiet?
At Reem, they would’ve tested his gift. Egath wouldn’t have swayed him to move against me unless he truly carried the magic of his people. Not rumor. Not wish. Power.
The palace.
The assassination attempt.
Blood was the answer, but not Velli blood.
I shot to my feet and braced against the washbasin. Its cool surface bit into my palms. Thoughts slammed together, jagged edges locking into place.
He was an Ichor. We had established that. He revealed his true talent during negotiations. He had fed before then—yet we never found the victim. No drained body. No husk abandoned in an alley or corridor.
Had he pulled from Egath?
He was an Ichor.
But then who controlled the men who attacked Nienna?
The memory flashed hot and metallic. Shouted orders. Panic and fury. Nienna, covered in dust and cobwebs and blood, pale with fear.
There had to be another Velli in the palace. The thought skittered through me, thin-legged and venomous. But there wasn’t. I had accounted for them all. I had mapped loyalties, traced bloodlines, watched for the faint shimmer of foreign magic.
Was there?
Which was more inconceivable: that one man held both magics inside a single body, or that another rat had slipped beneath my notice, nesting in my walls while I called myself king?
“Kallias?”
“Wait.”
My pulse hammered. Had I seen a Velli wield both gifts? Those who controlled minds were scarce as winter roses. Had one ever stood before me unnoticed? Was that why Tallon was so special to them? It wouldn’t matter that he was heir to Radaan if he possessed something far more dangerous.
The bastard prince wanted the throne. That much was clear. That was why he set us up—he was content to let her remain in Draconia while he undermined me at home. When I chased her, I handed him the opening he needed.
So why did he want her now?