Chapter 39
Under Eric’s guidance, the castle became only that: another building, another collection of corridors, stairways, and halls.
Before long, they reached the courtyard.
The guests crowded tightly before the Red Hand’s dais at its center, and voices echoed from the walls, but Will could not understand what they were saying.
Tonight, the guests were dressed as a pack of wild animals from the northern forests.
One even wore an entire bear across his shoulders, its empty eye sockets resting over his face like a mask, the legs dragging on the floor.
The crowd roared, and alcohol hung heavily in the air between the bodies.
Servants carried cups of spiced wine and dark beer through the courtyard, while the scent of cinnamon and cloves mingled with sweat and wet animal pelts.
Eric shouldered a path through and pulled Will with him toward the edge of the pack, which formed a semicircle before the Red Hand’s dais. Eric drew a sharp breath and caught Will just before he could rush forward.
Snow swept across the open space. At its center, Elodie knelt, bathed in moonlight breaking through the clouds, a dagger raised over her chest. Her body jerked, her fingers cramped, and the tendons in her throat tensed.
Curses burned in her wide eyes, but she could not force them past her clenched jaw.
“What is happening?” Will tried to wrench himself free of Eric’s grip. “We need to help her!”
Eric nodded toward a man standing opposite her, one cut hand extended toward Elodie. But his blood did not fall to the ground. It rose slowly and vanished into the blowing snow. More figures had gathered behind him. They, too, fed blood into the night and murmured incomprehensible words.
“You will never become the Red Hand!” the man shouted. From the newspaper articles, Will recognized him as Duke Bohun. “Even when you were a little girl, I could see that your father was wrong! You do not possess the strength the position requires. Withdraw from the contest if you wish to live!”
Elodie’s eyes spat fire. Sweat stood upon her brow, and her body seemed no longer to obey her.
Trembling, the blade sank another centimeter.
Blood dripped from a cut on her throat, and Will pieced together what had happened: this foolish man believed he could control Elodie through her blood—even if he required the aid of his entire clan.
“Why is this allowed?” Will whispered, looking toward the Red Hand, who had straightened upon his throne.
He watched the spectacle with vicious satisfaction, making no move to stop it.
With the white lion’s pelt draped across his belly, he was king of the beasts tearing one another apart in the dirt before him, and he relished it.
“There are no rules on how you remove your opponents from the contest. It is a risky move, but a powerful one if successful—to force Elodie to withdraw in front of the Red Hand. Although the effect is weakened by the fact that he apparently cannot manage it alone.” A tendon jumped in Eric’s jaw.
“But she is fighting. She is resisting him and his entire clan,” he added. “I did not know she was this strong.”
Elodie screamed with effort and forced the dagger several centimeters away from herself.
Will’s gaze darted toward Duke Wilkinson, who stood at the edge of the mob with his arms crossed. “If the clan is permitted to help, why doesn’t her fiancé intervene?”
“He could give her his blood. But I assume he wants to see her submit. Every day she insists on remaining in the contest humiliates his position. And it will reassure him that she will not poison him in their marriage bed.”
“He would rather watch his fiancée stab herself than save her?” Will glared furiously at the man.
“His first intelligent thought, though remarkably ill-timed.”
Will’s thoughts tumbled over one another as sweat ran down Elodie’s temples despite the freezing winter night. Again, she yielded by a fraction, the blade moving toward her throat.
“Can I give her my blood?” Will asked as the first threads of a plan took shape. He knew what it was to be helpless, and even if he hadn’t owed her his life, he would have intervened.
“Are you certain?”
Will nodded firmly.
Eric shrugged and released him. “Try it. For the moment, you are part of her household. The Red Hand will stop you if it displeases him.”
To anyone nearby who might have been listening, the words sounded casually spoken, but Eric’s eyes held gratitude.
He drew a small dagger from a hidden sheath beneath his fur and handed it to Will.
Their Elodie was in danger, fighting stubbornly alone as always, but that time was over.
Will remembered the nightmares Eric had described—how he was always too late to save what belonged to him—but he no longer had to save her alone.
With a cold glance toward the Red Hand’s bloated face, Will stepped forward.
Murmurs surged through the spectators. They hungered for entertainment, for an unexpected turn in the drama.
No one expected Elodie to win. She was only a small woman on her knees—a duchess without a clan.
The nobles nearly trembled with devilish delight each time a tormented, furious cry escaped her.
They echoed it like a clan of hyenas waiting for the animal to die so they could descend upon its carcass.
But Will’s intervention offered an exciting twist in tonight’s performance as he crossed the stage in long strides.
The prickling of their gazes reminded him of earlier days, when he had still enjoyed the spectacle, when the only stakes had been who would receive an invitation to the royal palace or earn a small headline in the morning paper.
When pranks had still been harmless. When it had not been a matter of life and death, when the audience had not thirsted for blood.
And blood he gave them.
Only when he stopped behind her did Elodie notice him, and her eyes widened. The dagger lurched another fraction forward.
He pushed up his sleeve and cut into his forearm through the scars left by the vampire bites.
It required more courage than he had expected, and when the pain finally came, Will tried to force it down.
The vampires beside the Red Hand hissed and pulled against their chains, while the man on the throne grinned hungrily.
“Open your mouth for me,” Will commanded quietly, holding his wrist above her. He did not touch her. Red drops fell upon her lips, and moments later, she tipped back her head and forced her mouth open. “Drink.”
Will’s heart felt too large inside his chest and burned with pride as Elodie slowly opened her cramping fingers and extended her tongue to catch more of his blood.
The dagger fell to the ground with a clang.
But her eyes remained fixed upon him, tears shimmering in their silver depths.
At that moment, something inside him clicked into place, something he had been searching for since the night in the harbor.
It locked into position and found its home, and he saw the same realization reflected in Elodie’s eyes.
No matter how fiercely the other clan tried to hold her down, she rose and shook away the last of the paralysis.
Her gaze was devastating, the storm roaring around her as snowflakes danced within her pull.
The blood that had risen toward the sky now rained down, and she caught it in her outstretched hands.
“How?” Duke Bohun stammered, stumbling back.
Elodie looked over her shoulder at Will one final time, and a small, devilish smile lifted the bloodied corners of her mouth. He nodded, not granting permission but offering encouragement, and for the first time, he waited eagerly for her vengeance.
She did not wait for the Red Hand’s approval. The moment she had gathered enough blood, she pulled her hands apart, her teeth bared in a furious grimace, and Duke Bohun exploded.
Blood burst from his eyes and erupted from his mouth and ears. His eyeballs popped from their sockets under the sheer force of it, his chest split open, and his body convulsed. Only his clothing held him together.
Shrill screams and panic filled the courtyard, then transformed in the next breath into ravenous excitement. The crowd cheered the brutality of Elodie’s revenge.
“Surrender!” Elodie called to the remaining members of Clan Bohun, her voice still hoarse. “Renounce your titles, or I will take them from you!”
The Red Hand laughed mockingly when several members of the family turned to him for help. “She is only a girl. You do not need my assistance.”
But Will suspected the Red Hand knew who would win this battle, and indeed, his chest seemed to swell with something suspiciously like pride.
The moment Elodie closed her fist, blood erupted from their bodies in the form of crystals. Eight men and women fell before they could offer any resistance. Their faces were distorted, their skin split open, their mouths forever stretched in screams and now filled with red crystal.
“Cowards,” Elodie scoffed. Not because they had refused to face her in battle, but because they had been too cowardly to endure the disgrace of surrendering every title they possessed.
The Red Hand nodded in approval.
Triumphant, Elodie turned toward Will, and her gaze fell upon his hand, from which blood still dripped onto the stones.
Before he could gather himself or tear his attention from the corpses, she was beside him and seized his arm.
For a moment, he expected her to scold him, but instead, she took his wound into her mouth and sucked.
He felt each thirsty pull down to his marrow. Her fingers closed around his arm and smeared the blood, but her eyes remained fixed entirely upon him.
“A storm,” he murmured, and for a moment, he forgot himself.
His free hand swept a sweat-damp strand from her brow, and a smile far too warm rested upon his lips.
He fed her his heart’s blood, and here, before every watching eye, her tongue passed across his skin, mingling burning pain with fevered pleasure.
“Enough! People are beginning to talk!” Duke Wilkinson seized Elodie by the arm and tore her away.
“Are you proud of yourself? You have exterminated one of Bloodgrove’s oldest families.
They were friends of mine and of your father.
Do you understand what you have done?” he hissed.
At least he possessed the decency to produce a handkerchief and wipe the blood from Elodie’s lips.
“They received the mildest revenge. I had planned something far greater,” she snapped, but gradually the predator receded, and she diminished into a housecat once more. She nestled against her fiancé’s side. “Forgive me.”
When the duke placed his hand against her cheek, Will turned away.
“You no longer need to fight. I will provide for us. I have more than you could ever imagine. My beautiful Elodie, always so greedy.”
Will suppressed the urge to roll his eyes, though he wondered why the words sounded so oily from the duke when only a minute ago, he would have liked to say almost the same thing.
“William Frank.”
Will stopped. Ice dripped down his spine when the Red Hand spoke his name and beckoned him forward with a crooked finger.
Eric stood beside the dais, but his neutral expression made it clear he would offer no help. Just as Elodie had transformed once more into the obedient wife, Eric had become the loyal official again, and Will cursed inwardly.
“Come.”