Chapter 2 #2
I was two seconds away from being scolded like a misbehaving child.
That would not be good. The Lords needed to be brought to heel, not offered an invitation to chide me.
I had to pull the situation back, to take the proceedings in hand.
My first instinct was to apologize for the interruption, but a queen did not apologize.
I raised my chin and stared Ereth down, filling my veins with ice. “Yes, Ereth. Since you’ve finally thought to ask, I do have better things to do than listen to you all bickering like children. I was told this was supposed to be a coronation, so let’s proceed with the business of it, shall we?”
A tense quiet fell over the Hall of Tears.
It was only now, with every vampire present stunned to silence, that I realized why this place was called the Hall of Tears: somewhere, out there in the dark, someone was crying.
A mournful wail echoed off the columns and then ricocheted around the recessed alcoves—a sound devoid of hope.
A shiver ran up my spine as I heard another sob join the first, and then another, and another.
Out there, beyond the crowds and the strange white-green glow of the torches, people were suffering.
“My sincere apologies, Your Highness.” Ereth had dropped into a deep bow, pale hand pressed to the middle of his chest. He lifted his head, looking up at me from beneath dark brows, and I saw the mockery in his eyes.
“You’re absolutely right. How foolish of me.
The night is wasting, and there’s much to be done. ”
“The girl needs to drink before she’s crowned.” It was Algat who made the declaration. Her cracked voice reminded me of the reckoning wind that used to howl across the dunes and batter the Silver City: dry and angry. “How can she hope to rule if she is not leashed to the blood?”
Taladaius had explained that he would hold his tongue as best he could during the evening’s proceedings.
He had been Malcolm’s favorite—his Keeper of Secrets—which meant that he was not a favorite among the five.
He hadn’t wanted to do or say anything to color the actions of the others, but at Algat’s comment, he quickly stepped forward.
“She isn’t required to drink,” he said. “No rule or law prescribes it.”
“No law and no rule, maybe, but what of common sense?” the old woman asked, in a sly croak. “Come now, Taladaius. The girl’s a virgin—”
Excuse me?” I couldn’t stop myself. My indignation erupted from me before I could reel it back. “I assure you, I am not.”
Algat gave me a pitying look. “Not of the body, child.” Her head tipped toward Fisher again, the speed and angle of the motion making my stomach twist. “We smell the sex on both you and your mate perfectly well, I assure you. No, you are a virgin of the blood. You have not fed from the life source of the living—”
“She’s still a member of their number,” Zovena cut in with obvious disgust. “I said it before and no one cared to comment on the matter, but how can a member of the living feed on the living? Again, how can she hope to rule . . .” She trailed off, her eyes growing round in her head as she took me in.
I had risen to my feet.
And my heart had stopped beating.
It hadn’t taken long to master the trick.
Taladaius had known that his counterparts would take offense over the issue, and so he had taught me how to paralyze the muscle in my chest. It had been simple enough.
All I had to do was picture my heart resting, taking a break, and that was precisely what it did.
My blood stopped pumping. Everything inside me stilled. I’d never realized that I could hear the rushing of my blood if I tried to, but I could. And now that it sat dormant in my veins, my inner world felt off kilter. It was like breathing under water; I shouldn’t have been able to do it.
“So she can choose when to be like us, then,” Zovena muttered under her breath. “But that does not make her one of us.”
“If she drinks, she will be.” Algat pushed, apparently dissatisfied that I hadn’t answered to the issue.
“This whole court knows that you haven’t fed since you awoke from the Midnight Kiss, girl.
Drink from someone, and all will be well.
We’ll place the circlet upon your head and then drown ourselves in wine until sunrise, celebrating you as our new queen if you do. ”
“And if I don’t?”
Taladaius was halfway across the platform, moving toward me. “Saeris.”
“Listen to him,” Zovena sneered. “Saeris. He calls her by her name! And why wouldn’t he?
He made her. She’s beholden to him. He pushes her forward as his puppet, for him to control from the shadows.
If you accept her, then on your heads be it.
But know you are accepting a proxy. Know who you’re truly bowing and scraping to when you swear fealty. ”
There were traveling theater companies back in Zilvaren who would have committed murder to secure Zovena as one of their lead players; the female was really beginning to annoy me. Thankfully, Taladaius seemed immune to her dramatics. “You don’t have to do anything, Saeris. It isn’t law.”
“It isn’t law because it’s never needed to be,” Zovena hissed. “The ruler of the vampire court should be a vampire. Feeding on the blood of the living should be the greatest pleasure imaginable to our regent. They should enact their basest nature without any need for convincing.”
For all his preparations over the past couple of days, Taladaius hadn’t seen this coming.
Maybe he should have. It made sense that these monsters would want reassurances.
I was an interloper taking up residence inside their palace.
I was half Fae. It was only natural that they were wary of me.
Martyrs only knew how they could tell that I hadn’t fed, but it was true. I hadn’t wanted to. Hadn’t needed to.
“My sisters are right, Highness,” Ereth interjected. “If you’d accept a coronation gift from us, maybe it would set our minds at ease. A beautiful young woman to sip from, perhaps?” His pit-black eyes flitted to Kingfisher. “Or . . . perhaps there is a simpler solution to this quandary?”
“No,” I snapped. “If it isn’t mandated, then do not seek to make a spectacle of me.”
Amid all of this, the Hazrax’s head turned from left to right, observing the scene as it unfolded.
It said nothing, its odd gills flaring. With its hands clasped together inside the sleeves of its bone-white robe, it took everything in without saying a word.
It shifted its body to face me now, though, turning its attention on me .
. . and my mate. Kingfisher had stepped forward and turned his back on the gathering—an unimaginable show of disrespect.
But I knew Fisher, and he didn’t give a shit about disrespecting the Sanasrothian court.
He wanted to look me in the eyes when he spoke to me.
“Just do it, Osha.”
“What?”
“Bite me. Drink. Swallow twice and be done with it. They pursue this to undermine you because they’re sure you won’t do it. But fuck them. This is easy. We take care of this, and we get to leave this room.” In my head, he said, We can go back to Cahlish. Back to Ren, and Lorreth, and Layne.
“He has a point,” Carrion said.
“You shouldn’t even be here, Swift,” Fisher growled irritably. “Keep your opinions to yourself.”
The eyes of a thousand vampires bored into me as I peered around Fisher’s side and looked out at the amassed court.
What would they do if I still refused? Many of them had died with magic in their veins.
It had corrupted and turned black along with their blood.
Some of them were powerful. The only thing keeping any of them from tearing us apart was the Law of Ascension and Taladaius’s edict.
But laws were broken all the time, and I did not want to die here, of all places.
Gods.
I took a deep breath.
“All right. I’ll drink from you,” I whispered.
Ereth clapped his hands together, overjoyed. “Wonderful!” He’d heard me, naturally. “Wonderful, wonderful!”
A growl of displeasure issued from the back of Fisher’s throat, but his gaze remained fixed on me, never wavering. He began unfastening the leather straps that held his right bracer in place, undoing the armor. “Block them out. Don’t pay them any attention. It’s just you and me, okay?”
I thanked the gods, the stars, and all four winds because, for once in his life, Carrion Swift kept his mouth shut. If he had made some quip about the fact that he was standing there, standing right next to us, he probably would have lost his front teeth.
I focused on my mate, determined not to fumble this. We had one shot. A single chance at turning the tides in this war. If our play had to be this, then so be it. I would keep a steady hand, but gods alive, it would be hard. This . . . isn’t how I imagined this, I thought to Fisher.
As he slipped his bracer free, his eyes found mine, burning with intensity. A slow, intrigued smile kicked up the corner of his mouth. Oh? So you’ve been imagining this, then, have you, Little Osha?
My blood lit on fire in my veins. The suggestive tone in his voice in my head would have made even the girls who worked at Kala’s blush. No. It was too late, though. My cheeks were glowing, and Fisher was chuckling under his breath, rolling back his sleeve.
You can own your fantasies with me, Little Osha. There is nothing in this realm or the next that I won’t give to you if you desire it. All you ever need do is ask.
Now was not the time. It sure as hells wasn’t the place.
But . . . Holy gods.
Breathe, Saeris.