Chapter 3
DOSE
KINGFISHER
THERE WAS A new tattoo on her chest: a thin black line that marked her skin from one shoulder to the other, right below her collarbone.
Just a simple line, but somehow striking.
She was breathtaking as she turned and faced the hall, her eyes lit with a galaxy of stars.
She was the center of that galaxy. I gravitated toward her anyway, but after what she’d just done—she had no idea what she’d done—my cock was the hardest it had ever fucking been, and I could barely think straight.
Gods, that fucking dress . . .
As Ereth climbed the steps of the dais, approaching her, I watched Saeris take in her surroundings, wide-eyed, and I knew what she was feeling.
The euphoria was running through my veins, too.
I should have been more careful when I’d told her to drink.
She couldn’t have known what would happen if she stilled with her canines inside me and didn’t drink, though.
It was my own fucking fault. I should have told her.
I should have explained. My cock throbbed relentlessly as I turned around to face the hall.
Ereth reached the top of the steps and bowed reverently, dipping low before my mate.
Saeris barely noticed that he was there.
My poor Little Osha was reeling from the effects of the bite, but not me.
I had years on her. I knew how to shove the high aside.
I did so reluctantly; it would have been nice to float on that sea of pure bliss with her, but Ereth had encouraged her to bite me for a reason.
Likely, he’d hoped the experience would put her on her ass.
He probably hoped having Saeris feed from me would dull my senses and make me lower my guard, too .
. . but Ereth didn’t know me. He’d never faced me on the battlefield.
Never visited me when I was trapped inside Malcolm’s maze.
He had no idea who I was or what I was capable of and, therefore, had no clue what heinous crimes I would commit to ensure my mate’s safety.
The beak-nosed bastard raised the golden diadem he carried in his hands, gently placing it atop Saeris’s head.
Her eyelids fluttered as she came back to herself, and my reality sharpened to a knife’s point.
She was vulnerable with him standing so close.
Too vulnerable. I bristled, my fingers prickling.
Patience, the quicksilver whispered.
Ever since Te Léna had partnered with Iseabail to tease the quicksilver out of me, the whispering in my head had been less frantic.
Sharper. Easier to understand. Together, healer and witch had achieved what neither had been able to accomplish alone.
The thread of quicksilver that lingered inside of me no longer made me feel like I was hanging on to my sanity by my fingernails.
For the first time since it had infected me as a youth, I had begun to think of the quicksilver as more of a blessing than a curse.
It urged caution now, as I watched Ereth like a hawk. Wait. Wait. Be patient . . .
Patience had never been my strong suit. The maze had changed that for me. I held my position, giving Ereth the benefit of the doubt. I knew very little of him. It was unlikely that he would move so quickly after—
Nope.
I was right.
I fucking knew it.
The blade that appeared in the Lord’s hand had a handle wrapped with a leather thong.
It must have been causing him serious discomfort this whole time; he’d been keeping it inside his cloak, tucked away against his side.
The blade was vicious, needlelike, and flashed bright silver: the perfect weapon for a vampire noble, inexperienced in the art of fighting, to drive through their enemy’s eardrum and straight into their brain.
Ereth moved quickly.
I moved quicker.
Saeris reacted, too, the dazed gloss to her eyes fading away. She reached for the dagger I had given her, but I was already there, slamming into the Lord.
Ereth made a guttural guhhhhh! sound as he flew back, the air rushing out of him. He crashed down hard on the dais steps. Raising the hand with the blade in it, he went to throw it, but—
I reached over my shoulder.
My hand closed around Nimerelle’s hilt.
In a beat, the sword was gone.
I hurled her with all my might.
The honed metal cut through the air, spinning end over end, arcing at the last minute and slicing straight through Ereth’s torso on a diagonal, cleaving him in two.
Nimerelle landed point-first, juddering, the blade burying five inches deep into the obsidian dais.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Ereth’s body was much less graceful when he struck the floor.
His insides were black, his organs necrotic, the ichor that oozed out of him thick and stinking of tar.
Death had perched on this monster’s shoulder for so long that he wasn’t going to waste much time claiming his prize now.
Nimerelle was a god sword, after all—laced with silver and the magic of the gods.
I might not have decapitated Ereth, but the bastard was lying in two pieces on the ground. The blow would kill him.
To my left, three high bloods wearing black tabards with bloodred dragons depicted on them writhed on the steps.
They’d come to their leader’s aid, it seemed, only to be felled by someone else’s hand.
Taladaius stood at the base of the dais, hand outstretched, expression blank as he unleashed his magic upon the vampires.
There was a reason the previous king of this court had made Tal his second in command.
He never flaunted his magic, but the male was powerful.
Even before he’d transitioned, Tal had been able to manipulate most liquids.
All liquids, in fact, apart from quicksilver.
Blood was a liquid . . . and right now, he was boiling the blood in the high bloods’ veins.
Steam poured from their open mouths, their screams silent as they died, and Tal observed their passing with a look of expertly crafted boredom.
Scandalized mutters went up throughout the hall—to use such taboo magic against members of his own court was rare indeed, but not unheard of.
Rumor had it Malcolm enjoyed watching his subjects smoke whenever they stepped out of line.
Saeris hadn’t ordered Tal to act, though.
He’d acted of his own volition. There would be consequences, to be sure, but that was none of my concern.
Saeris was behind me.
It only took a second to scan her for injuries. She appeared to be unharmed, but I didn’t trust my own eyes. I needed to hear her say it. Are you okay? I demanded.
Yes. I—I’m fine.
My relief was absolute. Stay there, then. Wait for me. No one else is getting up these steps. Amid the screams of horror and panic that erupted throughout the hall, I slowly stepped down from the dais to the platform, toward where the two separate pieces of Ereth’s broken body lay.
“I bet you’re regretting that,” I snarled.
Thin black liquid bubbled out of the Lord’s mouth, spackling his lips and his chin. “She is . . . anathema. Cursed,” he choked out. “The g-gods denounce . . . her.”
“Really?” I crouched down next to him. “Is that so?” I was still missing my bracer.
I raised my right hand to show him what my armor and Saeris’s gloves had been hiding from view: the extensive tattoos that marked us—and our union—as divinely bound.
Ereth had been Fae once. He knew the stories.
He had certainly heard tales of couples who were God-Bound.
His eyes went wide when he saw the ink circling my wrists.
Ink that had formed in the maze, when Saeris had been pulled through the quicksilver and into the realm of the gods themselves.
“They haven’t denounced her. They have safeguarded her.
” And maybe that wasn’t true. God-Bound unions often ended in death.
But Saeris had already died once, and I’d done way more than my fair share of dying back in the maze.
As far as I was concerned, Death had taken his due from us. I had to see the marks as a blessing.
Laughter burbled up out of Ereth, the sound a wet rattle. “You f-fool. W-we have different gods.”
And then he was gone.
Between breaths, the monster’s body crumpled to ash.
An enraged scream pierced the air, and there was Zovena, charging not toward me, but toward the sword still embedded in the center of the five-point star mosaic that decorated the platform.
I rose to my feet, baring my teeth. “Touch it, Zovena. Go on, I fucking dare you.”
The bitch stopped dead in her tracks, but not because common sense had claimed her; a streak of silver rippled across my vision, and Tal was there, tackling the female vampire to the ground.
“Stop!”
Saeris’s shout crashed through the Hall of Tears, and at her command, the remaining Lords, Tal and Zovena, and the high blood vampires rioting in their seats just stopped.
“I am ruler of this court, and I will be heard!” She stood at the edge of the dais, beautiful and terrible as a storm, the air rippling and distorting around her.
I wasn’t a member of the Sanasrothian Court, but even my ears rang with her authority.
It brought a number of the other high born vampires in the front benches to their knees.
“From this point forth, whenever you are in my presence, this is how you will greet me: on your knees! All subjects of the Blood Court of Sanasroth are forbidden from harming, hindering, or killing me, my mate, or any of my friends. Additionally, from this moment onward, no feeder enthralled to a high blood of this court may be used for the purposes of war, malice, or mayhem. I have spoken. It is done!”
A shock wave of power blasted through the hall, pulling at people’s clothes and causing them to shield their eyes.
Saeris had delivered her own edicts. The first laws of a new monarch, passed with force. The first steps of our plan were in place.