Chapter 5 #2
She had him pinned. Her uncle watched from the side with hunger in his eyes. She knew what he wanted next. What he expected. Instead, she held him there, her weapon pressed against him.
Stake, pike, or sword through the heart of a vampire. It was all the same.
“Y-yield,” her defeated opponent said, fear flashing through his gaze.
“Do not stand down.” Uncle’s steel voice cut through her indecision, making her flinch with its sudden nearness. He was next to her, looming over them. “Finish him.”
Her sweaty hand tightened on the pike. “I don’t know what he is guilty of.”
“Have you not learned by now? They are all the same. Traitors, rebels. He sought to steal my portion of the scepter. Tried to assassinate me, your mother…”
The male under her weapon sucked in a shaky breath. “N-no. I did—”
“END HIM. If you love me, if you loved your father, you’d end him. Remember what your hesitation cost you before.”
Her hesitation. That night. That night she had cost her father his life. And now…
“Do you love me? Do you love this kingdom?” Her uncle’s voice ground through her thoughts, demanding, relentless, a jagged knife striking against the uncertainty stilling her movements.
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“Then end him.”
It was always the same story. She had to prove that she loved him by butchering rebels and traitors. Sometimes she hesitated and others she didn’t. But always the memory of that night of her father’s death caused her to cave. She pressed the tip of the awl pike deeper into the man’s chest.
“Please, I'm innocent.”
They invariably said that when she got to this point. They consistently tried to bargain or work their way out, but Aryana had been tricked once, she had hesitated once, been manipulated once in the name of love.
She wouldn’t allow it to happen again.
The vampire’s cries burned in her ears as she drove the pike through his chest, ignoring the sounds of it crushing through his body, piercing his heart.
His eyes grew empty, the fear frozen in place as his jaw hung wide.
A sudden shudder ran through her. They always appeared that way when she was finished with them.
She straightened to meet her uncle’s gaze but only found displeasure there.
“I thought you had learned by now. I thought you trusted me.”
She stepped forward, his disappointment crushing down on her. She pressed a hand to her chest to stave off the ache. “I do, Uncle. I do. I love you.”
“Then why did you hesitate?”
“I-I don’t know. I don’t—” Why, after all this time, had she hesitated? The fear in the male’s eyes, his gasps, his pleas.
Her uncle shook his head. “You are still weak. Allowing feelings to cloud your judgment. If you are to protect my throne, you cannot hesitate. You must show only love, only loyalty to me. I’m afraid until you learn this, you will be a danger to our kingdom.”
His words were blows landing on an already battered body. Her throat burned with shame. “Yes, Uncle.”
He motioned to the guards standing by the wall, clubs in hands. “I must teach you a lesson. You will take it. You will not fight.”
She trembled but dropped the pike and bowed before her uncle. “As you wish, Uncle.”
“Someday I’ll discern from your actions that you love me. Until then, you’ll bear the punishment of failure.”
With that, he turned and strode off, not once looking back as the first vampire guard brought his club cracking across Aryana’s shoulders, making her cry out as she fell to the floor, and the next guard stepped forward with another club raised.
After her beating, Aryana sat in her bedchamber at her vanity table and laid the cool cloth against her bruised and broken skin. She needed to feed and then her blood would rejuvenate and she’d heal. She healed faster with fresh blood in her system. A knock prompted her to face the doorway.
Her mother stood there, looking at her with nothing but pity in her eyes. “How are you feeling, my bonnet?”
Aryana’s mother had married her uncle shortly after Aryana’s father had died. She didn’t want to judge her mother, but she’d learned a long time ago not to rely on the female for protection or for anything that mattered.
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t be too hard on yourself. You did your best.”
Aryana shook her head. “He thinks I’m not loyal enough. As if any second, I am going to turn on him.”
“I know he says that he’s doing it to make you strong—.”
“I am strong.”
Her mother wrapped her arms around her own waist, her brows pulled together. “We do what we must for our children. So that they may survive. So that we all can survive.”
Aryana glowered at her mother. Like she knew anything about being strong, about doing what was necessary to survive.
Her mother’s eyes landed on the bruises on Aryana’s body, and she frowned. For a moment something fierce flashed in the female’s gaze, but then it was gone and her shoulders drooped. “Do as he asks, darling. That is all that we can do.”
And that was what it always came down to. Aryana forced a sickly sweet smile. “Whatever you say, Mama.”
Just then a woman appeared in the doorway. Old wrinkles carved her face, and although she was dressed in a nice enough gown, she ducked her head in submission. Despite the satin scarf about her neck, her human scent flooded Aryana’s nostrils. “You called for me, Your Majesty?”
“Yes,” Aryana’s mother said. “It is time for me to feed.”
The woman was her mother’s human giver. A few vampires had one person that they fed from most or all of the time. Sometimes the relationships were based on consent. Most of the time they weren’t.
The woman, Enela, bowed. “As you wish.”
Her mother merely nodded and turned, but then paused and spun back to Aryana. “You mean more to me than anything. You’re aware of that, aren’t you, bonnet?”
Aryana held in a derisive laugh, schooling her face into a passive expression. “Of course, Mama.”
And with that, her mother nodded again and headed from the room to go and feed on her human.
The reality was, Aryana had deserved her beating.
She hadn’t proved her loyalty. She’d been silly, foolish, letting compassion cloud her judgment, making her forget the one most important thing.
Love was conditional. Love was selfish. Love was never strong enough to usurp the need for personal gain.
Love was weak. Aryana deserved every bruise, so she didn’t understand why she resented her mother’s lack of involvement, or her pointless admissions of caring.
After tending to her wounds and sneaking down to the dungeons, where her uncle constantly kept humans to slake her thirst, she crept along the castle’s dark hallways.
The moment of solitude calmed her tumultuous thoughts, and she reveled in it.
Most of the vampires at this hour were outside the castle hunting or on the upper floors or in their rooms, sharing special intimate moments.
And she was alone, breathing in the ancient stones’ silence that enveloped her as a familiar friend in the stillness.
She moved past uncle’s bedchamber and paused to hear raised voices.
“You told her he was a traitor,” her mother’s voice snapped. Aryana froze. She’d never heard her mother use such a tone with her uncle before.
“Like all the others,” Uncle replied.
“Yes, and like all the others, this one wasn’t. You simply wanted him dead so his father would learn his lesson and stop opposing you at court. Or did you think like the one before that he and I were—”
“Enough.”
Aryana’s breath sped up as betrayal sliced through her, hot and thick.
“Your paranoia is out of control,” her mother said, “and you can’t keep taking it out on Aryana.”
Uncle wasn’t having Aryana kill traitors. He was having her kill whomever he wanted for his own political gain. He'd turned her into his own personal assassin.
“You don’t love me. You aren’t loyal enough to this kingdom. You are weak. Remember your father…”
“I am the king,” Uncle threatened, his voice low. “I’ll do what I want. You keep that pretty mouth shut or you know the consequences—” He cut himself off as he inhaled sharply. “Who is there? Aryana?”
Rage seared into Aryana to hear him threaten her mother, and she almost shoved into the room. But her pain and bewilderment had her spinning around and racing down the hall away from the doorway, tears burning in her eyes. How could Uncle hurt her in that way? Treat her that way? Use her that way?
She ran down the steps of the castle, grabbing one of the many cloaks that waited at the front entrance before speeding out across the cobblestone, out into the night, and into the deep darkness of the woods.
The world came crashing back around Aryana. She gasped for breath at the memory, at her racing heart, at the harsh ache of betrayal and rage that stole through her.
Zarathos sat at the now paused spinning wheel. He stared at her, something unreadable flickering across his face. Her finger was still on the needle. Blood pooled on the floor. A lot of it. How long had they been at it?
“Did you see that?” she whispered, for the first time afraid that he had witnessed such a vulnerable moment.
Jumping up, he turned from her. “We’re done,” he said coldly. He unhooked the needle from the spinning wheel and tucked it in his cloak.
“Did we finish?” she asked, slightly panicked.
Without meeting her gaze, he gestured at the gold strands coiled around five full spindles laying on the floor.
The straw in the room was completely used up.
“As promised.” He stalked toward the shadows.
“I’m sure the king will demand a repeat of such a performance.
Make certain he understands you can only perform such a deed in solitude. I shall return tomorrow at nightfall.”
And with that, darkness gathered around him, and he vanished.