Reassigned
Ihad declined Rhazien’s invitations to dine or visit him since he’d returned from the Northern Hive, which meant he’d doubled the amount of gifts he sent me daily.
Every surface in my room was covered in black boxes with satin bows.
Most of which remained unopened, all of which were accompanied by a handwritten note.
And they all ended the same, ‘Love, Rhazien.’
Love.
Rhazien loved me.
He was in love with me.
And so was Dommik.
I hadn’t seen him either, which was probably for the best. His words had burrowed their way deep into my soul. I would toss and turn, repeating them to myself. Comparing what he’d said to every memory I had since meeting him. Looking for any sign of friction or lies. But there were none.
I knew there’d been attraction, curiosity, and lust. But love?
Love was something else.
Initially, I’d blamed his confliction on tasting me, but he’d claimed it was more than the blood amplifying his feelings.
As my mind spiraled, I realized how little I knew about the experience of living as a vampire.
If I go through with this—the binding ceremony—it would be the first step to being turned.
A stack of gift boxes toppled from a side table and I refocused my gaze back to my reflection in the ornate, oversized mirror.
It was three days until Solstice and the royal seamstress was fitting me for the upcoming events. Multiple feasts and balls and finally, the main event—the Offering. Each garment was completely unique, custom-made for my body, and would complement a similar outfit for Rhazien.
I guess when you have a never-ending life of nights, you’re also gifted time to hone your talents, perfect your craft, and produce copious amounts of drawings.
And my dress for the Solstice Offering was nothing short of stunning, like the designer had plucked stars from the night sky and sewn them into the fabric.
The sleeves did little for support, but offered a visual cascade from one shoulder to my bare collarbone before diving into a dramatic, symmetrical plunge nearly to my navel. It hugged the lines of my body perfectly and the dark fabric created an illusion of a midnight puddle at my feet.
“Perfection.” Gorvin applauded from behind me.
I blushed and avoided his gaze.
“Oh come, Lady Reyva. Don’t be bashful. You deserve every compliment in this gown. And this isn’t even the finished ensemble. Everyone, just everyone, is going to fawn over you. I hope you’re ready for that.” He made a few notes as he showered me with compliments.
The steward I’d met just a month prior was void of emotions. All business, that Gorvin, Rhazien had said. Yet, with each passing day, Gorvin’s excitement compounded.
My heart cracked as he spoke with the lingering attendants about my hair and accessories to accompany the gown.
To Gorvin, it was more than just Solstice.
It was a long-awaited event—Rhazien declaring a prospect, becoming bound, ascending to King of Immortals—and Gorvin would rise with him. With…us.
“What do you think, Lady Reyva? How does it make you feel?” He leaned in eagerly, parchment and quill ready to note any alterations.
I turned away from him, back to the mirror. The woman in the reflection was dressed like royalty. Her role was to be the key to Rhazien’s ascension, which could save countless lives. Although we still needed Lorana’s stone to wake the Original.
Even if we didn’t locate and retrieve it in the coming days, Winter Solstice would still be a momentous event.
For the first time, a ruling regent would become shadowbound to a prospect.
The responsibilities placed on a ruler didn’t care whether or not I was ready for it, trained for it, had other plans or dreams for my life.
I swallowed thickly, wondering about the ruler I might grow to be in ten, fifty, two hundred years.
“It’s absolutely stunning. I never could have dreamt of a dress this grand. You are truly a master artist.” The seamstress was still fettering away at the hem of the dress but looked up with a mouthful of pins and nodded in thanks.
“No changes, then?” Gorvin prompted. His brows raised as if to encourage me to speak up.
“I wouldn’t dare change a thing.” I ran my hands down the sides of the gown.
The seamstress beamed up at me like she’d never received a compliment before. Her smile fell as she looked at Gorvin, no doubt a past source of emotionless critique.
A knock at the door made us all turn.
“That will be the accessories,” Gorvin stood. “Enter!”
My breath hitched as it wasn’t the expected accessories, but Rhazien, who entered the room. His gaze landed on me like a fly falling willingly into a spider's web. He struggled to focus on one detail of the gown. My exposed neck and collar, the curve-hugging bodice.
Gorvin dropped into his signature sweeping bow. “Your Majesty. We weren’t expecting you.”
“Apologies for the intrusion.” Rhazien swallowed, his eyes dragging over every detail from my feet, up, up, up, until he finally met my eyes.
I was conflicted. Flattered and disgusted. I wanted him to miss me, but I wanted nothing to do with him. My emotions wrestled over their contradictions as I stood, breathless, staring back at the vampire who wanted to offer his shadow to me.
“Ravishing, isn’t she?” Gorvin swiveled from his regent to me.
“Yes,” Rhazien agreed in a pained whisper.
“You like it?” I don’t know why I asked but a nagging desire cared that he liked it. Rhazien pressed his lips into a thin line, unmoving.
The seamstress stepped away, the attendants began packing their things, and I stood staring back at the sad green eyes reflecting in the mirror behind me.
“Majesty?” Gorvin had his quill at the ready. “Was there something you needed?”
Rhazien cleared his throat. “I was growing concerned that my invitations, notes, and gifts weren’t making their way to you, Lady Reyva.” He surveyed the stacked black gift boxes around the room and gestured widely. “But I see they’ve been delivered.”
“You have my thanks,” I said, lowering my head but not much else so I didn’t disturb the pins protruding from the inky fabric.
Rhazien’s disappointment hung in the creases of his frown. I couldn’t blame him. It was short, cold, distant. Too formal for what we’d been before the Northern Hive.
“Are you nearly done then?” he asked the seamstress.
“Yes, Majesty,” she replied. Rhazien poured himself a drink from one of the sample decanters and sat facing the fire.
Minutes later, I emerged from behind a changing screen wearing a black silk robe and watched as the entourage of dressmaker attendants exited my chambers.
The latch to the grand wooden door clicked softly and we were alone.
Rhazien stood and began to reach for me, but the regent flinched, rethinking the movement. He seemed flustered and I wondered if he’d felt unsure of how to act around a woman.
“Preparations seem to be going well.” Rhazien picked up a cracker topped with salmon and an orange-hued sauce. He turned the morsel, inspecting it, before setting it back down. “Honestly, I’m relieved there are still preparations in progress.”
He was nervous, worried even. Everything he hoped for the future of his kingdom hinged on my ability to locate Lorana’s stone and the agreement to become bound. And I needed to agree. Needed to willingly accept the offer to be bound to him.
The stone was a whole other issue I didn’t know how to tackle.
I hadn’t breathed a word of my splintered vision to anyone.
If I could just try again, maybe my magic could get some clarification.
Was it pulling Cova because it was a book about our familial line?
Or was the stone set into her necklace truly Lorana’s stone?
Either way, the Solstice Offering was still on the table. Too many people knew about it, expected it, for it to be called off. The scandal would echo through vampiric history for centuries if it were cancelled…or if I refused him.
“Gorvin would never allow a pause in progress,” I quipped as Rhazien gestured to the decanter of wine. I nodded. Wine would be a necessary buoy for the choppy waters we were entering.
“Gorvin won’t admit that his pride hangs in the balance of a well-executed event.” We shared a laugh. The steward offered familiar common ground, but we were tiptoeing a fine line between neutral and contentious territory.
“Solstice will be beautiful,” I said into my goblet before raising it again. “To Gorvin.”
Our goblets chimed as they met. Then, Rhazien amended, “To you."
His flattery was appreciated but didn’t inspire the giddy warmth it once had. Not when I knew he’d been touched and pleasured by the harem of human slaves in the Northern Hive.
Rhazien motioned for us to sit in the twin emerald chairs in front of my fireplace that matched the deep greens of his eyes. Everything felt calculated, awkward. The opposite of how we’d naturally coexisted before.
I leaned back into the tufted chair and let my silk robe fall away, exposing my bare legs underneath. A muscle worked in his jaw. Like he was straining to hold eye contact and not shift his attention to my skin.
We were firmly back at square one. A place where I, again, held every ounce of power.
“Something wrong, Your Majesty?” I held a coy smile at bay.
“Yes,” he admitted, his voice reaching a guttural depth. “Deeply wrong.”
“Oh?” I said into my goblet. The addictive sense of control wrapped itself around the smoky notes of the wine.
I felt unsure about so much, but I was confident in two things. That he not only needed me, but that he wanted me. And those things were different, but together it meant I held all the cards.
“Reyva, do you realize how old I am?” He leveled me with a heated glare.
Ready for battle, I said, “You’ve told me. Although the time is hard to comprehend.”
“In all that time, do you remember how many prospects I have had?”
Yes. It was only mentioned every day of these preparations.
“Just me.” The responsibility weighed on my whisper.
“That’s right.” Red liquid threatened to leap from his goblet as he tipped it this way and that. “And I don’t intend on having another. It’s you or no one.”
Me or no one. A pile of bricks on my chest would have felt lighter.
The declaration pulled my gut in two directions. Part of me wanted to believe him, to lean into the finality of it—the importance of my role—while my mental opposition said not to trust it. Not to trust him.
Stopping Eryx and keeping Atoris from descending into incomprehensible devastation was too important. He would not abandon his great matter if I refused him. There would absolutely be another prospect. Maybe not right away, maybe not for many years. But eventually, there would be someone.
The mental tug of war raged as I drifted to absently stare at the dancing flames of the well-fed hearth.
“Reyva.” My gaze lifted at the silky sound of my name. “I need you to know that I want to see you happy. I want to make you happy.”
His brows were knit tightly together and I ran my tongue across the roof of my mouth as I considered his words.
“I’m trying. And I feel—” he set the wine glass down and leaned forward on his knees “—shut out.”
The man sitting across from me was no ordinary gentleman caller. He was a ruler. A regent on the cusp of ascension. He’d conceded to my absence instead of commanding me to join him for an event. He’d given me the space I’d asked for when I denied his invitations.
Of course he felt shut out. I’d let him in and he hurt me, deeply. Could I trust he wouldn’t do it again if I left the door to my heart unlocked, letting him come and go as he pleased?
What was worse, he knew that I knew what he’d done. Yet he hadn’t broached the subject. He’d asked for an opportunity to fix things between us, but all I saw was expensive gifts with empty meaning.
The black boxes filling the flat surfaces of my room used to represent effort.
Receiving them lit me up. But what I realized along the way was, I didn’t want or need more things.
No, what I wanted—what I needed from him was something he’d withheld.
His presence. His time. Unyielding devotion.
He had proven to be as predictable as any other royal spoiled by years of praise and attention.
And given his position, I wasn’t sure he could ever grant me enough of the true gift I needed. His kingdom would always come first.
I had to ask myself, could I do this again? Be the lonely wife to an important man? Sleep in my room with only the company of the priceless gems he gifted me?
As I stared at the dejected regent, I realized Shaw was right. Somewhere along the way, Dommik had become something more. More than a curiosity, attraction, or lust.
He wasn’t just someone to me. He was special.
How long had I felt this way and not admitted it?
I reminded myself that while my future with Rhazien may be repetitive and unfulfilling, the work that could be done when he ascended could change our world as we knew it.
It would usher in a new way of life between vampires and humans.
The barbaric practices of the Northern Hive would be permanently outlawed, saving generations of humans from meeting terrible fates.
It would be a better, safer world. For Lydia. And all future citizens of Atoris.
Would it be worth it? Risking that future to follow my heart?
After a long silence, his head drooped slightly. “We’re mere days away and I need you to tell me if I’m a fool for being hopeful. Hopeful that carrying on with preparations means you still have intentions to accept my offer at Solstice.”
His eyes looked to mine, searching.
He’d waited this long for a prospect, he could wait a little longer.
“I appreciate your visit.” The words were coated in the same layer of frost that blanketed the flora outside the castle walls. Winter was seemingly also awaiting my decision before making its official arrival.
“Oh, you should know. You’re going to have a different guard going forward,” Rhazien said over his shoulder as he rose to leave. “I’ve reassigned Commander Thorne.”