Pesky Sunlight
Rhazien Kyrell was dead.
Dead.
And somehow, I wasn’t. I thought I’d gone into the abyss. Not passing onto the next life or realm or whatever was in store after my final breath but to the vast nothingness. A place where the shades existed in the unending prison between the living and the immortals.
But when I awoke, my heart was beating. The reliable thump, thump, thump was slow and labored as it worked to pump what blood remained in my body.
I was alive. And I was relieved.
“Rey?” a whisper echoed beyond my closed lids. A familiar voice. A familiar nickname. The voice reached out again as I blinked, bringing the brick ceiling into view.
Gray, uneven stones swirled together above me and I slammed my eyes shut again. I was going to be sick. Slowly, the aches and discomfort of still existing in my human body revealed themselves, like peeling back the layers of a discarded onion.
The creeping nausea, my pounding head, stiff muscles deprived of stolen blood constricted in protest to my minimal movements.
I was a host to more discomfort and pain than I’d ever experienced.
Second only to delivering Lydia into this cruel world.
But all signs pointed to the same undeniable fact. I was—somehow—still alive.
“Rey!” Cova’s annoyance reverberated across the stones, sending even the well-fed rats skittering back into their holes.
Shut it, I wanted to hiss back. The fight in me died with the cold, biting metal shackled around my hands and feet.
I cleared my throat and croaked, “Yes. I’m here.”
A distant sigh of relief was followed by the echoes of sniffling.
My irons sang as I rolled to my side, still afraid I may retch on the dungeon floor.
“You’ve been out for nearly a day,” Cova rasped.
Part by part, I checked in with my body, waking up the bones and nerves. I didn’t reserve my groans and gasps as my depleted body struggled to obey simple commands.
It didn’t feel real. What I did feel was heavy. Like my veins were filled with the same iron holding me hostage and empty from the shattered bond all at once.
“Fuck…” I strained as my calf muscle locked and sent a fresh jolt of pain up the length of my leg.
“Auntie…please say you’re all right.” Lydia’s distinct, tender tone tiptoed between the sound of dripping water and distant jingling keys.
I pressed my toes down, forcing the muscle to submit and the pain eased enough to focus my attention back to opening my eyes.
I’d relinquished myself to the Hive to protect her, and she’d ended up locked in a vampire prison anyway. Not only that, but she’d witnessed the same horrors and I wasn’t going to waste time sugarcoating it. “Not yet. But I will be.”
If we live through this, I didn’t add. Things were bleak enough.
After a lifetime’s worth of effort, I sat upright. I exhaled, letting my head hang between my knees as I propped myself against the dungeon wall.
We were three little birds, all in a caged row. Each placed in our own separate cells.
The human keep had only one, slim opening in the walls that barely qualified to be called a window. But the Hive dungeon was submerged in the Irriset mountainside. It was windowless, lightless. The kind of place that completely suffocates any trace of hope.
As if there was any hope to harbor.
The image of Rhazien's headless body tumbling on top of Orla’s lifeless corpse would stay ingrained in my memory until I cease to exist, in whatever form I am when I finally pass to the other side.
I lifted my hands to my head, trying to physically rub away the sound his crown made as it clanged on the dais, but the chains shackled around my wrists and ankles only made the memory louder, more clear.
Cova still wore her torn dress from the ceremony and her signature sneer. Good. She would need all her wit and armor if we were going to even attempt to escape.
My gaze dropped to her collarbone. Our family heirloom—the necklace containing the shard of Lorana’s stone—was gone.
Eryx must have taken it.
My sister’s form had soft edges that shifted and multiplied, triggering more nausea. I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know how bad the situation was. “What happened? After…Eryx bit me.”
Lydia began to cry softly and my heart broke for her. She’d lived a comfortable, sheltered life, which is exactly what I’d hoped for her. A life filled with ease, safety, security. Not this.
Cova let out a long exhale while she tried to decide where to begin, but wasn’t given the chance. Metal meeting metal rang through the poorly lit space.
The shrill tapping grew closer, and closer, until a form emerged from the dark. His gaunt, pale face made him look like a specter here to claim my soul as his own.
“I’ll admit…I’m jealous I’m not the only one to know your taste,” Vaspar hissed as he leaned his face against the bars of my cell. Onyx eyes surveyed my exposed skin. “I dreamt of you. Daily.”
The walls dripped with the moisture of the underground and were heavy with the remnants of despair from previous tenants.
Vaspar, who had spent the last month of his life having his tongue removed as punishment for defying Rhazien’s orders.
For tasting me. Healing and being hurt. Living in a cycle of punishment again and again in this place.
The ghoul exhaled. “But now that my master has had you—and he knows what I know—you’ll be his.”
His.
The icy hand of fear gripped my throat like an invisible chain. He meant Eryx.
But what he didn’t know was that I would rather give myself willingly to death than be used by anyone else ever again. Least of all, Eryx.
Despite the embers that threatened to ignite beneath my drained muscles, I stood. Vaspar watched me with predatory eyes as I approached him.
The cold bars bit into my palms, a stark contrast from the heat radiating at the base of my neck. My rage curled there and my next words rode the wave of anger. “I—am no one’s.”
He leaned in even further before whispering, “Now…I heard you’re everyone’s.”
“You heard wrong,” I snarled.
Vaspar scoffed and I could smell blood on his breath.
“Deny it all you want, but there are very few reasons as to why Dommik Thorne wouldn’t have been in that ballroom for your binding ceremony.
Now, what could have possibly transpired for him to either find himself uninvited or purposefully excuse himself from witnessing such a monumental event? Hmm?”
His dark brows approached his oily hairline. He knew he had me in a corner. Well, if he was such a fan of talking, I’d let him.
“And what would those be, leech?”
Vaspar ran his tongue over his canine. “My first theory is that the great Dommik Thorne had fallen out of favor. Maybe he spoke up and pushed back against Rhazien’s progressive plans one too many times.
But it’s unlikely, since His late Majesty seemed to have a bottomless well of patience for the commander. ”
I tipped my head in consideration. “He can be a persistent bother.”
An unsettling sound erupted from the gaunt vampire. Half screech, half cough. I jumped but settled back into myself once I realized the perverse noise echoing off the stone walls was his version of laughter.
“He can. He can.” He pushed away from the bars and paced.
“But that’s not the reason. No, because look at you.
But it’s not just that you’re undeniably beautiful…
” Vaspar’s dark hair was tied in a ponytail and as he took a deep inhale, letting thin wisps fall back before exhaling forcefully toward the stone ceiling. “…it’s your smell.”
His heavy onyx eyes slid back to me. “Intoxicating.”
I almost rolled my eyes. This information wasn’t new or interesting anymore.
Vaspar pulled a stubby dagger from his belt and began tossing and catching it as he resumed his pace. “But I don’t think he’d be so bold as to taste you. He likes…permission.” He shook his head as if Dommik’s preference were an unbelievable tragedy.
When his back was turned, I took the opportunity to glance at Cova, who was huddled in the farthest corner of her cell. She’d retreated while I stood strong. And my strength multiplied when I saw the awe in her eyes.
“You’d think there couldn’t be anything worse,” Vaspar continued his musings and us three little birds had no choice but to be an audience to it. A mixture of pebbles, dirt, and sand scraped beneath his boot as he stopped and faced me. “But there is…one thing.”
His dagger poked through the bars, meeting the base of my bare neck before traveling down my center, like I was a wounded doe ready for slaughter.
Lower and lower it dropped until it met my womb.
“One. Thing,” he snipped and cocked a brow. “So tell me, Reyva, did you give him that one thing?”
Without hesitation, I lifted my arms wide. “Take a look. Do you see his traces anywhere?”
“No.” His eyes lowered to his blade still lingering at my middle. “But I can’t see everything.”
“You can see plenty. Now why don’t you run along to your master like a good dog.”
Vaspar clicked his tongue and tilted his head. “Look at you. Full of fire. Even now. When things are so obviously hopeless for you.”
I steadied myself, rage heating me from the inside out. I was determined he wouldn’t get to me, wouldn’t get the reaction he sought. He craved the fear, the cowering. Thrived on it.
Unsatisfied with my demeanor, he scoffed. “Reyva…the Unbitten.” His gaze shifted to my neck. “Well, not anymore.”
I didn’t know how to fight. Didn’t know the first thing about weapons or even how to throw a proper punch.
But the smug look on his face made me wish I could pummel it until his features were unrecognizable.
Even if it wasn’t permanent. Even if it would heal.
It would be worth it. My jaw worked as I ground my teeth together.
“So, what does that make you then?” He twirled his dagger in his hands. “I’ll tell you. It makes you no one. No one special. Just another mortal fleshie. A delectable snack.”
I folded my arms over my middle and smirked. “Then why keep me alive? Why not drain me and be rid of me?”