Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Void Pyramids, Blood Kingdom
Lanlin
My mouth tastes of nectar and roses.
Magic that isn’t mine — elemental and untamed — binds me. It keeps my eyes closed and my body as still as a broken puppet in the Eternal Royal Nest.
My own magic is drained like I knew it would be. I am weak in a way that I don’t remember being after I was dragged to the Scarlet Temple.
On my fangs, it is terrifying.
Yet I am alive.
For a few moments longer, I live.
And there is power in that.
Pain throbs through my temples like a heartbeat. Yet I am distracted by the high still buzzing through me from touching the heavens. I have never drunk so much blood in one sitting. I never dreamed that I would drink this much from my Blood Lover.
But now, how will I be able to resist?
Somewhere, someone is weeping.
The heart-wrenching sound pulls at me.
I struggle to open my eyes.
On my fangs, it is hard.
A lion roars. Then a rough tongue licks across my cheek, and I grimace.
I try to open my eyes again and find myself staring up into Devil’s swirling eyes. She licks me again, before she snarls. Then she leaps off the bed and slinks to join her sister, who is pacing around the bed.
I take a deep breath, struggling to fill my burning lungs. Then I focus on the Omega who is weeping over me…and the fae who is pale and unmoving next to me.
I push myself up onto my elbows. “Dearheart, do not cry…”
Freya drops Daire’s hand and snatches up her dagger. She scrambles closer to me, pushing the blade to my throat with a shaking hand.
I am fucking proud of my Queen.
She is dressed again in her white dress, although it is creased and stained with blood.
When did she put it back on?
“W-w-why did you do t-t-this?” Freya sobs. “You made an oath t-t-hat you would never harm a Blood Lover. I’m such an idiot t-t-hat I believed you. I t-thought that I’d lost both of you, asshole. Make him w-wake up. Please…”
I blink. “Our King knew that my Blood Lover must be drained. I warned him what would happen. It’s part of the ritual.
I wouldn’t survive the binding of my magic with yours otherwise.
As soon as I feed him back my blood, he will wake up with nothing more serious than a headache like mine.
Drowsy but very much alive. He’s fulfilled our deal. ”
My eyes widen when Freya throws down the dagger and dives on me.
She snatches me by my hair, twisting the ribbons around her fist. I grunt in pain, as she drags me up.
She is stronger than I am right now, and I haven’t yet recovered full sensation in my legs.
She is most beautiful like this, my fierce Omega.
When Shadow and Devil prowl closer to the bed protectively, shadow tendrils weaving out of them, I command them to stay back with a wave of my hand.
“It’s been hours.” Freya shakes me. I can see the dry tear tracks on her cheeks, beneath the fresh tears. Her eyes are red-rimmed. “Neither Daire nor you would move. I was trapped out here on my wedding night…and I tried everything…I thought…”
She raises her hand like she’s going to slap me, but then, she lowers her palm and drops me back onto the piles of cushions.
I wish that I had been able to feel her sharp touch.
She pushes her closed fist against my chest over my heart. “My pack left me.”
On my blood, I don’t want to leave Freya. I’ve never wanted anything less.
But tonight is a goodbye.
After being torn from my twin, the other half of my soul, I swore that I would never become close to anyone again because saying goodbye to Lazarus wrecked me.
Here I am, however, doing it again.
I swallow. “I beg your forgiveness, my Queen.”
I ease my arm around Freya’s shoulders, as she allows me to pull her down against my chest.
She sniffs at my neck, taking deep, frantic breaths of my pheromones.
“How about you stop doing things that need it?” She nips my scent gland.
“As you wish.”
Freya wipes roughly at her eyes, peering up at me. “You say that. But it’s not my fucking wish for you to keep secrets.”
I glance over her head at Daire, assessing him.
I understand why Freya has been distressed. As soon as I complete the ritual, however, he will awake like something out of a fairytale for fledglings.
Resurrected.
I didn’t realize that I would lose control as much as I did, when I drank so much of his blood.
Yet it was intoxicating.
I wince, when I notice how savagely Daire’s neck is torn. It will likely scar.
Yet a small part of me is proud of that.
It is a claiming mark from our wedding night. It feels right.
No matter if he chooses to become the Blood Lover for another vampire in the future, which sparks a possessive pain through me, that vampire will always have to see the mark I left on him.
He was mine first.
Daire’s ravens are settled on the cedar frame of the nest, watching me with sharp eyes and sharper beaks. I sense that they will peck out my soft parts if I make a wrong move.
I admire them for their protectiveness as much as I admire my Omega.
I turn my attention back to Freya. “You mean like the secrets Daire and you kept from me? The ones that you wish me to simply forgive?”
Freya flinches, before squirming in my hold.
“Ehm, we’re having that conversation now, are we?
Okay, I’ve had a rough few hours…weeks…months…
lifetime. I have thought about how I would talk about this with you so many times in my head.
Also, talked about it with Daire. If it doesn’t come out right, however, blame it on the shit you just put me through. ”
“And I beg you to blame my sharpness or rough edges on the ritual that is making me feel like a wolf transformed into a puppy.”
“A puppy?” Freya glances at me through her eyelashes, and her lips twitch. “Still, one with fangs.”
“Even a puppy can bite.” I trace my finger over a bloodstain on her dress.
“It’s not mine,” Freya mumbles. “I used it to stem the bleeding from Daire’s neck.”
I stiffen.
Did I truly bite him that hard?
I barely remember.
Freya nuzzles my throat. “Look, we lied, and I’m sorry.
The Council were going to execute us. Aurelius gifted us to you to save our lives.
It hurts him to be parted from us. I was trained to spy on you.
Daire was devastated to have to hide his identity.
He has already lost so fucking much. The dragons stripped him of his Crown, title, and name.
He’s lost his family, friends, and land.
They burned…everything. Then humiliated and paraded him through their streets in a cage.
He may once have been your enemy but now, the dragons turned him into their pet, courtesan, and assassin.
And when we first came here, we were told that you were a… ”
When she trails off, my lips thin.
“A monster?” I supply. “A beast? The terrifying Shadow Vampire King who would likely rip out your throats?”
My eyes blaze with rage before I can control myself, and I hate that Freya flinches.
“Why would you not think that?” I push her away with the little strength that I have, and she sits up with a startled expression. “When you are the Queen of Fang Kingdom?”
Freya blanches, clutching a velvet cushion to her chest like a shield.
“You knew,” she says so quietly that if I were not a vampire, I would not hear the words.
I sprawl in the rich linen, staring up at the ancient stars above me.
The moon is still.
I concentrate, summoning my bats who remained amongst the pyramids and so survived being burned by the dragons. The bats stream across the moon, which is starting to become tinged red at the edges like blood dropped into water.
It won’t be long until the Blood Moon is here.
I don’t look at the pyramids.
If I don’t look at them, then I can pretend that the howling Void won’t open at any moment.
I can pretend that the time hasn’t come that I have dreaded for the last three years…the time for me to throw myself in and sacrifice myself to save the world.
Save my Omega.
“I guessed.” I stare up at the sky, mapping it with my gaze.
This will be the last time that I can.
After all, this is my last night alive.
In my harsh training in the desert, when I was thrown out amongst traps, ambushes, and wild animals when I was younger by the Chief Priestess, Nebet, I learned to survive by reading the night sky.
Now, I simply want to revel in its beauty one final time.
“When did you work out who I was?” Freya demands.
“When you allowed me to use my Power to let out your shifter side. Your shifter side had been cruelly bound by someone powerful. Why would someone suppress your ability? Your wolf is glorious. Noble. I realized then that nobody would do that to a servant, the only orphan survivor of the massacre, unless they had something to hide. You are the same age as the princess who was supposedly killed.”
“By vampires,” Freya snarls.
“Possibly,” I concede. “I was not raised in the Blood Court to know and was only a baby myself when the slaughter took place. From what Heka told me when I asked him, however, the Orm Massacre may not have been the wiping out of one court by another in a straightforward way.”
“How can you talk about it that coldly?”
“Do I sound cold? I am just trying to be clear with facts.”
“What do you mean?”
“Heka has little interest in state affairs, and I do not trust the word of anyone else in the Blood Court. Perhaps, it was the same as the dragons burning the Winter Court or poisoning my dynasty, or maybe there’s more to it than we know.”
“Your parents killed mine. You simply don’t want to admit it.” She glares at me. “Yet you’d hold onto your grudge against Daire. That’s what I know.”
I narrow my eyes. “If my ancestors committed such acts, then I will atone any way that you wish, my dear.”