Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
DARK KNIGHTS
Late one evening, as we head south towards Old London, I’m in my bedroom, trying to make sense of one of the documents from the library.
Sophie is sleeping on my bed, rather than in the small cubicle attached to the cockpit.
I offered it to her while one of the guards was driving the coach, hastily summoned when we left the latest reception early, after the host mistook me for a blood dancer and tried to offer me to his guests.
I frown, shuffling the pages, annoyance a sharp tang alongside the ache in my chest.
One thing this trip has made very clear is what a mistake it was to keep me hidden away.
I’m supposed to rule over half the planet.
This tour has worked, in that my face is all over the news and social media so at least people are starting to recognise me.
But any respect I’m given is because of my last name.
It’s just as I realised on my first visit to the Safe Zone.
If not for an accident of birth, I’d simply be another human.
It’s not surprising at all that Mistral want to challenge my right to rule.
Like it or not, at least half of your subjects will be vampires.
I sigh, trying to work out whether a word on the page says ‘wings’ or ‘winds’.
I chose to return to my parents’ world because I realised that the best way for me to change things was from within.
The more I learn, though, the more I realise that getting a crown on my head doesn’t make me a ruler.
Power handed to me is different to power that I earn.
The first will slip through my fingers, if I’m not clever or strong enough to hold it.
The second, though, I can wear like a mantle, like armour. Because it will be mine.
What I need to figure out is how to earn it.
I don’t want to be a ruler who stays behind walls and guards, using the iron fist of Raven to crush any opposition.
I want to make an actual fucking effort to learn about the people in my realm, in the hopes we can come to a solution on how to change things.
Stonehenge, the palaces I’ve danced in, those rusted horses, still magnificent, still rising, yet so very alone, feel like a metaphor for all that I’ve seen so far.
Humanity’s greatness, now lost to them. Vampires seem to love all that humans have wrought; why then, do they not value humans the same way?
Because they’re food.
The version of history we learn as children is what we accept, until we grow old enough to question it.
I was taught that the Red Rising was a great victory for vampires, something to be celebrated each year.
I grew up believing it, content with my mound of velvet-wrapped gifts, the chance to dance at my parents’ ball.
But now that I’ve actually seen how things are for humans, I don’t see anything triumphant about it at all.
Another thing that’s clear to me is that humans can never be truly controlled.
Perhaps the biggest mistake vampires have made is thinking they can be.
This is why I want to see my realm, understand what was lost, and what might be possible, once I gain my crown.
Why I’m out here, letting people see who the Raven will be.
I might be human, might be protected by my parents and Bertrand and the bevy of Raven guards following in the coach behind.
But that’s no different to how my parents live.
The only difference is that they have teeth.
I need to grow my own fangs, ones of steel and skill and determination.
I’m getting better at the Morningstar, at least. Still slow, but it’s coming along.
Varin says he’s pleased with me, anyway.
I frown, trying not to be distracted by thoughts of the handsome arms master, even if I have just read the same sentence four times. I continue scanning the pages. These people, whoever they were, seemed to have figured out the secret of coexistence.
Ladye Morvenna, and her dark knights who do reap all that threatens them. There are none can withstande her dark forces, subject to only the ladye. Anyone who tries ys cut down like so many stalkes of wheat.
Wait. Her ‘dark knights who do reap’? That’s quite a specific word to use. Why not just say kill, or destroy?
Her dark forces. My mind goes back to a round table with a relief carving of the realms, of white-knuckled humans in chairs. What had Jane said? We want your dark forces withdrawn. Yet my father was adamant that Raven had stopped attacking the North Wind cells.
Fuck.
Could the dark knights be Reapers? No one knows where Reapers came from, or what they stand for.
Apart from the fact they hold fealty to no house.
What if Lady Morvenna’s community still exists, and they’re defending it?
What if Reapers were attacking the North Wind because they got too close?
But then why the hell are they targeting Safe Zones, too?
The other flaw in my argument is that Reapers are not a localised phenomenon. They’re everywhere. Called Dragons in Scorpion lore, Vipers by Lion. And Jaguar calls them El Muerte, which apparently means death.
But if Lady Morvenna’s dark knights really are Reapers, then I want to know more.
The description of their community, where vampires and humans live together, is the closest thing I’ve found to what I want to achieve.
Kyle told me Reapers were taken to the pits when they were caught – it was where he was when Mistral found him – so perhaps that’s somewhere to start.
But, even if I do find a Reaper, how can I get them to tell me what they know?
The documents are pretty clear that they protect their community with their lives. It’s a long shot.
I’m still turning it over in my mind when there’s a sharp jerk of brakes.
I put the paper down, wondering what’s happening.
Then I hear voices, and the hiss of the door from below.
I get up, shoving my bare feet into boots and barrelling downstairs.
The living area is deserted, the coach door open.
I step outside to a scene of devastation.
We’re stopped near a small cluster of buildings, on a finger of land by the sea.
Homes, by the look of them, and possibly a shop.
All ruined now. Glass shattered, gaping holes in the walls as though they’ve been ripped apart, scars in the brickwork still fresh.
My parents and Varin, along with several Raven guards, are picking their way through the wreckage.
I go to join them, and tread on something soft. Oh, darkness.
It’s a little doll, a child’s toy. Now stained with dirt and something darker, more ominous, spattered across its smiling face.
‘Emelia.’ My father comes to me. ‘I don’t think you should see this.’
‘I should see it.’ Even though my stomach is roiling, I need to. My father knows it, too. He takes my arm, leading me through the debris and over a shattered wall.
‘Oh God.’ I swallow, hard.
We’re in the remains of a room, at the back of what looks like a shop.
Splintered tables and chairs are tumbled together, along with piles of ash.
Dark stains are splattered across everything; a faint, rotting scent.
And, on the most intact of the walls, a familiar symbol.
The Raven mark, scored by tattered lines. The North Wind.
‘Human remains.’ Varin pauses on the other side of the pile of broken timbers, looking down, his brow furrowed.
I don’t need to see that. ‘Was … was this one of those nomadic settlements? Did we do this?’ I try not to look at the exposed upper storey of the house next door.
A child’s bed, the coverlets ragged and stained, hangs from the remains of a pink bedroom.
As though it was ripped from it. ‘Please tell me we didn’t do this. ’
‘We did not.’
My mother comes over to us, her eyes darker than usual. ‘Aleks.’
‘We do not murder children.’ My father’s voice becomes a growl.
My mother casts sorrowful eyes across the wreckage. ‘There’s nothing we can do here.’
There never is, once death has visited. It’s not something that can be turned back. Yet it seems like I always end up here, among blood and darkness and dead humans.
If you keep taking the same path, you’ll end up at the same destination.
There’s silence, a faint glimmer in the distance heralding the dawn. Yet it’s dark, among the scattered debris. I don’t bother asking the question, because I know the answer.
If Raven didn’t do this, there’s only one possible option.
An option that, potentially, holds the key to what I want to achieve. But, as I look around at the devastation, I don’t know how I can even consider approaching them.
Reapers.