The Vampire Garden

Chapter 1 - Sea Songbird

The vampire king ignored the first twelve women.

Ignored the next six.

The merchant watched him from his knees and tried not to sweat.

There it was.

The reason the voyage had nearly sunk.

The reason a sea beast had followed them for six days across the dark water.

The reason he'd doubled the price.

The king had stopped.

His black eyes rested on a girl kneeling at the end of the line.

Golden hair spilled over one shoulder as sunlight poured from a cup.

The king rose from his throne.

No one spoke.

A line of beautiful human women knelt before him, dressed in white silk and shackled at the wrists. Any one of them could have passed for a queen in another life.

The king walked past them all.

Straight to her.

"Where is this one from?"

The merchant hurried to pull the girl to her feet.

"She was found across the dark sea, Your Majesty. She doesn't understand our language."

The girl's head remained lowered.

The merchant reached for her face.

The king caught his wrist before he could touch her.

The crack of bone echoed through the throne room.

The merchant stumbled backward with a cry.

Only then did the king look at the girl.

Slowly. Curiously.

Like he'd found something he wasn't expecting.

His hand settled against her waist.

He lowered his face to her throat.

And inhaled.

Then one fang pierced her skin.

Just enough.

A single drop of blood.

The king closed his eyes.

A sound escaped him.

His fingers tightened against her hip.

When he opened his eyes again, something had changed.

"What is her price?"

The merchant nearly dropped his account book.

"Given the dangers of the voyage, Your Majesty, I was forced to increase."

"Name it."

The king never looked at him.

His thumb traced the girl's throat instead.

Her eyes lifted at last.

Green.

The green of new leaves after rain.

A color that existed for only a handful of days each spring before the world stole it away.

Something flickered across the king's face.

Not hunger.

Not amusement.

Something far more dangerous.

"What is her name?"

The merchant was already counting the coins.

"She doesn't speak any language I know. I called her Songbird. She sings constantly."

"Songbird."

The king tasted the word.

His hand settled over her heartbeat.

"My little songbird."

The words sounded less like a nickname and more like a claim.

"I hope you sing for me."

He bent toward her.

The way a man reaches for something he has never once been denied.

She turned her face away.

The deliberate movement was small.

His lips found only her jaw.

The king did not move.

No one did.

The throne room forgot how to breathe.

The king had been refused.

The queen's laugh broke the spell.

"We will take the Songbird," she said. "And the red-haired one. And the ebony-skinned one."

Her smile never wavered as she looked at her husband.

"Does that please you, my love?"

The king's attention never left the girl.

"Have my Songbird dressed for the ball."

Penny understood none of it.

Not the words.

Nor the silence that followed.

Or the way every eye in the room tracked her as though something impossible had just happened.

A man stepped forward to lead her from the throne room.

The doors slammed shut behind her.

The sound followed them down the corridor.

The passage smelled of old stone.

The kind of smell hidden behind walls after something dies and no one speaks of it.

Penny walked because she had no choice.

Torchlight trembled across black stone.

The language around her slipped and rolled like water over ice, beautiful and utterly alien.

The nobles had watched her the same way her cats watched trapped birds.

And the man with the silver circlet had bitten her.

Penny was almost certain of it.

The memory blurred whenever she tried to hold it, sliding away like a dream at dawn, but the shape remained.

His mouth.

Her throat.

The strange pull beneath her skin.

Come home before dark, little witch.

Her mother's voice drifted through memory.

Or the dead things will taste the magic in your blood.

Penny had heard the warning her entire life.

Every child on the coast had.

Vampires.

Monsters to scare children into behaving.

They weren't real.

Penny had believed that this morning.

Now she wasn't sure of anything.

The slave trader hurried past without looking at her.

The girls he hadn't sold followed behind him in chains.

Heads lowered.

The unwanted ones.

The ones being taken somewhere worse.

Penny watched them disappear down the corridor.

Something cold settled in her chest.

She lifted her eyes to the window.

She couldn't see the sea from here.

But she could feel it.

The pull of something vast waiting beyond the palace walls.

It had followed her across the dark water.

Even locked in the belly of the ship, she had felt it.

Penny swallowed.

Her mother had just started teaching her the old songs.

The kind that hid magic inside music, the way a blade hides inside a cane.

But she had been snatched before she could learn more.

She had called it once before.

On the slave ship out of desperation, she had fabricated a song.

It had answered.

Penny lowered her voice.

And sang again to it.

By salt and tide and bitter deep,

by storms the waking world won't keep,

I call upon the bones below

rise up, old serpent. Let them know.

They stole me from my shore and stone,

they bound my hands, they took my name,

but I am made of sun and sea,

and they will learn I am the same.

Coil around their rotting hull.

Drag the boat down.

Take the boat whole.

She let the final note lingered in a whispered:

"Rise, my friend."

The servant stopped.

The lantern shook in his hand.

Wax splashed across his knuckles.

Slowly, he turned.

Penny expected anger.

Instead, she found terror.

His face had gone pale.

His eyes searched hers with something that looked disturbingly close to recognition.

Then he grabbed her wrists.

Words poured from him too quickly for her to understand.

He dragged her through the corridors.

Lantern light danced wildly across black marble walls.

Something had changed.

The servant kept glancing behind them.

As though he feared someone might hear her.

When they burst back into the throne room, the servant dropped to one knee so hard the crack echoed through the chamber.

The music faltered.

Conversation died.

Every eye turned toward Penny.

And upon the throne sat the king.

The king's gaze lifted to Penny and the servant.

One pale hand tapped his knee.

The servant shoved her forward so quickly she nearly stumbled.

Penny lowered her eyes.

The king spoke.

Cold words she couldn't understand.

Beside her, the servant was still trembling.

Penny risked a glance.

The poor man looked as though he expected to die.

Then the king took her hand.

His fingers closed around hers, and the air seemed to change.

Cold ancient power rolled from him in heavy waves.

The kind of thing that existed long before names.

He drew her between his knees.

One finger brushed her lips.

Penny wanted to bite him.

She simply wasn't sure what might bite back.

The king said something else.

His voice slid through her like cold water through stone.

She couldn't understand the words.

But she understood the feeling beneath them.

When he leaned closer, instinct took over.

Penny sang.

Barely more than breath.

I am not your love,

I am your dove,

let me fly,

Say goodbye.

Your cold lips may linger,

but I'm smoke through your fingers,

gone before dawn,

like dew under the sun.

She felt the spell leave her.

Felt it reach him.

Then vanish.

Like a wave striking a cliff.

The king didn't flinch.

Didn't even seem to notice.

Fear found her and wrapped around her like an old friend.

Not because he was stronger.

Because he was beyond comparison.

Her mother's magic.

Her grandmother's magic.

Generations of whispered songs beside firelight and sea spray.

Their magic was a candle held against the sun.

Penny swallowed.

Magic could not save her from him.

She would have to be smarter than her magic.

The king's arm settled around her.

His mouth found her throat.

She froze.

The sharp sting came a heartbeat later.

Her shackled hands clenched.

She tried to turn.

His hands and mouth stopped her.

And suddenly she didn't need proof anymore.

The monster from her mother's stories was real.

And she felt the pull on her skin as he drank from her.

She felt his cold tongue run over the bite mark.

Then the king straightened.

He turned toward his court and spoke.

The words meant nothing to Penny.

The reaction did.

Something moved through the room.

As everyone had just been informed, the weather had changed.

Penny followed their gaze.

To the queen.

The woman sat perfectly still.

Her smile remained.

Only her eyes had changed.

Not anger.

Anger would have been comforting.

This was colder..

The look of someone quietly adding a name to a list.

She had no magic that could touch this king.

But a jealous queen was something she recognized.

The servant appeared at her side once more.

Without ceremony, Penny was handed back to him.

As he hurried her from the room, she could still feel the king's attention lingering on the mark at her throat.

The sensation followed her all the way to the door.

The servant walked so quickly she nearly had to run.

Words spilled from him in frantic bursts she couldn't understand.

One phrase repeated again and again.

Penny couldn't translate it.

But judging by the man's expression, it seemed to mean either hurry or dear gods don't sing.

Possibly both.

Only that morning, they had bathed her in milk.

They had braided ribbons into her hair.

Wrapped her in white silk.

They had scrubbed away the ship.

Made her beautiful.

Then sold her.

Then let her be touched. Tasted.

And finally sold.

The servant pushed open a large imposing wooden door.

Cool night air rushed inside.

Penny stepped through.

And stopped.

She had expected a prison or cages.

A garden spread before her in silver moonlight.

Flowers glowed white beneath the moonlight.

Fountains whispered in the darkness.

Laughter drifted through distant trees.

It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

And immediately she understood why it frightened her.

The sea had tried to stop this.

It had sent storms.

It had sent a monster.

It had followed her all the way across the dark water.

And still she had ended up here.

In silk.

In shackles.

Standing before the most beautiful prison she had ever seen.

Penny stared into the moonlit garden.

Somewhere beneath the perfume of roses, something was wrong.

Not dangerous.

The same way the ocean was patient before a storm.

The servant nudged her forward.

Penny stepped into the garden.

Far below the palace walls,

And beneath the deep black sea,

Ancient magics opened eyes.

Having waited centuries.