Chapter 26 #3
“We’d been at peace for so long that the King was untested when rumors of rebellion finally reached Valnar.
He relied on the wisdom of his advisers, including his Master at Arms who offered to quell the uprising.
Mordric didn’t give it a second thought, but General Gregorian cut his teeth on violence in the eastern borderlands during my father’s reign.
He was restless. Gregorian’s men slaughtered civilians in the streets with abandon.
Children and the elderly weren’t spared.
His forces became notorious for tearing babes from their mothers’ arms and throwing them from the city walls. ”
My eyes widened as I recalled a memory that I had witnessed when I had fallen into his memories back in Valnar—cobbled streets that ran red with blood, the stench of death hanging in the air. “You were there, weren’t you?”
“Not at first. When news of the massacre reached Valnar, the King tried to call off his forces. But Gregorian was drunk on violence. So Mordric did what he had to. He sent another group, one that included me, to clean up their mess.”
I glanced down at his hands, which were curled into fists at his side, his knuckles white. “Why you?”
He smiled bitterly. “Young vampires can be reckless, and before I was a glorified babysitter—” I bit back the retort at the tip of my tongue. “—I was a damned good fighter. Would have joined the Den of Specters if my station had allowed it.”
My breath snagged in my throat. I had only ever heard whispers about the Den of Specters, a team of assassins that operated under the Keeper of Secrets.
The initiated were so loyal to the crown that they would cut out their own tongues before letting themselves be captured. At least, according to the rumors.
“I was skilled enough that they sent me in to take down our own forces.” He spat the words like they were poison on his tongue. “Do you know how to kill a vampire?”
My stomach churned as I recalled Luc’s face. The resounding snap of his vertebrae shattering between Enhart’s fingers. The ragged breath that rattled through his lips again after mere seconds. I shook my head. “No.”
His eyes twinkled as he reached for his belt, unsheathing one of two daggers that he kept strapped to him at all times. It wasn’t the one he’d jammed into the other vampire’s throat. It was wooden, carved like a stake to a lethal point.
“There’s beheading, although it takes an extraordinary amount of strength and isn’t the quietest of deaths.” I grimaced as he twirled the dagger carefully between his fingers. “And then there’s this.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. What is it?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. It’s not common knowledge outside of vampire circles for obvious reasons,” he mused, running a finger along its edge. “This is an alder dagger.”
“An alder,” I repeated. “Like the tree?”
“Exactly. A tree that you would be hard-pressed to find in Valen. My great-grandfather ordered most of them razed to the ground when he became king. You see, the dagger on its own is not lethal to a vampire, but—” he pricked his finger, a bead of crimson blood forming on his ashen skin “—a single drop of our blood transforms it. Anointed with vampire blood, it’s the only weapon that can kill us.
That is, if you stab it directly into our heart. ”
I eyed him warily as he smeared his blood across the polished surface. “Why would you keep the only weapon that can kill you on your person?”
He shrugged. “You never know when you might need it.” He stabbed his dagger into the table, the wood splintering beneath its lethal point. He stared down at it, refusing to meet my gaze.
“The people you killed in Beltzan were murderers,” I whispered. “Mutineers.”
“They were,” he agreed. “But it should have never gotten to that point. They made a formidable enemy, given that there were far more of them than there were of us. We hunted most of them down in their barracks. By the time the last head rolled, I was one of few survivors.”
I wondered how many times he had had to use his dagger.
With their leaders gone, the remaining civilians had been evacuated from the city and sent south.
Most of them settled in other areas of the Outlands while their city became a shell of its former self, its only inhabitants being miners while the trade was overseen by the Master Tradesman back in Valnar.
It was odd to think that the conflict I had read about in school had involved not one, but two vampires I knew today. One who started it, and the other who had brought it to a close.
We ate the rest of our meal in silence, and I enchanted the dishes to clean themselves so we could get some rest. My eyelids drooped as we walked wordlessly toward our rooms, our shoulders nearly brushing up against each other in the narrow corridor.
Despite what Enhart had shared with me tonight, I didn’t imagine it would take me long to succumb to sleep.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally, upon reaching my door. “About Beltzan.”
He shrugged. “I’m the one who brought it up.”
“I know.”
He sauntered past me, opening his door with a creak. “Besides, I suppose that I don’t mind sharing those tortured tidbits of my past,” he said with his back to me. “At least, not with you.”