GHRELIN
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Saya Claymore
“Where will we be going first?”
“The outskirts of Mire. I will track their scents from there.”
Serun takes my suitcase and lifts it easily, as if it doesn’t contain a mountain of clothes, shoes, hygiene products, and salves in case of injury.
We make our way downstairs, my hands staying firmly at my sides. As much as I want to reach out and hold his hand, my mind is on Cole. What if this is bait to lure out Serun? My Blessed did things like that. Lured me from my home with lies.
Serun steps closer, his clawed hand touching my fingertips. Pulling myself out of my thoughts, I quickly glance at him and interlace my fingers with his. Battling these dark thoughts, I might just need him more than I could ever have imagined.
This nightwalker complicates every feeling, clouding logic and reality with the fantasy of being his. It’s starting to feel essential that my brother accepts this life—one we could build far from my Blessed and the slayers who want me dead.
Most see the Vampire Lord as our oppressor. And he is, topside. Fear tugs at all our hearts at the mere mention of any nightwalker, but Serun’s words keep returning to me before I close my eyes to sleep. Why are the feeding grounds on the slayers’ side of the border?
The manor doors open to the majestic garden draped in night, where Olivia waits. She jumps, her eyes widening at the sight of Serun covered in shadows.
She quickly bows, but Serun ignores her, drops our suitcases by her feet, and guides me down the stairs.
He unhooks the oil lantern hanging from the fence and hands it to me.
Instead of following us, Olivia turns down the path to the servant’s dwelling with the suitcases while we enter the tunnel to the Undercity.
Nightwalkers incline their heads, smiles on faces and awestruck wide eyes. Some mention how beautiful I am—beauty I never saw in myself until I came here. Others shrink back, still cautious, hiding in the darkness.
My hand tightens on Serun’s.
“Mumma, look!” a child holding a lantern says from the other side of the street, cherry cheeks flushed. He points to me, a smile brimming on his face. “M—” His mother scoops him up, and they hurry away before he can cross the street.
Nightwalkers on the main street go about their night, busy at the market stalls with their human Feeders.
Hands reach for blood bags, and children—hard to find topside—run through the steam and along the metal-sheet flooring that covers the Undercity.
Smiles reach eyes here, a stark contrast to the desperate looks I’m used to in the feeding ground.
And there our Goddess of Light was in the sky, if only for a few hours a day.
“Do you think she will return—Mother, that is?” I ask Serun.
“I’m hopeful,” he admits.
We head towards a building with one of those caged elevators outside that bypass the staircase. Loud banging comes from the floor above, piercing the air.
Nightwalkers waiting for the elevator don’t move when Serun guides us into the cage.
Once he realises no one else is prepared to join them, he slides the door across and locks it in place.
I grip the chipped, red-painted metal railing, while above, a light sways on a thin chain, a spider crawling over it.
An iron city. It’s the best way I can describe the Undercity. A place made of countless metals, filling the underground with an intricate structure of spiderwebbed beams. With it comes a constant buzzing in my ear from the ringing metal that intensifies the higher we go.
“Have the slayers been the real enemy all along?” I murmur, more to myself than anything.
“Humans should stop touching things they know nothing about. Once they do that, maybe Mother will have a reason to believe Kepler is worth saving.”
Since talking to Serun, I’ve learned a lot more about the world than I did from others in the feeding ground. In his eyes, Mother left after humans created vampirism.
A disease.
Then, to combat it, they created slayers.
Yeah, I can see Mother having had enough of the world if that were true.
The cage shudders. Serun slides the door open and waits for me to leave before he steps out of the elevator. We round the bend into an armoury and smithy, orange sparks flying. Swords, bows and arrows, and shields line the walls, shimmering in the dim light.
A man has his back to us as he hammers away at something, raising it high and slamming it down, grimy stains covering his broad arms.
While I wait at the entrance, my arms folded over a grumbling stomach, Serun coolly walks in and stands behind the man.
Shadows split away from his cloak like vines, curling around the blacksmith, and he stills.
In one swift motion, he spins, slashing with the hammer as though it is a broadsword.
Serun’s shadows break away like broken ribbons, and a cruel laugh echoes, deep and devious.
Serun has a tormenting kink, I see.
The man flips his protective helmet up, and my eyes widen slightly to find the blacksmith is Devan. Tired eyes settle on me before they snap to Serun. He immediately drops the hammer and bows. “L-lord Serun, how can I be of service?” he stammers.
Serun’s long claws tap the nearby table lined with daggers. “Lucifer ordered a bow, and I also wanted to know if you have finished the sword I commissioned for my consort.”
Wait, what?
I dart a look between them. Does he remember that last time I had a sword, I shoved it through his chest?
Serun flashes me a smirk. He definitely heard that thought.
Devan rises abruptly and wipes his forearm across the grime plastering his face. “I finished Lucifer’s bow the night Maeve sent me the order. As for your Lady Consort’s, the design was challenging until you sent the drawing.”
Serun designed it? Curious.
“I started with the floral design on the hilt…” He crouches and drags out a long, rectangular crate, then places it on the table. “Making sure it would be light to wield.”
Devan opens the box and carefully lifts out the blade. It looks like the sword of rot, except a vervain pattern moves up the hilt and the centre of the blade and all the way to the tip.
Serun faces me. “What do you think, my kamai?”
I look between the blade and Serun several times, unsure what is happening. “Why, though?”
“Reasons,” he says, but his eyes tell me he doesn’t want to share in front of Devan. “You need a weapon for our travels topside.”
Devan looks between us before gliding his fingers up to the tip of the blade. “It can cut through anything. Even its aura is sharp, see…” His thumb doesn’t quite touch the sword, but a slice of red appears across his skin, swelling into a dollop of blood.
This pungent scent wafts through my nose and into my lungs, clinging to the fleshy walls with a taste so sweet. Savoury. My tongue darts out, licking my cracked lips, moistening them at the possibility of tasting what drips from his thumb.
“Saya?” Serun says when I bump into his shoulder.
Robotically, as if lured by a voice, I make my way towards the nightwalker.
Hunger stirs inside me, the delectable perfume sliding down my throat and into my lungs like smoke.
Another breath of it amplifies every desire.
Saliva thickens in my mouth, and my fangs ache with the need to sink them into his flesh.
Devan raises the sword, clearly believing I want to hold the weapon. Instead, my eyes are on his neck, imagining ripping away muscles and bone.
I’m so fucking—
A cold grip wraps around my wrist, and before I can claw at Devan’s flesh, darkness consumes me, pulling me out of the armoury.
My back shudders as it hits smooth metal, and my arms press to the wall either side of me, Serun’s hands pinning mine to the wall while I writhe underneath his intense red glare.
“Saya, look at me,” he demands.
From down the lane Serun took me to, I desperately eye the entrance. Darkness shrouds us, and nightwalkers move by in oblivion. Still, the scent of Devan is like a song lingering in the air, luring me back to his workshop.
“I’m so hungry,” I rasp, my hands balling into fists and my body squirming to break Serun’s tight grip. “Just a taste. One bite.”
He blocks my view, intense eyes burrowing into my marrow. “Eyes on me, darling.”
“Serun,” I moan, drawing my focus away from the thin red line of mist luring me back to Devan, and gaze into crimson eyes. “He smells so fucking good.”
“I am a little offended,” Serun says.
The power the Nightwalker Lord has over me wavers, and I break free, facing the entrance once more. Inky black veins crawl to the surface of my skin, stealing away my light, my fingertips blackening.
“Saya,” Serun growls, a deep rumble in his throat. “Look. At. Me.”
Power crushes against my rib cage. My focus snaps to Serun and shadows peel away from him, revealing the face I am forever drawn to.
With a sharp breath, he rests his forehead against mine. His grip slackens and drops to my hips, drawing me closer until our chests press together. “Bite me, consort. Taste me.”
“Pardon…” My voice falters when Serun’s long, clawed finger draws across the pad of his palm, slicing a red gash across it. The potent lemongrass scent of his blood mists the air. My nostrils flare, and saliva pools in my mouth.
We exchange no more words. I take his offered hand and sink my fangs into already bleeding flesh. Serun lets out a guttural moan, and I quench this terrible thirst with blood that achingly burns down my tight throat.