Blood Feud

by Alyxandra Harvey

“How are you feeling?” I asked. Her veins were still unnaturally blue, her eyes red; side effects of nearly burning herself up with magic.

  “Ça va,” she replied. “Thank you,” she added, so formally she actually winced afterward.

  I smiled a little. “That was some trick with the mist.”

  She nodded. “There is so much we don’t know yet about our magic. I wasn’t sure I could work that spell. I certainly couldn’t unwork it once I’d started. I’d have been trapped in spirit form if it weren’t for you.”

  “Are you sorry you didn’t get to kill Greyhaven yourself?” I asked quietly.

  She considered that and finally shook her head slowly. “No. I guess that doesn’t make me much of a warrior, does it?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” I snorted. “Dogs and magic mists are a hell of a battle strategy.” I reached for her hand, weaving my fingers through hers. “You’re still staying for the coronation?”

  “Oui.”

  I looked at her. She sighed a little. “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “No one else in the world has ever seen me the way you have, not even Kala. You saw what I was. Before.” I knew she was remembering those rooftops too. “And yet you still look at me as if I matter, as if I’m somehow precious.”

  “You are precious,” I insisted. “Stubborn and secretive and independent to a fault, but precious.”

  “Oh.”

  I thought she might be blushing. “I love you, Isabeau.”

  She was definitely blushing now. She blinked at me. I just stared back patiently. “Come on, the bones said we’re meant for each other,” I reminded her.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Magda. She doesn’t hate me quite as much as she used to.”

  “Oh.”

  I smiled. “Don’t be scared, Isabeau.”

  “I’m not scared,” she insisted indignantly.

  “Oh, please. One little ‘I love you’ has you all freaked out. No sword or stake or slavering dog-beast can get you that pale and stiff.”

  She seemed to fight a short battle inside herself, one I could only watch. I didn’t have the weapons to help her. Only she had them.

  “You have a point, I suppose.” She unfisted her hands. “And what is a warrior but someone who faces her fears and defeats them?” She swallowed. “Je …” She swallowed again. “Je t’aime.”

  I’d never known the kind of bone-deep satisfaction I knew right then and there. I lifted our joined hands to my mouth, kissing her knuckles.

  “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I asked hoarsely.

  She smiled. “I suppose not.”

  She lay back down next to me, our sides touching, her hair fluttering over my arm, smelling like leaves and berries. We lay under the stars for a long time.

  “Will you visit me in the caves?” she whispered finally. “After the ceremonies and the council meetings are through?”

  “Of course.”

  “Even though everyone will disapprove?”

  I pushed up on my elbow. Her eyes were so green they nearly glowed. “I couldn’t care less what everyone else thinks.” I lowered my head, my mouth hovering over hers. “Besides … ,” I grinned slowly. “Think of it as intertribal negotiations.”

  She touched my jaw, smiling back, softly, lightly. “As handmaiden, it is my duty to foster a good relationship between the Cwn Mamau and the royal family.”

  “Exactly.” I closed the last inch between us and kissed her.

  And when she kissed me back we weren’t a prince and a handmaiden, weren’t Drake and Hound, weren’t anything or anyone but Logan and Isabeau. Together.

  ALYXANDRA HARVEY studied creative writing and literature at York University and has had her poetry published in magazines. She likes lattes, chocolate, and tattoos and lives in an old Victorian farmhouse in Ontario, Canada, with her husband and three dogs.

  www.alyxandraharvey.com

  www.thedrakechronicles.com

  Copyright © 2010 by Alexandra Harvey

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

  means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage

  and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First published in the United States of America in July 2010

  by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.

  E-book edition published in July 2010

  www.bloomsburyteens.com

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to

  Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Harvey, Alyxandra.

  Blood feud / by Alyxandra Harvey.

  p. cm.

  Summary: As the clans gather for the coronation of the next vampire queen, new alliances are

  beginning to form and the power of the clan leaders is threatened by a would-be usurper.

  ISBN 978-0-8027-2097-9 (hardcover) • ISBN 978-0-8027-2096-2 (paperback)

  [1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Brothers and sisters—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H267448B1 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009049258

  ISBN 978-0-8027-2228-7 (e-book)