by Izzy Shows
“The King must not like Nina,” said one woman—a noble thrall, from the looks of her gown—though she didn’t say it to me. She was directing her words to another woman.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, he hasn’t touched her. My vampire couldn’t wait to feed on me the very first night. He was positively overcome with desire. If the King hasn’t touched her, he must think she’s...deficient.”
I reeled from her words as if I'd been physically struck.
My first thought was to defend myself, because she'd wounded my pride. Not at all because a part of me was still trying to figure out why Grayson hadn’t touched me yet.
My second thought was, how the fuck could anyone have that kind of mentality? She was proud that the vampire she’d been chosen by had fed on her, as if that was a mark of maturity.
As if it was something to be desired.
These women volunteered to be thralls, Nina. You knew that going into this.
And yet, I hadn’t wanted to believe that they'd actually signed up for it because they liked the idea of what was going to happen. I’d wanted to believe, as horrible as it was, that they’d volunteered because they'd had no other choice. That it was either this or being destitute.
Neither of those was a good option, but the latter at least implied that they still had their wits about them.
But this woman... She wanted to be fed on.
Or at least, she'd convinced herself that she did. It was probably easier to live with all of this if you went on thinking that way.
“I wish I had Nina’s problem,” a small voice piped up from the corner of the kitchen.
I turned to find the owner of the voice: a young woman, curled up in a ball on the floor. A noble thrall; her sash was checkered blue and silver. Her hair was a mess of blonde curls about her shoulders, as if she hadn’t bothered to brush it today.
Frowning, I walked over to her, then knelt alongside her.
“Hey,” I said, and reached out to touch her shoulder.
She jerked as if she'd been burned.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean...” I bit my lip. Didn’t mean what? I didn’t know where I was going with that.
“No, it’s OK. I shouldn’t have... I’m sorry.” She finally looked up at me, her blue eyes brimming with tears.
Without hesitation, I threw my arms around her and pulled her tight against my chest. I didn’t know why she was hurting, but I recognized the pain in her eyes. Something had upset her—and judging by what she'd said, that something was the vampire who owned her.
Owned her. Like she was property. Like she wasn’t a human being with rights who deserved to be treated with decency.
Wait. Did humans have rights?
It was an odd thought to have at that moment, but I realized that I didn’t know the first thing about how the world actually worked. My entire life had been one cage after another. The cages in the dungeons of the castle, for the most part, and then living with Conall. I hadn’t exactly learned a lot about the politics of the world while I was living with him.
I made shushing sounds as I patted her back, and the tears came pouring out of her—tears that she must have been holding back for a while now, because it was like a floodgate had broken open.
I don't know how long we sat like that, me holding her and her crying, but at long last, she quieted. I held her tight for another moment to make sure that all her tears were spent, then patted her back and pulled away a bit.
“What is it?”
She wouldn’t quite meet my eyes, and there was a blush staining her cheeks.
Embarrassment? Shame? Maybe it was just from the crying.
“You can tell me,” I said.
“He hurt me,” she whispered, then shut her eyes tight as a shudder wracked her body. “He...he...he made me...”
I stiffened, understanding what she wasn’t saying. I closed my eyes and gave myself a moment to regain the composure I’d started to lose. It wouldn’t do her any good if I lost myself to rage right now.
That wasn’t what this girl needed.
I held her away from me so she had to look at me. Her eyebrows were knitted together, a clear sign of her confusion.
“It won’t happen again,” I said, my voice like steel. “We won’t let it.”
“Good lord, what are you going on about over there?” one of the other thralls said from across the room. “Of course it’s going to happen again, just like it'll happen to any of us. This is the way it is, Nina. Get out of your fairy tales.”
The girl I’d been holding sniffled, then offered me a weak smile. “She’s right. This is just how the world works. But I appreciate... Thanks for caring.”
I stared down at her, baffled, then jerked my gaze over to the offending woman across the room.
How could this just be the way it was?
No, I wouldn’t accept this.
I lurched to my feet and stalked out of the room.
11
Nina
I was seeing red as I tore through the hallways necessary to get back to the suite of rooms I lived in.
This was nowhere near OK.
No, I wasn’t naive. I didn’t live in a world where this was something that couldn’t possibly be conceived of. I’d been a prisoner in the cells down below, and I’d been very aware of what happened to some of the women down there.
That was a situation where nothing could be done. That was a situation where we were all powerless to help ourselves.
This? This was nothing like that.
Because I was here, and I was different, and I wasn’t going to allow this to continue.
One of the wolves had brought me my gear the day after I’d been accepted as a thrall, while the vampires were in their deepest sleep, just in case I needed to make a quick getaway. I’d been given strict instructions not to hunt while I was here, but they couldn’t leave me weaponless.
They’d also brought me the potion that was helping me survive here, but it was the gear I was thankful for now.
I was going hunting. I was going to tear that vampire’s throat out. Boil his blood. Destroy him. He was going to regret every moment of his miserable life after I was done with him, and only then would I give him the mercy of death.
It would be a slow, brutal, bloody murder. I relished the thought of it.
I’d have to wait for sunrise, of course, which was eons away, but I needed the comfort of seeing my gear to reassure myself that it could be done. That I wasn’t powerless to help these women.
Lost in my thoughts, I barreled straight into a vampire standing in the hallway. My head smacked against his chest, and I bounced away from him, shocked.
It took me a second to reorient myself, but when I did, I almost wished I hadn’t.
The vampire was leering at me, a venomous look in his eyes.
“Well, what do we have here?” He took a step closer to me and ran a hand up and down my arm. “Such a pretty little thing.”
Little? Even in this dress, it was obvious that I had more muscle than I should. I could take this vamp any day of the week, and I was surprised he hadn’t picked up on that.
I mean, yeah, it was good that I could pass in this society as someone not to be concerned about, but still...it was a hit to my pride.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going, but I really am in a hurry—”
“Too much of a hurry to talk to me? Come, now. Where are your manners?”
I stiffened. Manners? Fuck manners. This tool needed to let me go on my way.
My instinct was to slam my foot onto his instep and slam my elbow into his nose, but I resisted.
You’re supposed to be small and unassuming. Thralls don’t defend themselves.
Bullshit. It was all bullshit, and coming on the back end of finding out what had happened to that other woman, I couldn’t stand to let this go.
I inhaled through my nose, slowly, as I tried to get control of myself again.
“I really am sorry. I just... I need to go.” I tried to keep my voice soft and girlish, looking up at the vampire through my lashes.
He grinned. “But we’ve only just begun to get to know one another.”
Yeah, and now I’m leaving.
I started to pull away from him, but his hand locked around my upper arm like a vise.
OK, so he wasn’t taking no for an answer. This was going to get ugly, because no way in hell was I going to put up with him being a dick.
Just as I was about to give him a piece of my mind, I felt a calmness come over me.
Grayson was here.
Why did that make me feel calm?
I looked over my shoulder, and sure enough, there was Grayson, coming down the hallway with a dark look on his face. My stomach turned over, and it was all I could do not to rush over to him and reassure him that everything was under control.
Only, that look couldn’t possibly be about my situation, so why did I need to reassure him?
I guessed it could be about me. I was his property, after all. He probably didn’t like it when other people played with his toys.
“James,” he said when he was beside me. The look in his eyes was wholly unforgiving, yet I couldn’t look away from him. “You’ll have to excuse Nina. I have need of her.”
That wasn’t quite the badass showdown I might have secretly been hoping for, but it got the job done.
Vampires. So concerned with being polite when what they needed was to have their asses handed to them.
James dropped his hand from my arm—I was pretty sure I was going to have a bruise—and tilted his head in deference, then walked away.
A moment passed, then Grayson turned to me. Concern had replaced the indignation in his eyes. “Are you all right?”
There was no reason for that to piss me off. None at all.
And yet...
“I was handling it,” I snapped. “I don’t need your help. I can take care of myself.”
And with that, I stepped around him and stormed off to the suite.
12
Grayson
No one on this planet had ever confused me as much as Nina did. The woman was an anomaly, one that I dearly wanted to figure out. What made her so volatile?
I’d never had a thrall before, but I’d observed them long enough to know that this wasn’t typical behavior.
Then again, why would anything be typical for me?
I smirked at that thought. Nothing ever was.
Likely, it was because I had yet to enthrall her.
I knew it was something I needed to do, for her security as much as my own. If she was enthralled, I’d know where she was and what she was feeling at all times. I wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not she was safe—like that damned situation in the hall just now. If I’d had her enthralled, I would have known that something was happening.
I wouldn’t have to rely on being in the right place at the right time.
The idea of not knowing if she was safe chafed at my soul in all the wrong places.
There was no reason for her safety to be such an important issue for me—she was a thrall, and not even one that I knew well—and yet her wellbeing was something I desired very strongly.
Yes, there were a lot of reasons for me to enthrall her, but one rather big item in the negative column.
Enthralling a person was a very intimate process, in my eyes. I’d have to feed from her, and she from me. To another vampire, that might not seem like such a big undertaking, but the idea of forcing her to allow me to feed from her was physically repulsive.
I couldn’t—wouldn’t—do it.
When the time came, I hoped she would welcome the process, but I wasn’t going to force her into such a thing.
I pushed aside those thoughts and continued down the hallway to my original goal—finding Alex.
Nina was safe in the suite. I didn’t need to worry about her right now, though I fully intended to seek her out later in the night to discuss this.
It took only a matter of minutes to reach Alex’s chamber, where he had assembled five of the men I considered to be closest to me. I felt the loss of Raoul like a sharp pang in my heart, just as I always had. His death had been years ago, and yet scarcely a day went by when I didn’t regret losing him.
If I’d just moved faster...
No, I couldn’t go down that road, not now. There would be plenty of time to beat myself up over that later.
“Gentlemen,” I said as I entered the room, greeting them with a small incline of my head.
“Your Highness.” Everyone but Alex greeted me with the honorific. He continued to stand there, smirking.
It took quite a bit of control not to return that look.
“Gray,” he said at last.
“Alex.” I walked fully into the room and shut the door behind me. “Where are we on finding the good general’s killer?”
Discomfort crossed their faces when I didn’t waste time with the normal pleasantries, but rather cut straight to the point. After the run-in with James, I was feeling a little on edge, and I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.
One of the men—Robert—shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking down at the floor.
The other four were looking at him, clearly waiting for him to say something, but Alex was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, looking at me with a raised eyebrow, clearly willing to wait the lot of them out.
“Well?”
“No closer, sir,” Robert said at last. Shame was written all over his features.
A heavy sigh escaped me. “Run over it again.”
Robert took a moment to prepare himself, then spoke. “The general was found in a brothel, but no one saw the killer. We compelled all the brothel workers when we questioned them, so there’s no doubt that they aren’t hiding the killer in question. Whoever it was, they got in and out without being seen by anyone.”
There was a note of admiration in Robert’s voice, and while normally I would have rebuked him for it, I shared the same sensation. Whoever had done this was quite skilled. It was no easy task to go unnoticed in such a busy household, and yet they’d managed it.
And left no trace behind.
How?
It was a puzzle I had to figure out.
“Let’s go, then. We’ll see if we can’t find the associates of this killer and get the information from them,” I said.
What I didn’t say was how we were going to acquire that information, but I didn’t need to. They knew we would utilize whatever methods were necessary.
The seven of us quickly divested ourselves of our formal attire and donned garments that would allow more freedom of movement.
A niggling feeling at the back of my mind told me I shouldn’t be going out like this. It wasn’t safe. Something could happen, and what would that mean for the rest of my people?
Death.
But it wasn’t like I could sit idly by and wait for my friends to do all the dirty work for me. I wasn’t that kind of King.
Pushing those thoughts to the back of my mind, I left the room with the other six trailing after me.
No one stopped us as we left the castle. No one would dare to question what the King was doing, save perhaps for my mother. Luckily, she wasn’t there to nag me about staying home and staying safe and finding a mate.
The thought of that conversation was enough to set my head to pounding. I truly couldn’t stand it.
We strode quietly but quickly across the grounds and through the gates, then a little more quickly down the streets. At last, we broke out into the blindingly fast run of our kind.
Nothing on Earth could compare to the feeling of exhilaration that overcame me when I was able to run like this, unencumbered. For a moment, I allowed myself to forget all the responsibilities that weighed on me. I gave myself over to the thrill of running, to the blood pumping
through my veins, and reminded me that I was alive.
I wish I could share this with Nina...
The thought of her came unbidden to my mind, and it shocked me so much that I slowed down for a minute before forcing myself back to my usual speed.
I shouldn’t be thinking about Nina right now, not while I was on a hunt.
Why was she always on my mind like that? It wasn’t normal.
I’d never been so consumed by a woman before.
The seven of us tore through the city, flowing from one street to another, disrupting the evening strolls of the humans who were more confident about their place in the city.
Not everyone felt comfortable walking around at night. I knew that the majority of humans preferred to stay in their homes rather than risk the ire of a vampire on the streets.
It wasn’t like we jumped on them whenever we were given the opportunity. We fed on our thralls, our willing servants, rather than taking what wasn’t freely given.
And yet, the memory of what used to be would likely haunt the humans for several generations to come: the time before we had come to power and organized ourselves, when we had been separated from one another and it had been every vampire for himself.
Those days were long gone. Order had been instilled, and senseless violence was no longer tolerated.
But memories are a hard thing to eradicate.
So, most of the streets were empty, save for one or two humans scampering about.
The night wore on, and street after street turned up empty. We found no hunters. They couldn’t smell us coming; I was sure of that.
Except perhaps they could, if they were all wolves.
It had been wolves who had killed Raoul, but we hadn’t been able to find a pack in the city that could have been responsible for it, which wasn’t surprising. Until now, we’d thought the wolves had been eradicated.
But what if all the hunters were really wolves?
It would explain their ability to kill far exceeding what it should have been. It would explain why they were able to get away from us so easily.