by Keary Taylor
Copyright © 2016 Keary Taylor
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system,
without the prior written permission of the author.
First Edition: June 2016
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Taylor, Keary, 1987-
House of Judges (House of Royals) :
a novel / by Keary Taylor. – 1st ed.
Formatting by Inkstain Interior Book Designing
www.inkstainformatting.com
The Fall of Angels Trilogy
The Eden Trilogy
The McCain Saga
What I Didn’t Say
To view all of Keary’s books, in series order, click HERE.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
About Keary
JUST A FEW DAYS AGO, I was a queen.
Just days ago, I had two mansions full of immortal Born vampires ready to follow me to the ends of the earth.
Days ago, I killed a poor girl whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Days ago, the one man I thought would be loyal to me until the end of my days left me.
Just days ago, I was framed.
Just a few days ago, I thought I was going to die.
Just a few days ago, everything fell apart.
And now, I burn.
THE SUN BLAZED THROUGH THE spring air, shining over a beautiful little town tucked away in a valley in the mountains of Austria. It warmed the dew that had collected overnight. It coaxed spring flowers up toward the light. It grew the spring crops that would feed the residents.
It then finds its way into a small hole in the ceiling above me. It reflects and intensifies, zigzagging downward through the mirrored tube leading into a stone and steel prison. Before it reaches me.
I cower in a corner, my body curled into a small ball, my knees pressed against two of the steel walls. My elbows rest on my thighs, my hands pressed hard into my eye sockets. My entire body quakes, aware of the blinding light at my back. Pain laces into every muscle of my body. Fiery sparks shoot through my eyes, despite their covering, exploding into my brain, tearing down the back of my neck, sending the alert to the rest of my changed, immortal body.
A choked off sob escapes my throat.
Just a few days ago, I was a queen.
“It will be dark soon,” a voice calls from the next cell. “Deep breaths. Try not to move.” He takes a sharp, hissing, deep breath. His own agony is so apparent. “It will be dark soon.”
This is a prison, and its inmates are all vampires.
I want to respond. To agree—that it will be dark soon. To acknowledge the encouraging words he’s been offering all day. But I can’t move. I can’t breathe. If I do, my entire body will alight into flames and I will be nothing but a pile of ash on the stone floor.
I reside in a prison, and the sun is my tormentor.
“Two cups of warm water,” I breathe out through the pain. “Yeast. A teaspoon of sugar. Salt. Honey. Five cups of flour.” I start rattling off the ingredients to the first recipe that comes to mind—my mother’s homemade pizza crust dough. “Water. Yeast. Sugar, salt, honey. Flour.”
In my mind, I’m kneading the dough. I’m flattening it into shape. I’m watching my mother’s hands as a seven-year-old. There’s flour all over the floor, a smear of it on Mom’s cheek. And smiles on both of our faces.
I’m back in the old bakery, it’s five in the morning and I’m just finishing the blueberry scones. Mrs. Kachinski is standing outside the doors, waiting for us to open so she can get her morning coffee and muffins. The snow is softly falling outside, and the mountains of Colorado are barely visible through the dark.
But I’m not there. I’m cowering on the floor. I’m quaking in pain and fear.
“It’ll be dark soon,” I breathe to myself.
I FEEL THE SUN RECEDE, one ray at a time. It drops behind the horizon, the darkness creeping in one tiny inch at a time. Marginally, my cell grows from one shade of gray to the next. And finally, I feel the dark take over with a loving, comforting embrace.
And I collapse onto the floor.
A collective sigh rushes from several of the other prisoners. Followed by loud cursing from the German speaker.
For the first time in twelve hours, I open my eyes. Everything is a grayish yellow haze with a halo of light clouding my vision. I blink several times, attempting to clear it, but it doesn’t go away.
“You’ll be able to see again in about ten minutes,” he says from the next cell.
His voice causes a catch to snag in my chest. I bite my lower lip, attempting to gain control of something fast and fierce beneath my skin.
He takes a deep breath. “You okay?”
His voice is the bandage ripped off. The heat applied too quickly to the glass. My tipping point.
The breath rips in and out of my chest, at first in a hiccup. And then faster and faster, until it develops into a sob.
“I’m so sorry, Ian,” I cry as I lie on my back, on the hard, stone floor. “I’m so sorry.”
“Hey,” I hear him say; his voice sounds uncomfortable. “Don’t… Don’t say that. You didn’t…”
But he can’t finish his sentence, because there’s so much that I did. That he did. That we never were together.
I curl into a ball once again and roll onto my side as I let the tears silently consume me.
HE DOESN’T TRY TO TALK to me, and for that, I am grateful. But I can tell, I just can, that he’s every bit aware of me as I am of him. Of every breath. Of every step taken across the tiny space. Of every blink.
But we don’t say a word.
What would I say? Where would I even start?
Footsteps demand my attention as they come down the narrow passageway that drops down into the prison. Two of them. Down the aisle.
I scramble to my feet, righting my clothes, wiping my face clear of the tears and dirt and humiliation. I hold my chin high as metal screeches against metal and the door slides open just a bit.
Trinity stands there, a guard just behind her. For a second, I debate if I can overtake him, make a break for it. But there’s not a chance. I couldn’t even find my way out of the castle.
“Hey,” Trinity offers. She takes a step forward, into the cell, and the guard slides the door closed. He locks us in.
“Are you okay?” I ask, searching her over for signs of damage. Her hair is still as unwashed as ever, her nose ring gleaming in the dark. Her black clothes are un-rumpled.
“I’m fine,” she says, and the words come out rather grudgingly. She doesn’t want me to care about her, but for some reason, I do. She even gives me a little glare. “They put me up in a room. Sent me a feeder. I’m fine.”
I nod, still looking her over for signs of distress. The only ones there are seem to be directed at me. “You’re sure?” I ask in relief.
She’s having a hard time looking me in the eye, but she does meet my gaze for just a moment, nodding, before her eyes dart away. “You don’t look so good.”
My first instinct is to tell her what she can go do to herself, but then I remember that I am a prisoner here, and she volunteered to be my escort. “Been a while since I’ve seen the sun. Our reunion was a complicated one.”
Trinity swears under her breath, and her eyes instantly find the light tube. “Some prison,” she says.
“Is there any word on my trial?” I ask. “What are they planning to do with me?”
She doesn’t look back at me with my question, but continues to stare at the tube that leads out into the dark night. “I haven’t heard anything yet. The way they were talking last night after they dragged you off, I don’t think they’re in a hurry to deal with you. You could be here for a while.”
My heart races faster with each word she offers. My memory goes back to last night, when I sat tied to a chair, eating at the dinner table as if I were a guest. Until someone grabbed me from behind and started dragging me off into the dark underbelly of the castle.
“What about…” My breath catches in my chest. And a sweat breaks out onto my palms. Because everyone can hear everything in this prison. Especially the man in the cell next to mine. But I have to know. “What about Raheem? Is he okay?”
Trinity gives me a funny look, not understanding the way I’m acting because of my question. “A couple of guards hauled him out of the dining hall pretty quick after they took you away. He was freaking out. Screaming in some language I didn’t even recognize. One of the King’s people jabbed something into his neck, though, and knocked him out.”
Now, it’s my turn to swear. I turn away from Trinity, my hands fisting in my hair. I squeeze my eyes closed and try to calm down the angry tiger rearing its head inside of me.
“He’s too valuable to the King,” I say, mostly to myself. “He won’t kill Raheem. He can’t.”
“I don’t know,” Trinity says. “He didn’t seem too pleased to find out his favorite spy was sneaking around behind his back with his favorite maybe-resurrected queen.”
And all the blood in my resurrected body drops into my feet before disappearing all together.
There. She’s put it out there, for anyone in this prison to hear.
I swallow hard.
“Thank you, Trinity,” I say through gritted teeth. “I do hope you’ll come back with more updates later.”
She gives me a look, but she’s met with my own deathly one. Recognizing the command to leave, she knocks on the steel door twice. The guard opens it, and with one last look over her shoulder, she walks out.
I beg for their footsteps to retreat more slowly. I don’t want to look Trinity in the eye any more, but I pray for them not to leave me alone with the giant elephant in the prison. But in just a few seconds, the sounds of their shoes on the stones are gone, and all is quiet again.
One silent beat. Two.
A full silent minute that feels like a vampire eternity.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” I finally breathe.
Ian lets out a sigh. I hear him shift, sitting on the stone floor and rests his head against the steel wall. “Nope, not really.”
“Really?” I challenge him. I sink to the floor, resting myself against the very same wall Ian sits against.
“Really,” he says. Tight. Sharp.
“You’re so full of shit sometimes, Ian,” I say, letting out a slow breath.
“Yeah, well, you wrote the book on how to stuff the turkey,” he shoots back.
“You know, you keep acting like all of this is my fault,” I bite. “That I brought this on the both of us. But you seem to keep forgetting that we were both born this way.”
Ian lets out a disgusted sigh, and I hear him climb to his feet. “You should really just go the hell back to Silent Bend. Things have been a lot less dramatic around here in the last month without you around.”
“You’re calling me a drama queen?” I screech back. I climb to my feet as well, facing the wall, yelling at it. “Look at you, acting all typical Ian Ward—in denial of reality!” I throw my arms up in the air, behind me, and take a bow to the wall.
Someone yells at us in German and the Spanish speaker lets out a string of curse words at us.
“Stay the hell out of this!” Ian and I both somehow shout at the same time.
“You’re freaking unbelievable,” I mutter under my breath. My heart cracks a little further, and I hate myself for that.
“Me?” he hisses. “What about you, Alivia? We were… We had… And now, I hear you’ve already moved on, well and good, sleeping around with someone when the King might have killed you for it.”
“At least Raheem doesn’t hate me for something I couldn’t do anything about!” I scream. I rush that wall and smack both my palms against it, sending a bolt of pain racing through my hands.
“I never hated you!” he spits. “I hate this freaking system, this bloody race. And you just ran towards it, blindly, with open arms!”
My mouth drops open in disbelief. “You are an ignorant idiot, Ian Ward! You talk about bravery and making your own fate, but you turn a blind eye to anything different than your black and white version of right and wrong.”
“Apparently, you don’t know the difference yourself,” he seethes. “You’re here in prison!”
“I could have left,” I say through clenched teeth. “I was going to escape. But Elle asked me where you were, and I couldn’t walk away from her. I let them take me for her. For you.”
And that finally turns him silent. Ian would do anything for his sister. She was the last person he expected to come up in this conversation.
“So yeah, Ian,” I say, kicking him while he’s down for a beat. “I went into Raheem’s arms willingly. I went to someone who embraced everything I was, all the good I was trying to do, despite my circumstances. Because you turned your back on me. Time and time again. I’m a Royal, Ian. I have to act like one. I’m not the moldable, lost little child you keep treating me as.”
And maybe I’ve hit the right nerve, because finally, for the first time in maybe ever, Ian doesn’t have anything to say in response.
ONE DAY OF BURNING. ONE night of utter silence.
Five screaming prisoners.
The sun rises and sets four times. Five. Six. And Ian and I do not say another word.
The air grows thicker and thicker by the minute, just a little more pressure. Just a little more pain added to the mix. But all the more pride set upon our chests, making it harder to breathe and harder to offer the first word.
But I refuse to back down. Ian needs to recognize he’s being far too self-righteous. That this life of ours has never been black and white. He needs to accept reality.
Ian’s silence tells me he’s not forgiving anything, either.
So we go another one—two days in utter silence. Except for the screams of pain during the day.
And with each passing day, I fear I’m losing another piece of my mind. All I can think about is the burn in the back of my throat. The dehydration taking over my body. The growl in my belly, begging for food. I haven’t been offered an ounce since stepping foot in the prison.
I’m slowly starving. Dehydrating. I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse, though, that it won’t kill me.
On the ninth day of imprisonment, I hear footsteps coming down the stairs. Heavy boots, worn by a heavy body. The sound of chains rattle through the air. Past the first cell. Past the next. Down the aisle before they stop at my own cell.
The sound of a key grates against steel and the lock pops open at the same time my heart leaps into my throat. The door slides open and I’m greeted by a hard-faced man with a beard that touches his chest. A thick scar runs down one side of his face. And there’s a smear of blood on his lower lip.
“Hands,” he says in a thick German accent. He holds up a set of handcuffs with a lin
k of chain between them.
I swallow once before holding my hands up, bringing my wrists together. The guard secures the inch-thick bands around my wrists before snapping a similar pair around my ankles.
“Liv?” Ian suddenly calls out, a hint of worry showing in his voice.
“It’s okay,” I assure him, my heart suddenly racing. “It’ll be okay.”
The guard yanks on one end of the chain, dragging me forward. My weakened body isn’t prepared for the force of it. A little yelp instinctually leaps from my throat as I stumble forward.
“Liv!” Ian yells again. I hear his hands smack against the steel door as we walk past it.
“I’m okay!” I yell to him. “I—”
But I’m cut off when we reach the stairs and I’m being dragged up them.
“Try anything funny and you’ll regret it,” the guard says. I look to the side, where he stands, and see he holds a stake securely in one hand.
“Nothing funny,” I promise him. I study the huge arm muscles. The thick ropes of strength that wrap around his chest, even climb up his neck. This man could crush me with one hand. He could drive that stake clean through my chest and pop it out the other side.
My body has physically weakened in the time I’ve been here. I couldn’t fight him, and I’m sure that was designed on purpose.
I have little doubt that he has been given orders to kill me if necessary. Since Cyrus has confirmed I am not the queen, he has no need to keep me around.
I wonder briefly what will happen to my House should I die here in Roter Himmel. Silent Bend will once again be without a Royal leader. It will once again fall into poverty and discord.
No, I tell myself. That won’t happen. I will get out of this framed mess. I will return to the people who need me.
Up and up a thousand stairs. Down hallways. Down another set of stairs. Across a huge ballroom. Winding up a spire. It feels as if we’ve been walking for an hour. When, finally, we stop at a massive, ancient wooden door.
The guard knocks on the door five times, one long and four quick raps on the wood. “You don’t have long; use the time wisely.”