by Kelsey Quick
Zein nearly laughs, tilting his head to the side. He doesn’t believe one ounce of it.
Well, there goes that plan. The words are far from true, but the fact is I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I said those things to him. I thought I would be dead by now, another rotting corpse in the fallen pit getting split apart by fang and bone. The truth is I just wanted to go out with a bang. Should I tell him that?
“Forgive me, my lord.” I grit my teeth together as I look him in the eye. “Since I was certain that I would be sentenced to death, I figured that I might as well eliminate any preconceived notions about me. Apparently, I misjudged your kind and merciful nature.”
I maintain my eye contact past the point of permissible. His expression remains ambiguous until he finally smiles. I wonder if smiling means the same to him as it does to the rest of the world.
“Such sensitive creatures, you humans.” He eventually pairs a phrase to his smirk. He trails his fingers from my jaw to my neck. ”Perhaps letting you die instead would have solved your emotional turmoil?”
Tensing within his grasp, I fight to not answer such a goading question—one pulled from a trifling past. Instead, I flat-out ignore it.
“I kept you safe, untouched by others of my kind even when you would rebel. And this is how you repay me?” he says, a shade melancholic.
In the midst of my paralyzing anger, I find my voice. “My body may be preserved but my mind has been rotting for years. I trusted you that night. When you told me everything would be okay. For the first two years I lived every day wanting to die.” I gulp down my pride. “I mourned the death of my family alone. I suffered by waiting, thinking you would return... thinking that you meant everything that you had said to me. Once I finally accepted the truth... that the sole purpose for you keeping me alive was to be your damned slave, death no longer intimidated me.”
Silence envelops the room and the wisp of his smile deflates to a taut, unmoving line. Sympathy? Regret? Maybe something struck a chord, if vampires have any chords to strike other than anger and violence.
“I see. But it does not warrant such recklessness,” he says icily, and my spine stiffens. “As you are aware by your being here, I don’t want you—nor your blood—to go to waste. So, how can I dissuade you from any sorry attempts to flee my castle?”
I nearly laugh.
“You can’t. I will try until I either succeed or until you send me to Saya,” I declare.
He sneers. “Hm, or… I could break your legs?”
A shiver of fear ripples across my forearms. He must catch the slight scent of it, because he lets slip a grin. Is he messing with me?
I clear my throat. “I will never stop trying.”
“Yes, well. Everyone has something they refuse to bargain with. And unfortunately, you have already shown me yours.”
What?
He grabs the front of my ruby dress and pulls me closer.
“The lives of your friends.”
My heart skips a beat.
Savvy... Katarii… He can’t…
I look him straight in the eyes with rage as tears fall freely.
“Don’t you dare,” I whisper. “They didn’t do anything.” I throw my fists against him, but he silences the attack with his fierce grip.
He states calmly, “How about we compromise?”
Compromise? This vampire is a monster.
My fists drop to each side and I swear if my nails were longer, they would be drawing blood from my own palms. Zein’s hands find other prey in removing the loose strands of hair from my neck, his features falling expressionless as I become dreadfully silent.
“Compliance can always be bought,” he explains. “Accept and embrace your life here, and your friends will be overlooked. Continue on with your useless acts of dissent and I will see to their deaths, myself. Do you understand?”
Bitterly, I nod. There is so much that I now cannot fathom. By saving Savvy and Katarii from the fallen and bringing them here, I obliterated any chance to free myself again. Unless they would come with me. But knowing Savvy, there’s no chance.
“Is this why you’ve kept me alive all this time? To just toy with me?” I ask, my words cracked by tears, and my resolve momentarily broken.
“That is the question, isn’t it?”
He grabs the hair on the back of my neck and pulls down, exposing the breadth. My mind leaps to my years of night terrors; to that vampire from ten years ago; to my mother changing before my eyes into one of the fallen. I nearly forget to breathe while terror floods my veins.
He’s going to turn me into one of them!
“No! You can’t!” I scream as he lowers his face to the crook of my neck and shoulder, his hot breaths sending chills along my skin—as if each and every inch knows the horror that lies ahead.
“I can,” he says.
My fingers grasp at his immovable arms that have me locked against him. I pull and push with as much might as my hands can muster, to no avail. If I am dirt, he is steel.
How… how can he do this?
“I’m sorry for everything I said and for everything I did.” I blurt out anything that may stop him. “Please don’t turn me into one of them!”
Zein inhales along my neck, above the spot that I’ve only ever read about in history books. The spot that vampires would bite for prime blood flow in the past, before the law of Cain banned the conversions. It dawns on me that he has no intention of stopping.
His fangs find their target.
A final breath permeates my sight, infecting it with a horrid anticipation unlike any I’ve ever felt before.
Then I feel it.
Searing knives cut in and along my neck, the pain shooting up and down my spine. My ears fill with the deafening sound of liquid rushing; of my own blood siphoning out of me. I cry out, the burning intensifying as the warmth from my body is stripped little by little, every few seconds.
No...
Dizziness overcomes me; my limbs growing weaker and weaker by the second.
...I can’t be one of them.
My thoughts fly to my home in Avignon, France... to that night. Watching through smoke and rubble as my brother, having been converted to the fallen, crouches over my father, preparing to eat him alive.
I can’t. I can’t become that.
“Kill me please,” I mutter, as my world becomes
wholly and completely black.
chapter 8
Sharp tingles fly up my body, pulling me into the world again. My face is slick with sweat, every part of me spent, each limb as heavy and bloated as a sandbag. If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that I have no clue where I am.
I blink the gunk out of my eyes, although thick linen curtains block me from seeing anything past the small cot that I’m in.
It’s dark, minus some flickering from a candle in the near most corner. Layers of wool and corduroy blankets insulate both my body and its egregious stench. I throw them off in a rush to feel the affections of the room’s cool air. After a moment of relief, stinging pain from my neck shocks me into recollection.
Zein bit me… and drank my blood. What happened after that?
I frantically analyze every inch of my body. All my hair is where it should be, no grotesque nails, no jaundice, no blood dripping from my eyes, no insatiable bloodlust.
I’m not one of the fallen? But how? Am I dead?
Footsteps and a pair of voices interrupt my thoughts.
“Did he take too much blood from her?”
I recognize this voice. I try to piece it together and finally picture a tall, blond vampire.
Narref?
“No, both he and the nurse assure me he did not. But she is taking longer than the usual,” Gemini replies. I recognize his voice instantly.
“Perhaps it would fare him better to just leave her be,” Narref says, “given her apparent worth.”
I cock an eyebrow.
“To think he would risk his resolve—�
��
“She’s awake,” Gemini attempts a whisper, but naturally, he underestimates the human ability to hear. “Nurse.”
Heavy footsteps eventually thud across the marble floor. Two dark shadows appear below the linens, indicative of two white-heeled ankles, foreshadowing a grand entrance.
They open and a large woman, a vampire, looks me up and down grievously. She stands stout in a medic cloak, much like that of the doctor in the Selection Hall, except hers is a dark shade of ruby red. The makeup that covers every corner of her face looks to have already endured a full day’s wear.
“Come to, now, ‘ave we?” Her voice carries like none other, shrill and deafening. I merely blink as she walks away. She spares no pause for an answer, saying, “Can’t be goin’ to our master’s quarters without a bit o’ bread on your stomach. ‘Else I’ll be seein’ you of’en.”
“What?” I ask.
“You can’t expect to feel fine after a feedin’ if you don’t eat!” she snaps, making marks on her paperwork at a nearby counter. ”Goodness, you ‘ave a fancy for faintin’?”
“Wait,” I mutter, beginning to understand. I slide my legs off the edge of the bed. “Are you saying that I fainted from a lack of food?”
She turns a quizzical eye at me. “Yes? Why else would you think?”
“Because that was her first summoning. She got herself into trouble and Zein wanted to teach her a lesson, I’m sure,” Gemini says from behind the woman.
He sports a grin. “Though, he went a bit easy if you ask me.”
Narref stands wide-eyed off to the side. Why is he here?
They both stand in the doorway of what I have concluded to be the human infirmary.
“You...,” I direct my confusion to Gemini with disgust, although my mind is still swimming.
He responds with a politely sarcastic smile. “Hello, Dimwit, how have you been? You’re looking a little pale… Ah, you thought you were going to turn into one of the once-humans, didn’t you?”
My face falls to a glower.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” He turns his attention back to the nurse. “Nightingale is still teaching outdated information to their students, I’m afraid,” he proclaims, sitting down on the side of another cot and throwing his hand out in reference to me. ”That fine dimwit over there is still under the impression that Lord Zein’s bite can turn her into a fallen beast. Which is why she looks so ghastly... Well, that might just be her face.”
I ignore his jab only because of my intrigue.
“How is that possible?” I ask. “There’s no cure for the fallen, I thought?”
“Ah, right! No cure. However, there is a newly discovered vaccine for vampires that eliminates that pesky side effect. A rather peculiar substance of modern science, really. They call—”
I stop listening as I process his words. I’m still alive and I’m still myself.
Slightly enthused by the fact that I won’t be turning into a blood-lusting corpse anytime soon, I lift a grateful, yet shaky hand to my neck. My fingertips lightly trace over the swollen punctures that are covered by an arument bandage. The relief dissipates when I realize how pathetic I must have sounded last night.
I told him to kill me. Really, Wavorly? There goes your big-shot act.
Realizing that Gemini is still talking, I reluctantly tune back in.
“—although, they are extreeeemely expensive. And currently only awarded to elite vampires who own humans. They are trying to make it more available to further curb our losses, but they-”
“Quit rambling,” Narref snaps at Gemini as he pushes past his outstretched legs.
“Oh, well do excuse me, your highness!” Gemini snaps back.
Before I can blink, Narref has closed the distance, kneeling down to analyze me.
“Lord Zein requests her status. No abnormalities? Hints of disease or underlying conditions?” he says to the nurse while mulling over my neck.
What the hell?
She replies with a sigh, “Nothin’ out of the ord’nary, your grace. In need of food is all.”
Narref nods and stands, still staring down at me with an odd expression. The waiting game is awkward for a moment or two. I nearly bring up the Selection Hall when he reaches into the sleeve of his robe and pulls out five steel tags with gold-embossed characters reading “1R.”
“Here,” he murmurs, holding them out for me to take. “Since you haven’t had the chance to work yet, you will be needing these for your rations tonight. Make sure you work enough to eat well while you are here.”
I raise a brow and take the tickets cautiously. “Why are you here? Are you not a Selection Hall attendant?”
“First, you must know your place. You will refer to me as ‘your grace’ from here on out.” Narref says, raising a finger.
Gemini and I both roll our eyes. Narref seems to ignore it, indulging my question. “I take great pleasure in commencing the Distribution ceremonies once every year. However, every other day of it, I take pride in myself as the ambassador for Zein’s Province of Sabbanth.”
“He’s also Lord Zein’s ceremonial brother.” Gemini chimes in. “I would know, because he never stops reminding me of it.”
The comment receives a menacing side-glance from Narref, and a little chuckle from the nurse.
“Really?” I ask.
Given Narref’s questionable comments to me in the Selection Hall, I would never have guessed that he was an attendant to Zein, much less related to him.
“Yes. On behalf of the Great Elders, I swear my allegiance to my younger brother. But don’t worry, I would much rather serve him than be in his position.”
Strange to think that he would rather serve than be served. I can’t help but admire it, although I also can’t sympathize with his view of Zein—who is the least deserving of any sort of devotion.
Narref grants me a curt dip of the head, signaling his departure. He turns on his heel to stride gracefully out of the room, glaring at Gemini in the process.
As his footsteps dissolve to light echoes, Gemini scowls.
“Don’t like him?” I ask.
“No one does,” Gemini mutters, exchanging raised eyebrows with the nurse.
I look between them, trying to catch on. “Why?”
The nurse reaches into the lower cabinet to pull out a blood pack filled with water and a package of fruit. My stomach growls with sudden need as she walks toward me, her noisy heels clacking along the way. I half expect her to hang it over my head like the last guy in charge of feeding me, instead she merely drops it into my lap.
“He jus’ puts our lord on edge.” She turns back toward the counter. “Sibling rivalry sorta’ thing, I would guess.”
“Oh.” I look down to my anklet as I drink the blood pack of water. It’s still there, looking ratty as ever. The metal pieces are jagged, reminding me of fangs sinking into flesh, as Zein’s did last night; pushing me to recall my desire for freedom and my hatred of vampires.
My stomach knots in either painful hunger, or bitter anger, and Gemini seems to notice.
“Come, come. Get dressed, eat that, and I will escort you back to the seraglio.”
I glance at my body, briefly frightened by the fact that I might be naked. To my relief, fully clothed.
“I am dressed...?” I inform him, speaking slowly as if that will make it truer than it already is.
“Ugh. With those rags from the Distribution, still, yes. I still have yet to figure out how they call that ‘fashion.’”
He gives me a glance up and down with disgust as he explains. “I escorted Savvy up here earlier with your robes, but you were still unconscious. That girl sat here for quite a long time waiting for you to wake up. Anyway, they are at the foot, there.” He points to the end of my cot.
Savvy never ceases to amaze me.
“She was here?” I say a bit awestruck, until I remember last night.
My chest instantly tightens as Zein’s threat screeches through my thoughts.
Her fate now rests in my hands. If I don’t stop trying to escape, he will kill her. I swallow hard as I grab my assigned robes—identical to the ones Emi and Anaya were wearing last night. Finally dressed after countless rounds of trial and error—awkwardly and modestly commenced in the small space behind the curtains—I expose myself. Both Gemini and the nurse look me over for a split second before nodding.
The nurse comes up to me, applying salve to a crimson ribbon in her hand while on the way.
“Okay now, don’t move,” she says, reaching up to remove the bandage from my neck. She then replaces it with the ribbon, wrapping it repeatedly before finishing it off with a bow—hiding the twin wounds.
“There. That’ll do for now. In the future you will ‘ave to do this yourself,” she declares.
I nod, inspecting the ends of the ribbon that hang to my knees. Everything about my wardrobe is doll-like, pristine, and somewhat unnecessary. I purse my lips with annoyance. My rebellious nature returns as I start to feel like a certified object.
“Are you done? Come now,” Gemini urges, standing to walk out of the room.
“Do I have to go with you?” I ask somewhat sarcastically, expecting a quippy reply that never comes. Instead, he takes his leave while shaking his head. I jog after him, scarfing down the apples and water like I have never known hunger before. My legs still shake, my body is still weak, but I manage to catch up to Gemini.
A long silence ensues until I begrudgingly mutter, “I’m sorry for... you know, being rude.”
“Oh, I don’t care, particularly. But you really can’t go parading your indignant personality around here. Despite our castle having come to a comfortable coexistence, humans are still at the bottom of the hierarchy.”
I raise my eyebrows in offense but I listen to him. If any negative opinions about my attitude get back to Zein, it’s now Savvy’s life that I have to worry about, and I don’t think I can physically endure losing anyone else.
“You must start referring to every vampire here by ‘master’ or ‘my lady,’ aside from Lord Zein and Ambassador Narref, of course. Your regard for your nurse was far too informal. At least pretend to respect your superiors,” he lectures.