by Kelsey Quick
“Go to Narref, Dimwit,” Gemini says to me with a coy smile as I exit the beautiful barricade, beginning the long journey across the open floor. I keep my head lowered, eyes fixed to the stained glass floor beneath my feet. The molestation of rigid stares stifles me as I try to channel my body’s worth of grace and focus into my stride. It would probably be the end of me if I trip.
I look up once as I near the far corner, seeking one thing and one thing only.
A reassuring pair of eyes, dimly lit and seared by the low burn of the golden lanterns, meet my expectations. For once, I notice that Zein’s gaze is thoroughly cinereal, spotted with splashes of bright ivory and smoky silver. Obsidian shards cut in sharply along the edges of his irises, embedding grainy specks of lustrous imperfection into the pure and shimmering ash—roughly carved like the splintered edges of a tired blade. His pupils widen as he takes me in, and my entire existence melts into them, adding fuel to the molding and casting of my newfound desires.
“Good evening, my lord,” I greet Zein after successfully crossing the room. I dip into a deep and courteous bow at Narref’s side. It’s obvious that Zein is covering for his reputation, aside from the glance on my way over, he doesn’t so much as acknowledge me.
“Narref,” he commands, and the familiar servant turns to grab my wrists.
Lowly, Narref says to me, “We will take your blood with the kortrastet. Mind your manners and keep yourself detached. You won’t be shown explicit kindness here.”
I nod, looking past him toward Giomar and his supply unit. His human girl is a different one from that night months ago. I wonder for a second if the other one is even still alive. This one, meek and frail and dressed in amethyst, quivers uncontrollably as the servant inserts the needle into her bruised and battered arm. She’s sickly and malnourished; pale and brown-splotched skin sinks into the darkened caves of her cheeks and eye sockets. I glance around her to the other summoned supply units, all of which seem to employ the same distressing traits. Recalling Amaorin’s girls from the bathhouse, I wonder if the favorites are used for other things, and if they are treated better than the ones used only for nourishment.
Does blood quality not matter to them?
It’s obvious to me now, how much better Zein treats his entire supply. As my eyes retreat, they catch Giomar’s—an expression that requires me to engage Essence Dissonance to keep the fear at bay. I hastily look back down, trying to focus on anything else.
Narref finishes fastening the kortrastet needle to the tube, burying it quickly and steadily into my arm. I wince from the prick, and watch as the warm, dark liquid flows from my vein, through the hollow tube, and into a glass decanter on a nearby shelf. For several agonizing moments, all is silent except for the steady flow of blood. I make conversation to avoid the nausea.
“Is it hard for you?” I quietly ask Narref. “Being near human blood and yet unable to drink it?”
Still focused on the decanter, Narref hesitates a response. “After a while, it becomes fine. Synthetic blood curbs the temptation enough. Now hush.”
I roll my eyes. After a few more moments, Narref removes the needle and quickly wraps my arm with an arument bandage.
“Off with you,” he says, facing me back toward the opposite side of the room. And without another glance at him or Zein, I go. I happen to notice the fresh blood being poured over the food on their plates from the corner of my eye. Sickened, I speed up my pace.
Even more sinister and hungry stares scour me as I make my way across the room again. Heavy orchestral tones resonate from the music pit at the front of the hall, taking the attention away from me a little. Humans, not just in and around Cain, but across the entire world, are nearly extinct. Because of our endangerment, usually only the top elites are allowed human nourishment slaves. The rest must settle for synthetic blood, and while synthetics work in theory for a vampire’s hunger, there will always be a gap between its minute satisfaction and the true satiation of the real thing—like eating the leaves off a tree in lieu of the fruit at the highest branch.
I keep my head down as I reclaim my seat, very aware that every non-human in this room would jump on me and the other units if it weren’t for the ownership tags embedded into our arms. To the other vampires, it’s a fatal warning to not come near. To me, it’s an indication that I belong to Zein, and to Zein alone. And where months ago I gagged at that thought, now I am comforted by the safety it ensures.
After a long while of keeping our heads bowed and hands knitted upon our laps, light-hearted music begins to play, to which Anaya gives us the go ahead to lift our heads and view through the horizontal slat in the glass panel. I do, and soon wish I didn’t. Zein is now on the mosaic floor with the rest of the strong elites, dashing and regal, with all eyes in the room shifting to him. He is beautiful, like the horizon on the walls of Nightingale. Incandescent. But it’s who he’s now dancing with that causes my falling brow. Marina. They are extremely close together, without even enough space for a pearl to fit. Her small jaw is fitted to the crook of his neck and her expression doesn’t even try to hide her bliss.
Raw jealousy forms for the first time in my heart, hardening it and molding it into a reserve of anger and doubtfulness. I throw my gaze away from the spectacle, logically walking myself around my emotions.
It’s only natural. They are both vampires. They can understand one another. They can grow old into the centuries together. Strong, and fighting side by side, drinking human blood like monsters.
Which is why I’m jealous.
As a human I can’t be anything more than what I am already—a weak and worn blood slave.
I wish I were born a vampire.
For the first time ever, that blasphemous thought flies through my mind, to which I defensively and effectively pluck it out, all the while wondering what the hell is wrong with me.
chapter 18
“You first.” Savvy turns to me while in the baths. “What were you wanting to tell me? Is it about Lord Zein?”
Her eyes are bright and fluttery. She wants more than anything to tell me her own secret while trying to be polite enough to let me go first. However, after the banquet—well, after seeing Zein with Marina—I can’t seem to find the desire to talk about it. I almost want to forget about him.
“No, you go ahead, mine’s nothing,” I insist, settling further into the tub of lukewarm water. I put my hair up with a spiral, wooden hair-stick that I had whittled with the scrap metal shard from my anklet back at the seraglio. Whatever happened to that anklet, anyway?
Savvy purses her lips. “You sure?”
“Positive,” I say. “Come on, I know you really want to spit it out.”
She laughs before rolling her eyes upward, thinking of how to proceed. “Well, you know Master Gemini.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Yes...?”
“The first day we had arrived at the castle, you were summoned, and you had fainted. Remember?”
I nod, smiling as I recall. “And you had stayed by my side, waiting for me to wake up for hours.”
Savvy smiles back. “And in the midst of those hours, Gemini requested something of me...”
She takes a deep breath and bites her lip for a hair too long.
I tilt my head. “Are you not supposed to tell me?”
She nods and glances at me. “You have to swear not to tell anyone. You’re the only one I’m telling. Please?”
A warmth fills my chest at that promise of exclusivity.
“Yes, of course.”
“Especially not Lord Zein.”
“What makes you think I would tell him anything?” I scoff.
She gives me a fresh ‘I’m not stupid’ look, making me wonder if I ever had a secret to begin with.
She continues. “Master Gemini told me that on behalf of Lord Zein, I had an assignment. I would be summoned to talk to him about things rather than summoned to give my blood. At first it was just—”
“Wait what?” I interrupt. �
��But you were summoned to give your blood at least once, right?”
“No,” she sighs. “I’m sorry. At the time, I needed to lie. It was the only duty I could offer to my new and merciful lord.”
I fight back an eye roll.
But during that synthetics batching, when her wrist sounded…
“But your kortrastet wound?” My voice quivers.
“It was just a bandage,” she admits, “Gemini gave me the ribbon to wear so it seemed authentic.”
I swallow so hard it’s audible.
“So, what things were you summoned to talk about?” I mutter, a bit enraged by her secrecy.
“Life in the seraglio, human nature, the things the girls talk about, and… you.”
My heart seizes.
“Me?”
“Nothing weird just… monitoring. Making sure that you were feeling alright and that you weren’t sick or anything. The whole purpose is to make sure the supply isn’t in jeopardy while Zein is attending to more important matters.”
“That’s weird,” I say. “Zein was the one asking you about them?”
“No, it was Master Gemini. But Lord Zein knew about it.”
“Did you tell him about our conversations?” I add with an accusatory tone.
She shakes her head. “In fact, after about the third time, we stopped talking about that stuff, aside from what was required to fill out his parchment sheets.”
It hits me all of a sudden. What she’s been wanting to tell me.
“Oh.” I straighten in the bath, the water sloshing around us. Her cheeks grow red.
“First it was him talking about his achievements and his family, his duties and such. Then it slowly turned into how he felt about all of them. Then it was my turn, but I didn’t have much of that to talk about.” She laughs, but my mouth falls to a frown. I wonder if she knows how sad that statement actually is. “A couple more sessions like that and then one day, as he was showing me the study, he…”
“He what?” I whisper, dreading the suspense.
“...kissed me,” she says softly. “We both stopped instantly, knowing that what we did was against the law. Especially because I don’t belong to him. He sent me away and didn’t summon me again for weeks.”
The shock swirling through my body could knock down a dozen trees.
“The next time he did, he made sure it was known that he was made to by Zein. That something had happened to you in the seraglio the night before and Zein wanted to know what exactly happened.”
“Oh, when Anaya and Danny attacked me?”
She nods. “He also wanted to tell me that if anyone asked, Madam Seriesa had been relocated to a different province.”
I purse my lips recalling that woman’s bruised face just before she died, and how I’ve been keeping that from Savvy all this time because of my promise to Zein. What that says about my loyalties, I don’t even want to know. Guilt works its way up into my throat.
“Anyway,” she chuckles, “After one too many scowls, I called him out on everything. On how he was the one who kissed me and that it was his fault. He asked me if I knew what would happen if he slipped up and drank my blood. What would happen to both of us.”
“What did you say?” I can barely hear myself speak.
“I told him to just not drink my blood, then. That he should be able to control it. So, since then… it’s been interesting.”
“You love him,” I murmur.
She creases her brows while tediously picking at her long fingernails and nods. “I think so. And if that’s not rule-breaking enough for you, I don’t know what is.”
I can’t help but laugh, even though everything clashes within my brain.
Her face instantly falls to worry. “Seriously, Wave, if Lord Zein finds out, we—”
“He won’t.” I smile, grabbing her hand, saving her fingernails from her fidgeting. “I promise.”
Even though worry coats my tongue, I know the only thing I can do is give my support. How could I not? When I, too, am riding the thin line of the very sinful thing that she is.
“Thanks, Wave.”
I nod, craning my neck to study the ceiling arches, trying to change the subject for my own sense of wellbeing. “I can’t imagine Zein doing anything too harsh to Gemini, if he were to somehow find out.”
Savvy snorts. “You must really see a unique side of him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Apparently he has quite the bloody history.”
“You think?” My voice illustrates an eye roll. “He’s the youngest general of an army with a statue of himself decapitating an enemy in his foyer, Sav, of course he has a bloody history.”
Her gaze is as good as a trite ‘go-to-hell’ curse when she explains.
“Master Gemini told me about how he came to serve Lord Zein… how he became the youngest war general. There was a hearing, apparently, a long time ago, regarding Lord Amaorin’s older brother. Duke Amaorin. He was found guilty for allowing a supply unit to give birth to his child.”
“You mean, a demi-vampire?”
Seen as the lowest breed of vampire in Cain, demi-vampires are usually slaughtered or banished when they are found or birthed. Not strong or fast enough to be considered a vampire, and not enough satiating blood to be considered human. Half human and half vampire, essentially useless to Cain.
Savvy nods. “After the hidden child and mother were found in Duke’s basement by a servant, Lord Reginald Amaorin was forced to turn him over to the Elders, especially since the mother and the child turned up missing later.”
“How? Both of them would smell too human to—”
She shrugs. “That’s just what he told me. But the Elders had found the forbidden act of secrecy to be too much to let pass any other way… and so they sentenced Duke to death. He was a ruler of Cain at that time, too.”
“There were six rulers?” I ask, wondering where Zein fits into all of this.
“No. Duke Amaorin was a general of Cain. And Lord Zein was Lord Reginald Amaorin’s chief advisor at the time. There were only five.”
“Oh.”
“It was Reginald’s responsibility to perform the royal execution, since he’s the head over all the rulers. But when he couldn’t bring himself to kill his own brother, Zein stepped up from his cabinet to relieve him... so, I guess the Elders liked what they saw next, and appointed Zein to take Duke’s place.”
“So Zein killed him.” I take away.
“More like, mutilated,” she stammers, “He was apparently smiling when he—”
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask, suddenly nauseated.
“I’m sorry.” Savvy says. “I thought you’d want to know these things.”
I sigh, blinking through a wave of lightheadedness. I forgot that my blood had been taken earlier. “No, I’m glad you told me. It’s just, lately I’ve been having a hard time acknowledging that Zein is capable of such things, because...”
“Because you see him through the rose bushes, now?” Savvy finishes my sentence for me.
I peer at her and change the subject. “If you ever need cover to see Gemini, let me know. Even if it is... weird, I’m here for you.” I say it as if I believe that ‘falling in love with a vampire’ is a grave mistake. I should believe that. But I’m not so sure I do, anymore.
Her eyes shimmer with equal amounts of happiness and suspicion.
“Thanks, Wave.”
✽✽✽
Tonight, I awake from a different kind of dream. I was at the violet wall again. The inscription on the wall was in pieces, ‘the Elders’ written over and over, inked on the furniture, rug, and scribbled across every book. The blue-gold brooch, the patch, the bracelets, and the gun, bled dark and tarry ink that filled the entire room. As my lungs are forced to take in the damning liquid I am shaken awake by a soft, yet diligent hand. Long, straight white-blond hair and lavender-painted nails fill my vision, followed by opal, milky orbs.
“Madam Ceti?” I whi
sper. The rest of my friends and fellow supply units are still sound asleep.
“You’ve been summoned, dear, come now,” she whispers, offering me a reassuring grin.
The weakness in my limbs and the heaviness in my head indicate that I still haven’t recovered from having my blood drawn at the banquet. Could Zein really be wanting to take my blood again? Or maybe it’s for something else?
“Okay.” I sigh, standing on stiff and achy limbs.
Carefully, I follow Ceti, weaving around cots of thin sheets that cover peaceful bodies and canvas pillows. She leads me to the exit corridor that she and one other vampire attendant had been guarding—though the attendant is sound asleep. Fear twists my heart for but an instant as a creature, who stands hauntingly in the doorway, glides into my peripheral vision. Another one of those soldiers with the demonic masks. He just stands there, perfectly still.
“He will lead you to the other tower where Lord Zein’s chambers are. Stay close, lest you lose your way,” Ceti informs me, to which I nod.
Slowly, I walk over to the soldier with my eyes to the floor. I stop when his armor-coated feet come into view, and I follow when they turn to lead me out. When his back is to me, I allow my curiosity free reign. All parts of his body that aren’t covered by leather or armor are covered in a tight, black material. He walks with enviable posture, sporting a single spear with both hands. As the atmosphere becomes comfortable, I avert my attention elsewhere.
We travel down more stone laden hallways with uneven silver linings stemming out like veins in and around the bricks. Doorways upon doorways, all closed and huge. Stained glass windows depicting malice and atonement line every corridor. We make a turn once—to the right—and I see a sign ahead hanging from the arch of a smaller hallway that reads, “Night’s Way.”