I swallowed. Hard. I wasn’t ready for this. Not any of this. I wasn’t a diplomat. I had years of training to go before I would be. I was good with my sword, not my mouth. Not in conversation.
Holding my head up, and trying not to shake like a leaf, I put one foot in front of the other to make my way to the chair.
Savion’s chair sat taller than everyone else’s did. His seat was actually higher than the rest, and when I sat, even my tall frame didn’t come to his shoulders.
He wanted to intimidate everyone.
Clanging his knife on the metal goblet, it brought all eyes around to himself.
“Gentlemen, ladies, I would like you all to meet Kimber Raven, the Breaker of the Spine. She has graciously given up her freedom for the lives of her friends.”
The whole table chuckled.
My stomach heaved. I needed to find out what really happened to everyone who had been with me.
Savion didn’t break stride in his little show.
“Mistress Breaker, these are my Lord Knights, the most loyal of the loyal vampires.” He pointed around the table, and each inclined his head. “Dargo, Emil, Guilliame, and Aiko you know, Nillaston, Georgios, Vasily, Piotr, Billan, Robero, Corlos, and Kane. Also, Generals Odom, Tatano, and Illian.”
Odom was staring at me hard again. Studying me. It seemed almost as if he were trying to tell me something or get me to tell him something.
On top of everything else going on, I didn’t need this creepiness.
Creepiness.
I was sitting in a vampire stronghold, surrounded by a table full of male vampires, after surrendering my freedom to save my remaining friends from being beheaded by the man on my left.
Yeah, creepiness wasn’t capturing it.
Still, I felt like Odom had the answers to my questions about Savion and what had happened with the others. I needed to speak to him alone.
“Eat, Mistress,” the king said to me, gesturing to the table. “I know you’re hungry. We vampires can stave off a bit of hunger, but since you don’t fill yourself with blood, you need food. I won’t have the Breaker dying on my watch.”
I bit my lip, holding back my tart response, and looked at the feast on the table.
It was meat, more meat, with a side of meat. I glanced around, and there was a plate of cheeses just to my right, as well as what looked like a salad and a few raw vegetables in the bowl next to it.
Choosing those, I filled my plate and put just a small piece of chicken on the side of the dish.
“I see the druids still haven’t changed their eating habits.”
“We don’t need blood, and we are not obligate carnivores,” I answered, gesturing at the massive amount of food on the table.
“But still,” one of the knights boomed, “there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a feast. A little pig, a little goat, a little beef—”
“There is nothing little about this,” I answered.
The king chuckled. “She has a point. Chef! Make sure our guest has her vegetables and grains available for meals!”
Someone in the far back corner bowed.
Savion stabbed into a piece of something on his plate and chewed it a bit. “So, tell me about the Breaking. How much power did it take? Did you know you were the Breaker from birth?”
I picked at the carrots on my plate. “Truthfully, I do not remember much of the Breaking. I was more of an instrument than anything else. I guided the rocks from their places on high to their new places in the Scar.”
“Did you know that the spit of land you created from the breaking is thirty leagues long and twenty leagues wide?” Savion studied me as he offered the numbers.
“I had no idea…”
He snorted. “They don’t tell you much.”
“Sire, I’m the youngest and newest of the temple masters, and I don’t always get all the information as soon as it’s available.”
“Did it take you breaking the Spine for them to put you on the council?”
“No, sire, it did not.”
“One thing right,” he mumbled. He leaned in close to me. “I would have had you installed as the Princess of the Vampire had you been here.”
“I’m a druid, your majesty. I doubt I would make a good vampire princess.”
Savion chuckled. “Fair point. Still, I would have given you the honor due your station.”
“Do you think I don’t receive that now? I am a temple master, and I am accorded honors.”
“Should be more.”
“I’m more humble than that. Attention does not suit my manner. What I am given is too much sometimes.”
“Take what you can, little girl,” he snapped. His eyes flashed red. “Take what you can; take what is due to you. Don’t ever let those rotten druids think you any less than you are. You are the Breaker—you command mountains!” He turned and stabbed his fork in the air at me. “That alone should earn you the druid crown!”
I folded my hands. “I don’t want a crown. I want to serve the people. I started as a school teacher, sire, and I have no grandiose dreams.”
His eyes, flashing green then blue, pinned me in the chair. “A school teacher? The Breaker was a school teacher?” He started laughing, hard.
A moment later, the rest of the table joined him, and I flushed red, embarrassed.
I grabbed the napkin on my lap and threw it on the table, standing. “I’ll take my meals alone, thank you.”
Shoving the chair back, I walked away from the banquet and back to the door.
Savion was in front of me.
Vampire speed.
“You will sit back down, and you will finish your meal. You are alive at my pleasure, and it would serve you well to remember that.”
“I cannot change who I am, and I won’t be mocked for it.” I folded my arms, not moving.
His eyes flashed red, and his fangs dropped instantly. A primal hiss issued from him, and I desperately wanted to run.
I held my ground.
“Get back to the table, child. You will take your meals with my knights and me.”
Staring at him, I unfolded my arms. “If you mock me again, I’ll take my chances with your teeth and sword, sire.”
Marching back to the table, I sat. I put the napkin back on my lap and picked up my fork to stab a carrot, and chew it carefully. Savion walked back slowly and sat.
“So, shall we discuss our usual business? Lord Knight Vasily, how are your crops doing?”
I tuned out. I didn’t care about crops.
I didn’t care about a thing in this whole blood-drenched kingdom.
I needed to talk to Odom, and I didn’t know how to do that.
SAVION WAS GRACIOUS ENOUGH TO ALLOW me to use the library.
I wanted to tell him to choke on his permissions.
However, it was the only place he would allow me. He seemed both delighted and disgusted by my resistance to his charms.
I couldn’t tell him it wasn’t charm.
He was a snake, and I could sense the putrescence sliding off him as if he were shedding his skin. He had a fountain of blood in the middle of his entrance hall. There was truly nothing charming about that, and that was just the first impression.
Also, he’d sliced off my friend’s head.
Took a few points off for that.
The rest of dinner had been a torturous affair, with the men laughing and causing a ruckus about things I didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
One of the Lord Knights had ordered his dinner companion under the table to…
Well. She’d been happy to do it, and no one else seemed to mind. I patently ignored it as much as possible, though the shout when he came earned a round of applause.
Before Savion sent me to my room with Lord Aiko, he offered me several of the servants around to keep me company in bed.
I turned smartly on my heel and marched out.
First thing in the morning, Lord Aiko appeared and told me that I could use the library under
guard.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?”
“Why the library? Why not a sparring room or a place where you drain the bodies for their blood in your fountain?”
“His Majesty wishes you learn about us, to choose to stay here with us. Since you were a teacher, I suggested that instead of making you watch training or drills, the library would be a better choice.”
I looked at the walls and rows of books just behind Lord Aiko.
“Where’s my sword?”
He jerked. “Your what?”
“My sword.” I spun and looked at him. “I had a sword when I was captured. I want to know where it is.”
“I wouldn’t have imagined you had a sword.”
I cocked my head. “Why? Because I’m a woman? Because I’m a school teacher? Don’t ever forget that on top of all that, I am also the Breaker.”
Holding his hands out, he took a small step back. “None of those, Mistress. None of those. I just don’t see you as a woman with a sword.”
“What do you see me with then?”
“Bow and arrow.”
I laughed. “At least you see me armed.”
His face flickered. He was thinking something but wasn’t sure of himself.
I waited a moment and then pulled the words from him. “What is it, lord knight? You’re thinking about something. Another way to torture me? Break me?”
“Maybe, Mistress. Maybe.” His laugh was pure theatrics. His eyes betrayed the truth.
He didn’t want to turn me to their side.
Why?
His voice cut through my thoughts. “I was considering if you would like to learn to fire a gun. All of us wear both gun and sword. If you are to be part of our vampire world, you should learn. I will get permission from his majesty to show you. Yes?”
I pretended to think for a moment, so the guards didn’t get the idea that I was over-eager for that. “I think that would be a good idea.”
Hand me the knowledge we’d need to use those weapons? That fell into hell yes.
“Are you in a rush, Lord Aiko?”
He nodded. “Sadly, I have duties. I, or one of my men, will be back to collect you so you may wash for dinner.”
Damn. I nodded. “Thank you.”
He gave a stiff little bow, and I watched him disappear down the hall as the guards closed the door.
I was alone with millennia of vampire lore.
Where do I start?
* * *
The faint sound of someone screaming followed me through the stacks. It was, again, high and disconcerting, and I started to follow it through the room.
The library door banged open, and I jerked my head up.
Savion strode in, looking around. His lip twisted in disgust at the stacks and rows of books.
I was sitting in a chair flipping through a book of maps of S’Kir and watched him for just a moment before his gaze found me.
He tried to smile, but it came out more like a sneer, and then he offered his hand. “Come, Mistress Breaker. Walk with me. I wish to get to know you.”
My stomach roiled at the idea of being near this bloodsucker.
And it was only he, and his few cronies, who gave me that feeling of bloodsucker. I knew I was surrounded by them, that Odom, Aiko, Kane and the others—even the servants of the house—survived on blood, but none were as nausea-inducing as Savion.
I couldn’t refuse him.
Closing the book of maps, I stood and moved toward the door.
I didn’t take his hand. No way. I just waited at the door for him.
“You are so delightfully contrary, my dear Kimber. I enjoy your company already.” Savion’s snake oil smile was pasted on his face.
He led me down the hall, four guards trailing us, not saying anything just yet. There were prisoners in cages as we walked, and they moaned and reached for us as we passed.
Pointing to one at the end, to a cage with more spikes inside than any of the others, Savion explained the punishment. “She is one of our worst enemies. She thought she could set up a rebellion against me four centuries ago. You would think after being in a spiked cage for four hundred years, she’d learn. But as soon as we dunk her, she grows belligerent again.” He swatted her hand back. “My own personal experiment, really. How long can a vampire go without blood, while not in rest, before they die or go completely mad?”
He considered the woman behind the bars.
“We’re up to two centuries now, aren’t we Margaret. We’re mostly senseless most of the time. It’s really quite the delightful treat to see someone who was so defiant brought so low.” He looked back at one of the guards. “Grundy, have a sip. Tell me what you think.”
The guard, with a swagger and a smirk, grabbed the woman’s arm and sank his fangs into her arm.
I cringed. There were puncture marks all over the arm. None of which were healing well or quickly.
Forcing myself to not turn away or react to what I was watching, the stealing of her blood was violent and perverse.
While Grundy sucked from her arm, his other hand worked over his erection, inside his pants.
Breaking off a minute later, he made no motions to heal her wound.
“She still tastes fuckable, sire.” He grinned.
Savion nodded, satisfied. “Excellent. Find yourself relief for that.” He nodded at the guard’s crotch. “We’ll be fine without you for the rest of the day.”
“Thank you, sire.” He turned and left us, but it wasn’t hard to see he didn’t move his hand out of his pants.
Savion led us on from the dying woman. “Do you have such things in West S’Kir, my dear? Appropriate punishments?”
I had planned to be indignant about our justice, but Elex’s face flashed through my head. Instead of offering an answer, I said nothing. Savion seemed to take that as confirmation that we did.
“I’m glad to see that justice can still be meted out by your lousy king.”
“We have no king,” I snapped.
“Of course you do.”
“We’re ruled by the temple masters, governors, mayors and councils,” I answered. “There is no crown. We have no king.”
He turned his gaze to me, and this time, his eyes were dark green. “Curious. You have no crown? No king? That is not how I left the druids.”
“You didn’t and don’t have a thing to do with the druids, your highness. Not a thing.”
“You’re so young. I forget that. And the naïveté. Thinking life is black and white.”
I wasn’t going to fight about this naïveté thing, yet again. I opted out of the conversation and kept walking alongside this more-than-slightly insane king.
He wandered through the stronghold, blathering here and there about things, telling me about the different people in different cages, taking sadistic pleasure in biting or cutting or stabbing some of them.
The blood all flowed down the small drains below them, some a drip, some at a trickle. All of it just looked like what remained of Savion’s sanity flowing away.
He stopped us on the balcony overlooking the fountain in the front.
“This here is my joy. My biggest and best decorating idea ever. All the blood we used to waste during executions and tortures… it was a shame. I was delighted when one of my researchers finally came up with a way to keep things chilled. It’s been a boon, and we can save as much blood as possible.”
I wanted to vomit again. This was an egregious and unnecessary display of power.
Not to mention just plain gross.
I stared at the two stained glass windows, not answering.
Savion’s gaze joined mine as he stepped closer.
It felt…icky. He stood so close, almost intimately close to me. His expression warped to confused, and he stepped back.
He’d also felt the icky sensation.
Interesting.
Shaking it off, he looked up at the windows. “Those assholes. I’ve tried to have those windows b
roken out, but there is magic holding them there that’s like no other. It’s powerful, and I hate those windows. The bastard brother kings.”
I reached out with my power to see what he meant, how they could be unlike any other magic.
The touch was familiar. Comfortable.
The same magic that the Spine and Scar had given to me, Roran, Rilen, and Dorian.
The magic I had infused us with.
I was confused.
Savion cleared his throat, jerking me back to the now, and pointed to the doors below. “Did you know that in order to reach those doors from the outside, you have to pass through the Arch of Life?”
I shook my head. “What’s that?”
He chuckled. “That’s right. The arch was destroyed before the Spine rose. The Arch of Life will test the innermost you. People have gone mad because of it.”
“Including you?”
Shit. Oh, shit.
I had just poked a monster, never mind a bear.
Even the guards all through the hall stepped back when I uttered the words.
Swiveling his head slowly, his blue-green changeable eyes were gone and were overwhelmed by red. Deadly red.
“You rotten little cunt!” He stepped into me, and I backed up. “I spare your friends. I spare your lover. I spare your life. And this is how you choose to treat me? Calling me insane? Insulting me in my own home?” Each word brought him a step closer to me.
I kept backing up until I hit the wall behind me at the top of the stairs.
Savion was terrifying in his madness.
I swallowed hard. I couldn’t say a thing—I was paralyzed and knew anything else would piss him off more.
“I am not mad! You don’t know madness!”
The back of his hand came up and hit me so hard that I tripped sideways. My footing slipped, and I tumbled down the stairs, head over heels, slamming my back, my head, my shoulder, my knees, and—
Someone grabbed me before my head hit again.
The full fury of the insane king drove him into a rage, and he leapt down the stairs and sliced off the head of my rescuer.
The red hair bounced away as the body relaxed, and crumpled behind me.
I stared up at the furious eyes that flashed cold blue through the shocking red glow.
Death of Gods (Vampire Crown Book 3) Page 14