Breathing hard, Savion stood over me with the sword raised. He panted a few times, then threw the sword on the stairs and whirled away from me.
“Clean that shit up!” he roared and growled, punching two of the guards in the face as he passed them, crashing through the doors back into the rest of the stronghold.
He was beyond mad.
“Mistress?” Aiko was suddenly next to me on the stairs. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head, still unable to find my voice.
He offered a hand to me and helped me to my feet. Two of the other guards ran over to grab the dead guard and haul him to the fountain.
Aiko put an arm around me. “Come on, I’ll have the maid draw a—“
I put my hand on his arm. “No.” I walked to the edge of the stairs. “I want to see this.”
“You shouldn’t…”
Turning to him, I stared directly into his dark black eyes. “I need to see this, Lord Aiko. I need to witness the full madness of this so-called king.”
He bowed his head in agreement.
The guards had hauled the body to the edge of the pool, up onto the ledge and wrapped something around his feet. One of the others flipped a series of buttons on the opposite wall. I saw the dunking well drop a few inches, and then fill again as the main fountain slowed.
And then, they lifted the body to hang upside down and headless over the top of the fountain. All the fresh blood in the body rushed down and out and into the pooling dish at the top.
“He will stay there for a day so every last drop will be depleted,” Aiko said. “And to warn people that Savion will take your head and drink you dry if you cross him.” He pointed to the silver tray at the front of the fountain where the guard’s head now rested. “Tomorrow noon, that will go to the vultures.”
I waited another moment before turning away. “My rooms, please, Lord Knight.”
He took my elbow and led me away, promising me a bath and a quiet meal.
I doubted anything would ever help me recover from the sadistic nature of the Vampire King of S’Kir.
I SPENT THE NEXT DAY GOING THROUGH the stacks and stacks of books. Thousands of years. The vampire’s written language was a little different from ours, but not so much it stopped me from reading.
I read histories and victories, dramas and terrible poetry. Maps and decrees, lineages and declarations. On and on, as much as I could.
It was as much of a distraction as it was genuine curiosity.
Savion had ordered the guards to march me through the front hall where the guard still hung, his dead eyes staring up at the stained glass.
I wanted this king dead.
Even though I only flipped through a few of the books, I held on to the ones I wanted to read more of, and I stacked them on a table in a far corner, near a window.
I froze at the window. I could hear a sound, quiet at first, then louder and louder. It clarified itself a moment later into the sound of a woman screaming.
Somewhere far above me this time. Instead of listening to the scream, I listened to the word, but I couldn’t make it out. .
There were several sobs, and then… nothing. The sounds faded away. I waited a moment, and then went back to my books.
Strange things happened around these vampires.
By midday, there were several stacks, a dozen or more high. I wanted to wander through more stacks before I settled in to read.
Halfway down one, I heard the door open and shut at the far end.
“Mistress Breaker?”
“Here,” I called to the unfamiliar voice.
“I’ve brought lunch.”
Hearing the word, my stomach growled, and I heard a tray placed on a table. I was hungry.
Did vampires get hungry like druids did?
I put back the book I was holding and walked down the outside of the stacks by the window. It had turned into a gray overcast day with no threat of rain.
A man in a gray uniform appeared at the end of the aisle I was walking down and took a few strides toward me. His face was familiar, and I realized it was General Odom.
My heart leapt. I could ask him…
Before I could get my thoughts in line, the older vampire had taken me by my arms and spun me against the wall. His eyes raked over my face, and I was immediately petrified of him.
He kissed me.
Not a simple kiss and not one you would give to a stranger. It was a deep kiss, seeking ownership of my lips and tongue.
I felt his fangs.
With a blast of magic, I knocked him away from me, alternately disgusted and terrified. “What the hell are you doing?”
His voice was quiet. “Celine…”
“Kimber. My name is Kimber. How dare you—”
“You aren’t Celine?” Again, the words were a whisper.
“No! I am Kimber Raven, Mistress of the Temple of the Lost God and Breaker of the Spine.” I stared at him. “What the hell are you on about?”
The general looked as gray as his uniform, and his dark chocolate eyes were lost, sad as he backed away from me.
“Please, forgive me, Mistress Breaker. You look so much like her. I couldn’t help thinking this was a ruse.” He snapped to attention and nodded sharply. “I brought food.”
Sitting at the table a moment later, the general bowed and turned to leave.
Damn it, now I wanted to know.
“Who was she?”
He pulled up short. “Mistress?”
“You acted shocked in the throne room as well. Who was she? This woman you mistook me for?”
“Someone I loved before the rise of the Spine.”
General Odom was old—Rilen and Roran old.
If he remembered the world before the Spine, maybe he remembered the way the druids and vampires used to get along.
“General, you were intent on me last night at the table. Was my resemblance to your lost love the only reason?”
“No.”
Oh, he had things he wanted to tell me. “Please sit, General.”
“It… wouldn’t be prudent.”
I spun up my magic and created a bubble around the table that would keep his words from going more than a few hands outside of it. “Please, General. Sit.”
He gasped and then sat. “How much easier this would all be if we could create such bubbles of silence.”
“My friends…” I started.
He sliced into my words. “I have only a few days left here before Savion discovers my deception.” He pulled one of the sandwiches to his side and bit in. “Savior and gods, I’m so tired of pretending I like this place and obeying Savion. He’s mad, you know. Mad. Off his bloody rocker.” He paused. “Forgive the pun.”
“Forgiven.”
He took another bite and chewed it like it was going out of style. “Your friends are safe. My men and I made sure they had their weapons and a few samples of ours. We gave them a horse to carry your friend’s body back with them.”
This time, he stopped and put the sandwich down. “I am sorry about your friend. It was not our intention to kill anyone, but the guard in the throne room was not one of mine. He was one of Illian’s men. They are fiercely loyal—and twisted.”
I cocked my head. “What did you mean by you only have a few days?”
“We were told to behead your friends at the Crossing. Instead, we let them go with guns and horses. We brought bones from deer and elk back with us. It’s only time until he realizes that those bones are older than people we should have slaughtered.” He swallowed, staring at this sandwich. “And I am ready to be done.”
“He’ll kill you?” I was aghast.
“That I’ve lived this long is a miracle.” He snorted. “My plan is to not die, but it all depends on when he realizes what we’ve done. Several others and I plan to leave the night of the Blood Rite. They will be blood-drunk enough that they may not see us leaving.”
“Where will you go?”
“Beyond the Burnt Woo
ds, there is a rebel stronghold.”
“Wouldn’t he sense that?”
“Not when the woods themselves shield us. Their magic is ancient. It was a beautiful forest when I was young and was made up of thousands upon thousands of hushwillow trees.”
I gasped. “Hushwillow…”
“Yes. And the trees still keep the silence though they are long since dead and burnt to the ground. Are you all right? You’ve gone pale.”
I felt like throwing up. Again. Those woods were Rilen’s wife’s last resting place. It was overwhelming to know they were still there, still being used. “A story a friend told me…”
“The whisper shells.”
“Yes.” I bobbed my head slowly. “My mother had one, and I thought the prophecy inside was hers…but Roran explained it could not be because it was older than she was.”
“Once the Spine rose, the whisper shells couldn’t be used to contain visions anymore because the wood was gone.” The general nodded. “But the woods hide us. And it will be good to be away from Savion and his madness.”
“Can you take me with you?”
The question was greeted with pensive silence.
“You can’t or you won’t?”
General Odom tipped his head. “Won’t. Because we are planning to free you after I am gone. Just a few days, Mistress Cel—forgive me, Kimber.”
“You never answered my first question, General. Who is she?”
He became thoughtful again. “Before the Spine, before my head rose from my ass, I was an accomplice of sorts to Savion. I ran his dungeon, hidden in plain sight from the kings.
“There was a woman, captured as a teenager who lived in the cells. For some reason, Savion took a liking to her. Her blood was sweet, perhaps. Her name was Celine. We fell in love on either side of those bars. But we could do nothing about it because if Savion ever caught a hint of me on her, he would kill both of us.
“He took her blood and her body most times.
“When all hell broke loose, the vampire king disappeared, the Three went mad, the druid queen murdered—there was just a small chance for me to get her out of there. Just one and I took it.
“We rode like the primeval themselves were on our hides, stopping only to change horses. And finally, we reached Winter Keep, and I was able to get her on one of the last boats to North Landing before the Spine rose. I had nothing of her but a kiss as they pulled the walk back on the ship.”
By the look in his eyes, I could tell he was back there, back at Winter Keep, watching the woman he loved and couldn’t have as she sailed away forever.
I kept my voice quiet. “What was her name?”
“Cely. Celine Stormbreaker.”
I went cold.
My stomach twisted, and I could feel my teeth starting to chatter from the ice in my veins.
“Mistress?” General Odom was quiet.
“You’re sure of her name?” I managed to whisper.
“Of course. We flirted and spoke through the bars for eight years. Why do you look ashen again?”
My lip trembled. “Celine Stormbreaker was my nanny.”
General Odom went ashen this time. “I…”
“You’re sure.”
“You never forget the one you knew was your soul mate, even if we never did more than hold hands.” He stared at me, and swallowed hard, clearly something else on his mind. “Tell me?”
“She was the First in Rest. She came back to West S’Kir and couldn’t…handle life. She’d slept since the Spine rose until ninety-three years ago—and the sleeping sickness took her when I was five.”
“Sleeping sickness…”
“If you take Rest more than a thousand years, you die from it when you do wake. She fell asleep and never woke up.”
His face contorted once more. “Kimber, Mistress Breaker. You look like her. Identical, save your eyes.”
I shook my head imperceptibly, quietly begging him to say nothing more.
“When I put her on the boat for North Landing… she was pregnant.”
Everything swirled around me. The dizziness was uncontrollable. I drew a hard breath. “It’s not possible. You know that it’s not possible.”
Odom shook his head. “I know. But I know she was pregnant.”
“Vampires and druids cannot have children. It doesn’t happen. It can’t happen. That’s been established since…time began.” I put a hand on my forehead. “There must have been someone else… someone snuck in and…”
Odom sighed heavily, nodding. “It’s what I’d always thought. Because you are right. We cannot conceive between the species. There were a lot of us, foolish and young. Someone might have convinced Savion to let them have her for a night.”
I choked back tears. “He would have done that?”
The general folded his hands and leaned forward. “You must understand that Savion is evil. There is not an iota of compassion in him. He would do whatever he wanted. He still does. I had to get her out of there.”
Staring at my own folded hands, I could feel my world collapsing. “It’s not possible. My parents waited nearly seven hundred years to have a…” My lip trembled. “Oh, gods. They didn’t have a baby. They didn’t want a baby. When Cely died, they just took over… that’s why they were so bad at being parents when I was little. They didn’t want to be parents.”
The entire world was trembling at the edges of my vision, and there was no way to stop the crumbling sensation that tripped over my skin.
“Cely was my mother… Oh, Gods. She was my mother…”
GENERAL ODOM LET ME FREAK OUT and cry and scream.
He didn’t try to console me or quiet me. He just let me rage and cry for nearly an hour.
I didn’t know how I was going to survive this.
Danai, Elex, Carolee—now my parents were a lie.
Celine Stormbreaker. First of Rest. The woman who slept for three thousand years.
My mother.
Eventually, I came back to myself—although it was really starting to feel like I was just shutting ‘Kimber’ off and letting the ‘Breaker’ take over.
Still, it was necessary. I couldn’t let the emotions rule me yet. Not until I knew I would be safe back in the temple.
The general saw I was calming and started to gather the dishes so he could take them away.
“You need to know that anyone who is in my company is on my—our side.” He spoke so the clang of dinnerware could drown out his words. “You should also know that Aiko, Billan, and Kane are aligned with us. You may trust them if you need to do so. I will be leaving during the Blood Rite tomorrow night.”
He stared at me, as I was once again seated across from him.
“You will not like the Blood Rite. It’s primitive, horrible, and savage. Those of us who defy Savion, and who have left this place, have changed it. He has kept it as it was millennia ago—and it is a bloodbath. He will make you go. Whatever you do, please, do not offer your blood, and do not let anyone give you any. It could well be drugged, and I don’t know what that would do to you.”
I nodded. “And your plan for me?”
“One week from tomorrow night. Aiko will relay the details when he can beforehand. Can you hang on that long?”
Giving him a terse yes, I released the bubble of magic and the sound flooded back in. “General, thank you for the meal. I will be ready for dinner at the usual time.”
Picking up the tray, he bobbed his head and left the library.
I managed to walk to the back corner and found a couch I had seen earlier. I couldn’t even say I sat—I fell into it.
My whole life was swirling around and around.
Why had my parents gone to such lengths to excuse me from so many of my magic training classes? If I was the daughter of the First, her magic had been documented in the Rest as tremendous.
The more magic a druid had, the longer they could take rest. Only the most powerful could rest more than two or three hundred years.
&n
bsp; Had they suppressed my magic when Cely died? Hid it from me? It would go a long way to explaining why my magic felt so incomplete, why there were parts of my life I had trouble remembering. Was it possible to do that?
My reverie was ripped away when the screaming started again.
I was starting to wonder if I was going mad. Even when it happened in the hallways and common rooms, when I was accompanied, no one reacted to it.
And it was usually the same screaming, accompanied by a long, low sound after.
I just didn’t know who to ask without seeming insane.
Though it seemed, I was insane.
Without much thought, as the sound disappeared, I walked to a section of the stacks where I had seen books on druids. These books were ancient but magicked so they didn’t fall apart and crumble to nothing.
Looking at the titles, I ran my finger down the spines. Some intrigued me, some were just bad poetry, and some were histories of people that time had forgotten.
Though despite my best efforts, a single title continued to draw me back to it. Violet of Island of Flightless Birds. Somehow, I knew that wasn’t a flower but a person. I pulled the book for my piles so that it would stop distracting me.
Finally, I found one that made me pause. Of Druids and Their Magic. I took it out and headed back to my table with the piles of other books on it.
Dry and simple, there wasn’t much in it that I hadn’t already found on my own. Most of it was covered in school when I was younger. Only the last chapter was interesting, and even that didn’t answer my questions. I felt like the best way to find out would be to ask, but all three of my ancient males were nowhere to be found.
I slumped into the chair. I couldn’t scour the whole library to find things I didn’t know. I only had a week left. A week of living with a vampire who was the most awful being I’d ever met. I didn’t know what was going to happen after that. It was a small price to pay to make sure that Vitas and Roran got back to the temple.
I hoped I could survive a week.
* * *
Quietly reading one of the books on my stack the next day, I sensed someone else in the library.
Without the sound of the door opening and closing, I was instantly suspicious and on guard, but I kept my head down.
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