by E. M. Knight
I close my eyes and put all my focus on keeping the pain at bay.
“Riyu? Do you hear me? Have you even tried?”
“Oh, I’ve tried,” I tell her darkly. “Believe me. I did.”
I made it all the way to the King’s door before rationality, commonsense, and a touch of cowardice made me turn right around.
“I’ve heard nothing of the attempt,” she says. “I want a more concentrated effort next time. Do you understand?”
“Please, Beatrice. Just leave. Come back later, and we’ll talk then.”
“You know, I don’t have to do anything you say,” she tells me imperiously. “Every time I listen to your requests, I do so as your friend. And as a favor.”
“I know,” I say tiredly.
“Get well, Riyu,” she says. She opens the door. “Because I won’t stay patient with you forever.”
“Beatrice, wait,” I call out, just as she’s closing the door. “What did you do with Dagan?”
“Oh, that.” She smiles. “I made him believe a certain affliction he’s suffering from is related to the loss of the link. Nothing more.”
I stare at her. “And that helps me how?”
“Because he will come to you for… help,” she says. “A great brute like him cares not for showing his true feelings. He’ll do everything to hide whatever the broken link makes him suffer from. But if it’s a physical disability, and one that he is unable to hide… well, even Dagan’s pride has a limit.”
I sit up in alarm. “What did you do, exactly?” I ask.
“Promise you won’t tell him? Oh, why bother—you’re bound to me anyway.” She smiles in obvious victory. “I slipped a certain numbing herb in his drink. Its effects spread slowly… but it can become permanent, if left untreated.”
“Beatrice!”
“The antidote is in your desk drawer,” she says. “Few know it exists. None, I suspect, who are still living. Only I, and now you. Good luck.”
She turns, and before I can get another word in, exits the room.
The minute she’s gone, I scramble along the floor and do up all the locks. How did the woman manage to get inside? I never leave my door open!
But that is a very distant and unimportant thought compared to the pain pounding through me. In a quick breath, I mutter a simple spell that blocks noise, and erect a soundproof barrier all around my room.
Then, having exhausted my very last reserve of strength, I fall in the floor and cry out in agony as the shield breaks, and all the pain I’ve put off crashes into me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
DAGAN
THE CRYPTS
I pound on Riyu’s door, my anger rising for not being answered right away. I feel doubly humiliated at being seen down here, in the dwellings of the lowest of The Crypt’s caste.
I feel a vampire walking down the hall and fix her with a furious scowl. She bows her head, pretending not to have seen me, and hurries on.
I bang on the door some more.
Finally, it pops open. “Dagan,” Riyu says weakly. “I didn’t hear you. What—”
I barge in. No time for pleasantries. “Close the door,” I bark. “Do it quick!”
The small vampire complies.
“You stink of weakness,” I comment. I look around his rooms. This is the first time I’ve ever been inside. They are meticulously decorated, almost freakishly neat, aside from one glaring flaw:
The stain of blood all over the carpet and furniture.
I look back at him. He is eying me warily. I notice the way the hand he keeps behind his back is actively clutching the doorknob for support.
“Samuel did a fine job with you,” I say. “I heard of your little show of defiance afterward.” I pause. “Well done.”
He blinks. “What?”
I walk over and grasp him by the shoulder. He nearly collapses like a house of cards.
“The First Guards need to be strong,” I say. “Your inclusion in our numbers has raised many questions. Of course, the initiation happened so long ago that most of those have been quelled. But you showed them today that your place within our ranks is still justified. I say again: well done.”
“You didn’t come here to congratulate me,” he says sourly.
I break away and stroll to the other side of the room. “No,” I say. “I did not.”
I reach out and touch the frame of a painting on the wall. My fingers register none of the sensation. I could be probing a concrete plank, not this intricate, golden creation, for all the difference it makes.
“Riyu,” I begin. “I—damn, this is hard for me to say. I need… your skills.”
I grunt and turn to face him. He hasn’t moved from his spot by the door.
“You have certain… expertise.” I continue. “Not possessed by other vampires.”
“You mean my magic,” he says flatly. “The same thing you punished me for.”
I can tell it’s going to be an issue between us. And if I have to expose my vulnerabilities to him—dammit, I can’t have him so standoffish!
I bite a cut into my wrist and thrust my arm toward him. “Drink. You’ve suffered enough.”
He doesn’t move. His eyes fill with all sorts of suspicion.
“This is no trick!” I roar. “Drink and heal before I change my mind. That is an order!”
Grudgingly, he makes his way across. He looks me in the eyes as he takes my wrist and brings it to his mouth. He does not break eye contact.
He takes only the smallest sip before letting go. “There,” he says. “I drank.”
“More,” I growl. I shove my arm back at him. “Enough for your wounds to heal.”
“I don’t need them to heal. I wear them proudly.”
“You’ll wear more proudly if you don’t do as I say,” I snarl.
For a long moment there’s an impasse between us. I don’t exert any of my strength. That would be unfair. But I do use all the raw dominance of my presence, squaring my shoulders, lifting my chest.
“Drink,” I say again.
Reluctantly, he gives in. He takes my arm and pulls on my blood until his open wounds close.
“Now, change out of those blood-stained clothes,” I tell him. “You look a disgrace.”
He bows his head low—almost too low, almost enough to be mocking—and says, “As you command.”
And then he strips out of his clothes right there in front of me. I watch impassively. The First Guard share showers all the time after hard training.
When he’s dressed again, I’m forced to resume the humiliating venture which brought me here.
I cross my arms. “So. You said you know about the link. Tell me of it.”
He shrugs. He is still clearly sulking. “What’s to tell? It was severed improperly. The force of the break snapped back into you. Since your mind is not used to magic, you are suffering as a result.”
“I am not,” I say in a low and dangerous voice, “suffering. Do you hear me? It’s an inconvenience, and a minor one, at that. Do you understand?”
Again, he shrugs.
“It’s like a mosquito bite,” I continue, bluffing my way blindly to I-don’t-know-what. To some semblance of retained self-pride? Maybe. “Tolerable. Ignorable. But it’s not getting better, so instead of continuing to be affected, I’d rather have it cured.”
“You think I can cure you,” he states with no trace of emotion at all. “Magic does not have great healing properties, Dagan. It is easier to use it to destroy. All I can do is sympathize.”
“So you mean you will do nothing?” My rage threatens to break loose again.
“I didn’t say that,” Riyu mumbles. He walks over to his desk and rummages through the drawer. He withdraws a little baggie filled with some sort of yellow herb.
“Magic does not heal, but plants do. This will alleviate your symptoms. It should cure them, in fact.”
He tosses it to me. I snatch it out of the air…
But my numb fingers fail
to close on it properly. The bag slips through my hand and drops to the floor.
Riyu gasps. I feel a flood of humiliation. Quickly, I bend down and pick it up, then stuff it in my pocket and march stiffly for the door.
“Dagan,” Riyu says. “Wait. I didn’t know.”
His voice has changed. His inflection is different.
For the first time, he actually sounds concerned.
“There’s nothing to know,” I say gruffly. “If a single word of what happened here leaves this room, Riyu, the punishment you received today will seem a mercy compared to what you will face.”
But the warning does not deter him. He walks over and places a hand on my arm.
“I’m here for you,” he tells me. “Anytime you need.”
I make a disgusted sound and jerk away.
Riyu only becomes more determined then. “Steep the petals in boiled water,” he tells me. “Wait until it’s gone lukewarm. Then take them out and dry them. Do not drink the water. It will be poison. Crush them once they’re dry. Make them into a fine powder. Then line it up, and snort it all.” He taps the side of his nose. “That is the quickest way to get what you need.”
I nod. I’m about to push the door open, when he adds, in a hopeful sort of way, “I could do it for you, if you want.”
I want to scoff… but I don’t. I’m not entirely callous. I can tell that Riyu is very sensitive to my opinion of him.
“No,” I say instead. “I will manage. Alexandra will help.”
On mention of the woman, I notice the most subtle flinch.
“You’ve done enough for me, Riyu. Clean your room. There’s very little a vampire finds more repulsive than the stink of his own blood.”
And on that note, I leave him. A certain feel of victory wants to rise inside me… but it’s too early to gloat, yet.
First, I have to make sure the concoction actually works.
Chapter Twenty-Five
PHILLIP
THE STRONGHOLD’S HOSPITAL WARD
“How did this happen?” I demand. I am literally quivering with rage. “How did we ALLOW OUR QUEEN TO BE TAKEN?”
My voice rebounds against the distant walls of the painted white room and obliterates all other sound. Eleira casts a spell around the perimeter to ensure that none on the outside can hear what is happening—or sense who’s inside.
As it is, it’s only me, her, Raul, Geordam, and two other of my most-trusted guards.
“It’s not a coincidence,” Raul says. “Deanna and Carter working together. They staged it perfectly. So this wasn’t only about Bradley.”
“Or maybe,” Eleira says. “Maybe for her, it still is.”
I grimace. I can’t believe I was taken in by that hussy!
“Who painted the room?” Raul asks.
“She did,” I answer.
“And who supplied the paint?”
I snarl his name in absolute disgust. “Carter.”
“And you two—” Raul addresses the guards. “You were positioned outside. You noticed nothing? You sensed nothing?”
The two vampires have the sense to look ashamed. They failed, and they know it.
“No.”
“It’s not their fault,” I say. “Carter and Deanna did not come in through the front. These walls… these walls hide a secret.”
Geordam steps forward. “I searched them all,” he volunteers. “They’re exactly as they appear. There are no hidden passages.”
I shake my head, thinking of my experience with the secret cubby. “There are,” I say. I jab a finger into the palm of my hand in emphasis. “Deanna wouldn’t have left me through the halls. Then her culpability would have been too obvious. And Carter was the one who told Smithson about the stronghold in the first place. He knew more of its secrets than any of us.”
“Phillip,” Eleira says cautiously. “Do you remember that letter?”
“What letter?” I demand.
“The letter I gave you… to get to my mom?”
Raul frowns in surprise. Clearly this is the first he’s heard of it.
“Yes, right, what about it? I still have it, and no, I haven’t delivered it,” I say shortly.
Eleira clicks her tongue. “Not that. I just wanted to say, that when Carter gave me hers, he took me to a far-away chamber, deep in the belly of the stronghold. He showed me… more portraits. Portraits of vampires who had tried to escape. The ones the Queen kept in the castle weren’t the only vampires whose souls she’d severed.”
That’s news to me. “Why didn’t you mention it earlier?”
“It didn’t seem important. But my point is, while we were walking there, we went through passages that obviously hadn’t been disturbed in decades. And Carter knew the way, surely. So to think he could have arranged all of this undetected isn’t so big of a stretch.”
“So Deanna made her escape from my room through this network of background passages,” I say. “Then linked up with Carter and came here,” I walk over to the empty bed where Mother’s still form lay just an hour ago. “Without attracting the guards’ notice, they snatched her up, and took her away. But to where? And why?”
“Like I said,” Eleira offers. “Revenge. Morgan killed Bradley, not you. Her attempt on your life wasn’t the coup de grace. It was a distraction needed for the real heist.”
“Unless...” Raul steps forward. “There is one other option.”
All of us look at him.
“What if one of them… somehow… had a witch?” he asks. “I know it’s farfetched. But listen. What better way to do this undetected? A witch could have opened a way into the Paths. Hell, maybe it was even Riyu! Maybe Carter and Deanna were corrupted by The Crypts’ offer.”
Eleira shakes her head. “I would have sensed any magic being done,” she says. “Opening a portal requires a lot. It took all of Riyu’s ability to make one.”
“You could have been distracted,” I say, with no small amount of suspicion. Who knows what she and Raul were up to after our failure to revive the Queen?
She shoots me a nasty look. “I don’t think so. Besides, even if I missed it once, I wouldn’t have missed it twice. And they would have needed two different portals. One to bring them here, and one to get away.”
Raul grunts. “I was just considering the possibilities.”
“Here’s what we have to do,” I say. “We need to assume that Mother and Carter and Deanna are all still within reach. We need to act as if they’re still somewhere in the vicinity of The Haven.”
“Do you want me to mount a search?” Geordam asks.
“No!” I exclaim. “Knowledge of what happened here does not leave this room!”
“You’re going to keep the other vampires in the dark?” Raul questions. He sounds both judgmental and disapproving. “You’re starting down a dangerous path, Phillip.”
“What would you have me do?” I demand. “If the Incolam find out their Queen is missing, it’ll start a panic. If the Elite find out, it’ll start a revolt! You remember the crazed suggestions they threw about at the assembly. Can we really risk more of anything like that?”
He opens his mouth to object, but I carry on right over him. “No,” I say. “Aside from the six of us, none else may know. And we cannot panic either. All outside appearances must be maintained. Nobody can suspect anything is wrong. For all they know—” I fling a finger toward the door, “—the Queen is in here, right on this bed, asleep in a perfectly peaceful slumber! Otherwise, mayhem will rule.”
Eleira looks at me with big eyes that seem sad for a moment. “And darkness will rise,” she mutters.
“What?” I demand.
She gives a start. “Nothing.”
“Geordam,” I address the guard. “You did a search of the walls. But I suspect the way out is cloaked with a special sort of spell.”
“I would have picked up on that!” Eleira says, affronted.
“The weaves could be inverted,” I explain, pulling on my inventory of knowled
ge about magic. “Invisible to any witch except the one who cast them.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Eleira huffs.
“You haven’t been a witch for very long,” I counter gently. “I’ve read things, long ago.”
Eleira bites her lip and nods.
“There are official drawings of the stronghold’s layout,” I continue, “and there are secret ones.”
I reach into my pocket and take out a small key. If Geordam veers off track, even for a moment, I think, it could be my ruin.
But for now, what choice do I have other than putting my trust in the vampire?
“This key opens a chest my Mother kept hidden,” I tell him. I hand it to him, then give directions to the chest’s location. “You’ll find a number of the secret drawings inside. Be quick and bring them all. Don’t let anybody see you. We need them to discover the other way out of this room.”
I hope, I add in my head.
Geordam takes off with enormous speed. I look at my brother and the others. “And now, we wait,” I say.
Chapter Twenty-Six
ELEIRA
THE HAVEN’S STRONGHOLD
No matter what Phillip says, I would have picked up on any bits of magic hiding a secret passage out of the room. I know it.
But I fear there’d be little to gain by arguing with him. He’s acting not like himself at all—he reminds me of what I thought James would be like.
But I guess that can be overlooked, considering what he just went through.
All of us are on edge as the minutes slowly ebb away, waiting on Geordam’s return.
Raul breaks the silence first. “What’s taking him so long?” he grunts. “While we wait, Deanna and Carter are getting farther and farther away!” He glares at his brother. “Phillip. Keeping this under wraps is idiocy! If we tell the other vampires, we can recruit all of their help. We won’t have to go at it alone. Do you really think Carter and Deanna will be able to get away if they have the entire coven after them?”
“You don’t understand,” Phillip answers darkly. “But then again, you never did. You were always a dreamer. You always assumed the best in us.”