The White Lily (Vampire Blood series)

by Juliette Cross

  Then she could hear them no more and Friedrich was barreling toward her at full speed. He and the captain were at her side as she peered around the column, finding all three vampires had vanished.

  Friedrich had an arm around her waist, his right hand grasping hers, “Darling, you look a bit peaked. Perhaps some fresh air will do you good.”

  “Yes, Your Grace. Thank you.”

  He practically carried her into the corridor with the captain on their heels, the cacophony of music and voices dying as they made their way through the grand archway. She knew better than to give anything away as they passed a footman near the grand staircase to their suite.

  They passed a couple, the lady’s sleeve off the shoulder, the vampire noble at her side combing his hair back into place.

  “It’s been quite a long journey,” crooned Friedrich for their benefit, sounding like the perfect attentive lover. “Some privacy in our suite is all you need.”

  “Yes, darling,” she purred up at him.

  They marched quickly and silently the remainder of the way to their bedchambers. When he swept her inside with Mikhail behind them, she was shocked to find Grant and four other guards waiting for them.

  Friedrich released her waist but wrapped her nape with a reassuring squeeze as he said at once to the men waiting, “King Dominik is going to marry the Princess of Arkadia.”

  Grant scoffed. “The one the queen has been keeping prisoner in a bloodless sleep?”

  A bloodless sleep? Brenna wanted to intervene, but the conversation clipped by too quickly.

  “Yes,” snapped Friedrich.

  “So he’ll ally the north with the south, double his army and resources,” added Mikhail.

  “Friedrich,” cut in Grant, his expression tight with anxiety. “Remember Sienna’s premonition.”

  Brenna wondered at this, his expression tight with anxiety as he replied, “We need to warn Marius and Arabelle. Immediately.”

  “Wait!” Brenna threw up a hand, finally breaking in after this swift whirlwind of discussion. “I heard Lord Rathbone talking about Dragon’s Eye.”

  All gazes swiveled to her.

  “They signed some sort of contract with King Dominik, offering him resources. They were angry about the queen’s decree. Lord Maxim wanted to retrieve their men and horses from the stronghold a half a league away.”

  “What? Half a league?” Dmitri scowled. “That close?” he asked almost in disgust. “He isn’t hiding this fortress at all.”

  “Arrogant bastard,” muttered Mikhail before turning to Dmitri. “Go. Now. Do a radial sweep to ascertain the location then meet us outside the southern gate at the edge of the woods.”

  Dmitri was out the door so fast, she barely noticed it open and close.

  Friedrich gripped her by her shoulders, his warmth seeping into her bare skin, but he spoke over her shoulder. “Gavril and Yuri, you’ll stay outside the suite and guard Lady Brennalyn.”

  It didn’t miss her attention that he still used a title she didn’t own, but for some reason it warmed her inside. His gaze dropped to Brenna, voice roughened with heavy emotion. “I trust you’ll guard her with your lives.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” said the dark-haired one, Gavril as the two guardsmen exited the room.

  “Mikhail, you and Grant meet me with the others at the southern wall. The guards are lax tonight with the revelry so it should be easy to cross in and out.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” said Mikhail, the two of them filing out quietly.

  Friedrich took her hand and led her into her bedchamber, the candelabras still lit and a warm fire crackling. The golden light cast the white furnishings in an ethereal glow.

  Friedrich suddenly turned her in his arms and embraced her tight, his mouth pressed to the crook of her neck. She wrapped an arm around his waist and clutched a hand in his hair. For a moment, they did nothing but hold each other, their pounding heartbeats thrumming, chest to chest.

  “The two guards I’ve left are Mikhail’s most-skilled assassins,” he whispered in her ear. “It isn’t likely anyone will notice our absence from the ball. And if so, they’ll think we merely escaped for a tryst and shouldn’t come looking for us. Even so, I feel safer knowing they’ll prevent anyone from crossing the threshold with their very lives.” He pulled apart to look at her. “Helena is only half a league away. A distance we can cross in minutes. I’ll get her and then we’ll head onto Winter Hill and meet you there. As soon as Dmitri meets us with the location, I’m sending him back to get you. As planned, he will be in charge of getting you back to my castle. He’s the fastest. Lock this door when I leave and don’t open it until you hear Dmitri on the other side.”

  She nodded, knowing to change into her travel clothes he’d designated. Though she’d have preferred to travel in his arms, she noted that he’d assigned Dmitri to her out of his need to get her away by the fastest means possible. “I’ll be ready,” she assured him. “Don’t forget Sylvia.”

  “She’s already halfway back to the castle. As soon as she was seen as your lady’s maid and did her duty of dressing you for the ball, Mikhail had one of the Bloodguard carry her back at once.”

  She shook her head in surprise. She’d known that traveling and arriving to Izeling Tower in a luxurious carriage with large trunks and human servants was all a ruse to show they’d been prepared to stay at the tower for days like all the other royals. It would’ve looked suspicious otherwise. But the plan was to leave the moment they had the location of Dragon’s Eye. Discovering that it was so close was a slight variation in the plan, but they’d still leave in the dead of night while the nobility reveled down below. They’d regroup at Winter Hill then move on to Hiddleston and into hiding with the Black Lily.

  “Friedrich, what did Grant mean about Sienna’s premonition? She was Nikolai’s woman, right?”

  “There is not enough time, but suffice it to say, Sienna has a gift. And she has seen what could be a prophecy of a most dire future.” He wavered, gaze flitting over her face.

  “Tell me. Please.”

  “It is our belief that if King Dominik sires a son by a pureblood vampire royal, then the queen plans to sacrifice the child at its birth to wield dark magic that could blot out the world in shadow. In the kind of world the queen craves most.”

  “Oh, God, Friedrich. We must save her.”

  “We will. But first, Helena.”

  His desperate perusal of her face tightened her gut. When he lowered his head and pressed the sweetest, gentlest kiss she’d ever tasted from his lips, her knees wobbled.

  “Friedrich,” she whispered, voice breaking. “Please be careful. If anything happens to you—”

  “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry,” he murmured softly against her lips. “You get changed. Dmitri will retrieve you within a half an hour. I want you ready to leave at once.”

  He stared at her for a few more seconds then swept from the room and closed her door. Now she must do the most difficult thing of all.

  Wait.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  She turned the latch of the lock as she heard the outer door close from the parlor. Without hesitation, she stripped off her gloves and started unhooking the bodice at the front. One benefit to this unusual gown was the hooking at the front, instead of lacing in the back. Friedrich had thought of everything.

  Discarding the bodice and then shimmying out of the layers of silk, her stockings and chemise, she pulled her getaway clothes from the trunk with a smile, remembering their earlier conversation.

  “You want me to dress in boy’s clothes?”

  “Yes. It will be warmer and easier for travel. It’ll also be safest as you can hold onto Dmitri’s back so his arms are free.”

  “I’ll be riding Dmitri?”

  “If you say the words ‘riding Dmitri’ like that again, I may lose my bloody mind.”

  “Well, it’s your plan that I should ride him, not mine.”

  Then he’d tumbled her to the bed w
here she’d tried ineffectually to escape in a fit of laughter.

  Smiling, she slipped the thick muslin shirt over her head and then pulled on the trousers, her heart bursting at the thought of seeing and holding Helena soon. Pulling on her thick wool stockings—boys’ stockings—she cinched her boots tight and took a seat at the vanity. She removed the pins of her sophisticated coiffure and let her hair fall loose. As she brushed it through and braided into one simple plait, she noticed the servants who’d stoked the fire had also removed the silver platter of refreshments and replaced it with another.

  She tied a red ribbon at the bottom of her braid, noting that King Dominik certainly knew how to throw lavish parties and spoil his guests. Perhaps that was all part of flaunting his wealth and power, for the entire palace reeked of decadence and excess. Even the half-burned candles in her chandelier had been replaced while she was at the ball, so that the room never lost its mystical quality with the fairy lights dancing around the room.

  The tall, glossy, white clock in the corner bonged. Brenna jumped and stifled a scream. Then laughed at her jitters.

  She stood and strode over to the lovely piece of furniture, the silver hands both pointing up to twelve o’clock, the pearl-inlay pendulum swinging back and forth. As the clock tolled the hour, a carousel opened up inside the face of the clock where a thumb-sized silver rabbit swiveled out and bobbed while an open-mouthed wolf loped on its heels in mechanical tandem, circling and circling with each strike of the gong. Upon the final stroke of midnight, the rabbit pitched forward and the jaws of the wolf caught him, pushing his quarry inside his cave. The carousel doors closed with a soft snick. The last clang died and the crackling of the fire took precedence again.

  “Unusual,” Brenna muttered. And if she must be honest, rather morbid.

  It had only been ten minutes since Friedrich had left. She paced near the window, the night too dark to see anything below, the starless sky swathed in gray clouds. A sweet scent caught her attention, and she turned to the silver tray on the sideboard.

  She was wrong. It wasn’t piled with an array of refreshments but laden only with a carafe of red wine and a porcelain platter of glossy, red pomegranate halves opened and spilling over with juicy seeds. She wouldn’t dare touch another drop of alcohol, for she needed her wits about her, but the succulent pulpy fruit lured her with the scent of cinnamon and ginger and another scintillating spice she couldn’t identify. Her mouth watered. She’d never tasted candied pomegranate seeds before. It appeared there was no end to the wonders provided by their enigmatic and terrifying host.

  She lifted a small handful of six seeds and popped the first in her mouth. The sweet coating melted and a spiced flavor burst on her tongue.

  “Mmm.”

  She circled toward the fire, nibbling on her small repast. She hadn’t eaten a thing at the ball since her stomach was twisted in knots. And there hadn’t been much time. She wondered again about Lord Rathbone and Lord Maxim. They were allies with the king, but they were obviously displeased with the idea of the king gaining more power in their region with a betrothal to Princess Mina. She frowned at the thought of the poor princess waking from her bloodless sleep to find she was betrothed to the treacherous King Dominik. She wondered if Lord Rathbone and Lord Maxim might ally with the resistance against the king should it come to that. Doubtful they would ever be sympathetic to their cause, no matter how much they despised the reign of a new, power-hungry sovereign.

  She popped the last seed in her mouth. A spark from the fire caught her eye. The golden flames flickered more slowly, almost as if swaying and dancing in unison, their glittering sparks an eerie aberration. She backed away, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “What—?” Her back hit the sideboard.

  Then she felt it…an indefinable sensation coursing through her blood. Her heartbeat quickened, pounding in her ears. She lifted one of the glass-like pomegranate halves and inhaled the scent of the candied seeds, finding nothing menacing within.

  But it didn’t matter. For the blood rushing like wildfire through her veins, a quickening both arousing and terrifying, seeped through muscle, down to the very marrow of her bones. She staggered, watching as the pearlescent, cherub-lined mirror swayed and rippled.

  What is happening?

  Gasping for breath, her limbs gave way beneath her and she crumbled to the floor, the pomegranate rolling from her hand, the deep-red seeds spilling onto the white marble floor. Riveted to the silvery angelic faces, certainly screaming down at her now, she watched as the frame moved, her mind crashing with a haze of terror she couldn’t understand.

  “Mirror…mirror…” She heard her shaky voice trying to enunciate some unknown horror coming closer, as if her voice were disembodied of herself.

  The wall yawned open. No, not the wall. Just the gargantuan mirror itself, swinging wide to reveal the mouth of hell. And from its infernal depths stepped the devil himself. King Dominik.

  Paralyzed on the floor, she could do nothing but watch the terrifying figure looming toward her. Smiling.

  “No,” she muttered, shaking her head, which made the kaleidoscope of lights spin too fast. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling him draw closer, like the electric sizzle on her skin before a giant thunderclap. A dark rumble of laughter vibrated from the monster in the room, licking across her skin like a leather whip.

  “Open your eyes, little rabbit.”

  She tried not to but a bone-crushing pain seared up her spine. She opened her mouth to scream but nothing came out, for the agony sucked the breath from her lungs. She snapped open her eyes and the pain receded at once. A wave of indolent pleasure rolled in its wake.

  “Oh, God,” she lamented too late, a tear slipping.

  The pomegranate seeds. They’d been laced with his elixir. His power of persuasion. That’s what now coursed through her blood. She’d recognized the similar flood of heat to Friedrich’s bite. But the effect of the king’s potion was entirely different. One was full of seduction and pleasure, the other was wrought with paralyzing pain and crushing dominance.

  She froze in utter fear as he crouched over her. He brushed the back of his knuckles across the apple of her cheek. Like a lover.

  “You are a pretty little rabbit, aren’t you?” He bared his teeth in a salacious grin.

  A shadowed figure moved in her periphery. Then another.

  “Shall I carry her, Your Majesty?” The cold request of a Legionnaire.

  “No, Kostya. I’ll take her.” He lifted her against his wide chest, the size of him as daunting as his potent presence. He carried her back toward the passage behind the mirror. “Little rabbit needs to get used to her new master.” He grinned at her again, all sharp teeth and cold menace. Piercing eyes cold as the winter snow. “My lady…my woman…my Brennalyn.”

  Her heart plummeted as he echoed the words Friedrich whispered in her ear when they made love in front of that mirror. He’d watched them. He’d heard them.

  He knew everything.

  As he carried her into the chilly tunnel, she opened her mouth to scream, to warn her guards.

  “Don’t.”

  His one-word command was like a hammer to the base of her spine. She swallowed her cry to stifle the pain.

  “Good girl,” he crooned close to her ear then carried her into the deep darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Dragon’s Eye sat in the middle of a bowl canyon bordered by two peaks of the Belaya Noch range and thick forests. It would be easy to overlook, as no roads passed near here. The wind shear off the north side of Mount Noch was brutally cold, making this place impassable. Or nearly so.

  “Perfectly out of reach,” said Mikhail crouched on Friedrich’s left within the shallow tree line at the base of Mount Noch.

  Friedrich scanned down the line of twenty vampires of the Bloodguard as they passed Helena’s hair ribbon from one to the other. Brenna had brought it so that they could find her swiftly when the time came. Every vampire was stra
pped with the crisscrossing harnesses over chest and back, the leather straps lined with sheaths of daggers. No less than twenty per man. Perfect for throwing and weakening an opponent from afar. This wasn’t including the serrated longer variety of knives they carried at their hips and in their boots for more close-contact combat. Weapons thick and strong enough to sever windpipes and crush through chest cavities to a vampire’s heart.

  “The fortress wall will be easy to scale.” Friedrich noted there were few guards walking the perimeter at the top.

  “These walls weren’t built to keep vampires out but to keep humans in,” added Grant.

  “True.” The very idea rubbed him raw. His bastard of an uncle preyed upon the weaker species, the ones he was meant to protect. He turned to his human brother. “Let’s go.”

  The line to his right nodded. Then to his left. Mikhail lifted a hand and flattened it toward the fortress in a “go” signal. Without another word, the vampires bled into the darkness in such swift speed there would be no detecting them. Friedrich threw an arm around Grant’s shoulders and he did the same, then they blurred through the cold night. By the time they’d gotten to the only entry gate, two of the Bloodguard had dispatched the watchmen, their throats slit with such force the guards’ heads were barely attached.

  Once more, Friedrich was relieved to have the Bloodguard on his side. They knew how to kill their own kind with swiftness and silence. The plan was to enter at different points. Those who scaled the wall would eliminate the guards at each point so the rest could maneuver through the encampment without detection. They waited at the entry while Mikhail stared up at the perimeter wall.

  Within five minutes, one of his men dropped from the wall directly beside them as silent as a wraith. With a lopsided grin he motioned to move on.

  Damn, if these Bloodguard didn’t love killing just a bit too much. Once they’d freed Helena and joined Brennalyn and Dmitri back at Winter Hill, he planned to offer Mikhail a more substantial incentive to join the resistance. They hadn’t spoken about what would happen beyond this mission. Friedrich had hired the Bloodguard to replace the Legionnaries at Winter Hill. But after tonight, they’d be moving on from Winter Hill. The Black Lily could use expert assassins like them. If they would agree to align with human revolutionaries. But something told him with Mikhail having had a human mother before she was transformed to vampire, he might be sympathetic to their cause.