by Simon Archer
“Excuse me,” she said, making to march past me, straight towards my Captain.
“No, don’t!” I said, catching her arm so she would turn around to look at me. When she did, I noticed we had drawn the attention of a few of the troops. I schooled my features when I looked back at Rozmarin so as not to give anything away.
“Why not?” she asked, her eyes bright with restrained fury.
“Can we please talk about this somewhere else?” I asked, hoping she could hear the desperation in my voice.
Her eyes narrowed for a fraction of a moment, and for a split second, I thought she would refuse. But then she nodded as she seemed to come to a decision. She stepped closer, into my personal space, and before I could ask what she was doing, she wrapped her arms around me as big black leathery wings appeared behind her back. They spread out wide, arching upward, and the next moment, we were in the air.
Screaming. Someone was screaming. It took me a moment to realize that it was me, and even then, I didn’t stop. It took me until we hovered above the castle’s rooftop for me to gain my awareness back. Somehow, I wrapped my entire body around Rozmarin, my arms clinging to the back of her neck. As my eyes began to focus again, I could see for miles and miles. I could see the colorful buildings of the East Village in the distance and the pointed tops of pines and other evergreen trees. If I wasn’t so terrified, the beauty of it would have enraptured me.
When we finally landed, I shoved Rozmarin away and sprinted to the eastern corner of the rooftop to empty my stomach for the third time that day. It seemed my motion sickness was still present and persistent. She handed me a handkerchief to wipe my mouth, allowing me the time and space to just breathe. When I finally felt human again, I mustered up the last of my energy to give her my most seething glare. When I looked up, Rozmarin was still glaring at the Captain and troops below.
Pissed that she caught me off guard, I said, “You better have a damn good reason for bringing me up here and scaring me half to death.” I could still hear the breathlessness in my voice, but it didn’t take away from the venom in my tone.
Rozmarin’s attention returned to me, and she straightened, taking a step forward. “I am leaving in the morning.” That got my attention, and I stood up straighter too.
“Why?” I asked, unable to keep the disappointment from my tone, despite our previous discussion.
She hesitated before he answered, and I immediately knew I wouldn’t like the answer. She spoke her next words slowly, carefully as if she was deciding how much she actually wanted to say. It only served to piss me off further.
“Sahar needs an ingredient for the cure that is… difficult to obtain.”
“Nice try.” I crossed my arms over my chest, and my chin lifted a fraction. “I’m going to need more than that. Why can’t someone else go?”
Rozmarin sighed tiredly. “The troops need Anix here, and she is the only other one who I would feel comfortable sending to the BloodDrake alone.”
“The BloodDrake?” I asked, trying to recall ever learning of such a place.
She hesitated again, but with a raised brow from me, she explained. “The BloodDrake is an ancient sorceress. Not a soul truly knows how old she is, likely not even herself. It is said that she was once a beautiful, enchanting sorceress, but when a human man broke her heart, she ripped his own from his chest and ate it as she stood over his corpse.” She paused to take a breath before continuing her explanation. “Supposedly, her lover’s heart made her stronger and gave her eternal life, but that power did not come without consequence. As payment for her immortality, she is cursed to be part woman, part beast. Her immortality also only lasts as long as she eats human hearts. She has killed thousands of men who have dared to trespass into her cave, deep within the Constantan mountain range.”
My arms were still crossed as I quirked a single brow. “And you want to go fight her?”
“Not fight her.” Rozmarin shook her head. “Visit her. Make a deal with her. She is ancient and a ghastly hoarder which means that she has collected things that otherwise no longer even exist.”
“Like your gallery?” I said as I recalled all of the Old World artifacts she had saved and collected after the Great Purge.
“Yes,” she said, then hesitated. “But far more valuable.”
A moment passed while I turned the options over in my head before I made my decision.
“I’m coming with you.”
Rozmarin blinked and took a step back, her brows pulling down above her eyes. “Christoff--”
I didn’t let her even begin to argue before I continued. “I’m smart, and I can get around quietly. I was a thief, remember?”
“Yes, I understand, but--” she began, but I kept going, ignoring her attempt to speak.
“And I can fight. I’ve been training every single day with the troops in all sorts of weaponry, including my dagger, which is light to pack.”
“My lord--”
“I’ve even picked up some alchemy in the lab. I know several defensive and offensive po--”
One moment, Rozmarin was standing feet away from me, and in the next, she was right in front of me, cupping my face gently. I could feel her cool breath against my forehead as she leaned down to kiss it lightly.
“It would honor me to have you by my side on the journey,” she whispered as she pulled back.
I froze, rooted to my spot in shock, my hands hanging loosely at my sides. “W-Wait, what?”
Rozmarin stepped back, her hands falling from my face to run through her long dark locks. She sighed, her expression grim.
“You have proven to be one of the strongest creatures I know, supernatural or not. Man or not.” My heart squeezed painfully at her words, threatening to spill over, but she wasn’t finished. “But I must warn you, it will not be pleasant, and it will be dangerous. The BloodDrake has a ridiculous prejudice against humans.”
I shrugged. “Who can blame her?” I know I couldn’t, especially not after the gruesome history lesson that Rozmarin had given me last night. The pictures she had painted in my head of the destruction humans of the Old World had caused before the virus had been weighing on me in the back of my mind ever since last night. It was an ugly, horrible truth that, apparently, most humans of the West Village were unwilling to face.
I planned to change that as soon as we got back from our trip to visit the BloodDrake, but for now, I needed to focus on the task at hand.
Rozmarin grabbed my right hand and brought it up to her mouth so that I could feel the tickle of her light, cool breath fan across the top of my hand. She placed a light kiss on my knuckles, a wicked smile playing on her lips as heat simmered in her eyes.
“Your fortitude never ceases to amaze me.”
All thoughts of my ugly human history vanished at the look in her eyes. My own widened. When Rozmarin straightened again, the heated look hadn’t left her eyes. In fact, she looked like she was about to take me right here on this rooftop.
“Where was this desire last night,” I joked, but the breathlessness in my voice was unmistakable.
A laugh bubbled up in her chest, and she reached out and pulled me to her by my hips, her grip firm, but not painful. When her lips tipped up to my ear, her voice was barely more than a growl, and my stomach clenched at the sensation.
“Do not tempt me, my lord.”
I turned my face to meet her eyes, allowing her to see the heat in mine. Her position of power gave me a heady sensation of lust
“Why ever not?” I teased.
Her expression softened, and she leaned in to kiss me, but not before whistles rang out from the courtyard below. In the next moment, Rozmarin crushed me to her body, and the loud, menacing growl that emanated from her chest shook both of our bodies. Wings had appeared behind her back, and she’d spun us around so that they blocked us from the view of the obnoxious, catcalling troops below.
When I looked down, she was looking over her shoulder at the troops below, teeth bared. She had
switched from being a few moves away from screwing to being ready to tear off someone’s head in a matter of seconds. Oh, for the love of Constanta. I had heard that vampires were incredibly territorial creatures, especially when it came to their mates, but seeing Rozmarin acting so possessive over me was a different experience--
Mates. The word clanged through my head like a pinball machine.
I wasn’t sure if that was the correct term for us, but I wasn’t about to bring up that particular conversation. My hand came up to cup Rozmarin’s cheek, forcing her to face me again.
“You’ll only make it worse,” I whispered, burying her face in my chest. Then I wrapped my arms around her waist before she decided to fly down to the courtyard and make every soldier in sight pay for their taunting with their tongues. “Let’s get out of here.”
It was all the encouragement that she needed. As soon as I got the words out, she tightened her grip around me, arched her wings, and then we were up in the air again.
This time, I managed to keep the screaming to a minimum.
28
Rozmarin
I left Christoff in his quarters to pack his things before the nighttime meal. We would leave at dawn the following day, and I warned him to pack light, as I would fly us there. He had seemed to adjust to the experience after a few threatening swoops over the troops in response to their catcalling. I had seen other vampires fight to the death over a mere look in the wrong direction of one’s lover. We were inherently protective and possessive creatures. I had spent centuries working to gain control of the impulsive instincts that came with my transition.
Still, this raging yearning I had for the human man who had won the heart of half the kingdom was as new to me as he was. Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely certain how to handle it, but I would. I had handled every other ridiculous obstacle thrown my way since the beginning of my existence, well over two-hundred years ago, and I would continue to do so for Christoff’s sake.
A sense of purpose filtered through me while I packed the food for our trip in my private quarters. Servants had laid out fruit, bread, cheese, and a variety of dried meats across my desk, and I wrapped them carefully, finding the best pockets to shove them in to avoid spoiling. Normally, I’d have packed far less food and certainly not so extravagantly, but I intended to make this trip as smooth and painless as possible for Christoff.
Though I knew him to be one of the most courageous and capable beings I’d met in my existence, there was no stopping the weight of responsibility I felt for his safety and comfort. It was suddenly at the top of my priority list, alongside the responsibilities that came with my crown. His mother’s words from all those months ago when I had gone to visit his family drifted through my head.
I don’t know what it is that you truly want with my son, but I can only hope it is better than I can offer him here. You take care of my baby boy. Give him a better life than I could. If you do, I will be forever in your debt.
Little did she know that I was the one who was in her debt. Little did I know what her son would come to mean to me. Her son had already done so much for me, for the kingdom. Far more than I ever could have imagined when I’d first met him. And now, he chose to stand by me while I faced the BloodDrake and the coming challenges that came with running a kingdom in the New World threatened by the virus.
A knock sounded at my door, dragging me out of my inner thoughts. I looked over my shoulder, sniffed once to identify the visitor, and said, “Come in.”
Rachel walked through the door then. She and Aerywin had both been busy over the past months, mainly attempting to get in contact with the other kingdoms for updates on their wall security and the state of the zombie hordes in the surrounding territories. We continued to have our nightly meetings, but we’d hardly seen each other outside of those instances.
I wondered what she was doing in my room, considering we scheduled one last council meeting tonight before Christoff and I left in the morning. I knew her better than any of the other council members, a product of basically having grown up with each other for two hundred years. It had to be something that she didn’t want to say in front of the others. My guess was that it had to do with tomorrow’s trip.
“You cannot go to the BloodDrake,” Rachel said. A command, not a request.
I rolled my eyes internally, unsurprised. Though Rachel had quite the steely exterior, much like myself, she was fiercely loyal and protective. And, as a vampire, she had her own set of standards when it came to family dynamics and protectiveness.
“I must go. Sahar needs an ingredient that only the BloodDrake has in her possession for the cure. If I do not retrieve it, who will?” I asked, only pausing in my packing for a moment to raise a brow at her over my shoulder.
“I do not care. I forbid you to go,” Rachel replied, ever the bullheaded friend. For a moment, I had a flashback of Christoff’s own brother, Tyrion, as he answered the door with the Vampire Queen and the Doom Bringer on the other end of it and somehow managed to look entirely unimpressed.
I sighed. This was not the first time this had happened. In fact, most of our conversations before my less-than-ideal missions outside of the wall usually went a lot like this.
“I will not be alone. Christoff is going to come with me,” I said as I walked over to my midnight blue wardrobe. I began tossing a few pairs of clothes onto my king-sized, wood-framed, four-poster bed.
Apparently tired of being brushed off, Rachel moved to block my path to the bed. She grabbed the traveling cloak from my hands and tossed it onto the bed before placing her hands on her hips to look up at me.
Though she was tiny, she always managed to make her presence seem far larger than her physical size. I took a step back as she glared at me through thick lashes and charcoal lined eyes. Her purple streaked, black hair hung around her round face perfectly. Her black lace dress, complete with a high rising turtleneck, made her look every bit the vampiress that she was.
“You will listen to me.” Her voice was low and menacing, and if I had been anyone else, I might have been fearful. Still, I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut and give her the attention she was demanding.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I nodded for her to continue.
She breathed out a frustrated sigh. “There is something you must know about the BloodDrake in the Constantan mountain range,” she said cryptically, and I gave her a look that said, ‘I am all ears.’
“Long ago, well before I met you, I had a lover.”
“You don’t say?” I joked, but the vampiress just glared until I shut my mouth with an apologetic grimace.
She took another frustrated breath. “I had a lover who went to the Constantan Mountains for a similar reason to yours. He was a warrior sent to retrieve something only that creature had possession of, somewhere in her cave. He spent weeks climbing the mountain range, searching for the right location. When he finally did, he found a bone garden.”
“Bone garden?” I raised a single brow at that, not understanding her use of the term.
Rachel nodded. “It is exactly what it sounds like. The creature has killed so many others that dare to even pass by her cave that there is a garden of dead bodies surrounding it. She has had a lot of time to build her strength, her legacy. She will not go down without a fight, and even then, she will have a plan to bring chaos to the world when she is gone.”
“I have no intention of underestimating the BloodDrake,” I said. “I am not so naïve as to not have a plan.”
“You rotten girl, can’t you listen to what I am saying and let me finish?” she snapped, throwing her hands up in the air, frustrated. She took a deep breath, and I stayed silent. “The BloodDrake has never lost a battle in her entire existence, do you understand that? You have no idea how old she is, how many lives she’s taken, purely for sport. I can list a thousand for you right now. And not just humans. She’s slaughtered warriors of every species, far greater and stronger than you, I can promise you that.”
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br /> “Are you finished?” I asked irritably. She merely glared at me but said nothing further, so I continued. “I know the risks this mission poses for Christoff and for me. I know the history of the BloodDrake, and I know the odds. You don’t think I don’t know exactly what I am up against?” My temper rose. “If I saw any other way out, I would take it, but there is no other option. I cannot just sit around and watch while the zombie numbers rise, sitting on my ass until they breach the wall and slaughter my people.”
“And I cannot watch while our two biggest chances of survival abandon us to fetch a mythical ingredient for a cure that may or may not be finished by the time our walls are breached,” Rachel snapped.
“If you have an alternative solution, I am most certainly open to hearing it,” I challenged.
When Rachel did not answer, my gaze returned to her face. She narrowed her eyes into a glare, but when I took a closer look, I could see the glimmer of tears that lined them. The subtle wobble of her chin. The working of her throat as she shoved her panic-induced tears down. I felt my own gaze soften, and I pulled her into me by her shoulders, wrapping her in a tight embrace.
“My sweet,” I whispered into her hair, and I felt the shaking as she silently sobbed into my chest. “I would never abandon you. Not you or this kingdom.”
“I cannot bear to lose you too,” she said in a broken whisper. “You and Chris.”
“I know,” I said, and I did. Though Rachel rarely ever spoke of her life before me, I knew that she had been through far more than I could ever imagine. I pulled back, my hands resting on her thin shoulders.
“I promise you that I will come back with the ingredient and with Christoff. Whatever it takes,” I said as a sacred oath, holding her gaze so she could see the sincerity in my eyes.