by Jody Morse
Mark of Blood
Vampire Kingdom #2
Copyright © 2016 Jody Morse & Jayme Morse
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 1
Lila
SEBASTIAN STARK LOOKED like he had just been hit by a wrecking ball.
I wasn’t sure who Celia was. I also didn’t understand even half of what the two of them were talking about. But there was one thing I was able to make out from the way his cheeks had drained of all color at her words.
The idea of going to war scared the hell out of him.
“What are you going to do, Sebastian?” Celia asked, tucking a lock of her chin-length golden blonde hair behind one ear.
Sebastian ran his hands over his short black hair as he considered it.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I need some time to process this. Surely you can understand how shocking all of this is for me,” he replied.
“I understand. But will you allow me to fight on your side? Will you allow me to fight alongside the Stark coven?” There was a hopeful look in her gray eyes.
“Yes, of course. Who am I to deny myself of an ally?” he asked. “It looks like we’re going to need all of the help we can get. Right now, however, I need to be by myself. I need some to think... alone.”
She nodded her understanding.
Sebastian shifted his gaze to me, as if remembering that I was there for the first time. As his crystal blue eyes locked on mine, my heart skipped a beat. His eyes lingered on me for a moment before he turned back to Celia. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“Anything you need,” she agreed with a nod.
He pointed his chin at me. “Please take Lila back to the palace. To my office, to be precise.”
Celia glanced over at me and then back at him with a nod. “That won’t be a problem, except I’m not quite sure where your office is.”
“Of course. How silly of me,” he murmured. “Do you remember where grandfather’s quarters were?”
An odd look passed through her eyes. “How could I ever forget?”
“That’s where my office is located.”
“Okay.” As Celia took a few steps in the direction of the castle, Sebastian reached out and touched her arm lightly.
“Celia, you must know that Lila is of utmost importance to me. I need you to keep her safe. I know it’s been a long time since you’ve been to our kingdom, but these woods are no longer safe the way they used to be. Starving vampires have taken up residency in these woods. They’re incredibly dangerous to humans. Don’t let any other vampires come near her, neither in the woods nor in the castle. Don’t let her out of your sight for even a second. Do you understand me?” Sebastian asked sharply.
“Yes, I understand,” she replied with a nod. When her eyes met mine, they were somewhat cold, lacking all emotion. “Follow me.”
As I slipped past Sebastian, I couldn’t help but secretly hope he would kiss me again or touch me, at the very least. But he did neither of those things. He simply walked in the direction of the beach, leaving me disappointed and alone with Celia.
I followed after her, staying a good two feet behind her the whole time. I stared down at the back of her shoes. I wasn’t sure how she was able to make walking through the woods in the huge spiked heels she had on look so effortless. As it was, I could barely even walk in the low heels that Martina had chosen to go with the gown I was wearing.
We were about halfway through the woods when Celia stopped dead in her tracks. She slowly turned to face me. “Did you hear that?”
“No, I didn’t hear any—” I started to say, but then I heard it: the sound of shoes crunching over dried-up leaves and the snapping of twigs. There was someone else in the woods with us—someone who, judging from the sounds of it, was moving with incredible speed.
Then I heard the same sound again—except, this time, it was coming from another direction. And then I was certain that I heard it from somewhere behind me, too.
My heart pounded against my chest. There were multiple vampires in the woods and they were all headed straight for us. Well, straight for me.
“Stay close to me,” Celia commanded in a low voice.
Not that she had even needed to tell me. I wasn’t about to move away from her. But before I even had the chance to respond, a vampire had lunged himself straight at me. As his thin, pasty white arm reached out for my neck, Celia knocked his head right off his body.
As two more vampires rushed over to us from one side and another two came up from behind me, I began to feel a little claustrophobic. With them moving in on me like this, I knew that my chances of getting out of this situation were slim to none.
One of these vampires was going to end my life, the same way Marjorie had been taken from us.
Prince Sebastian had left me in the woods with a complete stranger to die.
But then Celia broke out her ninja moves. I watched, both in amazement and sheer horror, as she spun around, knocking each of their heads off, one by one.
When the fragments of their bodies were lying in a lifeless pile on the ground around us, she turned to me. Her hands were covered in blood.
I gaped at her. “How did you do that?”
“I’ll tell you later. There’s no time for us to talk right now. We need to get you the heck out of here. Come on.” Tossing me over her shoulder, she carried me through the rest of the woods, moving at the speed of a cheetah.
Once we finally reached the palace grounds, Celia set me back on my feet again.
Smoothing my dress back into place, I breathed a sigh of relief and my heart began to beat at a normal rate again.
A thought entered my mind. Had Sean even made it to the Chambers alive?
I immediately shook the idea away. If my boyfriend from back home hadn’t survived the woods, surely the guards would have come back to inform Sebastian. And they hadn’t, which meant that everything had probably gone just fine.
Poor Sean. He must have been so scared. It made me sad that he made it all the way here in what had clearly been an attempt to rescue me, only to be whisked away to the Royal dungeon.
It only made me wonder what Sebastian had planned for him.
As we crossed the grassy lawn between the woods and the castle,
Celia said, “It sounds like there’s an event going on here.”
The sound of music and laughter filled the air. The guests probably hadn’t even noticed we were gone.
“Yes. Sebastian—err, Prince Sebastian—and Princess Alessandra threw a Royal ball,” I explained.
“Allie is here?” Celia glanced over at me, a surprised look in her gray eyes. “Alessandra, I mean.”
I nodded.
“Well, this could be awkward.” Her eyes moved away from mine. She avoided my gaze as she led us to the front of the palace, her hands still covered in vampire blood.
“Why could it be awkward?” I pressed. Even though I was curious, I actually got the sense that she wanted to talk about it.
“Alessandra was my best friend. We haven’t seen each other in a really long time. Two-hundred and seven years, to be precise. We had a major falling out,” Celia explained, darting her gray eyes over to meet mine. “Do you happen to know why she and Sebastian threw a ball together?”
I nodded. “She and Prince Sebastian announced their engagement.” I swallowed hard as I said the words out loud for the first time. It was what had caused me to run into the woods, and almost to my death, in the first place.
Celia stopped in her tracks and glanced over at me sharply. “She’s marrying my cousin?”
“Sebastian is your cousin?” I asked with raised eyebrows.
She nodded. “He is.”
“Then... yes,” I replied, even though I wasn’t entirely sure. After the way Sebastian and I had kissed, after everything that had gone on between the two of us, just the idea of him marrying Princess Alessandra made me feel like I was going to crumble. There was no way he could love me the way I was certain he did and follow through with actually marrying her.
Of course, I knew that was all just wishful thinking. My mind flashed back to our exchange in the woods just moments before.
“I don’t love Alessandra,” he said firmly.
“But you’re marrying her,” I insisted. How could he say he didn’t love her when she’d just announced to all of the Royal vampires that he was going to make her his wife?
“Only to save the vampire race as we know it.” There was a genuine look in his intense blue eyes, a look that made me want to believe him.
But should I have believed him? What if he wasn’t being honest with me?
There was no doubt in my mind that what he felt for me was real. But, at the end of the day, he was still a vampire prince. There may have been a prophecy that was written about me, but it didn’t change the fact that I was merely human. And Sebastian Stark had made one thing clear from the very first time we’d met.
Humans were completely disposable to him.
Chapter 2
Sebastian
I SAVORED THE FEELING of the damp sand beneath my bare feet as I stared out at the ocean that lay ahead of me. The waves were rough, the tide stronger than usual.
A clap of thunder sounded far off in the distance, the first indication that a storm was brewing.
What perfect timing.
The issue at hand plagued my mind. I had 48 hours to come up with a plan. That was just two days to figure out a way to save my home, my kingdom, my coven, from Aunt Caroline and cousin Daniel. Two days to figure out a way to prove that the island belonged to me, to my father.
The only problem was that I had no idea how to go about doing any of that. As far as I knew, there had always been an unspoken agreement between my father and our relatives that the island was ours.
Celia claimed that Aunt Caroline had written documents that proved that the island belonged to her, but I didn’t see how that could have even been in the realm of possibility. The island was rightfully ours.
My grandfather, William, was the last king to have ruled our coven before he’d been mysteriously murdered. We lived in a patriarchal society. The throne always went to the eldest son. The only way Caroline could have been queen of the Stark coven was if she had been an only child or the eldest of two sisters, and she was neither.
That meant that the island and the palace belonged to my father, that the kingdom was his to rule. As far as I was concerned, Aunt Caroline didn’t even have a leg to stand on.
Even so, I hated that my father had left the island.
In some ways, I hated that I was his eldest son. Being born first meant I was expected to take responsibility and make any decisions that needed to be made in regards to the coven. That meant that any problems the coven faced while he was gone automatically fell on me.
While I didn’t entirely mind being the next in line to become King, I wished that my father could have been there and that he could have been the one to deal with his sister. At the very least, I wished he could have told me she was wrong.
The worst part of it all was that I didn’t even know how to reach him, since I had no idea where he was. No one had heard from him—not even once—in the two years since he’d been gone.
My father hadn’t even had the decency to say goodbye. He’d just made his departure in the middle of the night, leaving me entirely to my own devices.
Under ordinary circumstances, I might have been worried that something had happened to him, but his abandonment wasn’t at all surprising. My father had always done selfish things like that. He’d always thought of himself first and his family last. It had only gotten worse ever since my mom had died ten years ago.
As it thundered again, a strike of lightning hit against the ocean. I should have probably been affected by it in some way, but I wasn’t. It wasn’t like it could kill me, anyway. There wasn’t much that could kill me. But if we went to war... Well, who knew what would happen to anyone in our coven?
I wondered what I could possibly have done to get out of this mess. I had to figure things out and not only for myself. If I didn’t come up with a solution—and fast—we were going to end up going to war. And I knew I couldn’t let that happen.
I needed to do what I could to protect my family, our coven, and... Lila.
I glanced over my shoulder at the woods that lay behind me, already worried about whether or not Lila was okay. There weren’t many vampires who I would have trusted to keep the love of my life safe from harm, but I did trust Celia.
My cousin had always strongly opposed the idea of drinking directly from humans. She found it to be inhumane. She only drank human blood when it came directly from a vial. She would have rather existed on animal blood than drink from a human’s neck, which most vampires only did in the event of an emergency. Animal blood was enough to sustain us but not for very long.
It may have been over 100 years since Celia and I had last seen each other, but I doubted that her views could have changed all that much.
“There you are,” a relieved voice said from behind me, slicing through my thoughts.
I turned to find a worried-looking Zoe standing behind me. She was wearing a long, sleek burgundy dress that fell just above her ankles. It made her golden eyes pop against her mocha skin.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” She let out a frustrated laugh. “How can you even ask me what’s wrong at a time like this?”
“At a time like what?” I stared at her blankly, but as I asked the question, I realized that she must have known what was going on. Her witch intuition must have told her that once Daniel and Aunt Caroline arrived, there was a good chance that our coven would go to war.
“Could you be any more self-absorbed, Sebastian?” she asked.
“Zoe, I have a lot of things on my mind right now. Instead of throwing insults at me, I highly suggest that you tell me what you’re talking about before I lose my temper.” I shot a warning look in her direction, but judging from the look in her golden eyes, it didn’t faze her in the slightest.
I was pretty certain that Zoe was the only woman in our kingdom who didn’t fear me and I honestly wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“Sebastian, have yo
u seen the sky?” She pointed up at it. “It’s no longer red.”
I glanced up at the sky. I’d noticed the change already and it had made me nervous at first, but I allowed myself to look at it closer now. I took in the shades of pink, blue, and purple and the way they blended together above us for the first time, creating a beautiful portrait that hung over our heads. “It’s pretty. Isn’t it?”
“Pretty? Pretty?” Zoe let out an annoyed sigh. “You would think it’s pretty.”
My eyes drifted over to meet hers. “You can’t tell me that you don’t find the new sky pretty, especially after we’ve been looking at the same boring sky every day.” Zoe hadn’t been in Deadwood as long as I had, but... still. For the 60 years she had lived in our kingdom, the sky hadn’t changed even once. It became so boring, so monotonous.
I looked up at the sky again, studying it. I noticed the way the stars peeked through the beautiful layers of colors, glittering in the night. The moon stared down at us, casting a glow against the ocean.
The sky reminded me of Lila. Her beauty was the only thing that could even begin to compare.
“I’ve never seen anything more beautiful,” I told Zoe honestly.
“Well, that beauty comes at a price, Sebastian. There’s a reason the sky looks the way it does.”
Her words snapped me out of the trance I’d allowed myself to succumb to. I’d had every reason to be alarmed about the sky. Of course, there was a reason why the sky had randomly changed colors after hundreds of years.
Now that I had come back down to reality, I silently began to panic.
“What is it, Zoe? What happened to the sky?” I pressed.
“How much do you know about Laurel’s spell?” she asked me.
“Not much,” I admitted. “All I know is that vampire blood and a thousand mermaid tears were mixed to form the barrier in the sky, and we’ve been protected from the sun’s rays ever since.”
“So you don’t know about the agreement the mermaids and the vampires had to come to for the spell to happen?”
I shook my head.
“Before the mermaids agreed to offer their tears to keep your kind protected, a treaty was made,” Zoe explained. “The agreement was that no vampire would ever kill another mermaid from the Deadwood Sea again.”