Page 74

Slowly, the female turned.

I bowed my head. “Nemu.”

Her footsteps were silent, but I knew she approached. And just as I knew she drew near, I knew she ordered me to rise.

I obeyed, standing on shaky legs and forcing myself to look the goddess of healing in the eye.

She was exquisite, but not in any sense that would have appealed to the peoples of Ter Isir. Her skin was white like the first snowfall of winter. Red eyes shot through with gold glittered in her face. Her black lips were full and well-formed, her fangs long and hooked at the ends. Up close, her black gown wasn’t a gown at all, but a dark, flowing river of blood. Pinned at one shoulder, the river coursed over her ample breasts, flared around exaggeratedly curved hips, and cascaded to the ground. Every few seconds, the snake on her shoulder flicked its tongue into the thick liquid.

She was a vampire as we were meant to be—or perhaps as we used to be, when Ter Isir was young and the Deepnight wasn’t a canopy but a long, black night no human dared to enter.

She was a monster. An apex predator. And she could crush me with a thought.

Her eyes traveled down my nude body and rested on my weeping, smoking hand.

“Nemu,” I repeated, her name sizzling over my tongue. “I ask for your bly’ad.”

She kept her gaze on my hand, but the snake stared at me with beady red eyes. It opened its mouth, displaying fangs that dripped with blood the same color as her gown.

Icy fingers touched my wrist, and I looked down and saw that Nemu had lifted my hand, her black claws long and sharp against my skin. A crackling noise echoed around us, the sound like a thousand people straightening their backs at the same time. Whispers followed, the rush of noise raising every fine hair on my body.

Nemu lifted her eyes to mine. The snake hissed, its tail beating fast against her breast. Slowly, the goddess tilted her head and peered at me.

THERE WILL BE PAIN.

“Yes,” I said, and I wasn’t sure if I answered aloud. But it didn’t matter. In this place where the gods dwelt, thoughts were intention.

YOU WILL DIE.

“I am already dead.”

The snake hissed.

The goddess opened her mouth and spoke. “KESH.”

My eardrums burst. A thousand bolts of lightning struck me at once, cooking me from within.

Pain. Unimaginable. Words did not exist to adequately describe the agony of her voice. My mouth stretched on a soundless scream as Nemu held my hand and watched me die a hundred deaths. Each breath brought a million lashes of the whip. My skin flayed from my bones layer by layer. A fire seared me from the inside out, until tears streamed down my cheeks and my soundless scream became a scream in truth. I ceased to be Laurent of Nor Doru, son of Nicolae and Sorina. I was not a king, nor even a male.

I was pain.

KESH. The word boomed through my mind and flowed onto my tongue. My mouth filled with blood, and I tasted my heart.

Nemu’s red and gold eyes observed me dispassionately. Her gown flowed, and the snake swirled down to her hip. Its head weaved around her arm before arcing toward me in a sinuous wave.

A forked tongue lashed my wrist.

KESH.

The snake bared its bloody fangs.

KESH.

It struck, biting directly over the wound in my hand.

My head went back. My own fangs shot down, stabbing through my lip. I screamed, shredding my vocal cords as I shook and stared at the white mist that was nothing and everything. Blood ran down my chin. Tears poured down my face. With a wretched sob, I opened my mouth and pushed the bly’ad from between my cracked, bleeding lips.

“KESH!” I screamed, the word exploding in my mind.