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My mouth gaped open and stayed that way. Jules—the motherfucking Butcher —continued grinning at me from the back of his hellsteed.

I was an idiot.

The way all the convoy warriors treated my traveling companions suddenly made perfect sense. I thought they were just in charge of the harvest. Not that they were the supreme rulers of the Azarasian Impire.

My stomach twisted. I’d spend the last week alternating between eye-fucking and glaring at the Imperium .

My vision spun. If Luc—the Conqueror —hadn’t sat firmly at my back, I’d have slumped right off his hellsteed. Was I going to faint? I couldn’t faint. Not now. I had to say something. Anything.

All that came to mind was, “Being chopped up with Thérèse doesn’t sound much better.” Followed by, “Wait, did you say Lucero Azaras ?” And then, much later than it should have been, “Your Majesty?”

Jules burst into laughter. The red-cloaked vampires on the walkway above the gatehouse straightened at the sound.

“He did say Azaras,” Luc answered, amusement lacing his voice. “The demon is my sire.”

I twisted fully around to look at him. His gorgeous face was too close for comfort, but I didn’t even care.

Luc was Azaras’s son .

Demons were shapeshifters and didn’t have any physical traits to pass to their children, so they probably didn’t look alike. But my mental image of the Beast King changed nonetheless.

Jules wiped away the tears his laughter had wrung from him. “You know, most people stare less once they learn who we are.”

I stiffened. Fuck. It had been insane to make eye contact with the vampires at my back and side when they were merely lords. I didn’t know what was worse than insanity—but whatever it was, I had it. Because I was still staring directly into the Conqueror’s eyes.

Luc slowly arched one brow. That arrogant, infuriating smirk twitched at the corner of his lips.

Right. Because I was still staring.

I wrenched my gaze forward as we approached the castle’s gate. A lone skull, crowned in tarnished gold, dangled from chains above the entrance beneath the parapet. Jules flipped it off as we rode through.

The white stone road led through a garden, trimmed pear trees lining the path to Dawnspear’s towering doors. If the lords—kings—hadn’t just shared world-altering information, I’d be drinking in every manicured shrub and flower bed in the runic parterres. Instead, I traced my finger back and forth along my book’s dulled edges within the satchel crossing my chest.

Questions crawled up my throat. I bit my lip. I needed to stop speaking. Making casual conversation with two murderous warlord kings who planned to fake-marry me as a living sacrifice wasn’t smart. But they hadn’t killed me yet for the offense. If they did, who would serve as their volunteer? If their covenant spell was as important as I thought, they wouldn’t risk it.

When they didn’t need my cooperation, it would be a different story.

Better to ask now, then.

I started with something easy. Hopefully. “Is Karra your mother?”

“She isn’t.”

“Oh.” My shoulders slumped. Jules had said I’d have access to a library. I had hoped to find The Soulborne Queen ’s remaining volumes and finally finish Karra’s story, but did I want to anymore? Knowing what I knew? “I guess it’s not a happy ending for them after all.”

“You look heartbroken, curiosity.”

“I shouldn’t be. It’s a historical romance. When does real life ever go well?” I cringed as a thought occurred. “Wait. You’re telling me I’ve been yattering on about erotica written about your father?”

“Azaras is my sire, not my father,” Luc said, voice suddenly flat. “I’ve never met him.”

“Still. You’re related.”

“Azarasians aren’t terrified by the idea of their relatives fucking,” Jules said cheerfully. “That’s very much a human issue.”

Before us, the road split into two, leaving the garden behind for an open forecourt. We circled a fountain, its centerpiece a massive golden spear stabbing skyward between spurts of water. The gilded piece was as beautiful and deadly as its Butcher King.

Unlike Jules, it was slightly more bloody—at this moment, at least.

Trails of red streamed down the spear’s shaft from the flayed body impaled on its sharp end. I clutched a hand over my mouth. My stomach tried to spin around and leave. I couldn’t tell if they had been male or female, mortal or vampire. There was no skin left, just gleaming muscle, wet and raw. Their chest had been cracked open, ribs reaching outward like grasping fingers, a beating heart cradled in the center like a palm.

The beating heart.

It—they weren’t dead. How could they not be dead? Even knowing vampires were near indestructible, this seemed too terrible to live through.

But if they were a vampire, why weren’t they healing?

I saw my answer a second later. A line of runes floated before the heart, shadows sinking into the ruined body. Imprison. Suspend. Endure. The spell held them trapped in this state, bleeding and broken, neither living nor dead.

But it didn’t halt the agony.

The only thing keeping the forecourt from filling with screams was a golden gag strapped tight over their mouth. Their lidless, bright blue eyes flickered, rimmed by a thin line of shadow. I jolted. Every vampire I had met so far had gold or silver eyes. Did he not have a soulbond? Azaras had cast the soulbond runespell across his kingdom three thousand years ago. I knew vampires were immortal, but the thought of living that long hurt my brain.

If you could call this living. There was nothing but pain and madness behind that gaze. Whoever this had been, they weren’t anymore.

They weren’t anything anymore.

I wanted to tear away, but I was trapped in that gaze. Even like this, the vampire mesmerized me. “Is your entire castle decorated with corpses?”

Jules snorted, like there wasn’t a skinless body writhing a couple feet away. “Nah, just the outer wall and forecourt garden. I’m not letting the traitors inside.”

Of course. Silly me.

When the hellsteeds reached the far side of the fountain, the angle finally forced my gaze away from the undying vampire. I swallowed and faced forward. There was nothing I could do for them. I couldn’t even save myself.

I wracked my brain for what I planned to ask the kings next, but my thoughts had managed to escape where my stomach had not. Had it really mattered, if I couldn’t remember? I knew the important parts of my fate.

Mortal Bride.

Fake marriage.

The Conqueror and the Butcher.

My nausea flared again.

The road merged into an open area for carriages and wagons. Vampires in navy and maroon livery stood waiting at the base of the broad staircase leading to an ornate set of red doors.

As one, they dropped into bows, a closed fist pressed to their hearts. “Imperium.”

Jules was off his hellsteed in a blink. He gently patted Cala’s nose and murmured, “Please don’t bite anyone.”

One of the attendants stepped forward—hesitant, but resigned—and took Cala’s reins.

Jules walked to my side as Luc dismounted behind me. Without a word, the King of Dawn wrapped strong hands around my waist and lifted me down. Firm. Effortless. My knees nearly crumpled. I hadn’t stood for more than a few minutes in days, and if not for healing runes, my thighs would be chafed raw.

Jules tightened his grip, keeping me upright before I could collapse at his feet. Golden eyes met mine. I ducked my head. Do. Not. Stare. At. The. Butcher. King.

Idiot.

“You’re heeding my advice now?” His pretty mouth pouted in my periphery. “But I wanted to watch you batter your little eyes at me, your strong, beautiful, charming rescuer.”

I resisted the urge to glare. “What exactly did you rescue me from?”

“Today? Falling off a hellsteed. Long term? A boring life without orgasms.”

My gaze snapped up. “What?”

Fuck. He’d made me look. And now that I was looking, I couldn’t stop. The afternoon sun lit his blond waves into pale gold, a perfect match for his eyes.

“Orgasms are a great and terrible sin , aren’t they?” he asked, his voice going gruff in imitation of a patriarch. “Along with everything else enjoyable in life?”

“Well, yes.” He wasn’t wrong. Once our school curriculum began covering sex, we were required to attend church nightly to purify our minds of the Azarasians’ wicked propaganda. By then, I’d already snuck a dozen romance novels past Deidre. “But I really don’t think you can take credit for every… orgasm I’ll have for the rest of my life.”

Assuming I could even have one. If venom rid me of my pain, perhaps—

“Why not? I plan to give you at least the first dozen, starting tonight.”

My jaw dropped. He planned to what now? Tonight ?

Jules stuck out his tongue. A tiny ruby embedded in a gold stud caught the light, flashing red.

If my jaw could drop further, it would have. “Do you have a tongue piercing?”

Jules grinned. Shit, why had I said that aloud? “Do you like it?”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. I finally settled on a strangled, “Do you?”

His expression turned wicked. “It comes in handy at times.”

“In what way?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Well, yes, that’s why I…” Wait. Did he mean what I thought he meant?

His smile broadening, Jules winked and headed for the stairs. “You won’t have to wait long to find out.”

I stared. My heart started pounding loud enough that I heard it in my ears.

Oh, my fucking stars.

I forced my eyes to narrow. “Why is everything an innuendo with you people?”

“We’re vampires,” Luc said, halting at my side. “Unlike humans, we don’t believe sex is something to hide in shame.”

Heat flooded my face. At this stage, it was far beyond a flush. Why was I even debating this? And with the Conqueror and Butcher of all people? I’d left my common sense back in Mabon.

I hadn’t realized it was something I needed to pack.

“It’s not shame,” I said weakly. “It’s just… not proper.”

“Why?”

“Because…” It was a duty to endure? Because the Church said so? “Just because.”

Luc arched a brow. “That’s terrible reasoning.”

I sighed. “I know.”

The King of Dusk gently shook his head before following his soulbound up the stairs. His steps were controlled, deliberate. Power contained in every stride. Both kings moved with confidence, but Luc commanded authority with a step next to Jules’s effortless glide.

Without the kings beside me, one of the vampire attendants approached. To them, I was probably no different than the kings’ hellsteeds and saddle bags. They reached out—

“No.”

Luc didn’t raise his voice, but the weight of his command snapped through the air. The vampire attendant dropped to their knees so fast that bone met stone with an audible crack.

“Forgive my overstep, Your Majesty.”

Both kings had turned, but neither spared a glance at their kneeling subject. Their gazes locked on me instead. Luc reached out a hand and crooked a finger. No words. No expression. Just a silent command.

I straightened. I would not cower. If I repeated it enough times, maybe it would become true. I climbed the stairs to Luc’s side, every step like walking toward my execution. The sense of impending doom had quieted on the road with the kings, but now it pounded against my breastbone, keeping time with my heart.

Jules strolled through the opened front door like he… well, like he owned the place. Which he did. “I’m hoooome. Did you miss me?”

The vampires bustling through the entrance hall bowed immediately. It gave me the perfect opportunity to gape unobserved.

The floor was a masterpiece of inlaid stone, obsidian, and ivory marble swirling in elaborate patterns that stretched across the impossibly vast hall. Crystal chandeliers the size of a person hung from every second coffered ceiling, twinkling in the sunlight spilling through the arched windows. White columns with gilded crown molding stretched toward a distant ceiling, its expanse painted in deep, bloody shades—not of dawn, but of slaughter.

In the mural, dozens of bodies lay broken and bleeding around a dark throne, its seat wide enough to fit two bloodied kings. Luc and Jules sat enthroned in carnage, every bit the Conqueror and the Butcher. There was no sign of the smirking, infuriating men I had come to know.

But I had only met the masks of the monsters. They had told me exactly who they were.

They had decorated the first room of Dawnspear with a reminder of how they built their impire.

“No,” a male voice responded, grumpy and unafraid to share it.

Two dark-haired vampires had remained standing. I hadn’t noticed them at first, too overwhelmed by the sheer majesty of the room. The man had the sleeves of his plum-colored doublet rolled to his elbows, his black hair cut short and utilitarian. Not a single strand fell across his pale face or sharp, silver eyes.

“That’s not very nice, Sabas. I could have you killed for being mean to me.”

“Please do. I’ve spent the last month doing Luc’s paperwork.” Sabas dragged a hand down his face. Like every other vampire, he was beautiful. But there was a shadow beneath his eyes I hadn’t known immortals could get. “I’ll stab myself if I see another grain report.”

“It’s not like Rox not to help,” Luc said mildly.

“He lost a bet,” the woman beside Sabas said. Her black uniform was a version of the kings’ army leathers, elevated with silver thread and armored plates. Most vampires wore their hair loose, but hers was neatly braided, a long plait resting over her polished shoulder pauldrons. Her olive skin deepened the gold of her eyes. She stood nearly as tall as Sabas, both of them a couple inches shorter than Jules—and still a good three inches taller than me.

“You bet on paperwork and then lost ?” Jules pulled Thérèse from her sheath. “We can’t tell anyone this was a mercy killing. It will ruin my reputation.”

“Put Thérèse away, Julien.”

Jules frowned playfully over at Luc. “I’m not actually going to stab him, Lucey . Then Cédric would die, and Perry wouldn’t ever forgive me for killing his favorite brother.”

“Aren’t you his favorite brother?” the woman asked dryly.

“Am I? He’s always yelling at me, so it’s hard to tell.”

“We were attacked by wraiths near Widow’s Lake,” Luc said, ignoring his soulbound to address Sabas and the woman.

She turned to a maroon-cloaked vampire among the still-bowing attendants. “Send a squadron to sweep the area.”

“Yes, General.” The vampire dipped their head and strode from the hall.

Sabas pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s the closest a pack has traveled to Montaurère in a century.”

“The bodies at the Dufresne Abattoir must have lured them from the wilds,” Luc said. “Your last report said you found the last of the culprits?”

Sabas nodded. “Their tribunal concludes today.”

“Schedule an audience for tomorrow morning.” Luc stepped forward. Every vampire and thrall moved with him without hesitation. The motion was automatic. Jules lagged behind, but no one else dared. “We’ll announce their sentences publically.”

“Ugh.” Jules waved a finger at his boots. Unfasten . With a flare of shadows, the laces came undone, and he kicked them off his feet. “How about the day after? I planned to spend tomorrow in bed.”

He said that last bit while looking at me. Why was he looking at me? My blush had started to fade, but at that, heat rushed to my face again.

Jules winked and held out a hand for me. “Best not to get left behind, lovely. Montaurère is a dangerous place for humans without a collar.”

I crossed the marble floor slowly, hesitating only a moment before placing my palm in his. Jules curled his fingers around mine and started after his soulbound at his own pace.

I glanced back at his boots, sitting abandoned in the middle of the entryway. “Won’t someone steal them?”

Jules snorted. “I could leave them in a city square. They smell too much like me to risk touching.”

“Everyone can’t know what you smell like.”

“They don’t, but we can sense magic in a person’s scent. By process of elimination, the boots are mine or Luc’s.”

I nodded and twisted around—

The kings’ retinue had stopped. All the vampires stared at me like they were shocked I knew how to speak. Or maybe it was that their Butcher King chatted back. I went rigid under the intensity of those bright eyes.

“This is…?” Sabas asked reluctantly. His brow furrowed as his gaze flickered between Jules and me.

“Our new Mortal Bride,” Luc said.

Sabas waited for further explanation, but neither king seemed willing to give it to him. “And?”

The kings shared one of those loaded glances. After a moment, Luc shrugged nonchalantly. “And Jules might keep her.”

“Keep her?” Jules twirled a strand of hair that had escaped my braid around his finger, pulled it to his nose, and inhaled. His eyes fluttered shut. “I think I might breed her.”

My stomach dropped. He might what now? A storm of emotions whirled at his words. Terror, obviously. Anticipation? I wasn’t going to touch that one.

And then what always followed—shame and a muted flash of pain through my core.

Human female, sixteen, likely infertile.

I had told the kings I was ill, but they hadn’t asked for details. They didn’t know. But I did. The memory of that day, the vampire healer’s clinical voice, still haunted me.

I hadn’t ever had the chance to decide if I wanted children. For a Maboni woman, there was no choice. Marriage. Children. Obedience. The only path. It had terrified me. But when the verdict came, my relief had been short-lived.

Una had abandoned me. My stepmother barely looked at me. Patriarch Meallán had stared, eyes heavy with pity and perverse desire all at once.

I hadn’t been worth much. No Maboni was. But that day, I became worthless.

But if I hadn’t been infertile, would I be a mother now?

It didn’t matter.

I would never be.

But I couldn’t tell the kings that. Just in case Jules wasn’t joking. He had to be. The offspring of a vampire and a human was always a witch, and the King of Dawn wouldn’t want a witch child.

And if he wasn’t joking… well, vampires had low fertility rates, like all demonbloods. He would surely blame it on that. Maybe, for once, my broken body was a blessing.

The General raised her dark brows. “That’s a first.”

“Fatherhood looks good on Cédric.” Jules released my hair. “Might be time I give it a try.”

Luc didn’t acknowledge the remark. His gaze swept the thralls, assessing, discarding. A silent moment stretched, taut with expectation. When his eyes settled on a golden-haired thrall, she didn’t flinch, but something in her posture shifted, as if bracing.

“Our volunteer needs to be bathed and dressed with the other Maboni,” he said. “You know the rules, Maire.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Ready her for the ceremony.”

Maire nodded and stepped to my side. Two chains of gold circled her neck. The first, a gilded collar. The second, a pendant necklace of a star. But instead of the star rising to the sky on a tail of dust, the symbol was flipped like the star was crashing into the ground. My stomach twisted at seeing the Church’s symbol again, even if it was upside down.

She wore a sleeveless black gown of fine-quality linen, the material clinging to her flat stomach and perfect curves. Two slits ran up through the middle of the skirt, exposing flashes of bare skin with every step. Too much skin. Back home, a woman wouldn’t dare show so much as an ankle outside her house. But every thrall I’d seen had worn this little.

As if their bodies didn’t belong to them at all.

Maire gestured for me to follow her. I swallowed and took a step—

“Wait.” We both stiffened at Luc’s voice. His gaze had dropped to my chest—no, to the satchel over my chest. A flicker of something crossed his face, too brief to name. Not calculation. Not possession. Something closer to… reluctance? Then, just as quickly, his expression smoothed. He turned to Jules. “Take it.”

“Ah, yes. Good call.” The King of Dawn strolled back over and raised his hand. “Hand it over.”

I hesitated. Then, slowly, I passed him the satchel and my book.

Jules bopped my chin with his knuckles. “I’ll see you later, lovely.”

Later. Tonight. The ceremony. I forced a breath out and turned to follow Maire before I panicked. We moved toward an empty section of wall between columns. She pressed on the wall. It clicked open, revealing a door worked seamlessly into the design. She ushered me into a narrow hallway.

When the door closed behind us, shielding us from vampire eyes, her head snapped up. Her soft, submissive expression was gone. She gripped my arm with surprising strength. “We don’t have a lot of time. Listen well, and maybe this won’t be the worst night of your life.”