Page 25

Without Edda holding me upright, my legs collapsed beneath me. I landed with a wet, sickening squash on her body.

Her. Body.

Oh, stars.

I was sitting on a fucking corpse.

I sucked in air, but I didn’t have enough to scream. Blood smeared my hands, my hips, my thighs. It was everywhere, warm and sticky against cooling, dead skin. I thrashed, scrambling to get off her, but the floor was slick with blood, my palms sliding uselessly. My vision swirled, the world fading in and out of focus.

Pain still clawed at my insides. It was like Edda had rooted around inside me, the damage she left scarring my very soul.

Tears streaming down my cheeks, I finally managed to crawl away. My nausea subsided slightly now that I wasn’t touching a starsdamned dead person—

I bumped into Jules’s legs.

My head went back until my vision became nothing but the King of Dawn. The afternoon light turned his hair into a pale halo, gilded and blinding. His golden eyes fixed on me at his feet. He brushed a fingertip through a splat of witch blood on my cheek and brought it to his lips.

“Hmm.” He made a face. “Not bad, not great. Mediocre at best.”

I didn’t bother holding back my horror. “Are you rating how the witch you murdered tastes?”

“How dare you suggest something so barbaric, lovely? I was rating how the witch Luc murdered tastes.” Jules’s quip didn’t have quite the same zest as normal. Something about it rang untrue? His joyful mask was flawless and yet somehow I knew his grin was strained.

“We mean no harm, Imperium,” Exalted Morrena said, kneeling in my blurring periphery. The Kings’ Council had surrounded the remaining witches, boxing them in with nothing but the threat of their power. “Edda acted without my knowledge—”

“Silence,” Luc snapped.

I flinched at the harsh command, cowering down to the floor at Jules’s feet. I hated this. Hated the way I instinctively curled inward, making myself small like I had for so many years. But I was in a room full of monsters. Monsters who had already killed two people today.

Survival was more important than pride.

But even through the terror, my curiosity stirred. I risked a glance to my left until a polished boot with silver clasps came into sight. My gaze followed upward, past dark, tailored trousers over hard muscle, past black velvet drawn tight across a broad chest. When I met silver eyes, my heart nearly stopped.

Luc cataloged every part of me, his burning gaze methodical. Whatever he saw, it must have satisfied him, because he turned. But as he did, he shifted subtly. He positioned himself between me and everyone else in the room except his soulbound.

Something in me stuttered at the possessive motion.

Stupid, gullible heart.

Even spattered in the blood of their latest victim, it still hadn’t learned.

Luc let the moment stretch, watching the witch delegation tremble. Then, in a voice cold enough to silence the entire room, he said, “You will not repeat a word of this to anyone ever, not even to another soul in this room.”

A word of what? But Exalted Morrena nodded quickly. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

Luc stared for a moment longer, a chilling look, before he glanced toward the door. Estrella and Tristan stood at attention, flanked by four unfamiliar vampires. Black armor gleamed over hardened leather, the star insignia of the Impire stamped over their chests. They must have entered when the witch nearly killed me.

With a flick of his fingers, Luc issued his command. “Take the delegation back to their quarters.”

The four guards moved instantly, surrounding the witches in a blink. They hauled the delegation to their feet with little care for dignity. Exalted Morrena barely had time to grab her cane, clutching the carved wood to her chest with bloodless knuckles as the guards ushered them out.

Estrella and Tristan closed the doors behind them, but they remained inside, their gazes locked on me.

Like I was a threat to the kings.

Fuck. There was more to this mess than weak empathy links and power glamours.

“What just happened?” My voice came out as a hoarse whisper, but in the throne room’s silence, everyone heard.

Eight pairs of luminous eyes snapped to me at once. If I hadn’t already been kneeling on the floor, I would have collapsed beneath the weight of their attention.

Jules circled me until he stood at his soulbond’s side and drew a rune in the air over Edda’s corpse. Incinerate . Her body to ash. The moment the witches had left, the mirth had disappeared from his face, replaced by calculated appraisal.

It wasn’t an expression I’d ever seen from the smiling King of Dawn.

“I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise,” he said, without a hint of his usual effervescence.

Luc didn’t lift his gaze from me. “I didn’t figure it out, either.”

“We’re both idiots, then.”

I frowned. Wonderful. They were ignoring me. Maybe Dawnspear would start to feel like home. The thought was bleak enough to make me snort aloud, only slightly delirious.

Luc arched a brow. His expression didn’t change from controlled confidence, but there was turmoil behind those silver eyes. “Do you find this amusing, Nessa?”

My breath hitched. Nessa. Luc had never called me by my name. I was always Miss Halloran or little curiosity or bride to the King of Dusk. Never Nessa. “I don’t know what this is.”

“Don’t you?”

The accusation was clear in his chilling tone. My crime, not so much. “Not at all.”

The kings exchanged a look before turning to their council. Sabas, Cédric, Roxiana, and Isabeau stared like I had sprouted a second, dangerous head—and they each had a different plan for dealing with it. Sabas and Isabeau’s hands hovered over their weapons, ready to strike. Cédric held a vial of crimson, my blood catching the light as he studied it. His brow furrowed, eyes sharp with quiet calculation. Roxiana’s silver eyes remained narrowed and shrewd, considering.

Luc took in their reactions as thoroughly as he had taken in mine.

Then, he made a decision.

“Leave us.”

Sabas tore his intense stare from me. “Estrella and Tristan should remain behind.”

“She’s no threat to us,” Luc said.

Sabas’s mouth thinned. “If she harms herself—”

Harm myself? I wasn’t optimistic about my future, but my body had never felt more stable. The kings’ magic and venom had stopped my pain and dulled my other symptoms. For the first time in years, I almost felt normal.

“She’s no threat to us,” Luc repeated, this time with finality. “Leave us.”

This time, the Kings’ Council obeyed without argument or hesitation. They all dropped into bows. Then, in the space of a breath, they were gone. The door clicked shut as Estrella and Tristan closed it behind them.

Leaving me alone with Luc and Jules. Again.

And this time, things were significantly colder.

The first three times I was alone with the kings, I had ended up naked within minutes.

Twice, they had made me come.

This time, I doubted that was the way things would go.

I wasn’t kneeling before two regular vampires. I bowed before the Conqueror and the Butcher, and this was not a game to them anymore.

Jules, who always filled silences with sharp smiles and lazy quips, said nothing.

Luc, who usually dissected me with clinical interest, stared at me like I was something beyond even his understanding.

Stars, why couldn’t they just say something? I would rather be threatened. I would rather be touched. Anything would be better than being studied like this.

Luc drew a quick, simple symbol in the air. The shadows flared in the breath of space between us before suddenly flinging toward me. Truth . I jerked back as the shadow rune crashed into my face and dissipated into nothing with a slight flare of heat. “Do you know how truth runes work, Nessa?”

My breathing hitched. “No?”

“You’re now incapable of lying.”

So this was an interrogation. I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Can’t you tell when a human’s lying?”

“Normally, but that’s less clear now with you,” Luc said.

If this interrogation had any chance of ending with my death—and it did with the Imperium involved, even if it wasn’t until they found my replacement—I might as well speak my mind. “What does that mean?”

But the King of Dusk ignored me. “Why didn’t you try to fulfill the birth quota?”

I flinched. I had answered this question dozens of times over the last couple of years. No one ever understood my reasoning. I had stopped expecting them to, but for some reason, I had thought the kings would understand. I told them how touching myself brought pain. They had witnessed most of my illness’s effects. The only point we hadn’t touched on was my infertility.

I lowered my head, staring at my knees. The cold stone blurred beneath me. “I already told you. There’s something… wrong with me. I’m in pain a lot and…” My cheeks flushed. “ Desire can make it worse.”

“Most Maboni consider a harvesting the worst fate imaginable,” Jules said. “You really would rather become a thrall than experience the occasional, painful fuck?”

My gaze snapped upwards. The bastard. “It wouldn’t have been occasional . It would have been always. It would be always now, if I wasn’t wearing a soothing rune or filled with your venom.”

“So you’d rather give your soul to a vampire?” Jules grinned, sharp and dangerous. “The godstars surely won’t invite you to their paradise after death now.”

My anger flared higher. I lifted my chin, forcing the words through clenched teeth. “You don’t need to mock me. I’ve spent far more time reading history books than scripture. The godstars don’t care about this world or any creature on it. There’s no paradise after death. There’s just death.”

A flicker of something crossed Jules’s face. Interest? Surprise? His brows rose, amusement curling at the edges of his mouth.

But my response only made Luc frown. “Why did you volunteer for the harvest, Nessa?”

“You were there,” I said. “I volunteered in place of my sister.”

“And if your sister hadn’t been called, would you have still volunteered?”

I frowned. Why would anyone volunteer for the harvest for no reason? Though the question made sense, if I was in on the plan to… make them feel me come?

It didn’t seem that serious an attack.

I shook my head. “No.”

Luc paused, his surprise at that simple truth almost tangible. I expected Jules to break the silence, but for once, he remained still, arms crossed over his chest, jeweled fingers tapping against his sleeve.

After a moment, Luc continued, “So it was a coincidence that you volunteered for the harvest the same day we were in town seeking a new Mortal Bride?”

I opened my mouth, then paused. When he put it that way, my answer sounded ridiculous. But I couldn’t lie. “I guess? It does sound like an awfully large coincidence, but if it was planned, I didn’t know about it.”

Luc’s expression darkened. He didn’t like that answer. “Who cast the power glamour on you?”

“I don’t know.”

The next question struck as fast and precise as a swing of his axe. “What does your second glamour hide?”

I frowned. A second glamour? “What second glamour?”

“The witch didn’t trigger a defensive rune,” Luc said. “She tried to remove another spell that felt like it was woven into your very bone. The other spell must be a glamour, too, since we didn’t give the witch permission to remove anything else.”

“I didn’t know about either glamour.” I really, really didn’t. The closest I had ever come to magic before the harvest was watching magistrates cast runes to project their voices.

But that obviously wasn’t true. I wasn’t sure what terrified me more, being surrounded by an agitated Imperium or facing the possibility that my whole life was a lie.

Or was it whatever had shocked the Kings’ Council and Imperial Guard?

“What happened earlier?” I asked, softly this time.

For a second, neither king moved nor answered. There was something… uneasy about them? Their expressions remained blank, but that was the word my instincts insisted on using.

“When the witch tried to remove your second glamour, she almost killed you.” Luc’s voice was deliberate, measured, slow. “The runespell was likely cast when you were very young, making it an integral part of you. She nearly tore your soul apart.” His next words sent ice down my spine. “When you started to die, I started to die. Jules started to die.”

My heartbeat pounded against my ribs. “Why… would my death cause yours?”

“You truly don’t know, do you?” His silver eyes speared into me. It was like he was peeling away the layers of me until he reached the core of who I was. “We’ve been soulbound.”

I stared.

Stared.

Stared harder.

I must have heard that wrong.

“We’ve been what ?!”

Soulbond. They couldn’t… They couldn’t possibly be saying… No, no, no. A pulse of heat raced through me, my breath ragged, chest rising and falling faster than it had when éamon died. I opened my mouth to say I didn’t understand, but I couldn’t form the words. They were lies.

I did understand.

I hadn’t read beyond the first volume of Karra and Azaras’s story, but I knew what happened.

Their bond snapped into place during a feeding, a soulborne spell activating when the demon latched into her lifeforce.

They had both collapsed, their bodies overwhelmed by the merge.

At first, Karra had only felt Azaras’s strongest emotions, but she had seen past the mask he wore with his courtiers. She had understood him.

I hadn’t put together the pieces. I nearly convinced myself I had imagined those few glimpses into the kings. It hadn’t even crossed my mind this could be a soulbond.

With the fucking Imperium.

My world started spinning. Only the cold stone cold beneath me, biting into my bare skin, kept me grounded. “No.”

Luc arched a dark brow down at me. “No?”

“That… no.” Why was it suddenly hot? I was barely wearing anything. “This must be a dream. This can’t be real.”

Luc remained as calm, controlled, and intense as ever. As serious as ever. He wasn’t joking. Neither was Jules. I stared up at them from my place on the floor.

Fuck, this was happening. Either that, or I had died or lost my mind. Were those the preferable options? I slumped down off my knees, my ass hitting the floor.

This changed everything.

The weight of it pressed in on me, thick and suffocating. I ducked my head, but if I wasn’t looking at the vampires above me, I was looking at the blood splattered below me.

Stars, I should’ve been more disturbed by that.

But instead, my thoughts spiraled in another direction. “You’re not lying, are you? That’s why I’ve felt so…”

Comfortable?

At ease?

Safe?

The idea of admitting that aloud made my stomach swirl harder than at the sight of blood.

“Do you think we’re lying?” Luc asked, his voice nearly soft.

My gaze flickered from luminous silver to gold and back. A day ago, I’d have said there was no way for me to know, but now I looked at them… and knew.

Just like how Karra had known.

“No, I don’t,” I said. “Why cast a truth rune if soulbound can’t lie to each other?”

“The caster behind your glamour and soulbond was clearly talented and powerful.” He spoke the words slowly, each one measured. “Perhaps they weaved something into the spell to allow you to lie to us.”

“Do you think I’m lying?”

Luc considered me for a long moment. “The bond is telling me you aren’t. But if you don’t have any answers, we need to find someone who does.”

Jules reached out a hand. “That woman in Corraidin wasn’t your mother, correct?”

I stared at it for a second too long before hesitantly placing my palm in his. The King of Dawn easily pulled me to my feet, but he didn’t let go.

Luc didn’t step back, either.

I stood trapped in the space between them, their bodies bracketing mine, their presence a solid, unyielding wall of heat. My shoulders nearly brushed both their chests.

Oh, stars, I was soulbound to the Imperium .

Before I panicked, Jules tilted his head slightly. “If you don’t have any answers for us, your parents might.”

Shit.

I didn’t know much about magic, but one did not accidentally cast a bloodborne soulbond. It had taken the demon Isaura hours to cast the spell on Karra. How had I not noticed?

Had someone erased my memory? Who? When? I didn’t think so, but most of my childhood was a void I didn’t poke at. The days in Books & Bows blurred into one, endless pages and pain, but before it was little more than darkness and fractured flashes.

Kneeling in church. The tight squeeze of my mother’s hand. Sitting silently at the dinner table, always on the edge of my family. Telling stories to Aislin with her new dolls. The chill of the bedchamber Deidre had moved me to after Orrin’s birth. Una and I giggling at the back of the classroom, years before it all went wrong.

Nothing about magic.

But if someone had cast these runespells years ago, how had they known I’d become the Mortal Bride?

How had my parents not noticed their child missing? My stepmother, I could believe. But my mother? No. That made no sense.

“She was selected for the harvest when I was nine,” I said. “It’s been nearly twenty years, so I’m sure she’s long gone.”

The kings shared a look.

“Despite whatever rumors you’ve heard in Mabon, most of the harvested thralls live long lives here,” Luc said. “Maboni are collared during or after the harvest feast and can’t be killed as long as they wear a collar.”

éamon’s screams echoed in my head. “I noticed. How kind of you.”

“Kind?” Jules snorted. “We have thousands of fangs to feed. The blood has to come from somewhere.”

The words scraped against my mind, their casual cruelty catching on every raw edge. I licked my suddenly dry lips. I would get through this conversation without running away screaming.

“That’s not a guarantee,” I muttered. “Maybe she was eaten by a hellserpent on the way here or killed by your chancellor for fighting back.”

“It’s possible but unlikely,” Luc said. “Most of the humans we import live until they’re seventy.”

“Seventy?” The eldest Maboni I had ever met, Great-Aunt Cloda, passed at seventy-one. Most were lucky to see sixty.

Luc nodded. “Vampire venom, sweat, blood, and cum improve a human’s health and lifespan.”

My mind ground to a halt. Sweat? Cum? My body knew to be repulsed, but my curiosity twisted in the opposite direction. Just existing around vampires stretched a human’s life? I swallowed, my throat dry. “That’s… disturbing.”

Luc’s lips twitched. “Your mother would be in her late forties?”

“About.” I crossed my arms, holding myself together. “It doesn’t really matter, does it? She could be anywhere in your Impire.”

“We keep detailed ownership records, so it should only take Sabas a day or two to track her down,” Luc said smoothly. “We can send a message to Mabon and have Delphine question your father.”

Alarm spiked through me. My father had only ever tolerated me, but I still didn’t want him to be interrogated by vampires. Not even my bitch of a stepmother deserved that. “I doubt my father knows anything,” I said quickly. “He thinks magic is a blasphemous affront to the godstars.”

Jules snorted. “The godstars are magic, just like their former kin.”

“I didn’t say it made sense.”

But the King of Dusk wasn’t one to be side-tracked. “He’ll answer my questions nonetheless.”

How were they being so… practical about this? “Shouldn’t you be upset that you’re soulbound to a human?”

The shift was instant. The look in their eyes went from examination to possession.

I shuddered. I couldn’t help it. The kings had always looked at me like I belonged to them. But before, it had been the distant, indulgent gaze of a vampire with a favored thrall. I hadn’t realized it then, but it was so clear in comparison.

Now they looked at me like I was theirs and theirs alone.

Luc’s voice was low and steady when he finally spoke. “All Azarasian children are taught from a young age that there’s no point in resisting or denying their bond. Once souls merge, they can’t be untangled.”

“At all?” My voice barely rose above a whisper.

Jules tilted his head, his golden gaze sharp. “Not by magic, distance, or death.” A slow, knowing smile curved his lips. “Might as well get used to us. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together.”

I swallowed hard. Their every sentence felt like the closing of a door I hadn’t even realized was open.

It slammed shut forever with Luc’s next words. “Enemy or a pawn, you’re ours for eternity now, bride.”