Page 43

By the time we rode into the palace’s square, my wonder had trampled my anger and horror into dust. It was unfair that monsters this terrible created cities of such stunning beauty. Very few vampires and thralls remained in Tenebra de Mar right now, so I had no audience beyond the kings as I gaped at every intersection, every storefront, every grand house and manor.

And now I gaped at Duskfell.

The palace was plucked right out of The Soulborne Queen . Rusticated arches framed the thousands of sapphire blue doors and silver-paned windows embedded into the facade of black stone, nearly as dark as the daemium tower in the city center behind me. Towering columns stretched from the ground to the cornices crowing the building five stories overhead. From this angle, only the spire on top of the massive dome was visible, a glint of silver in the sunlight.

I barely noticed Luc dismounting his hellsteed, too busy drinking in every detail. I had imagined this city, this palace, a hundred times over, and not once had I come close to its true magnificence.

Large hands settled on my waist, plucking me from the saddle and my thoughts. Luc set me on my feet as a small contingent of vampire attendants spilled from the palace doors. I tried to keep my shoulders straight, but I couldn’t help but hunch the slightest bit, even if none of them met my gaze directly.

“Imperium,” a male vampire said as he dropped into a low bow. “We weren’t expecting you. Please forgive our poor greeting—”

“It’s of no concern, Barros,” Luc said, twisting toward the vampire, one hand still resting on my hip. “This wasn’t a planned trip.”

Tristan slid from his hellsteed’s back, but Estrella remained seated, like Jules. The King of Dawn nudged Cala forward until I was nearly forehead-to-snout with his white-spotted sable mare. “I’ll collect Orlagh Halloran. Are we doing this in the throne room?”

“I think something less formal will suffice.” Luc examined me coolly for a moment before glancing back to Jules. “The library?”

“Which one? Main floor, third floor, or the apartment?”

My gaping returned like it had never left. “Duskfell has three libraries?”

The corner of Luc’s lip twitched. “I consider the third floor more of a laboratory.”

Jules scoffed. “There’s too many books for me to count, so it’s a library.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” I said.

“It works how I want it to work.” Jules winked down at me. “It’s like you forget I’m a king, lovely.”

I didn’t dignify that with a response, but my grimace only seemed to amuse him.

“First floor it is, then,” Jules said. “Try not to have too much fun without me.”

I went stiff. The King of Dusk’s hand burned into me through the thin layer of my gown. Jules didn’t necessarily mean sex. Surely, there were other fun things to do in a palace. Not that the bond and I were in agreement on that one.

Luc only lifted an arrogant brow. “Don’t be gone too long then, Julien.”

Jules shuddered slightly at his full name in Luc’s dulcet tones. “A fucking minute will be too long.”

“You’ll survive.”

Jules straightened suddenly, a wicked light entering his eyes. “You know what would help?” He had his hellsteed turn until he loomed over me. “May I ask a boon of you, sweet bride?”

“A boon?”

“Something to warm my heart when we’re parted.”

I narrowed my eyes instantly. “How long will you be gone?”

“An hour,” he sighed, like he’d said a year.

Or, given he was immortal, a century.

I glanced down at myself, as if a suitable gift might suddenly appear tucked into the folds of my riding gown. The emerald fabric was sturdier than the lace from this morning and paired with a contraption Jules had called a brassière. The matching drawers were made of silk and smaller than any undergarments I’d ever worn.

Apparently, traveling meant I gained extra layers—but none of them hid secret pockets.

“I don’t have anything to give you.”

His grin widened. “You do.”

“Like what?”

Luc gave a small smirk. “He wants your panties.”

I blinked at him. Panties? Jules had called the tiny drawers I wore panties…

“You want my undergarments ?” I squeaked. The gathered vampires remained silent, their expressions unreadable, but I swore I caught the faintest flicker of amusement in Tristan’s gaze before he schooled his features. “You just gave them to me two hours ago.”

“Mm-hmm,” Jules purred. “Just enough time.”

Just enough time? I opened my mouth to ask… then snapped it shut. I didn’t want to know. More importantly, I didn’t want the entirety of Duskfell’s palace staff to know. Though they likely already did.

I stared at Jules.

He stared back. He was entirely serious… and waiting for me to hand over my panties, like every other vampire in the palace’s plaza.

I swallowed. Okay. This was happening. Honestly, it didn’t even make the list of most embarrassing things that had happened to me in the last week. Breathe in. Breathe out. The quicker I got this over with, the quicker we could get inside.

To the library .

But how exactly did one gracefully remove their undergarments in public?

As if he heard the thought—or felt my panic through the bond—Luc offered me his hand. I stared at his bronze palm. That didn’t answer my question.

“For balance,” he added.

Oh. It did answer my question, then.

With a deep breath, I placed my hand in his. Luc steadied me as I bent and reached up my skirt. My gaze fixed on the stone tiles as I eased my panties down and stepped out of them. A little pink-tinged wet spot stained the center. Magic had kept away the pain, but my ailing body still reacted to the desire thudding through me. It always had, yet it still managed to shock me every time.

I bundled the fabric in my fist as I straightened, heat flooding my face. The blush deepened when Jules held out his hand, the rubies on his fingers catching the light. I all but tossed them at him.

The King of Dawn immediately brought them to his nose and inhaled.

My jaw dropped. My stomach flipped. My thighs clenched in vain against the wave of pooling heat.

“Delicious.” Jules tucked my panties in his trouser pocket. “I’ll make sure to return them in one piece.”

I frowned. Why was returning them in more than one piece even an option?

The next second, Jules kicked Cala into motion. He guided her in a wide loop through the plaza before heading toward the gates leading into the city, Estrella and her hellsteed in his wake.

Leaving me alone with the Conqueror.

“Come, bride.” Luc released my hand and lowered it to the small of my back. Without a word to the staff, he led me through the towering doors and into the palace’s high-ceiling halls.

Where Dawnspear was gold and white and bloody paintings, Duskfell was silver and black and bloody paintings. But here, the ceiling murals depicted twinkling stars, not massacres. Instead of rigid symmetry and towering grandeur, the palace had arched corridors, recessed alcoves, and balconies draped in wrought iron. The doorways were rounded instead of square, their frames adorned with intricate filigree, and some hallways led through open-air courtyards. Each time we passed through an entryway into the interior, the temperature dropped, as if magic were warding off the worst of the heat.

What would the library be like? Karra hadn’t visited any library in Duskfell in Volume I, so I had no idea what to expect. I glanced up at Luc—then dropped my gaze just as quickly. He radiated authority and confidence, an ease that I had never experienced once in my life. It was always difficult not to wilt into a stuttering moron before him.

Jules always made it so easy.

The King of Dusk didn’t know the meaning of the word.

The silence only thickened the tension between us. Within us. Luc wouldn’t breach it. His lips stayed in that small, knowing smirk, somehow as chilling as it was heated, a predator watching its prey squirm at the edges of its vision. He wouldn’t have to wait long.

Do it, idiot. He’s literally been inside you. “Why the library? Don’t you have a dozen sitting rooms?”

His brow arched. “Would you prefer a sitting room?”

“No?”

That dark brow inched higher.

“No,” I said, firmly this time.

He squeezed my hip, a small reward. And it was a reward, no matter how much I wished it wasn’t. My skin tingled. My nipples peaked. My breath hitched.

Damn bond.

“That doesn’t answer why.” I didn’t even know what I was getting at. Did I want to know if this was for me? Because I was his soulbound? Because he wanted to fuck me? Both?

The answer couldn’t change anything. In the handful of hours after becoming their Mortal Bride—before they learned I was their soulbond—I had glimpsed the real Conqueror and the Butcher. Even if I hadn’t, their kind, alluring personas had always had sharp edges.

Luc’s deep, rumbling voice pierced my thoughts. “I want to watch your expression when you first see the library.”

Oh.

I didn’t know how to respond to that.

Before I managed some sort of reply, Luc guided us around a corner, through an archway—

And straight into darkness.

The runelights in silver chandeliers flickered to life the second our feet touched the tiled floors. A long hall stretched ahead, bookshelves lining the walls all the way to the barrel-vaulted ceiling. The rolling ladders only climbed so high, so a narrow walkway ran the length of the room a story up, accessible via two spiral staircases at either end. Pedestals bearing artifacts filled the empty space in the center, leading toward the back, where dark azure sofas were arranged around a richly woven carpet.

I stopped so abruptly Luc nearly dragged me forward.

Shit. I needed to sit down.

Would the rest of my life—whether mortal or immortal—just be the kings showing me progressively grander and grander libraries?

I wouldn’t object.

Luc turned fully to face me as I took in the majesty of our surroundings. He drank in my reaction, the same way he’d watched Jules fuck me on my knees, his lips a breath away.

Heat tinged my cheeks, but I kept my gaze moving, roaming, absorbing, memorizing. What did I want to explore first?

My feet already knew.

I drifted toward a large silver-framed globe, nearly as tall as me. Luc followed at my side, just out of my line of sight, but even if I weren’t bound to him, I’d have felt his imposing presence.

I didn’t even know where to start. I spun the globe. It kept turning, stretching farther and farther, mountains turning into plains, into deserts, into lakes and oceans, and then somehow even more land beyond that.

“It’s so… big.” I didn’t have a better word. No word could capture the weight of our entire world laid bare before me.

Luc reached out, steadying the spin with a single finger. It landed directly on a small island off the coast of a larger landmass.

Mabon Farm.

I repressed a flinch at my home being referred to as a farm rather than just a country, but I had known that was how the Impire saw us. I had read it in the books they provided. I swallowed and traced the familiar shape of my homeland to the Impire’s shores.

“We were here, in Montaurère.” Luc lowered his hand slightly, catching mine as it moved. A slow spark of tingling awareness traveled through my skin. He guided our hands over a mountain deep in the heart of the Azarasian Impire—slightly south of Mabon, a handful of miles inland. Then lower, to the tip of a peninsula surrounded by the Thaddeian Ocean. “And now we’re here, in Tenebra de Mar.”

I gently pulled my hand from his and continued tracing the borders of the Azarasian Impire. While cities were marked in the conquered territories under the Impire’s banner, the only other settlements in Azarasian lands were fortresses dotting the coastline and a wall spanning Salathien’s Bridge. The narrow isthmus connected our vast continent to another across Callistan Bay.

“Why are there only two cities marked in the Azarasian homeland?” The words left me before I even thought to hesitate. Knowledge was a safe space, one Luc and I had in common. Likely one of the only things a powerful king had in common with a broken bookworm.

He answered easily. “Because there’s only two cities in the Azarasian homeland.”

I twisted, my eyes widening. “You only have two cities?”

“We don’t need more than two cities,” he said, gaze steady on me instead of the globe. “There are fewer than three hundred thousand Azarasians. We usually welcome no more than a hundred children a year, so our population doesn’t grow quickly.”

I swallowed. Of course, it had only taken moments for our conversation to veer into the topic of children.

Flashes of my fever dream returned. Luc standing over me, Jules at my side. There are other ways to get vampire blood in a human. Jules had explained the reaction their blood caused, but neither of them had addressed the problem it created.

If I couldn’t consume vampire blood, I’d age and die, dragging the Imperium with me.

If the healers didn’t find a solution…

How long would it be before I contributed to that hundred?

Cheeks heating, I circled the globe, quickly leaving it and our topic of conversation behind.

The next pedestal held a clock encased in gilded brass, its delicate gears visible behind a panel of polished glass. A faint ticking filled the space around it, steady and precise. The one after bore a compact printing press, its iron frame smaller and sleeker than the massive machines I’d seen sketched in books. Rows of movable metal type were meticulously arranged on a tray.

The fourth object was slightly more familiar. A large rectangular instrument made of dark, hand-carved mahogany stood on four sturdy legs. It was the same type a vampire had played during Rosier’s bond rite. This instrument wasn’t as ornate, but something about its simplicity made it even more striking.

I drifted my fingers along those ivory rectangles and pressed down—

A musical note rang through the space, sharp and unexpected. I had anticipated the sound, but I still flinched, startled by the way it cut through the hush of the library. It didn’t sound anywhere near as pleasant as when the musician had played the instrument.

“It’s called a fortepiano,” Luc said. His voice was as smooth as the polished keys beneath my fingertips. “The first was designed around fifty or so years ago. I watched the inventor make the one in Dawnspear and then put this one together myself.”

I turned to him. “You built this?”

“I built the clock and printing press, too.”

That took me a second to process. I glanced back at the instrument, the gleaming wood and delicate keys. It wasn’t just a relic Luc had acquired. It was something he had crafted with his own hands.

“Can you play?”

Luc sat on the long bench, his movements as fluid as they were deliberate. He lifted his hands to the keys. A slow, mournful melody rose from the fortepiano’s hollowed body, notes drifting through the library like whispers.

It was soft. Gentle. A story of something lost. Something long buried. Something that had no place in the presence of the Conqueror. He wasn’t wearing his axe, but he didn’t need it to be hard and unyielding.

When the melody finished, Luc’s fingers hovered over the keys for a moment and then lowered to his lap. A flicker passed through the bond, a familiar ache. Grief, old and scabbed over.

I swallowed, my chest tight. “That was beautiful. Does it have a name?”

He didn’t look at me when he answered. “It’s a lullaby Jules’s mother used to sing to us. Anyone who knew its name died centuries ago.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say to that. The silence hung between us, thick and weighted.

Before I breached it, Luc pushed from the bench and turned toward the shelves. “I have something to show you.”

He led me to the towering bookcases, his steps silent on the marble tiles. My gaze trailed over the spines—histories, records, books bound in rich leather and embossed in silver script. Then Luc stopped before a particular shelf and gestured toward it.

My pulse kicked up before I even knew why. Then I saw it.

The Soulborne Queen: Volume I by Katalina Estevez.

And beside it—

My breath caught.

Volume II .

My hands moved before I could think, plucking it from the shelf and flipping it open in the same motion. The pages were smooth beneath my fingertips, the ink still crisp as if it were brand new. I scanned the first few lines, my pulse pounding in my ears.

This was it. The words I had longed for, hunted for, despaired I would ever read.

I barely noticed Luc watching me from a step away. Not until I felt the weight of his gaze, intense, assessing, amused.

I looked up, cheeks flushing. “Oh. Sorry. I—”

“Never apologize for the things you love.”

I swallowed. “Right. Of course. Sorry.”

Luc arched a brow.

I clamped my mouth shut. If I didn’t, I’d just end up apologizing for apologizing about apologizing.

His expression softened slightly. Then, without a word, he took the book from my hands. “Come.”

Luc led me toward the seating area near the back of the library, to the dark azure sofas. To the left, a corridor led to an open-air courtyard bathed in soft, golden light. The breeze carried in a faint trace of salt through the archway.

He gestured to the sofa. “Sit.”

I sat.

Luc handed me the book, his silver gaze steady. “Read.”

I hesitated, clutching the book tight. “Are you sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I be sure?” Luc tilted his head slightly, his gaze molten. “Did you have something else planned while we waited for Jules?”

Heat bloomed in my chest. “I—uh—no?”

Luc’s smirk deepened, knowing. He had caught the lie.

He’d always catch the lie.

“Enjoy your book, little curiosity.”