Page 7

I traced my fingertips along the veins of my arm as the wagon lurched beneath me. Three days had passed since we landed on the mainland, and I’d run out of things to stare at as we traveled through dense woodland. The trees here looked the same as they had yesterday, the day before, and even back home. I had read about the famed architecture of the demons and their offspring, but I had yet to see anything beyond a fortress near where the galleons docked.

I had prepared for terror and pain but not for boredom.

The weight of The Soulborne Queen bumped against my back, stored in a small leather satchel that looked army issue. I didn’t dare pull my book out, though. The rest of the Maboni in my cart already shot me enough unfriendly looks.

I didn’t try to dissuade them of whatever betrayal they thought I had committed. Let them think what they wanted. Their distance meant extra space, a small mercy when my hips and legs ached from sitting for so long. Their disdain didn’t matter.

Nothing they thought about me did. All our fates were in the Azarasians’ hands now. Mine more than most.

My life for a book. Well, that, and as many soothing runes as I wanted. Neither was difficult for the vampires to give me. The trade seemed almost silly, but it wasn’t really a trade at all. My blood, my body, my life—they were theirs either way. I might as well claim what I could to make myself happy through the terrible things to come.

They still hadn’t told me why they needed a willing volunteer, but it couldn’t be worse than the alternative.

The sound of hooves on stone echoed behind me. Two vampires rode past on giant hellsteeds. Back in Mabon, only Luc and Jules had ridden them, but here, every vampire had one.

The red-cloaked warrior pulled a bundle from one of the straps dangling from her hellsteed’s saddle and tossed it into the center of our wagon.

For a second, no one moved, though we had more than grown used to our overlords’ routine.

Vampires didn’t need rest or sustenance as often as we did. Neither did their hellsteeds. We hadn’t stopped for over twenty minutes at a time since reaching the mainland. The vampires tossed bundles of food and water onto the wagons twice a day and stopped a couple of hours later to shuffle us off to relieve ourselves.

Despite the hunger gnawing at my stomach, I didn’t grab for the food. No one did, except for the woman closest to the bundle. She pulled a hardtack biscuit, dried sausage, and small block of cheese from the bag, then passed it to the person beside her.

No one spoke. No one fought. A vampire had ordered them not to during the first meal. We were to distribute the food calmly, and there was no way to disobey, not with the thrall runespell carved into everyone’s necks.

The runespell remained flat like black ink most of the time. Fergus sat beside me today, the markings flaring a couple of times, making him grit his teeth or clench his fist. Submit. Obey. Loyalty. Track. Boundary. Seal. Maybe he wanted to leap from the wagon and make a run into the forest. They’d ordered all of us to stay with the convoy before we left the coast.

I glanced up into the forest, staring between tree trunks into the creeping darkness. The sun was setting. I pulled the navy blue cloak tighter around my shoulders. Now would be a terrible time to escape, even if I wanted to jump from a moving wagon. I was the only human who could do it.

But just because I could didn’t mean I would. I wouldn’t escape the vampires, and even if I did by some miracle, I’d probably be eaten by the wolves we heard baying at the moons last night. I thought I’d spotted one in the dark, a massive black creature nearly as tall as me with eyes of pure shadow.

I had stared at the woods outside Corraidin for years but had never ventured into the forest. Vampires and witches weren’t the only demonblooded creatures that walked this world—hellbeasts wandered the wilds. A couple of years before I was born, a hellbear had ventured into town and killed nearly fifty people before the magistrates dispatched it.

Escape wasn’t worth the hassle, just to trade what killed me.

The bundle of food reached me... and was empty. Each wagon held a different number of Maboni, and the vampires weren’t about to count every time. At yesterday’s dinner, we had two extra meals to go around. I glanced at the three people to my right. An older, sleeping man, a woman my age, and a teenage boy. Better two extra than four too few.

I sighed. “Great.”

“Better you than me,” Fergus muttered, biting into his biscuit. “Ask your vampire lords for more.”

Fergus and I hadn’t spoken since school a decade ago, but everyone at risk of failing the birth quota remembered each other. He had married and tried. I hadn’t. I heard the judgment in his tone.

“They aren’t my vampire lords.”

He eyed me, his lip slightly curled but his gaze considering. “Is that why you didn’t marry? Did you want to fuck a vampire that badly?”

I flinched. “I didn’t—” I swallowed my words. Arguing would only make me sound guiltier. Either way, I lost.

“Then what did you give them to stay out of the ship’s hold? You have nothing else a vampire wants.”

I remained silent. If I didn’t respond, he’d stop. Eventually.

“Here.” Fergus held out his half-eaten biscuit. “I’ll trade you for it.”

I blinked at him. “What?”

“Give me whatever you gave the Azarasians, and you can have my remaining food. Your mouth and cunt must be divine to persuade two vampires.”

An older woman across the cart spoke. “The vampires said—”

“They said we couldn’t fight,” he sneered. The woman stiffened. It was rude to speak to an elder like that. “They didn’t say we couldn’t fuck. The blood whores haven’t stopped since we left the ship.”

I shuddered. The dozen humans chosen onboard had been placed in a wagon together. At the rest stops, some vampires ordered a thrall from their cart and fed from them right there in the open. The moaning made peeing rather difficult, but I’d managed.

Vampire venom didn’t just create desire in the short term. There was a burst of lust during the biting, sure, but it also increased libido over time. Those thralls had experienced multiple bites now. Their wagon had turned into a full-on orgy yesterday afternoon.

We were a couple of wagons in front of them, but if I focused, I could hear someone panting.

I tried my best not to focus on it. Una was on that wagon. We hadn’t been friends in years—maybe not ever, given how easily she abandoned me—but watching her become an eager, glassy-eyed thrall felt wrong.

The older woman lifted her chin. “The godstars will punish you all for your wickedness.”

I flinched. What did I do? She sneered at me as much as she did at Fergus and the bitten thralls. Like the suggestion I fucked a vampire was as unholy as him asking me to suck his cock for a biscuit.

“The godstars abandoned us ten thousand years ago when They littered this world with demons.” Fergus twisted back to me. “What’s it going to be, Nessa? Consider it practice for your new masters.”

I bristled. “Fuck off, Fergus.”

His eyes darkened. “You don’t get to speak to me that way.”

“Why not?” I leaned forward, closing the space between us. I was tired. I was hungry. The soothing rune Jules had drawn this morning was fading.

Fuck this day.

Fuck this week.

“We’re the same,” I hissed. “I’m not the only one who’ll be a vampire’s whore soon.”

“You bitch.”

Fergus lunged at me. Eyes widening, I jerked back, but I wasn’t fast enough. I spent the last decade reading books. Fighting wasn’t exactly my forte. But Fergus had clearly worked on his feet, his body strong and built.

He wrapped his hands around my throat.

I clawed at his grip. My lungs demanded air. My vision wavered. In my periphery, the last bit of sunlight disappeared through the canopy of branches.

“Fuck...” I choked out the words. “...you.”

He squeezed. “Vampire whore.”

My nails sunk into Fergus’s flesh, drawing blood. His grip didn’t loosen. Darkness crept in. Not just from the sky, but from my vision. I wanted to laugh. I’d feared dying at a vampire’s hands, but I’d never even make it to my new home.

A stupid fucking human would kill me.

As I faded, something twinkled in the shadowed edges of my vision.

Long fingers, decorated in jeweled gold rings, curled around Fergus’s shoulder.

In a blink, the human was gone. I collapsed off the bench onto the wagon’s floor and gasped in air.

Above, through the branches, stars twinkled down at me from the dark sky. I huffed and huffed, my heartbeat slowing. Tears burned down my cheeks.

I had almost died .

Fergus had almost killed me.

If the vampires didn’t need me alive, I’d be dead .

I pushed onto my elbow, every breath painful. The other Maboni cowered, heads lowered. No one had said a word in my defense. With a glare, I hauled myself back onto the bench.

Jules leaned a hip against the side of the wagon, casually flipping his curved dagger. Fergus had landed in a bush off the road, uninjured. So far, at least. He rose to his feet with his fists clenched, but he didn’t face Jules alone. Luc and four other vampires, including Tristan and the dark-haired woman I assumed was his soulbound, watched stoically from the back of their hellsteeds.

Fergus paled but didn’t move.

Jules smirked at him before his gaze flashed over to me. His attention quickly dropped to my neck. With every breath, fire flared through my throat. The bruise must have been stark against my pink skin. Jules’s luminous eyes hardened into a flat gold, the shadow of his pupils expanding.

His smile didn’t fade.

If anything, it sharpened.

I couldn’t stop my shudder. I didn’t know which was worse—Luc’s callous stare or his soulbound’s vicious glee.

Jules stopped twisting his blade and pointed the black tip toward Fergus. “You tried to kill our volunteer.”

His mouth twisted into a nasty scowl. “Fuck you.”

Jules’s grin widened. “You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?”

“And you’re a pompous asshole,” Fergus spat.

“Big words, my friend. Don’t waste all your brain cells on insults, you’ll need them in a minute.”

“Not that it will make a difference,” Luc said, his voice as cold as death.

Fergus shied back. “Just kill me already, you fucker.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Jules flipped his dagger around, pommel toward the man. “Here.”

“What?”

“Take it.”

“You’re giving me a weapon?”

“A daemium-hilted blade. You could cut through bone with this.” Jules glanced over at the mounted vampires watching from the sidelines. “Get our challenger some light. I don’t want him to stab a wagon.”

Behind Luc, two of the silver-eyed warriors lifted clawed hands, tracing a rune in the air. Light . Shadows coiled before flaring into a burning ball. Runelights. The vampires thrust them upward, where they hovered over the grass beside the road.

Fergus’s narrowed gaze flickered between the Dusk vampires, the lights, and the smiling Lord of Dawn. “Is this a trick?”

“No trick,” Jules said, his tone almost too friendly. “Take the blade. You get the first strike.”

Fergus stared at the hellynx-carved hilt. He had no other option and he knew it. He took three hesitant steps toward Jules and snatched the blade away like the Lord of Dawn set a trap.

I tensed, waiting for the strike, too. But Jules just pushed off the wagon, straightened and raised his arms at his side, hands empty. “I’ll even stand still, make it easier.”

It was still a trap, but Fergus charged. Fergus wasn’t short, standing around my height, but the Lord of Dawn had seven inches and fifty pounds of lean, sculpted muscle on the man. More importantly, he was a vampire.

This wasn’t a fight.

It was a beast prowling around its cornered prey, stretching out the moment before the kill.

Fergus drove the blade deep, straight into Jules’s shoulder. It cut through leather, flesh, and muscle. Jules didn’t flinch. Neither did his soulbound. Pain was one of the first sensations Karra had felt through her bond. The Lord of Dusk must have felt the wound as clearly as the Lord of Dawn, but neither of them showed it.

The blade punched clean through, its tip bursting from Jules’s back. I clamped a hand over my mouth as bright red blood bloomed along the metal. In a blink, the daemium drank it down.

It looked so... human. So normal. Not at all what I expected vampire blood to look like.

Fergus stumbled back, but he didn’t pull the blade free with him. He gaped at Jules. Daemium was one of the few materials that could injure a vampire. If placed right, it could even kill a weaker one. But Jules wasn’t a weak vampire. I didn’t know how strong he was, but he and Luc were clearly the leaders of our convoy. Demonblood hierarchy was always strength-based.

Still. It was daemium .

“Doesn’t that hurt?” I whispered.

“I’ve had worse.” Jules pulled the blade out. Blood gushed from the open wound. It didn’t close up instantly. Jules might have been powerful, but no daemium wound healed without magic.

From his hellsteed, Luc drew a quick rune with his shadowed claws, his attention entirely on his soulbound. Heal . The injury closed near instantly. Mend . With the second rune, Jules’s leathers and cloak stitched back together, too.

Fascinating.

Jules rolled his shoulder, then blew a kiss toward his soulbound. “Thanks, Lucey.”

Luc shook his head gently. “Stop letting people stab you with your own daemium blade. One day, someone will hit something vital, and then I’ll owe you for stealing your kill.”

“You’ve been saying that for five hundred years. Most barely stab me.” Jules twisted toward Fergus. “You really committed, though. It wasn’t even that terrible attempt. But if you wanted to do damage, you should’ve aimed for my heart.” Jules tapped his chest with the tip of the dagger as he stepped forward. “Still wouldn’t have killed me, but it might have made me twitch.”

Terror rose in Fergus’s gaze. “Godstars, forgive my sins—”

Fergus’s prayer cut off as Jules suddenly stood before him, a hand wrapped around his throat. “The godstars didn’t forgive their own brethren their sins. Why would they absolve you?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. The Lord of Dawn struck, a smooth, efficient move that worked perfectly with the curve of the blade.

His weapon wasn’t meant for stabbing. It was a blade for cutting and slashing.

It was designed to bleed an enemy dry, cut by cut.

Jules didn’t have patience for that. He sliced Fergus from navel to neck.

Blood burst from the man’s gut and splattered to the dirt, followed quickly by a slick mass of pink that might have been intestines.

He screamed.

I screamed.

The Maboni awake in the wagon screamed, which woke the sleeping man, who then also screamed.

Beside me, someone vomited.

Inspired, my stomach joined the revolt. My throat burned with my heaves.

With a laugh, Jules wrenched the man’s head back and buried his fangs in his throat. Fergus’s shriek somehow pitched higher, despite his internal organs already slipping to the ground.

A vampire’s dry bite was agonizing, but I hadn’t known it was worse than dying with your guts in the dirt.

How was he not dead yet?

Then the Lord of Dawn pulled back harshly, taking Fergus’s windpipe with him.