Page 11 of Brimstone

SAERIS

“SHE ISN’T ONEof us. How can she be our queen when I can hear her heart beating from here?”

The throne was cold as ice. No cushion padded its seat, and the frigid temperature of the hard stone leached into my back and ass. I squirmed uncomfortably as the beautiful vampire with the golden braids called out across the hall for all to hear.

“Ours might be the youngest court in this realm, but Sanasroth has always prided itself on its traditions. For a thousand years, we were ruled over by thefirstvampire. A brilliant male, who carved out a home and a future for his children and earned us all the right to belong. He wasn’t just a king. He was a walking god among the living and the dead of this realm, and this . . . thisgirl,” she spat, “was human mere days ago. So weak that one of our own had to save her life.” She sent a look full of naked malice in Taladaius’s direction. “How do we replace the creator of our entire species withthis?”

She was an excellent actress. Her words overflowed with emotion as she paced around the star, weaving in and out of the other Lords of Midnight. Most would have been fooled by thehitch in her voice when she spoke of losing Malcolm, but I heard the lie.

Her heart was not broken, because she had no heart. I felt her malign energy radiating from her as sure as I used to feel the heat radiating from the suns back in the Third: Whatever soul she might once have possessed had fled the shell of her body long ago. A dark, cruel thing crouched inside of her now, peering out of her wide, pretty eyes, using her voice to speak.

“Do other courts invite the chicken or the calf to sit atop their thrones in fancy dress to preside overthem?” she bellowed.

A wave of cries went up around the hall in a rising tide of anger. Some of the vampires seated on the benches leaped to their feet, shouting out above the rest.

“No!”

“They would never!”

“Perversion!”

“Anathema!”

“Then why dowecrown a lowly creature that would have been food to us only days ago and give it the power to rule over us? Why do weembarrassourselves like—”

That’s Zovena, Kingfisher said. The sound of his deep voice in my mind startled me; I barely kept the surprise from my face.Though I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now. Tal gave you all their names.

Yes, I answered.She’s Keeper of Missives.

I felt Fisher’s approval in the back of my mind.Yes. See the ring on her hand? The thick band of gold with the purple stone? That marks her as a Lord. All five of them have rings. They’re a source of power, gifted to them by Malcolm. Each supposedly contains the same amount of magic, though it’s rumored that Tal’s is the most powerful. Zovena was Lìssian once, like Tal. He loved her. For her part, I think she loved him, too. But that was a long,longtime ago.

I watched the way Zovena glared at my maker now and found no love or warmth of affection for him in her eyes. “You should have left her there to die, Taladaius,” the female seethed. “You could have slit the Bane’s throat while you were at it, too. But no. We all know how much you care about your precious Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate, don’t we? So now you bring them both before us, hand in hand, mates, attempting to install not only a half-blood child as queen but a full-blooded Fae male as king consort along with her! And not just any Fae male. One who has plagued and murdered our people for centuries! Have you forgotten that we are atwarwith him?”

I waited for Kingfisher to say something, but no response came. Glancing over to where he stood on my right, I found that he was yawning.

I spoke into his mind again.Laying it on a little thick, don’t you think?

His left eye twitched.No, not really. Zovena and I aren’t the best of friends. I’ve heard it all before.

The slender male with the hooked nose stepped forward from his point on the star, deep furrows forming in his brow. He looked to be in his thirties, but gods only knew his real age. “That’s enough, Zovena. Throwing a temper tantrum won’t change anything. Taladaius saved the girl. Now she is of our blood. She killed Malcolm. Therefore, she must ascend. It is our way. We all know it. Hysterics solve nothing.”

“This isn’t hysterics,” Zovena bit out. “This is outrage! On behalf of my brothers and sisters!” She gestured to other members of the Sanasrothian court, seated in their benches, stretching back into darkness. They bayed in response, buying into her rhetoric. “They deserve better. A strong hand. A queen who—”

“Oh, so you still envision aqueenon the throne, then? A female like yourself, perhaps?” the hook-nosed male asked.

While they bickered back and forth, I spoke again to Fisher.That’s Ereth, I suppose? Keeper of the Evenlight?

Fisher answered right away.Yes. He and his followers are religious zealots. They worship one of the demon gods. If he gets his way, every single living being in Yvelia will be drained of their magic and turned into slaves. Every continent will be turned into a wasteland paradise for vampires, where they can hunt and kill anything left alive for sport.

Sounds delightful, I said.

The other one is the Hazrax. The last of its kind. It is twice as old as anything else that draws breath in Yvelia.

Taladaius had been oddly vague when he’d spoken of the Hazrax. It was not Fae, but it wasn’t vampire, either. It had come to Malcolm centuries ago, back when the vampire king was still in the throes of forging his empire, and had offered its services to the king. When Malcolm had asked if it wanted eternity in exchange, the Hazrax had sworn to destroy him if he tried to bite it, and Malcolm had believed every word. When the king had asked it what itdidwant in exchange for its fealty to Sanasroth, the Hazrax had said that it “wanted to watch.” From that point onward, the Hazrax had become Keeper of Silence.

Just yesterday, I had asked Taladaius why the vampire king had allowed the creature to remain in his court if he truly did think it capable of destroying him. Taladaius had just shrugged. “The Hazrax’s magic is shrouded in mystery. No one here knows what it’s capable of . . . but whatever magic or power it showed to Malcolm scared him enough to allow it to stay.”

We knew the Hazrax entered Ammontraíeth many years ago, Kingfisher said into my mind.We haven’t heard tell of it leaving since. It’s rumored that it doesn’t even leave this hall. It doesn’t eat or sleep. It just watches.