Page 129 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

“Not mortally,” replied Myrddin. “Not yet. We’ve got to get him inside. To the castle, away from the public.”

A primal fear struck her.

“Don’t even think about it.” Yanna whipped her head toward Lilac so fast, the last of her hair flew out of its braid.

Her hand tightened around Lilac’s wrist, nails digging into her in panic.

“Are you delusional? With him looking and—and speaking like that ? After everything he just said? The tongue of the devil, mouth of a hell hound on him.” Yanna shuddered.

“Last night at the feast, I’d understand.

Right now, he looks like a demon who crawled out of hell after devouring everyone there. You’re not going anywhere near him.”

Yanna wasn’t wrong.

Garin’s hair was a nest of branch and leaf, the leftover ribbons of his shirt singed all the way off after Myrddin had shocked him.

His already-large ears, she hadn’t noticed before, tapered into little points, the tips sticking out from his jet black waves.

His muscles coiled under the layers of dried blood leaking from the glistening, gaping hole in his arm as he tensed, grinding his sharpened teeth against the pain.

The tip of his nose to his chin was stained in the burgundy he’d gulped down from Yanna and Myrddin—fangs covered in the tar-like bile he continued to vomit .

If he never looked more a vampire at the brothel, then he was monstrous tonight.

She’d never seen anyone so beautiful.

Indeed, deluded Lilac would remain if it was her flesh that sated him, her voice that soothed him. Her blood that drew him like a beast desperate to lap at her beckoning tide.

“Your sister is right. He needs your blood, but he musn’t access it freely. He is momentarily too volatile for that.”

The wind picked up, ruffling their hair. Lilac reached up to pick a bramble from her mess of frazzled blonde hair. The eve was mild, but Lilac had spent the most of it trembling. She didn’t now, with her hand in Yanna’s. She thought of Isobel, and Piper.

She and Isobel were older— six years older than Lilac. Her mother had been young, maybe only two or three years Lilac’s senior when she’d birthed her.

“Did you know?” Lilac’s voice cracked, unable to mask the heaviness of the night.

Yanna’s laugh was scornful. “You think we’ve come to you on purpose. You think we’ve come to beg for status. For safety.”

“You would not have to beg. You have been immediately elevated to my court.” She almost broke a smile at the look of disbelief on Yanna’s ruddy face. “When I’d mentioned it before, it was an offer.” Lilac nodded at Gwendal, who was still unmoving. “Now it is an order.”

“I don’t believe it,” was all Yanna said in response, her expression growing dubious and cold once more. “We are not Marguerite’s daughters. Our mother is a stranger unto us. The same with our father. It’s always been me and Izzy. Just us, and only us. That’s the way it was meant to be.”

“Whether it is true or not, my request remains. You, Isobel, and Piper. My friends, Lorietta, and Adelaide, at The Fenfoss Inn. Even him.” She looked to Myrddin. “We were meant to find each other.”

Myrddin was silent. He hadn’t shown an once of surprise upon Garin’s revelation; if he felt any at all, it did not show.

“Did you?” Lilac asked him, knowing he’d immediately understand her question. He was a fortuneteller, bound by the truth.

“I have an eye for many an occurrence, both large and small. Sun and moon, reconciliation and reckoning. But I cannot see into the past. What I do know, is that you are correct in that regard, Your Majesty. You and Mademoiselle—” He glanced questioningly at Yanna.

“Galvan.”

“You and Miss Galvan were destined to find each other, as is true with many special friendships. Piper is lovely, but it will be helpful to surround yourselves with those not unaffected by Garin’s arcana.

” Myrddin picked a patch of dried blood out of his beard.

“Regarding your thrall bond, you might find your penchant for unfettered obstinance an unexpected boon.”

“He seems to be worsening,” Lilac whispered, as if Garin wouldn’t be able to hear her. She wasn’t sure the vampire bothered paying attention, with all the retching he was doing. “Nothing’s a match for Garin’s will.”

“Not with his deepening hunger, as you’ve seen, no,” agreed Myrddin grimly.

“But with the way your body reacts to magic, either absorbing or deflecting it entirely as we’ve seen with the Guài disillusionment charm, I’d be intrigued to see what happens when your gall meets any other form of arcane resistance against him.

” His brow arched, almost as if the thought amused him.

“Tonight you’ll find Garin’s powers, usually dormant outside of your thrall bond or any active entrancement, more violent in their effects. ”

“Is that why he looks like that?” Yanna asked.

“Yes. He’s taken the form of one of the ancients. A Strigoi.”

“ Strigoi ,” Lilac repeated, letting it roll off her tongue. Myrddin hadn’t seemed shocked by this, either. “Did you know this would happen when you sent me to enthrall myself to him?”

“I did not anticipate it, no.” Myrddin pursed his lips, studying Garin—the animalistic way he was sprawled, arms out, expelling the last of the tar-like blood from his stomach.

“It is a possibility, when regnants are kept from their thralls. Forced to abstain from their bodies and blood for an extended amount of time, they turn into walking ghouls. More like the undead. Stronger. Hungrier. More swollen.”

“Garin’s not swollen,” Lilac managed, horrified.

“I did not say where .”

“But I haven’t fed him or—or done any of that since the night at The Fool's Folly.” She was incredibly red, her chest flushing. “But that was mere days ago. ”

“What do you mean? You sucked his cock this morning in your closet,” added Yanna, throwing an arm up. “Does that not count for anything?”

Myrddin shot Yanna a stern look. “It usually takes much, much longer for a vampire to turn into a Strigoi. There’s no set rule, though it’s usually weeks.

Months, even. And by then, the vampire has descended into such a frightening state—into something so depraved and unjust in its ways—that whomever is keeping the thrall from it will often return it to them.

And the thrall will make no easy captive, either.

” Myrddin’s eyes darkened. “Most of the time, if they’re not closely monitored, it is the mortal thrall who won’t survive the separation.

It’s almost never the thrall holding itself from their regnant,” he added, regarding Lilac knowingly. “That, I know, is unheard of.”

“In that way,” Lilac said slowly, processing it all, “it sounds like Strigoi are often created.”

“You’d be correct in your astute assumption.

Strigoi are rare extremely rare. I don’t know if there’s ever been a recorded sighting in all of Brittany.

Or even your neighboring France.” He stifled a incredulous laugh.

“They’re commonly seen in the countries where the vampire governs feely, alongside or maybe even over the human populace.

There are such communities across every continent, as I’ve witnessed in my travels.

In the eastern, mostly Romanian sect, the Strigoi serve among Sanguine elites as guards or court to the Doyen.

There, they reside in remote castles or manors overlooking their villages.

They’re created, then kept in a perpetual state of hunger during times of war or anticipated battle, their thralls held from them in iron and blessed hawthorn cages until they’ve carried out their purpose or task. ”

“Then what happens?” Yanna asked, picking her nail beds raw.

“Then, the Strigoi is rewarded with their thrall. I would not call this specific reconciliation a reward for the thrall, though,” said Myrddin, grimacing.

“It is often a very violent reunion. When the vampire in question is needed for duty once more, their thrall is stripped from them again. Then, the process begins all over.”

Lilac’s stomach was in knots. She thought about the passage in the vampire manuscript she and Piper had read. “Is the Doyen a clan leader?”

“Yes. Garin is the Doyen of the Brocéliande vampire coven after Laurent, although I’m not sure Laurent ever applied the same terminologies.

Garin certainly does not. He was very informal in his ways, more focused on the family he created.

Great leader, he was, for someone so young and inexperience.

Garin’s transformation into a strigoi was likely accelerated by his intense hunger for you, made worse by drinking Yanna’s blood.

That’s not even counting whatever ails him that prevents those injuries from healing. ”

Lilac eyed Garin’s gaping arm and thigh, the pant leg soaked through in water and blood. Not even the magic of his strigoi transformation had healed him. “Is this permanent?” she asked under her breath.

Myrddin did not answer right away. He pursed his lips, then blew a breath out.

“Some say Sanguine magic is a branch of underdeveloped arcana on its own. Some say it is an adjunct form of Necromancy. I think it can stand to be studied more, which is what I’d been pushing for at the Ambleside Sanctum when I decided to flee with the amulet I’d given Bastion.

Either way, much like Necromancy, it is a volatile, poorly understood type of magic.

No,” he finally replied. “He should revert to his humanoid form after he’s had you. ”

“ Had her? Are you joking?” blurted Yanna. “He’ll kill her.”

Myrddin’s shrug was slow and apologetic. “She’ll have to sate him one way or another, Mademoiselle Galvan. It can be done carefully. They’ve done it before. The queen is stronger than she knows.”

Lilac’s ears began to ring. Yanna and Myrddin’s arguing should’ve sobered her, cleared her mind enough to push against the raging urge to serve him.