Page 45

Unlike with Garroway, we did not skirt the fringes of the city to make our way around Olhav. I suspected a half-vampire like Garro was not allowed complete freedom to waltz through the city proper.

With Lord Ashfen, we staked through the heart of the ancient metropolis. My eyes kept jumping at the astounding buildings and residents I saw.

Once we exited the comparably mundane district where the safehouse was located, everywhere I looked were enormous buildings built vertically.

Stained glass glinted from reflections of eerie firelights raised high on poles.

The skyrises stretched five, ten, even twenty stories, nearly punching into the clouds.

Combined with the colorful windows and lights, a cornucopia of emerald, sapphire, and ruby hues danced above us in the sky. I quickly lost my sense of direction from the overwhelming, suffocating closeness of the tall buildings.

The streets were smooth stone rather than rough cobbles I was used to. They looked to be hewn from alabaster marble in some places and sleek obsidian in others. It created a checkered walkway that dizzied me.

Skartovius glided across the streets like he owned them. He walked gracefully, his cloak behind him remaining still from his measured gait, while I stumbled along like an ape, entranced by the sights. My eyes bulged at every cross-street when a new, larger structure popped up out of nowhere.

The people we ran across were no less decadent than the mountain city they called home. Pale-skinned, one and all. Dressed in fineries of lace, silk gowns for the women, with ostentatious hair stylings. The men wore pressed tunics and form-hugging suits.

Unlike the packed, stifling streets of Nuhav, we could go entire blocks without seeing anyone. It was an eerie contrast, likening this place to a ghost town.

When we did cross an errant vampire or a small group of them, invariably I would see a bloodsucker glance over and sniff the air. At first I thought everyone here just had the sniffles from the stiff mountain breeze.

“It’s your scent,” Skartovius explained when I made a confused face after the third time it happened.

“My scent? Do I smell bad?” I resisted the urge to lift my arms and check.

“I daresay you smell enchanting, little temptress. In fact, I know you do. It is your human blood they smell, not your body.”

My neck went hollow. Every bastard here is hungry to feast on me.

He noticed my reticence and gave me a dark smile. Lowering his voice, he said, “Your unique blood, I suspect, is doubly mesmerizing to the commons.”

Skartovius’ hand fell on the small of my back, his touch effortless and light. It did nothing to stop the stiffness of my gait. He stayed alarmingly close, never stepping more than two feet away from me, matching my stride note for note.

“I’m not going to run,” I said out the corner of my mouth as we crossed another threshold into a different section of town. “I’ve had ample opportunity to do it during the day, when your people are sleeping and vulnerable.”

“It’s not for my benefit I touch you so,” he answered. I watched his eyes as another strolling couple ventured down the road opposite us. “It’s for yours.”

I understood his meaning when the male in the party glanced over, snorted the air, and quickly looked away after realizing who was marching beside me.

If Garroway was my protector and Vallan my antagonizer, then it was clear Skartovius was my owner. My handler.

“You’re a possessive man, aren’t you, Lord Ashfen?”

He glanced over, the half-smirk dancing in his eyes. “Incomparably, love.”

With that in mind, and his spindly fingers ghosting over my back, I inhaled sharply to keep my pulse down.

It didn’t work, and Skartovius let me know. “Your heartbeat is rising, Sephania. Are you nervous? Frightened? Enticed?”

“Yes.” I swallowed hard. “Do you think it wise to march me through town like a trophy for everyone to see, given . . .” I leaned closer to him, “. . . what’s in my veins?”

I worried saying the word “Loreblood” out loud would prompt the shadowy vampire assassins from Nuhav to jump at me out of nowhere.

“You are safe with me,” he replied, his voice deepening. “I promise you that. The commonbloods would not dare strike a nobleblood or his charge. Not in broad nightlight.”

“You speak of your kinsmen as if they’re humans from Nuhav.”

He scoffed, ignoring my quip. “Besides, if you are going to acclimate to Olhav and join our high society, you must not be kept inside a box, hidden away like some buried treasure. You must be seen , eventually.”

I worried my bottom lip. “I’m feeling plenty seen, Skar. Too seen, you ask me.”

This new district had shorter buildings and more bloodsuckers roaming the roads.

Inadvertently, it meant less attention was paid to me as the vampires went about their evening, stalking from door to door and conversing in loud taverns.

They were dressed in meaner garb, with some wearing jerkins and cuirasses of armor, making them look fierce.

In one of the windows of a loud establishment, I caught sight of pale, bare breasts bouncing, and I blushed and turned away, realizing I had accidentally looked into a brothel in action.

The lights here were a commanding yellow, the topaz brightness nearly matching the sun’s power at certain avenues where light-poles converged at four corners.

“I’m feeling a thematic shift in this area. Less regal, more seedy. Reminds me of Nuhav a bit.”

“That is because we have passed from the Commerce Ward to the Military Ward. Unlike your ramshackle home where everything and everyone is boiled together, Olhav is split into five distinct regions.”

I looked over at him—and up, since he was so tall. I felt like I was finally getting somewhere with this newfound information.

He noticed my eagerness and, infuriatingly, cut himself off.

I frowned with an annoyed pout. “If you expect me to acclimate to Olhav, you’d best tell me how it operates, Lord Ashfen.”

He smiled humorlessly.

I bobbed my eyebrows. “Scared I might bring this intel down to Nuhav?”

The fake smile remained as he rolled his eyes.

“Commerce, Military, Intelligence, Faith, Judgment. Those are the five districts, or Five Ministries, of Greater Olhav. Each of the Five Ministries has its own overlord or overlady, and together their council dictates our government. The aptly and uncreatively named Five Ministries is a pentagonal-headed hydra with each head hailing from a royal, ancient vampiric bloodline.”

“And each region is color-coded to identify the ministry based on, what, the overlord’s or overlady’s preferred hue?”

He snorted. “You are rudimentary, little temptress, but not entirely wrong. Are you attempting to point out how ludicrous this all is? How pompous?”

I shrugged. We had walked for nearly an hour now, and I was no less entranced by everything around us. “Your words, not mine.”

“There was once a sixth district,” he said. “It was eventually decided to be dissolved and absorbed. Care to guess what it might have been?”

I thought for a moment. Commerce for moving the economy in and around the Olhavian Peaks.

Military for protection, of course, and conquest. Intelligence for spying and building networks, I assume.

Faith, being . . . religion. Do the vampires pray to something like Truehearts, as we do in Nuhav?

And Judgment, either an extension of Faith or the arm of the law.

I mulled it over, rolling my tongue against my cheek. “Seems to me, at first blush, you have everything covered to turn Olhav into a well-oiled machine.”

“No, love, we do not. Don’t be hasty. Think on it longer. What do those five things all rely on to operate smoothly?”

When he put it that way, the thought came to me almost immediately. “A willing citizenry.” I rolled my wrist as we walked, speaking with my hands. “People who buy into the system.”

“Quite good. And how do we keep the citizens willing?”

Skartovius Ashfen would’ve been a good teacher if he wasn’t a bloodthirsty killer instead. Perhaps the two vocations weren’t mutually exclusive.

And that thought is what brightened the light in my mind. Teacher. My head whipped over to him. “By keeping them ignorant?”

He nodded slowly.

“Knowledge and history,” I muttered under my breath. “Olhav has no center for gaining knowledge. No schools, no academies, no libraries—no places of learning?”

His gold-flecked crimson eyes sparkled as they locked with mine.

“It seems a horrible misstep,” I said. “Would knowledge not make you more powerful? More inclined to try different systems of commerce to find greater economic success, for instance, or employ new military strategies to bolster your ranks? Better spying techniques learned from other cultures?”

He lifted a finger, waiting for a group of hard-speaking vampires to pass us before continuing.

His eyes lingered on the mundane-dressed bloodsuckers, and he frowned at their backs.

“You speak of knowledge in the right hands . That’s exactly what it does, Sephania.

Problem is, the royals can’t trust a vampire—as strong-willed and ambitious as we are—with that sort of power.

Not a common fullblood, anyway. And then there’s the aspect of having six ministers for every issue, which creates unbalanced voting. ”

I nodded along. Even though Olhav was cleaner and better structured than Nuhav, it clearly had its own swath of problems. Regular ambition among bloodsuckers being one of them. At least in the eyes of the overlords and overladies.

“You’ve spoken of agency and independence,” he said, and I felt like we were getting to the point—perhaps the crux of everything I’d wondered recently about this vampiric trio I had linked with.

“You hold those things dear, and for good reason. Because knowledge leads to agency and freedom of thought, which leads to understanding, which leads to power and control and the realization you don’t have any, which leads to . . .”

“Rebellion,” I finished when he trailed off.

His eyes smoldered and he smiled. A thrum of excitement speared through me at the look of pride he showed me, his newest pupil.

“And that’s where I come in,” Skartovius said in a hushed voice.

My brow threaded. “To stop the rebellion . . . or start it?”

His arrogant smirk remained plastered on his beautiful face. “What do you think, love?”

My eyes bored into his. “The cause .”

A slow, measured nod made his auburn mane fall forward from his shoulders, sweeping his chest.

A heady daze filled my mind. I had always wanted to see Nuhav fixed .

Different. Changed. Where people didn’t starve or have to fight for freedom in underground battle rings.

Where girls and boys weren’t raped and traded on the flesh market.

Where we didn’t have to pray to a faith that only kept us destitute, disheveled, and poverty-stricken.

Where we didn’t have to abide by violent lawmen that only saw us as marks and were more ruffians than protectors.

Skartovius wanted something similar here. He wanted change, at the very least. I didn’t know his reasons, his plan, or what he specifically wanted.

But I knew this was something I could grasp and get behind.