Page 140 of The Ballad of the Vampire Prince

“Then why do you have this information?” I ask.

“Remember when I said Rhianelle tried to murder me?” he drawls, checking on his nails momentarily. “I dug up her past so I can kill her first.”

A vicious snarl rips from my throat.

“Calm down, we had a trial and this was a while ago,” he says without feeling. “Look, this is just a wild guess, all right? I think Rainer and her family lied about her age. She’s not even a High Elf.”

Another shock shudders through me.

After a few hundred years in their long lives, the elves will decide where to utilize their speciality best. Some will ascend to become a warrior like the knight beside me, or the healing Hlaryan elves, or the magic-wielding Mhlaryan elves, or the inventive Tluryan elves, or in Rhianelle’s case, an Alderalf and the Queen of Aelfheim.

But Red is saying that Nel has not even ascended yet.

He glimpses the confusion in my face and takes pity on me. “I don’t know much, but let me tell you a story. There is a famous legend that started in the beginning of the war in the Age of Conquest, a myth told by the folks from the village of Feywildra in the poor region of Elowen. It’s a poor countryside nearest to the borders of Astefar. They told a tale of a feral elf girl who lived in the woods. In some collections, she is a silver-haired ghost who is always hungry, in others she is a kind spirit, leading lost travelers from being hunted by the beasts of the forest.”

I can’t keep a breath down as I listen to him.

“The timing of those lores started around the same time the previous queen left Rhianelle in the custody of the horrible Governor of Elowen when she was five,” Red goes on, his eyes dimming with something like sorrow. “If my presumption is right, Astefar is the domain of the Un and Rhianelle has spent all that time in the realms of the gods as we did in our temple.”

I want to dismiss his stupid theory, but whatever he says matches with the pieces of memory I drank from her. I picture the little girl, abandoned in the woods to fend for herself. An avalanche of feeling goes through me at the story.

“I don’t press her much about this since it’s her family’s secret, but Rhianelle once told me she was only eighteen at the time she was crowned. It’s been fifty-one years since she sat on that throne. So yes, she turns sixty-nine this year,” he finishes in dismissal.

The old lady suddenly reappears right in front of us. If I were mortal, my heart might have actually halted from the spook. I didn’t hear her move… she’s almost as silent as my Nel. “You can have the cart now. I’ll just be right here packing my stuff if you need anything.”

“Thank you!” Red claps his hands together, giving me another startle. He walks over to the cart with a wide grin on his face.

“I remember having the best time of my life before my ascension,” he resumes his musings. “I call it my soul-searching years. My poor elfling queen never got that.”

I feel momentarily gutted by the knowledge. My Nel didn’t even get the fun years like this fucker did. I want to pry more information from the knight.

No, that’s not what I really want.

I want Nel.

I want—I need to see her now. I need to touch her and hold her in my arms. I need to kiss her and hear her voice.

I’ll storm the stupid council chambers and—but Nel wouldn’t want that.

I made a promise and I will honor our deal.

So, I force myself to sit on the bench underneath the tree and watch Red work. I consider this as my penance for stealing Nel last week. He dismantles the cart carefully to create my commission. I don’t bother him with talk to let him concentrate. It may not be obvious to a mortal’s eyesight, but his eye colors are mismatched now.

“Still worried for me, vampire?” Red angles his head, his blonde hair, glimmering in the sunlight.

I say nothing.

“I would have bargained half my life span if that was the price,” he says with an unbothered calm.

The guy is careless but no one can doubt his loyalty to his queen. I might let him live after all.

I look at the letterings he carved. “What is that?”

“Her date of birth,” Red answers simply, blowing the sawdust into the wind.

The seventh day of the fall on the eleventh year in the Age of Conquest.

Balthazar’s pendant is quick to translate that to the human calendar and my breathing falters. Unease and dread begin filling the damned thing beating in my chest.