Текст книги "A Bargain So Bloody"

Автор книги: Vasilisa Drake

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Another flourish and Amalthea revealed her stack of cards from another drawer. It was easily a hundred cards thick, exponentially larger than my own paltry deck. She thumbed through them haphazardly. “No, no… where is it… no… ah! Here we are.” She slid the deck back into its hiding place and lifted a card triumphantly between her fingers.

My brows drew together. “You can’t be serious.”

It was a creation card. Creation magic was extremely rare and coveted, because unlike most temporary enchantments, that which it created was permanent. At its purest, the power enabled the caster to create whatever was in their mind. Like all cards, they came in different strengths and assortments. Prince Marcel the Bountiful had a kind of creation magic. It only allowed him to multiply that which he already had, but even that was considered an incredible feat. Reading the symbols on this card, this card was limited, but even still, it was outrageous to propose using it for something as mundane as a dress.

I pulled back, trying to reason with Amalthea. “It’s too much. Better for me to skip or wear what I am now if I really must attend.”

“It’s imperative you send the right message. Wearing some ill-fitted castoff or thrown-together day dress—sorry—is decidedly not the right message.”

“Amalthea, families would work for years to afford a card half that powerful.”

“You know, you can call me Thea,” she replied as if that was the only part she heard.

“Thea,” I echoed, trying out the nickname. “Be sensible. This extravagance is beyond anything a void should dream of, let alone do.”

She cocked a hip out, the dark fabric swaying with the movement. “You’re the king’s Chosen. The only thing you need to dream of is your dress. Or, if you prefer, I can conjure it for you.”

The gleam in her eyes said she liked that idea more by the second. I yanked the card from her fingers, which she let go easily with a triumphant grin.

“Only because I’m afraid of what you’d put me in,” I grumbled.

She huffed. “I have excellent taste, I’ll have you know.”

I left my position in front of the mirror and carefully pulled my current dress off, casting a mournful look at the comfortable fabric. I’d never used a creation card before, never even held one, but magic was always intuitive. I shut my eyes and tried to think of what I would wear. I didn’t have a clue what the fashions were these days, let alone the vampire styles beyond what little Amalthea had told me. I pushed a general idea to the card, hoping like with disguise magic it would fill in the blanks. I am not one of them. The magic traced over my body, wrapping around me. I am not prey. Fabric appeared with a sparkle of light, unformed yet as the magic read my intentions.

I don’t want them to touch me.

When the dress finally materialized, I stepped out for Thea to see.

She blinked at me, for the first time slightly off-kilter.

“Well, that’s definitely sending a message.” She recovered and drew closer, offering me a hand. “I’d daresay you’re as ready as you’ll ever be. Won’t Raphael be surprised to see you!”

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Thirty-One

It took nearly half an hour to navigate the winding maze of the mountain castle’s halls, to say nothing of the added complication of the shoes Amalthea had lent me. After years going barefoot and wishing for proper footwear, I found myself wishing I could kick the pointy-heeled torture devices off. The thick calluses of my feet weren’t made for such fine things. I tried to map the castle in my mind as Amalthea led me, arm linked with mine. The halls were almost entirely empty, and as we approached the ballroom, I realized why.

When Amalthea declared we had three hours to get ready, she clearly had no intention for us to arrive on time.

“It sounds like the ball started hours ago,” I whispered to her.

She gave me an amused look, gray eye twinkling with mirth. “But of course. You couldn’t be seen arriving first, after all. That dress deserves an audience.”

I wasn’t so sure.

The dress was exactly what I’d wanted, but I never would have been able to picture it. Now that the magic had taken the essence of my thoughts and made it physical, I was unsure if it had been such a wise idea to let those feelings guide the creation magic.

The skirts flowed around me, the bodice and sleeves heavy. I’d seen myself in the mirror before leaving.

If Raphael hates it, perhaps I’ll get to leave the ball immediately.

A servant opened the door, and with no further instruction, the herald announced our arrival. “Presenting the seer of the court and adviser to King Raphael, Lady Amalthea, and King Raphael’s claimed human, Lady Samara!”

A hush fell over the space. Or perhaps there was no silence, but rather no noise that could surmount the roaring in my ears as hundreds of pairs of eyes stared up at me.

Prey. To them, I was prey.

My vision swam, bouncing from group to group, a sea of white hair, pale skin, and red eyes surrounding me.

Then my gaze landed on one particular figure.

Raphael.

At once, he became all I could see. He was dressed in more finery than I’d ever seen. Like Amalthea, his neck was exposed—and there was no doubt in my mind this was not an invitation, but a threat. The fashion was unlike anything I’d ever seen in the Witch Kingdom. He was dressed entirely in black, with rich silk stretching from his shoulders down to billowing cuff sleeves. The garment was inlaid with rubies that glinted under the chandelier’s light, a large one pinning a matching cape to his back. A fearsome crown sat atop his head. Severe silver spikes went unadorned, marking him as a king who needed no such finery.

He looked more like himself than I’d ever seen him, yet at the same time he was unrecognizable from the vampire I’d slept next to in the woods.

When I first saw him, I thought he looked shocked to see me. All traces of surprise were gone now, and instead the slightest glint of satisfaction shone on his face, from the light of his eyes to the slight upturn of his lips.

He strode to the base of the stairs, expectant.

“Oh good, I was worried he might be angry I brought you,” Amalthea whispered.

Her words gave me enough of a jolt to ground me back in the moment. Yes, I was in a ballroom with vampires, but damn me to the eighth hell, I was already in a castle surrounded by them. I’d known what I was walking into, even if the sight was discomfiting. We began to descend the stairs.

My gaze remained trained on Raphael.

When we reached him, he turned his attention to Amalthea.

“You and I will speak later.” The barest threat underlaid the words, but it was enough that Amalthea quickly excused herself as she was “utterly parched.”

He extended a hand to me, and I grabbed it like a lifeline.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” he said so quietly I had to strain to hear.

“I gathered as much. I can go,” I said quickly, but Raphael shook his head before I finished.

“No. Better that they see you for what you are.”

“A weak human?” My skepticism was plain.

“Untouchable.” He cocked his head slightly to the side. “This is quite the dress. It suits you.”

I was instantly flustered. Who was this Raphael? He was direct and ferocious, as he’d ever been. There was a silkiness to his words—that, and the way he was dressed not as a disheveled ex-prisoner but as royalty—that made me feel strange.

My dress was utterly opposite to vampire fashion. I’d begged the creation card for one thing: I don’t want vampires to touch me.

The magic translated that into a dress that was closer to armor than the flowing form Amalthea wore. A metal collar covered my neck, winding down into chains that held up the bodice, which was made of metal sheets that molded to my form. The sleeves and skirt were still feminine, covering my body in a way that let me move freely. The entire piece was copper of varying shades. It wouldn’t actually hurt vampires—creation magic couldn’t create enchanted items—but just as Amalthea had wanted, it sent a message.

I’m not one of you.

To complete the look, I’d added the cursed copper shackles as cuffs. They were useless as weapons, but they worked just fine as a warning.

“Dance with me,” Raphael said.

I blinked up at him. “Why?”

He grinned. “If you’re in my arms, I can keep an eye on you, since it seems Amalthea can’t be trusted to not give into her whims.” He made some gestures, and music billowed over the chatter. I hadn’t been able to hear it properly, but now that I could, it was all I could do to not sway my body with the sounds.

Waves of notes surrounded me, and I was greedy for them. It had been so long, so damnably long. My chest tightened as the music crescendo swelled, climbing, climbing, and then crashing over me. When the song ended and another began, my throat was dry.

Raphael cocked his head, studying me like I was something all too interesting. Could he feel what the music meant to me?

“Talk to me, Samara.”

How to explain what it was to go years and years with nothing but screams and insults to break up hours of bleak silence? That having my senses filled with something so beautiful, so lovely, and alive, made my knees want to buckle?

“Perhaps we will dance later,” he murmured, guiding me away from the dance floor.

I struggled to focus on his words when all I wanted was to find the source of the music and sit at the feet of whoever made it. “I… I like music.”

The three words were hard to get out. Music was mine. It was private, secret. Making myself give that up to a male who should have been my mortal enemy felt wrong.

And yet some part of me wanted him to know me.

“Do you play?” he asked, oblivious to my internal struggle.

I pursed my lips. “No. My mother said it wasn’t proper for someone of my status. She was convinced I was to be a lady, who had others playing music on command.”

Raphael didn’t say anything to that, and with the silence, I found myself wanting to give voice to a memory. “When she was away, I’d try to make my own instruments. The closest I came was a flute made from a carrot. Of course, there was no quiet way to play my carrot-flute, so I was quickly discovered.”

“And then?” Raphael said as I trailed off. We were being watched from behind cups and tilted heads. Raphael didn’t pay an iota of attention to the onlookers as we moved around the room. His attention was entirely on me.

“She had it tossed in the evening stew.”

Raphael drew up short. “That was cruel.”

I shrugged, the chains over my shoulders making a soft sound. “It wasn’t meant to be. She did it for my own good.”

Raphael didn’t reply to that, but I sensed he had more to say. We’d nearly reached the refreshment table when a male vampire approached.

“Greetings, Your Majesty,” the noble said. His elevated status was obvious from the finely made clothing and comfort with which he moved through the room.

“Lazarus,” Raphael acknowledged.

“It’s wonderful to see you back at Damerel,” Lazarus crooned. “And you’ve taken a human.”

I didn’t want to meet any vampires, but as with all predators, any display of weakness would just arouse those deadly instincts. When the vampire looked at me, I didn’t shrink away. Instead, I straightened my spine, resisting the urge to fiddle with my cursed copper cuffs as I fixed my feet under the dress into the same formation Iademos had drilled into me earlier that day.

Raphael inclined his head. Obviously, his taciturn habits were part of his nature, not personal as I’d once assumed.

“We’re all so curious about her,” Lazarus continued, paying no mind to Raphael’s lack of response. “And everything that transpired while you were gone. Was your quest successful? Are we once more safe from the abomination?” The noble managed to drip his honeyed words in the barest hint of contempt.

Raphael smiled, but all I saw were fangs I was glad not to have pointed at me. “All is as I wish it to be.”

Lazarus was quick to make his excuses while I tried to puzzle out his words. Raphael had been on a quest to get the Black Grimoire. He’d been waylaid and mistakenly gone to Greymere instead of the marshes. But what abomination? The Grimoire? It was an odd term, and Raphael hadn’t attempted to burn it or anything.

Perhaps the true reason for Raphael’s time away wasn’t widespread. But that still begged the question: What did they all think Raphael meant to do in the Witch Kingdom?

We continued, landing at the refreshments table. Several vampires eyed their king but thought better of approaching. The long table at the edge of the room was piled high with glasses, a pyramid of champagne flutes on one side of an ice sculpture that wasn’t fine enough to be magic made. The other side held a matching tower of chalices filled with deep red liquid. My stomach revolted at the sight.

Raphael extended a glass of golden champagne to me. “Here.”

I shook my head.

“You’re not thirsty?”

“I don’t imbibe.” I’d never really had the chance. Any spirits that made their way to Greymere were quickly hoarded by Nelson and distributed among his favored few. The behavior that followed did more to frighten me than inspire envy. Those were nights to hide in the farthest, coldest corners of the prison. Losing my senses in the midst of all these vampires from the same drink? That was what my nightmares were made of.

“Water, then.” He gave some small signal and a servant—human—approached. He instructed him to bring fresh spring water and dismissed him with a turned shoulder.

The sight rankled. “Are all humans in your kingdom servants?”

Raphael arched a brow at me. “Anyone who tried to treat Amalthea as a servant would find themselves laughed out of castle and country.”

“All voids, then?”

“We all serve something higher, do we not?” he drawled. “But no. Otherwise this table would be covered in blood mead.”

The table was divided between both drinks. Yet there were no humans in attendance among the nobility. There were hundreds in attendance, but Amalthea was alone in her not-pure-white hair.

“Look closer,” Raphael said in my ear.

I stiffened as the heat of his breath caressed me, the tingle curling down the back of my neck. I hadn’t realized we were so close. But I obeyed, examining those nearest to us more carefully. A pair of women chattering behind feathered fans, hiding their necks. A trio of men, gathered around a high-top table, one gesturing wildly as he recounted some story. I cocked my head, trying to make sense of what I saw. All had cropped white hair of slightly varying lengths, and each had red eyes… but my attention snagged on the one on the right. His eyes seemed just a shade less vibrant. His skin didn’t have the same blue tint as the others had. And perhaps most telling, he was older. Maybe sixty, sixty-five, if I were to lay a bet.

There was only one explanation.

“No,” I breathed.

“Oh, yes.”

By the sixth hell. Bad enough they wanted to be vampires, but they even aped their appearance. Amalthea had said disguise cards were difficult to come by, so they must have spent a magical fortune in a Vampire Kingdom to match their appearances.

“All the time?”

“Mostly for special occasions, council meetings, and so on. Perhaps ten or twenty percent at most among the gentry are human. The nobles are a mix of long-standing houses and appointed posts. Obviously, humans can only rise in position from the latter, and when your competition has an endless amount of time to reach a post, you’re at a disadvantage. Make no mistake, the humans you find among them are some of the craftiest creatures in this room.”

“And so they want to fit in, for the vampires to forget they’re not like them?”

“As if the chasm between immortal and mortal is so easily crossed,” Raphael said with the barest snort. “The endless drum of their beating hearts and labored breaths will always give them away.”

I swallowed and put a half step of distance between us. He was right. Vampires were a world apart.

A servant returned with a crystal glass of icy water on a tray, a boon in the heat of the crowd. It wasn’t the same servant, but he looked familiar. Not from Damerel, though. I hadn’t learned any faces here. I tried to place him while he extended a tray towards me.

“For you, Lady Samara,” he said with a respectful half bow. His gaze was on the floor.

For a moment I just stared. Was my mind playing tricks on me? The face I imagined I hadn’t seen for many years, and only in shadows.

Raphael took the glass and handed it to me when I made no move to take it.

“Thank you,” I said, as the human servant retreated. A mistake. You mistook that other servant for another. I ignored Raphael’s curious look and tried to return to the subject. “Amalthea doesn’t bother. Trying to look more like a vampire, I mean.”

“The fates themselves could not convince Amalthea to do anything she didn’t want to.”

“I’ve known her only a short time, and I find that to be a fair assessment,” I agreed.

We spoke a little more but were eventually interrupted. More sycophants, much like Lazarus. Honeyed words, talks of politics and policies mixed in with cloying praise for Raphael: his sense of justice, his dedication to the kingdom, his wit, his majestic presence. Some might bear a grain of truth, but I suspected the same words would have been applied to a lobotomized rooster if it wore the crown. Some things didn’t change.

I occupied my mind by studying the celebrants of the room, both those who approached and anyone else in my line of sight. With each one, I made it a game to figure out if they were vampire or human. Most were vampires, as Raphael said. As I practiced, I got better at picking out the humans from the bunch. The clothing was the same style… but seldom quite as grand. The difference between a civil servant and a titled inheritor. They lacked the utter stillness the vampires were capable of, the grace that came when you moved with no excessive flourishes. There were differences in the red eyes, but while the vampires seemed to nearly glow as they sipped the blood mead, the humans were always lackluster.

Disdain swept through me. How quickly they begged to be rid of their humanity. Not just that, their individuality. I loathed the part of me that understood. Was it so different from the court of the Witch King, where courtiers constantly competed to dress in the latest fashion, or raced to tell the king the latest gossip? Was I any better, even if I was only here temporarily?

Many had chosen this. They had given up the second-class life of a mortal without magic in an enchanted kingdom to try to rise another way. I wanted to believe that made me different. But my choices had led me here too. If it was a matter of survival, would I disguise myself as a vampire? I couldn’t deny it. I’d let one feed on me, claim me.

I would never let one turn me. That difference would have to be enough.

A nasally voice caught my attention.

“And will she be joining us for the Tri-Lunar Eclipse Ceremony?” a female noble asked. Vampire. Definitely vampire. Her hair was up, her bodice cut low. She angled her neck as if beckoning. If ever there was someone inviting a bite, it was this female. Did vampires even bite other vampires? What was the point?

“Perhaps,” Raphael said noncommittally.

They must mean me. I edged closer to Raphael. I didn’t feel particularly threatened, but I didn’t care for the hungry look in her eyes. Though it wasn’t quite directed at me.

“Oh, it’ll be so exciting,” her companion added, punctuating her words with a demure flap of her fan. Her neck was covered in a high lace collar. “It’ll be my first one.”

“You never forget your first,” the first vampire said with a wink. “Mine was just barely three hundred years ago, and I’ve been waiting for the next one since.”

What exactly was the Tri-Lunar Eclipse Ceremony?

The conversation dripped in cultural innuendos I lacked context for. The focus drifted back to politics, and eventually, the two females were replaced by others, all attempting to curry favor with the returned king. There was no more time for Raphael and me to talk, and I found I missed the comfort that small talk had offered.

At least, I could have used the distraction. Without it, my mind kept returning to the human servant from before, unable to relax.

OceanofPDF.com