“I CAN‘T BELIEVE we let him just drag her away like that.” Lorreth paced up and down in front of the map table, balling his hands into fists. Every time he spun around, he hit something with Avisiéth’s scabbard, clearly unused to carrying the weapon. “We should have fucking done something!”
“Like what?” I’d never heard Ren sound so defeated. He sat at the head of the table, chewing on his thumbnail. Since we’d made our way back here, numb and soaked to our skin, the general had crafted the beginnings of a number of plans, speaking out loud to himself, only to hit a stumbling block and start over again. Now, it seemed as though he’d officially given up.
Fisher hadn’t said one word since he’d stalked inside and planted himself at the seat opposite me. He just stared at me, a sea of green and silver locked onto my face, the muscles in his throat working. To be the subject of such intense focus was disconcerting at first, but I’d gotten used to it over the past hour and had resorted to staring back at him, nudging him inside my head, trying to cajole him into saying something.
Come on. Talk to me. Tell me something. Anything, I said silently. You can’t just shut down. But still not a word. Clearly, he thought sinking into a catatonic state was a perfectly acceptable coping mechanism in light of the situation.
“There has to be a way.” Lorreth kicked angrily at the pile of chopped wood by the fire. One of the pieces splintered and fell apart. He didn’t even acknowledge the mess he’d made as he spun around, clouting Ren’s shin with Avisiéth, and stormed toward the exit. Right before barging out of the tent, he turned around and marched back again. “Fisher, there are thousands
of texts in the library back at Cahlish. There must be something in one of them about this. Your father studied the blood curse for decades. I bet he made a note about this. How to cleanse a thrall’s blood. How—how to burn away the enchantment between master and thrall before the conversion begins.”
Fisher’s brow furrowed. He stared at me harder. “Fisher?” Lorreth prodded.
“He can’t hear you,” Ren said wearily. He pinched the bridge of his nose, sagging back into his chair. “Just give him some time. He’s thinking.”
Could there be information back at Cahlish about that? I asked him. But Fisher showed no sign of having heard me. Well, shit. If he wasn’t going to give me answers, then the other two males were going to have to fill me in because my brain was about to implode.
“Why is Malcolm’s bite so different from the other vampires?” I demanded, glowering at Ren, daring him to try and brush off the question. Thankfully, he answered.
“Malcolm was the first to be affected by the blood curse. The very first. When Rurik Daianthus, the last Yvelian king, discovered the cure, Malcolm was one of the few who chose to remain vampires. Over the centuries, the others who had accepted their curse were systematically killed off until only Malcolm remained. There were whispers that Malcolm ingested their power somehow. He is millennia old, undying, never aging. Every year he survives, he grows in strength and capability. His venom is potent beyond imagination. When one of his lords bites a victim, they can drink and sate their thirst without killing. If they bite the same human a number of times, eventually they become enthralled—”
“There. That word. What does that mean?”
“The victim becomes bound to the vampire who bit them,” Lorreth said, stepping in. “Mindlessly devoted to their needs. They’ll feed and fuck their master without a single thought for themselves. Inevitably, their masters grow bored and drain them, and then their victim dies. Three days later, they rise from wherever they’ve been discarded and become the feeders you’ve seen on the river.”
“But Everlayne…” I couldn’t say anything else. The thought of that bastard sinking his teeth into her neck made me want to vomit.
“Malcolm only needs to bite once to create a thrall. Everlayne is now completely under his control. Even if we broke into Ammontraíeth and
managed to break her free, she wouldn’t come. She’d fight so she could stay and please her master. And in a little less than fifty-six hours, she’s going to die.”
“Don’t say that! We can’t know that for sure. He might decide not to drain her. He might just use her as a bargaining chip for—”
“Malcolm’s venom is lethal, Saeris. All it takes is one drop. He doesn’t need to drain her to kill her now. The work is done. Only two possible paths lay before Everlayne. If Malcolm permits her to drink from him, and she actually does it, then she’ll return and become something like Malcolm’s Lords. If she refuses to drink from Malcolm, or he refuses his blood to her, then she’ll die and return as a feeder.”
A part of Fisher heard that. Deep down, he registered the information, and it shattered the wall he was trying to hide behind. He stood from the table, inhaling sharply, dragging his hands through his hair.
“Welcome back,” Ren whispered.
Fisher was about to say something, but the tent flap flew back, and in came Danya still dressed in her armor from the skirmish. Her eyes blazed with anger. She growled, lips peeled back, showing teeth, as she charged across the tent, straight for Lorreth.
“Danya—” Ren warned. But it was too late. The female warrior had pulled back her fist and launched it into Lorreth’s face. He’d seen her coming. Had adjusted his stance and folded his arms over his chest, but he hadn’t done a thing to block her from hitting him. His nose exploded with blood when her blow landed.
“Asshole! Give it to me. Give me my fucking sword.” “It isn’t your sword anymore, Danya,” Fisher said.
“Like hell it isn’t. I’ve carried that weapon for three hundred and thirteen years! I earned it!”
“Your father passed it down to you,” Fisher corrected dryly. “The sword you once carried was unmade and reforged. This blade is new. It chose Lorreth.”
“It’s mine,” Danya seethed. We all saw her lunge for Avisiéth. I couldn’t have stopped her from taking such an ill-advised course of action, but Fisher, Ren and Lorreth could have. None of them did. Some lessons had to be learned the hard way. The sword she’d carried had already been silent when it had been given to her. Not even an echo of magic had remained inside it. She’d probably heard tales about what would happen to someone if
they touched a god sword that didn’t belong to them, but her pride was such that she really did believe the weapon hanging at Lorreth’s hip was hers. He let her take it. The second her hand closed around its grip, she unleashed a blood-curdling scream, and her hand detonated into a cloud of pink mist. A shockwave of blinding white light surged from Avisiéth’s pommel, and Danya was thrown across the map room. She crashed down onto a chair, reducing it to kindling in an instant.
“Holy fucking gods,” Ren uttered. “It took her fucking hand.”
“Maybe she’ll stop punching people in the face now.” There wasn’t a scrap of sympathy in Fisher’s voice. He went and stood over Danya, his eyes glittering and cold as ice. Meanwhile, Danya awoke from an apparent faint and realized what had happened to her hand. Her sword hand. I braced for another scream, but she choked out a sob instead.
“Oh, gods! No. No, no, no!”
“There’s a chance it can be regrown. If I take you back to Cahlish and get you looked at by a healer, will you stop all of this bullshit and calm the fuck down?” Fisher demanded.
Danya didn’t deserve her hand to be regrown. Her theatrics had reached a point where she deserved to live with the consequences of her shitty temper. That wasn’t a charitable thought on my part, but I was well and truly over her attitude. She’d been a bitch ever since Kingfisher had shown up back at the camp. We had more important things to worry about than a petulant warrior who threw a temper tantrum every time she showed up in this fucking tent. Lucky for her, Fisher was more forgiving than me.
“Yes,” Danya moaned. She clutched the bleeding stump left at her wrist, tears streaking over her cheeks. “I will. I…swear.”
“So that’s it? You’re heading back to Cahlish?” Ren asked.
“We all are. Three out of the five of us need to see Te Léna. And then we’re going to tear that library apart until we find a way to help Everlayne. We have time. Not much of it, but some. We need to use it wisely.”
Renfis was white as a sheet. If I wasn’t mistaken, his hands shook with relief rather than anxiety now. Fisher had taken charge of the situation, which meant he wasn’t responsible for finding a solution to this disastrous situation. He opened his mouth, ready to speak, but Fisher got there first.
“Before we can leave this tent, there’s something we need to do, though.” He looked back at me, resolved. “Our Alchemist faced the enemy
tonight and stood her ground bravely. We have among us a newly blooded warrior.”
Oh no.
Gods.
No.
I did not want any of them looking at me like this. Fisher’s quiet pride. Ren’s warm approval. Lorreth’s wolfish grin. Under normal circumstances, it might have been nice to be recognized for the feeders I’d taken down, but with Everlayne’s outlook so bleak, I couldn’t bear it. “I don’t want a fuss,” I said.
“You don’t want a fuss?” Lorreth laughed. “This isn’t about you, Saeris. This is about us recognizing one of our own and paying due respect. You don’t get a say in the matter.”
I looked to Ren for help, but he shrugged apologetically. “Sorry. He’s right.”
“Look, whatever this is can wait. We’re in the middle of a crisis. There’ll be time later for…I don’t even know what you’re planning on doing, but it can wait!”
Fisher wasn’t persuaded by my argument. Not one little bit. He leaned back against the table, folding his arms across his chest. “We don’t let things like this wait. We’re at war. There’s no guarantee any of us wake up tomorrow. We celebrate our wins as they come. And we damn well make sure our warriors know their worth.”
Lorreth was first to step forward. He drew Avisiéth and sank to his knees, running his palm along the blade. A stream of crimson blood ran in its wake. He pressed his hand against my chest, right between my breasts. The contact wasn’t sexual, but Kingfisher still huffed a little. “My blood in thanks, sister,” Lorreth said softly.
He got up, still grinning at me like an idiot, and moved out of the way so that Renfis could take his place. The general sank to his knees, then nodded as he sliced open his own hand with a dagger and placed it over the bloody print that Lorreth had made. “It was my honor to fight alongside you,” he said. “My blood in thanks, sister.”
My cheeks were burning, a thousand degrees and climbing, when Fisher quietly came forward and knelt at my feet. His halo of dark hair was all over the place, his skin pale in the flickering torchlight. His eyes were steady, though. They ran me through as he withdrew Nimerelle and closed
his fist around her edge. When he placed his hand against my chest, he tapped his index finger and middle finger against my sternum, in time with my racing heart. Giving me a very tired, very sad smile, he said, “I give you my blood in thanks, Saeris Fane.”
