Her Royal Blood

by Felicity Jordan

  “Jexin, it’s probably best we leave that rock inside you for the time being. It could be the only thing stopping you from bleeding out. Refeu, we should tie off that wound neck as best as we can. Jexin, can I borrow your knife?”

  Jexin grunted his assent, and Tim used the knife to cut off the bottom of his own shirt.

  “Show me where.” He reached for Refeu, and a blood-soaked hand met his, guiding him to the wound. Refeu hissed in pain when Tim touched it.

  “Sorry,” Tim murmured. “I can’t tie it too tight, obviously, or it would strangle you. I hope it’s enough…”

  Neither of the others said anything. It wouldn’t be enough, they all knew. Tim quickly finished tying the makeshift bandage, but now, he didn’t know what to do. They were stuck here with the task of deciding who was going to live and who was going to die.

  Tim didn’t know the answer. He didn’t want to die, but he was less worried about himself and more worried about Rachel. Any one of their deaths would affect her terribly. Before she’d come to love Jexin and Refeu, the answer would have been obvious, but it wasn’t anymore. She loved all three of them.

  “We have to find a way out of here. For her. Listen, you two stay here. I’ll try to dig my way out and bring help back.”

  Neither Jexin nor Refeu answered such a ridiculous proposition. Though Tim knew very well he wouldn’t be able to dig his way out of a collapsed mountain, he had to try something. Slowly, so as not to hurt either of the vampires next to him, he started trying to shift the rock.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jexin

  Jexin understood Tim’s frantic desire to do something, but he was having no luck in shifting the rock. Even if he and Refeu had been at full strength, the three of them together probably couldn’t dig their way out of this mess, at least not before they died of hunger and thirst.

  The rocks above them made an ominous groaning noise, and Tim wisely desisted. They had no chance of getting out of this alive if they were crushed by the rubble above them.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Refeu said regretfully. “We have a decision to make, and the sooner we make it, the better chance whichever one of us feeds on Tim has of surviving.”

  “Wait, what? When did we decide that only one of you would feed on me? Last I checked, all our lives were in the balance. If you both feed on me, I die but you both live. Either way, one of us dies and two live.”

  Jexin admired Tim’s bravery and willingness to sacrifice himself, but he wasn’t being realistic. “You have to survive, Tim. You’re Rachel’s first love. She’d be hurt by your death more than she would by mine or Refeu’s.”

  “She’d be devastated to find out either one of you died!”

  “We know.” Refeu coughed painfully before continuing. “We know she loves us too, but face it, she needs you more than either of us. As for which of the two of us should survive, Jexin, you’re her guard. I think she’d be better served to have you by her side.”

  Jexin shook his head but realized that neither of the others could see this in the dark. “You can protect her just as well as I can. You may not have the same level of training I do, but you’re competent in combat, and you can bring the might of the entire Alabsa bloodline to bear. You represent an important alliance for the Cherki bloodline.”

  “Hello? I’m still here, in case you’ve both forgotten!” It was too dark to read Tim’s expression, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out he was mad. “You don’t just get to decide this without me, my opinion matters here, too!”

  “You are willing to sacrifice yourself for us, brother, and we thank you for that, but I’m afraid we can absolutely make this decision without you.” Refeu ignored Tim’s splutter and continued. “You are not thinking clearly. Jexin and I have millennia of experience in judging situations like this. You are understandably shaken and you’re not weighing up your options objectively. You can’t force either of us to feed from you.”

  “You call me brother, but you treat me like a child! How dare you presume to make this decision without me!”

  “Refeu… maybe he has a point.” Jexin didn’t like the idea that their last hours together might be spent with Tim resenting him and Refeu. Tim would never forgive himself for it when one of them was gone. “What would you have us do, Tim?”

  “I don’t know, ok? Just don’t presume that one of you has to die for me.”

  “Fine, but that still leaves us with a decision to make.” Refeu was impatient, and rightfully so. Jexin could feel his own strength waning as the wound in his stomach bled sluggishly, and Refeu couldn’t be faring much better.

  “Well, first we need to decide what we’re basing this decision on. Is it on how Assa will be affected practically, or emotionally? If it’s both, we need to decide what proportions we should be using.”

  Jexin had been in enough battles that he knew how to strategically weigh up factors that went into life and death decisions.

  Tim and Refeu both threw themselves into the debate. After what felt like at least an hour, they were agreed on two thirds weight to Assa’s emotional wellbeing, and one third to practical matters such as safety and alliances.

  Then, the true argument began. They started with the practical issues, these being easier, but there it still took them ages, more time than they could afford. Tim was obviously out in this category; there were plenty of donors, and Assa already had a relationship with Bethany. His importance was in the emotional category.

  Jexin and Refeu argued back and forth about which one of them would be a better fit for Rachel’s future. Tim couldn’t decide where he stood, which didn’t help matters. Eventually, he interrupted the fifth point of their argument, which had been going around in circles so long that Jexin was beginning to lose track of where they’d begun.

  “Look, we don’t have time for this. Both of you are getting weaker, I can hear it in your voices. If at least two of us are going to decide, we need to make a choice now. I don’t care how we do it anymore. Flip a coin for all I care, but we are not wasting a life here. Rachel isn’t going to lose more of us than she has to.”

  He was right, but that didn’t mean Jexin was happy about it. “We don’t have a coin to flip, and even if we did, it’s too dark.”

  “An elimination game, then.” Refeu’s voice was indeed weaker, or Jexin may have argued with this new tactic. “I used to play it with my guards when I was younger. It requires honesty, but I trust you both. If you trust me the same, we can do it.”

  “We trust you,” Tim assured, and Jexin nodded along with him.

  He realized once again that they couldn’t see him and spoke up. “Tell us how to play.”

  “One of us is the judge while the other two are players. The judge picks a number in their head, then tells the players to pick a number between one and ten. The player who picks the number closest to the judge’s number wins a point. Then we switch around, until each person has played an equal number of times. The person with the most points wins. In this case, we’ll each judge once, and the person with the most points gets to make the decision.”

  It was a strange game, but it would work for their purposes. “I’ll judge first.” Jexin’s belly throbbed angrily and unconsciousness beckoned. They needed to get this done fast. “I have a number. Go.”

  He picked fifteen, a number forever fixed in his head, because it was the fifteenth of June when Assa and her sisters had gone missing. “Refeu? What’s your number?”

  “Fifty-two.”

  “Tim?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “Tim wins this round.”

  Refeu sighed but didn’t argue. “Right, I’ll judge next. Go.”

  It didn’t take long. Jexin won the round against Tim, and then Tim judged for him and Refeu. When they’d all declared their numbers, Refeu hesitated.

  “Refeu? Who won?”

  “Jexin. Jexin won.”

  Tim swore under his breath. Jexin was quiet. He was relieved, of cours
e, that he could choose, but he was also terrified, because he already knew what his choice would be. His choice meant he would die in this cave. But he’d be with his brothers, at least. He wouldn’t be alone.

  “Refeu feeds on Tim.”

  A hand found his and squeezed. “Are you sure?” Tears choked Tim’s voice, and Jexin was glad he couldn’t see them. “I’m sure. Tell Assa I love her.”

  “Maybe if you both fed just a little bit…”

  “No.” Refeu wasn’t crying, but his voice was heavy with grief. “It won’t be enough. Already, even with one of us feeding just enough to survive, it will put you in danger. If we both fed only enough to keep you alive, we’d both die. Jexin… you can still change your mind. You can feed.”

  “No. This is what’s best for Assa. Do it, Refeu. Feed, and live.”

  “Wait!”

  Jexin cringed at Tim’s shout. This was hard enough without the other two trying to dissuade him. “We’re not arguing about this anymore, Tim. I won fair and square.”

  “I know. I’m not arguing your decision. Just… Refeu, do you have to feed yet? There’s still a chance we can be found. We should wait until the last moment. If they find us, we could still all live.”

  Jexin wanted that more than anything, but he wouldn’t lie about it. “Assa’s people may find us, but it’s equally likely that an enemy finds us. We can’t hope that our presence here will remain secret for long. Someone would have seen us coming here. Assa’s enemies would try to hurt her through hurting us; we’ve hardly kept our relationships with her secret. If someone comes, they may well be here to kill all of us. We need to get out of this hole, find the afesu, and get back to the palace before anything else goes wrong.”

  “No, he’s right.” Jexin rolled his eyes, but Refeu kept speaking. “I can wait a bit longer. I know my limits. Before I reach the point of no return, I’ll feed, I promise.”

  “And what if the Bokir hunters find us first? You could be wasting the only chance we have!” Jexin could have strangled them both. The decision had been made, why couldn’t they just get on with it? Some part of him recognized that if it had been either of the other two slated to die, he’d have gone to the same lengths to avoid it, but that didn’t lessen his anger.

  “I’m not letting you die if there’s another chance. How do you think Rachel would ever forgive us for that? We’ll wait as long as we can.”

  If he hadn’t been paralyzed by a large piece of stone through his belly, Jexin would have clobbered Refeu, vampire prince or not. Did they not realize how hard this was for him already? This was just making it worse! Giving him hope when they all knew that the situation would likely still resolve in his death was just cruel.

  It was utterly unfair, but he knew there would be no persuading Tim or Refeu. He didn’t want to argue.

  “If these are going to be our last hours together, then I’d like to spend them talking about Assa.”

  Finally, they’d found something they could agree on. “I would like that, too. Tim, you know her best. Tell us more about her, about before she came to the palace.”

  “No,” Tim said softly. “I’ll have a lifetime to tell you that. I want to hear from Jexin, about what she was like as a child. You guarded her and her sisters from when they were born, didn’t you?”

  “I did.” Jexin smiled as he thought back. “Those three years will always stand out as one of the high points of my life. They were such precious children – smart, but naughty! Assa, though she was called Essa then, she was the ringleader. I remember the one time, they somehow managed to get into their mother’s jewelry box, then realized they’d be in trouble for it. They each grabbed a handful of gems worth several kingdoms and ran off in different directions to hide…”

  Despite the pain he was in, Jexin smiled as he reminisced. Tim and Refeu laughed with him, and for a while, he could forget that he was stuck in a dark cave that would soon become his tomb. If he couldn’t have Assa with him, he’d be happy that he at least had Tim and Refeu. They’d look after her and see her through her grief over him. Jexin could leave the world happily knowing that Assa would be safe and loved.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Rachel

  Dasek’s dire warnings rang in her ears, but Rachel was resolute. She wasn’t waiting back at the palace, not now that Jexin had sent the guards back without him. The idiot. He may be right that it was better to go with a small group, but did that small group have to include him? Not to mention the other two men she loved?

  There was only one thing to do. She’d have to go to them and drag them back to the safety of the palace. She was the only one whose orders to Tirin Jexin couldn’t override. She’d get her guys out and send a team in to look for the afesu.

  Dasek wasn’t happy, of course, but she wasn’t going to waste any more time arguing with him about it. They’d work out their differences once she was back with her mates. She knew he wasn’t exaggerating about the danger to her being outside the palace, but she couldn’t just sit back and hope her mates returned alive.

  “Don’t worry, Assa.” Tirin gave her an encouraging smile. “We will get your mates out, and then I will personally lead the team to get the afesu. We won’t stop until we have it, no matter what it takes.”

  “Thank you, Tirin.” He blushed, apparently not having expected thanks for doing his duty. Rachel looked away. She knew she was being selfish, asking Tirin and his men to die so that her mates could live, but she couldn’t stand the thought of losing any of them.

  She also knew that even if she didn’t ask it, Tirin and all the guards would insist on going in to search for the herb, no matter how suicidal it was. They’d trained for more years than she’d been alive to live and die for her family, and they were more than willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to ensure her happiness.

  “Assa, I have to ask… are you sure you want to come?”

  She repeated the argument she’d given Dasek, one that sounded slightly less insane than that she simply had to go into a system of caves that was likely to collapse on her head and crush her.

  “I’m a royal vampire. I have better senses than other vampires, even the guards who have trained to heighten their senses. I’ll have a better chance of picking up the scent, if it’s old or if it has been partially washed away.”

  “Yes, Assa.”

  One of the brilliant things about the guards being sworn to me; they don’t argue. At least, not much. Jexin argues more, but that’s because he’s not just my guard. The others, though, I can tell them to leave it alone, and they do. It’s refreshing, and quite honestly a relief, because I can’t imagine going this whole trip arguing about my presence on it.

  “How much further?”

  “Another hour, maybe, by car. From there, we’ll have to walk.”

  “No. We don’t know if Jexin, Refeu and Tim are in trouble. From what you’re told me about the caves, I imagine it’s a significant possibility. When we stop driving, we run. We run until we find them.”

  “Yes, Assa.”

  “Any chance I can get you to call me Rachel?”

  “No, Assa.”

  “Thought not,” she muttered. “It was worth a shot, though.” She couldn’t be sure, but Rachel thought she saw Tirin exchanging grins with the other guards. There were six of them in the car, plus her – Tirin, four other guards, and Gali. Certainly enough for a rescue party.

  Rachel’s optimistic declaration that they would run hit a snag pretty early on. As a vampire, she had more speed, strength and endurance than she ever could have imagined before. Unfortunately, that endurance may be vast, but it wasn’t unlimited, as she soon found out.

  Her guards had no trouble – their training had been vigorous, and they were more than up to running for hours on end with no pause. Even Gali kept up well; Rachel could only guess that healers had some kind of compulsory fitness training. She, on the other hand, started to struggle, and continued to slow the party down.

  Her attempts to
send the guards ahead and leave her hit a brick wall. Loyal followers or not, they wouldn’t follow orders that would put her in danger. Eventually, to her mortification, Tirin and the other guards took turns carrying her piggyback, which barely slowed them.

  “If you tell Jexin about this, I’ll have you arrested,” Rachel muttered in Tirin’s ear. She was sure he must be able to feel the heat emanating from her face.

  “Not a word, Assa, I promise.”

  No one asked for a break, and by the time the sun was setting, they’d reached the mountain. They had come prepared with flashlights, and quickly formed a procession to the only entrance to the mountain tunnels.

  Tirin insisted that he go first, and Rachel allowed it, more for his peace of mind than her own. She quickly picked up the scent. It was obvious and fresh, and she realized that her previous justification wasn’t needed. The guards would have been able to find the trail fine without her.

  They hurried along the path, not speaking. Though no one said anything, Rachel could tell something was wrong. The air felt… shaken up. She didn’t know how to describe it better. She was still getting used to her vampire senses and would have dismissed the feeling had Tirin and the others not been looking so grave.

  Rachel allowed herself to stay in denial for a bit longer. It seemed that Jexin, Tim and Refeu had taken a circuitous route through the caves, winding around so that they checked each one. Here, Rachel’s sense of smell was a bonus, because she could smell where the trail went and was able to cut out a lot of the twists and turns, leading them along a straighter route.

  All too soon, they stopped at a wall of rock rubble. Worse, Rachel could tell from the dust in the air that the collapse was recent. She took a deep breath, trying to convince herself she was wrong about the scent trail. “Tirin?”

  “The scent trail leads right into that, Assa,” he said softly, understanding her unspoken plea. Gali quickly put a hand under her elbow, apparently fearing she was going to collapse. Rachel thought it was a good idea on his part, because her knees suddenly felt weak and shaky.