by Vivienne Cox
“I tried to tell you,” Luna whispered from behind him. She, at least, sounded amused.
Ignatius couldn’t find it in himself to be as properly mortified as he might have been. It was all he could do to tear his eyes away from Lucian, from the frankly stupid smile that man was trying to conceal. Thank the Gods.
“Allissa.” Sylva gestured her forward. “Mister Hanstrom, a moment, if you would be so kind.”
“Yes, of course, Your Majesty.” He vaguely felt he was babbling. Another glance at Lucian, and a bow to the three of them. Lucian’s grin was a fanged one as Ignatius closed the door behind himself.
This time, he was well aware of the breath that he was holding, and he thought he very nearly crumpled under the weight of the past weeks as he finally exhaled.
“I hope you plan to never do that again,” he said conversationally, wiping a smudge of soot away from his own face. The fireplaces truly were a mess. He had been slacking.
“Attempt to die?” Lucian hummed, and his paperwork rustled as he flipped through the pages. “Yes, I will try to keep it to a minimum, Ignatius, thank you.”
It was the worst kind of humor, but he couldn’t help but chuckle. Still, more important matters. “How is your arm?”
Lucian grunted, and Ignatius glanced over his shoulder to him. “I’m not certain, to be frank.” Lucian clenched and relaxed his fingers, and Ignatius’s eyebrows furrowed at the lack of the fist he ought to be able to make.
“The pain hasn’t gone?”
“It isn’t so much pain as it is a lack of… everything, honestly.” Lucian dropped his hand back to the table. “They’ve informed me it may yet take a backwards slide, as a matter of something to look forward to,” he said dryly.
“I’m certain it will heal.” The flue was going to take ages to finish preparing. Ignatius sighed, and sat back on his ankles. Lucian wouldn’t begrudge him the break, but the room was cold and smelled of ash, and darkness was falling outside the windows. He turned away to breathe a breath of cleaner air, and leveled his gaze at the prince again. “You just need a touch more blood, I’m certain.”
“Perhaps.”
“Back to your regularly scheduled donors, then?”
Lucian raised his eyebrows. “So, you.”
“Of course.” He held out his hand aloft, offering his wrist. “I could do with a break, anyhow.”
Perhaps the prince rolled his eyes, but he barely hesitated in rising from the table. “You never used to be so incorrigible, Hanstrom.”
Was it embarrassing that he was nearly thrumming in anticipation? He missed these feedings. It had been so long. He had been studiously denied from lending a vein immediately following Lucian’s awakening. Finally, he thought, and shrugged, very lightly. Affecting an air of nonchalance. “You’re healing, Your Highness. I worry only for your health and safety.”
Lucian snorted, folding to his knees next to him. He reached for Ignatius’s wrist, but Ignatius held it out of the way.
“My neck,” he said gently, raising two fingers to tap at his skin. “It’s easier for you.”
“Better for me.”
“Yes.”
“Just that,” Lucian said, with the same, dry tone, but the fingers of his right hand were deft as they undid and shifted Ignatius’s collar, and he was smiling before he descended upon his neck.
The pain was almost a blessing, and Ignatius bit his tongue to hide a tiny, helpless moan. It was akin to returning home after a long journey, settling into bed at the end of a long day. Right. Oh, he had missed the closeness, too wrapped up in duty and worry.
“Only that,” he mumbled vaguely, delayed, and tilted his head to further bare his skin to him.
Lucian said nothing, a hand at his back and atop his thigh. And this was bliss. So very close to rapture, and he was falling into the weight of it all. His mind was drifting, and he thought he made a soft note of pleasure. And then, even more vaguely, he realized it was a noise of pain– of something not right. Of feeling too drained too quickly– but perhaps he had been drifting longer than he’d thought– but Lucian wasn’t pulling away and Ignatius made a garbled noise– a question, perhaps, maybe just his name–
He couldn’t pull away if he wanted to. Somewhere, internally, mostly, he was becoming aware that Lucian’s hands on him were restrictive, and the mouth at his neck hot and insistent and his fangs were still very much embedded into his throat. Somewhere, he thought he ought to be panicking. Somewhere else, Ignatius knew he’d let Lucian continue regardless.
He would pull away on his own, after his fill. Surely… surely… surely…
The darkness from outside the windows was enclosing upon him, and Ignatius hazily found that he maybe wasn’t so certain after all.
8
Chapter 8
Somewhere, basely, Ignatius was aware off the fact that he ought to be opening his eyes. Somewhere, beneath the pain and the strange muted feeling keeping him well within its grasp. Somewhere where he couldn’t pull himself up from the depths, but could still hear everything that was going. Some of what was going on.
“Luna–” Lucian’s voice. A way he ought never to sound like. “You need to–”
“I need space.”
“I’m not leaving–”
“You can and you will, now go!” Luna ordered.
The faintest pass of air against his skin, Ignatius supposed. The brush of dainty hands against him. Hot and cold at the same time. What was happening?
The sound of footsteps. Panicked whispering, and then silence.
Silence.
Ignatius drifted.
“Sister–!”
Displacement. Fabric shifting, the sound of a body slumping against another. Ignatius wasn’t certain how he could pick out the details, but they were almost in startling clarity.
“This is… beyond my power, Lucian…”
“Then… Mother–”
“– would sooner let him die if she realized what he was to you,” Luna interrupted. Her voice was weak. She sounded like she was drifting just as much as Ignatius felt he was, but rationalizing that was conscious thought. Ignatius didn’t think himself capable of it, then.
“That’s unacceptable–”
“He is a human servant … a man you love, Lucian, she would never–”
“No. No–”
Lucian, frantic in ways Ignatius couldn’t understand. Had never heard in his life. It ought to strike fear in him.
It didn’t.
“– is the only way.”
“You know that I cannot–”
“You can! Or he will die, Lucian.”
“I can’t do that to him. Not like this. Not ever, even, you know–”
“I am not here to coddle you, brother!” The urgency was the only thing to abruptly affect Ignatius. A brief instant of it, and then gone. “I cannot heal him and he has hours at most! You took the risk every time you bit him, this is your responsibility! You have to make this choice, not I!”
“I won’t take away his humanity this way!”
“You already have!”
A pause.
Luna was the one to continue. “… guilt isn’t my intention. I know you feel enough of it as is. … we both do.”
“This wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have been here with the two of you while you were still healing. I take as much blame in that regard. And, that asides… my training has been for naught if I cannot save a single man.”
“It’s not your fault,” Lucian repeated, perhaps vehemently. But it sounded weak. So weak. “… I would blood him myself if I could, brother, you know this.” “… I know.”
“I am sorry for being curt. I’m sorry for all of it. But this isn’t… time is of the essence, and this is Ignatius we’re speaking of. This is…”
“… reality,” Lucian whispered.
Weak, weak.
He thought he imagined the feeling of his hand against tendrils of hair, his palm against a che
ek.
He thought he imagined the feeling of tears beneath his fingers, and then he didn’t think at all.
Consciousness returned all at once. It hurt like a certain kind of living hell.
For a short moment, Ignatius wasn’t certain why. His memory was fuzzy and sharp at the same time; details slow to filter back in like awakening from a long nap. But he was buzzing at the same time, wildly aware, thoughts filtering through like tasks filed away to be performed later but immediately forgotten.
It was strange, and overwhelming, and the pain throbbing through his body did little to ease the mental discomfort.
Factor in that he had no idea where he was… everything was unfamiliar, dark and rich and endless. His eyes ached. His ears were thumping with the silence. Where was Lucian?
“Ignatius.”
He jerked forward. The momentum nearly sent him tumbling off the bed, a tangle of blankets in his lap. The voice at his side was unfamiliar. Sounded strange, and the atmosphere smelled strange, and there was that ache, the pounding echoing in his head and limbs and mind settling into a point in his throat, and his teeth, and he opened his mouth to speak and his tongue scraped against something too sharp. The taste of metal in his mouth, of blood––
Ignatius stopped.
Oh. Oh.
Oh no. Oh God–
“Ignatius,” the voice at his side repeated, and Ignatius whipped around to face it.
It was a man, middle-aged. Short brown hair and blue eyes. Black fabric and skull print and… no, no, not human. He was a vampire. He was a vampire, like Ignatius was, now…
Ignatius couldn’t help a tiny whimper, and pressed his palm over his lips.
“My name is Cor Leonis,” the man said. Then he reached to the small nightstand and held out a dark mug. “Drink this.”
He didn’t want to ask. He didn’t need to. “No,” he ground out, and kept his hand at his mouth. “If you think you can starve yourself, you’re mistaken.”
“No.” He wanted to be stern. But Gods, he wanted to drink, and there was no hope of it being bourbon or whiskey. No hope at all.
“You’ve been awake three times over and bit me the last time.” He held up his hand, still bandaged, and Ignatius winced. Vampire on vampire injuries tended to take longer to heal, part of why Lucian had taken so long to recuperate– “You need to drink, or you will do it unwillingly. Right now it remains your choice.”
Ignatius hesitated. And then shook the thought away, looking off towards the window. The curtains were drawn. “Where is His Highness?”
“His Highness?”
“Lucian.”
“In Holstein, I would imagine.”
Ignatius looked back. “In…” Stopped. “Where am I?” he amended, and tried to will his fangs to recede. He felt as though he were going to vomit. The answer to his question… was not going to assuage that, he was certain.
“This is Insomnia, the capital of Lucis.”
“Lucis…” he repeated. It sounded so foreign on his tongue.
He knew of Lucis. He had studied everything he had ever been able to get his hands on regarding all of the neighboring nations, both as a learning exercise and as a way to gather information on Holstein’s enemies and allies. But this… Cor Leonis… informing him that he was in Lucis, and that Lucian was in Holstein…
This was wrong. This was all so wrong.
“As a token of goodwill to Lucis, you were transferred to our care to become chamberlain to our prince, Nicholas Lucis Caelum.”
No.
This wasn’t happening. It could not be happening.
but it was happening, so very clear in the thirst rattling his bones and the fangs currently scraping his own tongue.
He was in Lucis, and he was a vampire.
The breath whisked in through a too tight throat, and Ignatius shuddered as he reached out his hand for the earlier offered mug.
9
Chapter 9
“Ignatius.”
He raised a hand in greeting. “Gladiolus.”
“Oh come on.”
“Gladio,” he relented, and sighed. “Nicknames are hardly professional while on the job–”
“Yeah, that’s why you call the prince ‘Nick,’ huh?”
“He insists,” he said, exasperated. “Far be it from my position to go against his wishes, but it feels so… blasphemous.”
“Blasphemous?” Gladio laughed, so loudly that one of the glaive looked at him from their posts. “Gods, Ignatius, you’ve really got to get the stick out of–”
“Oh, there you two are!”
Ignatius glanced up as Prompto edged around the corner.
“Prompto.”
“Afternoon,” Ignatius greeted, and then paused when he noticed the small, black box nestled within the blonde’s hands. “A new project?”
“It’s a camera!”
“A… wait, that little thing?”
“Yeah! They’re making them, ah, portable now? Smaller. For average people.” He held it up. “Get together, I’ll take a photograph!”
“Prompto. We’re vampires.”
“Oh, crud.”
“You’re a vampire as well,” Ignatius chided gently. “Or have you forgotten?”
“Well, I have to press the button, so I wasn’t trying to take a photo of myself…” He shrugged, and waved his hands at them. “Get together, anyway! We can pretend!”
“Prompto, I really need to get these to–”
Gladio slung an arm around his shoulder. “Aw, pose for a picture won’t be in. Don’t crush a dream.”
“Oh, and I thought I was so good at that,” he said dryly, a tiny smile threatening his careful facade.
It had been… difficult… to settle into life at Lucis. Or perhaps most accurately, it had been difficult to settle into his… lack of humanity. It had been… terrible, for a lack of a better description. It had been months of being miserable. Loathe as he was to sound so dramatic about it, there hadn’t been another way to handle it.
Perhaps most surprisingly, the trouble hadn’t come with drinking blood. The internal disgust had been there– he was drinking blood– the idea only in combat by the way he had felt when Lucian had drank his blood. He had always been beautiful when he had.
Granted, Ignatius hadn’t thought he was beautiful himself. He was messy. It had been months before he’d felt confident enough to control himself around other vampires, and even longer to associate with humans.
He hadn’t been allowed to meet Nicholas during those months. He was too dangerous, unpredictable, Cor told him. He had hated how blunt the older vampire had been with him at first, and then he had started to appreciate it. There was no coddling to be had, not like this.
When he finally had been permitted to finally meet with the prince of Lucis, it had been… it had been.
He had wanted to hate him, too. Hate every one of them. The Florences for turning him, the Queen for dismissing him. King Regis for accepting him and Cor for forcing him to accept the state he was in, and he had wanted to hate Nicholas because Nicholas was not his prince.
That had lasted for all of a moment, especially when it came to the king and his son. They were only… inviting, and accepting. And neither of them were at fault.
And as for Lucian, well… Ignatius could never hate him.
The details of his turning had never been shared with him. He wasn’t certain if their friends in Insomnia truly did not know the extent of it, or if they were keeping it from him on principle. He remembered Lucian drinking from him, and then he had only flashes, brief memories he thought were more like dreams than anything else. He hadn’t known if they were true or not. He still didn’t.
He could, however, make the assumption that it had been the prince of Holstein who had blooded him. He always had been, and still was, praised for his intelligence, after all.
“Great! I’ll let you guys see it when I get this roll developed!” Prompto tucked the camera back into his chest. “
Are we going out tonight still?”
“It’ll have to depend on the workload. Which reminds me.” He shifted the suit folded over his arm. “The prince’ll need awakening, I imagine.”
“As if his Royal Laziness wouldn’t sleep until the last possible moment,” Gladio said, and Ignatius shot him a look. “You know it’s true. Go get him awake, we’re meant to train tonight after the soirée.”
Ignatius nodded. “I’ll remind him. Prompto, Gladio.” He bid them farewell, and continued on the familiar path up to the prince’s bedroom.
The Citadel was so very different to Fenestala Manor. But it was home now. One that he had even grown to adore nearly as much as the previous. Even if it was bittersweet.
Two sharp raps of his knuckles against the door, and then Ignatius let himself into Nicholas’s room. “Your Highness.” As predicted, he was still asleep. “Highness, it is time to be awake.” As also predicted, Nicholas didn’t so much as twitch.
A sigh, exasperated still, but fond. No, he’d never had the chance to hate him. “Highness.” He reached forward, taking the prince’s shoulder between his fingers to shake it gently. “You’ll be late for the party at this rate.”
“Nggghhh…”
Ignatius smiled. “Come along, now. The sun’s long gone down.”
“‘m awake,” Nicholas mumbled. “‘s the time…?”
“Seven-thirty. You’ll be due at nine. I’ve brought up your suit.”
“Ugh…” Groggy blue stared up at him through barely open eyes. Nick yawned widely, scrubbing both hands against his face. “Party… damn… forgot.” He pushed himself up, and Ignatius finally relented to continue gathering Nicholas’s things for this evening.
“Gladio informs me you’re to train with him tonight as well.”
“I do remember that.” He kicked the blankets away, staggering to his feet. Ignatius backtracked, reaching out a hand to steady his sleep warm body. “Gods… my throat’s killing me.”
He paused. “Since when?” The prince’s last feeding had been just over a week ago, and wasn’t scheduled before the gathering tonight. These were vampire diplomats, but for Nicholas to be that uncomfortable throughout something he barely tolerated to begin with…
