General Lucius continued. "The mage did not escape on her own. Several guards were killed in the escape, and they all bear wounds that indicate a wolf attack."
Now there were murmurs from the other generals. My father and I remained silent, absorbing the information that we had been given.
I knew I should be focusing on the fact that a wolf had come in and attacked things—the werewolves had been eradicated eons ago, this shouldn't be possible—but the general's usage of the female pronoun had stuck in my head.
Which blood mage had escaped? I had to know. Was it the female that I had visited earlier in the night?
For some reason, my gut clenched at the thought. I didn't want her out on the streets. I had spoken to a guard after leaving her, to learn more about her. She had been in captivity for most of her life, she didn't know how the world worked. She wouldn't survive out on the streets.
She has a wolf with her.
My lips curled back in a subtle snarl. I liked that idea even less than the idea that she was out on her own. If she was with a wolf...But no, I needed to push these thoughts from my mind. She didn't matter to me.
I forced my thoughts to turn to the more important topic at hand; we had a werewolf problem. I didn't waste time thinking about all the ways this was illogical or impossible. It had happened and it had to be dealt with.
Did anyone even know how to kill a werewolf anymore, short of extracting the heart? That was the only way to kill a vampire, and I guessed it would be an efficient means of dispatching a werewolf as well. But that sort of fighting was dangerous. It required you to get close to your enemy, and offered up the possibility of them reaching your heart as well.
This was why the blood mages had been such a dangerous enemy when they had free roam of the world—they possessed the power to kill a vampire from great distances. We had been powerless to do anything in retaliation without moving in large packs and quickly finding the blood mage attacking the group.
A werewolf, though, would have to get in close to kill a vampire. It provided a level playing field, and I relished the thought of killing the wolf that had made off with the blood mage.
Somehow, I knew it was she who had escaped.
No, we are not thinking about that now. I reprimanded myself as my thoughts turned back to the blood mage.
"We must go on the offensive," I said once I managed to reclaim control of my mind. "If there are wolves in the city, we must be rid of them as soon as is possible."
"Patience, young Prince," my father said. "We must not be so hotheaded."
I chafed at the reprimand. He called me hotheaded, but I saw no flaw with my plan. If we rooted out the werewolf we would be able to reclaim the blood mage that escaped. She would have to be killed, made an example of...
I found that I didn't like the thought of that.
Of course, there was a much more disturbing thought that took precedence. What if the wolf that had made off with the blood mage was not the only one in the city? The wolves of old had always moved in packs. Where there was one, there were always five more. At minimum. Logic dictated that there would be a pack behind the lone wolf we'd been attacked by, and that was dangerous.
Hunting a wolf pack was dangerous. A wolf on its own was not such a problem to be dealt with, but put any kind of beast in large numbers, and the odds quickly go in the other direction.
If there was a pack, we should move now, so that it didn't have time to get back to its pack members.
I wanted to argue this with my father, make him see the reason behind my suggestion, but decorum dictated that I say nothing. My father had made a statement, and all must defer to him. The council was not on equal levels with the King—this was how it had always been. And I was no different from the council, aside from the fact that they also ranked beneath me. But when it came to the King, well, no one could argue with him.
Especially not in front of others.
I couldn't believe he wasn't going to immediately go on the offensive, though. To wait and see what would happen was an act of weakness.
When I am King, I will not be so weak. I will make a show of force so that my people will always know that they have a strong leader who will look out for them.
No one doubted my father’s capabilities that I knew of. No one other than me. Decades under his command, working closely with him, had shown me that he was not the immaculate ruler that he presented to the people. He was plagued with indecision, and he moved too slowly.
It would be the death of him one of these days, but I hoped that day would not come too soon.
I did not yearn for the crown. It came with responsibilities I was not yet ready for. As a Prince I had enough of those already, and I had to remind myself frequently to enjoy the small amount of liberty that came with my position in comparison to my father's.
He had no friends. It was impossible to be close to anyone when you were King. You always had to be concerned with whether or not someone was after your crown. Paranoia came with the job description. There was only ever one person a King could feel safe with, and that was his Queen. Not even his heirs were trusted—perhaps least of all his heirs.
But his relationship with his mate—my mother—was abnormal now, to the point where he might as well not have a Queen. My mother lived, but she had barely been able to carry me to term, and her last pregnancy had been over a century ago. The miscarriages had created a void between the two of them, and in a way it was as if they weren’t mated at all.
And so it was that I was the only heir.
Yet another dangerous and weak thing that my father had done.
He should have produced more heirs, in case something happened to me. Heirs were important, not just for the succession of ruling the people, but because without one of the royal blood, the entire vampire race would die out. We are all of us linked together, from sire to sire. The death of a sire means the death of all their progeny. And all vampires are ultimately linked back to the King—if the King has no heir and is killed, then that is the end of our species.
There is a special ceremony that is performed with centuries old magic to officially link the succession from sire to heir so that upon the sire's death the hold of the line is passed down to the heir, rather than the heir dying along with the sire. If the ceremony is not performed, then the line dies with the sire.
For me, the ceremony had been performed when I had reached my prime. So long as nothing happened to me before my father died, our line was secure. And then it would be my responsibility to secure the lineage.
Truthfully, my father had already begun to pressure me on this. It was exceptionally important because I had no brothers, no one to take my place. And yet I resisted for now.
How had I come to this line of thought? I pushed it from my mind, focusing on my father when I recognized that he was about to speak.
He cleared his throat. "We will send our stealthiest warriors into the city to locate the wolf and the blood mage. The blood mage is of utmost priority—if that collar falls into the wrong hands, they could figure out how to remove its magic and everything we have worked for will be for naught."
All the more reason why I thought a full frontal assault was necessary. But I pushed that thought aside as well; my father's decision had been made.
I could do nothing but stand by him.
Chapter 7
Nina
I spat blood onto the ground to clear it from my mouth, glaring at the wolf across from me.
One month, that was all I had been given to acclimate to the world again before my training had begun. I would have liked a little more time, but that wasn't up to me. It was all up to Conall. I owed him a life debt, and if he said to jump then I was damn well going to jump.
The she-wolf across from me was grinning viciously. She enjoyed the fight, and I think more than that she enjoyed pummeling me. A month had been enough time for my body to adjust to food and for me to begin bulking up so that I no longer looked like a
skeleton, but it hadn't been enough time for the wolves to accept me.
Still, they glared at me whenever I walked past them. I heard the insults muttered under their breath, and I knew that they hated me more than words could say. I felt like it was a little over the top, all things considered. I knew that blood mages weren't exactly the most accepted race, but after my collar was removed and they saw that I didn't immediately take control of everyone's mind, I had thought that they would bend a little more.
That was not the case.
I ducked to the side as the she-wolf lunged for me again, narrowly missing her first. She wasn't holding back. If I let her get a good shot in, she might just break some of my bones.
That, I did not want. I wasn't in the mood to break and bruise, but again, that wasn't up to me. I was going to walk away from this, one giant bruise, I had already accepted that.
But that didn't mean that I wasn't going to give this my all.
I desperately wanted to make Conall proud. I wanted him to think that I was worthwhile. I didn't want him to regret choosing me to save from the cells.
Because a part of me was afraid that if he regretted it, he would send me back. I couldn't ever go back to those cells. A shudder ran down my spine at the thought of it, and my attacker took advantage of the moment when I wasn't paying attention.
She landed a punch to my shoulder, sending me spinning backwards. I fought to regain my footing and forced myself to concentrate on the task at hand.
Conall was watching, and I couldn't disappoint him. That just wasn't acceptable.
I balled my hands into fists and bounced my weight from foot to foot, ducking again to avoid another blow, then darted in to slam my fist into her gut.
She moved aside before I could get there and brought both of her fists down together on my back, using my momentum against me. I slammed into the ground, hard. My head smacked against the dirt and I just barely managed not to groan. All those years of torture really came in handy when you didn't want your opponent to know that they were getting the better of you.
If she thought I was beaten, then there wouldn't be anything I could do.
I rolled onto my back, pulling my legs up and threw my weight forward, landing on my feet. It was a move I had been taught a few days ago, and it had taken a lot of practice to get it down pat.
Yeah, they didn't immediately throw me into beat-you-black-and-blue practice, they had started with teaching me how to fall. You would think that falling would be something everyone automatically knew how to do, like some sort of genetic code. How hard could falling be?
Hard, let me tell you. You have to learn how to hit the ground right, with your palms flat out in front of you so that you can push off as soon as you hit the ground. You have to learn how to hold your head steady so that your neck doesn't slam into the ground, and yet at the same time stop your head from cracking open.
So yeah, it's hard, but I had learned. And then once I had learned how to fall, they'd taught me how to get back up as quickly as possible. I was already a walking bruise from those lessons, and my muscles were sore and screaming at me, but there was no respite to be had.
Every day was another lesson. Every day held more bruises to be added to my collection. There was no downtime for healing. I assumed that was because they wanted to toughen me up as quickly as possible, but no one really said why.
No one really said a lot to me, period.
"Come on, little girl," the she-wolf taunted me.
I gritted my teeth together and came at her, fists swinging. She sidestepped me, but I danced to the side this time to keep her from repeating the same move from earlier.
Another lesson learned. See? I'm not completely useless. I can figure things out pretty quickly.
My breath was coming in hard pants, my lungs were burning, and my arms felt like blocks of heavy wood. It took a lot of effort to raise them up to a fighting stance again, but I managed it.
She swung at me again, and this time I blocked her blow with my forearm and brought my other arm up in an undercut.
My jaw dropped when my fist connected with her face, snapping her head back.
Holy shit, I'd actually gotten a shot in! I really hadn't thought I would be able to accomplish that.
But there was no time to waste getting excited about my lucky shot, because she was wiping the blood from under her nose and her eyes promised death.
She didn't like getting hit. News flash: neither did I! But apparently that didn't matter.
Without warning, she came at me again, fists flying. It was all I could do to duck and block her blows; I was entirely on the defensive. This was bad—defensive wasn't a good position to be in for long. You tired quickly when all you were doing was blocking blows, and you were never going to win a fight from this point of view.
As I blocked her, I tried to keep my eyes on her body, looking for an opening.
Come on, just give me another one.
But she didn't. She just kept swinging at me, and I knew I was going to go down any minute. There was nothing I could do about it, she was just too fast.
I ran to the side, catching a blow on my back as I went, trying to get away from her so I could get my bearings in the fight. But she pursued me viciously, not giving me even a moment to catch my breath.
Jesus Christ, didn't she know what a fair fight was? This was just training; she shouldn't have been coming at me so hard.
I spun around, and her foot collided with my chest, sending me flying into the ground. I choked, trying to draw air into my lungs. They just didn't want to work. I felt like a thousand-pound truck was resting on my chest, my heart was stuttering, and I knew I had to get back on my feet.
Stand up, damn it. Don't let her beat you.
I struggled to my feet and ducked to avoid her next blow, but her foot connected with my head and I saw stars. I clenched my eyes tightly shut as I stumbled, trying to stay standing, and then her foot connected with my arm and I felt it bend at an angle it really shouldn't have.
A scream was torn from my throat and I fell to my knees, clutching my left arm to my chest as I swore up a storm. I couldn't open my eyes to see through the pain, couldn't get my brain to work. All the torture from my childhood hadn't prepared me for broken bones—repeated flesh wounds had been the option of choice for the guards. Most of the time.
My arm was on fire, or at least that's how it felt. I fought to bring air into my lungs.
Could I get up and fight with a broken arm? I seriously contemplated it, as suicidal as that was. I didn't know how to fight with one arm. Hell, I didn't know how to fight period, as of the recent evidence had shown.
At last my eyes opened and I looked up to see the she-wolf staring down at me, waiting to see if I would get back up. I wanted to in that moment. I had never wanted anything more than to get back up and smash her fucking face in, but I knew that I wasn't capable of it.
Not that I wasn't capable of violence, I mean. But rather that I physically wasn't capable of completing the task at the moment.
Later. She would pay for what she had done to me. I swore it to myself, and it made me feel a little better.
"I submit," I said at last, choking out the words.
Movement caught my eye, and I looked over to the doorway that led to the training courtyard, and saw Conall leaning against it. Disappointment was writ across that face.
I hung my head in shame. That look crushed me in ways that a broken bone never could.
Chapter 8
Nina
That night found me in the library, my broken arm set and in a sling cradled against my chest, a grimoire in my lap. Conall had managed to save a few of them from before the days when the vampires took over the world. I don't know how he managed that—was he that old, or had it been done by his family members?—but I was grateful. It was a connection to a part of myself that I had never thought I would have.
I had always believed I would never be able to tap into this part of mysel
f. The iron collar I had worn for twelve years had assured me that I would be divorced from this side of myself for eternity, but Conall had been able to remove the collar and I had felt whole for the first time in a long time.
Now, I had to prove that I could learn the spells in the grimoires and prove to him that I was worth more than just your average hunter. He hadn't brought me here just to learn how to fight hand to hand, or how to stake a vampire. He had brought me here to learn blood magic, so that I could take out the vampires from distances others couldn't accomplish.
I had to learn how to do it.
I peered down at the page. One of the wolves had taught me to read, though it had been a painfully slow process, and I had felt like an idiot the entire time. But secretly, I was elated that this was a skill I now had under my belt, no matter the fact that it was still difficult. I had to sound out some of the words, but I could do it on my own now. The words meant something to me, they weren't just random scratching’s on a page that I would never be able to decipher.
Every day that I lived in this mansion I learned something new that carried me one step closer to being an independent person. No one would ever be able to take the ability to read away from me, and that elated me in ways I couldn't put into words.
Just as I came to a rather difficult word and was about to sound it out, I heard footsteps from outside the library. I tensed. The wolves were still very hostile towards me because of what I was, and I knew that if they found me learning blood magic—even though that was what Conall wanted from me—they would only become worse.
A part of me wanted to walk away from the blood magic if it would mean acceptance from the pack. I wanted to belong somewhere. No, not just somewhere, I wanted to belong here. I had been separated from my family since I was six years old, and the concept of family was basically foreign to me. I could only remember what my abuelita’s face looked like. She had raised me in place of my mother, who had been killed by the vampires when I was even younger. The faces of the other family members were just a blur to me, they hadn't been as much of a presence in my life.
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