“Good,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it. And to answer your question—yes, I do come to the library often. Although I rarely read fiction.”
“Non-fiction, then,” I assumed. “About what?”
Given his history as an athlete, I guessed he liked to read about sports.
“History,” he said, the answer taking me by surprise. “Mainly the history of the Vale, although I read as much about the supernatural world as possible. The library here is one of the few places in the world with accurate information about supernatural history. I assume the library of the Seventh Kingdom has similar books as well?”
“Of course,” I lied, not wanting the Seventh Kingdom to sound primitive.
At the same time, I realized how stupid I was being by spending my free time reading fiction. I was here to overthrow the Vale.
A good place to start would be by learning as much about it as possible.
“Well, I have to be going.” Jacen reached for the library door and opened it for me. “It was a pleasure running into you, Princess Ana.”
“Thank you,” I told him, stepping through the door. “It was a pleasure running into you, too.”
The door closed, and I stared around at the library, taking a few breaths to get ahold of myself. That conversation with Jacen had been so easy. It reminded me of the time I’d spent with him as Annika.
But beneath the good looks and charm, he was selfish and cold-hearted. He was an extraordinarily good actor, but I couldn’t let myself forget who he truly was, no matter what.
And so, I slipped the novel I’d been carrying into the return slot and headed to the non-fiction section of the library.
Because I had a kingdom to overthrow.
Annika
The books on supernatural history were all written by hand, and I wasn’t allowed to check them out. It looked like I would be spending my afternoon in the library.
I was engrossed in multiple books spread out over the table when a shadow loomed overhead.
I looked up and saw four of the princesses—Eve, Margaret, Darra, and Tari. Two of them were from Utopia—the all female kingdom in New Zealand, and two were from the Ward—the warrior kingdom in West Africa. They towered over me, their arms crossed and their lips set in firm lines as they stared down at me.
My heart leaped into my throat. I didn’t know why they were here, but it couldn’t be good. And I couldn’t help thinking about whoever had been trying to sabotage me since my arrival—the person who had made sure Tess didn’t know to tell me about the talent I needed to show during the welcome ball, and who had slipped a note with “go home” written in blood under my door at some point while I’d been sleeping last night.
By the way the four princesses were looking at me, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was one of them. Or all of them.
“Did you want to use this table?” I asked, even though all of the other tables in the section were empty.
“No.” Eve stepped forward—apparently she was the leader of the group. “We wanted to talk to you.”
“All right.” I was relieved that they wanted to talk, since they were looking at me like they wanted to beat me up. I closed up the books and stacked them into a pile. “Would you like to sit?”
“No.” One of the twins snarled—I assumed Tari, since she was the more vocal of the two. “You should have stood the moment you saw us, given our ranks.”
“We’re the same rank.” I tried to keep my voice steady, not wanting to give away how intimidated they were making me feel. I glanced to the front of the library, relieved at the sight of Tess standing with four other guards—I assumed the guards for the four princesses. Tari and Darra were both skilled warriors—they could probably beat the guards in a fight—but it made me feel better to know I was protected.
Well, physically protected. The guards couldn’t stop the princesses if they attacked me verbally. Which was exactly what I felt like they were preparing to do right now.
“We’re not the same rank,” Eve said, her nose in the air. “The four of us are princesses.”
“As am I,” I reminded them, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible. A princess didn’t raise her voice—right? “You all saw me use compulsion on our first day here, as did the rest of the court.”
“We did.” Eve nodded. “But we’re princesses of actual kingdoms. Your kingdom doesn’t exist. The Seventh Kingdom is a myth. Therefore, you’re a princess of nothing and should rise in our presence.”
“I will not.” I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms, making it clear I wasn’t budging.
The thing was, they were right. I was further from a vampire princess than they could imagine. If they knew what I really was—a human blood slave—they would kill me here and now.
But I was sick and tired of vampires pushing me around. So I was staying in this chair, even if all four of them tried to pull me out of it themselves.
“You should have been the one sent home this morning.” Eve sneered. “Not Princess Bianca.”
“I thought you would be happy that Princess Bianca was gone.” I held my gaze steady with hers. “It means there’s one less princess for us to compete against.”
“We’ll be happy once you’re gone,” Princess Margaret chimed in. “You’re wasting the time of our prince.”
“Your prince?” I laughed. “Prince Jacen belongs to no one.”
“He belonged to me after the ball.” Eve smirked and tossed back her hair, watching me as she waited for my reaction.
I prickled, but tried to keep the annoyance from my face. “What do you mean by that?” I asked, each word crisp and steady.
“Once the ball was over, he invited me to his quarters,” she said. “As for what happened once we were there, use your imagination. Which it sounds like you have a lot of, since you used it to invent an entire kingdom.”
Margaret laughed and moved closer to Eve. The twins showed no emotion whatsoever. They were unreadable—like statues.
I didn’t want to believe what Eve had said. But I also remembered the way Jacen had looked at her on the night of the ball. He’d been attracted to her—there was no doubt about it.
He’d always behaved like a gentleman around me, but then again, Jacen was a cold-hearted liar. And Eve looked so smug that my gut told me she was telling the truth.
I couldn’t let the one good conversation I’d had with Jacen in the hallway earlier make me get soft toward him. If I allowed myself to get swayed by such a small thing, how was I supposed to be strong enough to pull off my mission?
“I’m leaving,” I told the princesses, standing up from my chair with so much force that it nearly toppled over behind me.
“You’re leaving the palace?” Eve quirked an eyebrow. “That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said since you arrived.”
“I’m not leaving the palace.” I narrowed my eyes at her and squared my shoulders, glad that I was taller than her in Ana’s body. “I’m returning to my quarters. The only way I’ll be leaving the Vale is if Prince Jacen asks me to leave himself.”
I turned around and walked away from them, not bothering once to look behind.
Annika
I somehow managed to wait until reaching my quarters before collapsing onto my bed and bursting into tears.
I hated that I was crying over such a stupid confrontation. It was obvious from the start that those girls didn’t like me—they hadn’t tried to hide it.
But the girls weren’t all I was crying over. While I hated to admit it, the thought of Jacen and Eve together hurt. Why had he taken the most hateful princess of the whole bunch to his bed? The only princess who’d been nice to me so far was Princess Isabella, but she was quiet and generally kept to herself. She was also my competition. They all were. I couldn’t let myself forget that.
I was alone here. I was alone everywhere.
There was no one left in the world who cared about me. And it was all the fault of the vampires.
>
Someone sat on the bed, and I looked up, finding Geneva. Not in her true form, of course—the others in the palace would have recognized her true form. Instead, she was using a transformation potion to appear as a homely middle-aged woman. While in the palace, she was posing as my lady’s maid, and she’d taken up the room connected to mine.
All on my command, of course. As long as I had possession of Geneva’s sapphire ring—which I’d been keeping in a hidden pocket of my underwear—she was bound to do as I commanded.
“Since you’re not volunteering anything, I guess I’m going to be forced to ask you.” She sighed and rolled her eyes, her brazen attitude coming through despite her modest form. “What happened?”
I sat up, sniffed, and wiped the tears from my face. Once in control of myself, I gave her a run-down of what had happened in the library.
“I hate her,” I said once I was done.
“Which one?” Geneva asked.
“Eve.”
“Why?” She raised an eyebrow. “Because she confronted you about the Seventh Kingdom not being real, or because she slept with your silver-eyed prince?”
I glared at her. Next time I was upset, I needed to remember that Geneva was not a good source of comfort.
“Forget about it.” I sighed and sat back into the pillows. “I just wish supernaturals didn’t exist, and that I was home with my family like I should be.”
“I’m afraid my powers don’t extend that far,” Geneva said. “I can’t kill people or bring back the dead.”
“I know.” I huffed. “It was a figure of speech. I wasn’t making a real wish.”
“Be specific in your language in the future,” she told me. “The spell that binds me doesn’t take these ‘figures of speech’ into account.”
“Will do,” I said, although now that I was reminded of my wishes, I wanted to do something to get back at those princesses. Mainly, Eve. “Would it be in your power to give Eve a horrible case of acne?”
“Technically, yes,” Geneva said. “Except that vampires don’t experience such human ailments. If Princess Eve were to come down with acne, she would know that a witch had cast a spell upon her. And since you’re the only vampire princess with a witch as her lady’s maid…”
“She’ll suspect that I’m the one who did it,” I said. “Any spell cast on any of the princesses will likely be blamed on me.”
“Yes,” Geneva agreed. “Even though you’re masquerading as a princess, you should behave like a queen. A queen doesn’t best her competition by lowering herself to the petty tactics of schoolgirls. A queen bests her competition by being the best.”
“How are you such an expert on queens?” I asked her.
“I’ve known one or two of them in my time.” She glanced at the door, her eyes far off, and then snapped her attention back to me. “My personal opinion is that queens are always far better rulers than kings.”
I was about to say that Queen Laila didn’t fit that pattern, but it seemed stupid to voice such a thought while in her palace. My quarters felt private, but I couldn’t allow myself to get too comfortable. I had no idea who might overhear.
“I wish for you to create a sound barrier,” I told Geneva. “So that no one can overhear our conversation. That’s within your power, right?”
“Most certainly.” She flicked her hand. “The sound barrier is up. You may speak freely now.”
“Good,” I said. “Because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about why I’m here.”
“You’ve changed your mind about wanting to rid the world of Laila?” Geneva asked.
I couldn’t be certain, but it almost seemed like her eyes lit up at the prospect.
“No,” I said quickly, since there was no question in my mind—Laila had destroyed the lives of too many humans. Her reign needed to end. “But I am worried about the feasibility of this plan.”
“What about it?” Geneva asked.
“The current plan is that I pretend to be a vampire princess, get Prince Jacen to propose to me, marry him, and then kill Queen Laila once I’m an official princess of the Vale,” I started.
“Yes.” Geneva nodded. “That’s what we discussed.”
“But I’m already here,” I said. “And we can’t say for sure that Prince Jacen will choose me. So why not kill Queen Laila now?”
“Because with princesses from all over the world staying here, security is higher than ever,” Geneva said, her eyes sharp. “Now is the worst time to launch an attack on the queen. You’ll fail.”
“I thought you were the most powerful witch in the world?” I challenged. “Surely if anyone can help me pull this off, it’s you?”
“I’m the most powerful witch in the world, but I’m not stupid,” she snapped. “Launching an attack when Laila is expecting it is stupid. You would be dooming yourself to fail.”
“But at least I’m here and can get a shot at her,” I pointed out. “If Jacen eliminates me from the competition and I have to leave the palace, I’ll have lost my chance entirely.”
“So don’t get eliminated from the competition.” She said it like it was the simplest thing in the world.
“Easier said than done.”
We glared at each other, and I had a feeling we’d reached a standstill.
“You’re letting Eve get you worked up for nothing,” Geneva said, calmer now. “I’ve seen enough of men to know that the prince won’t choose a quiff like her.”
“I don’t know,” I said, defeated. “But at the rate things are going, he won’t choose me, either. And if I get eliminated and lose my chance to take down Laila, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”
“If you try to take down Laila when security is so heightened, you won’t be alive to regret anything,” she said. “Neither will I, for that matter. The guards will kill you before you can get within arms length of the queen. If you’re killed while wearing my ring, the ring will go dormant and I’ll be gone, too. I’m looking out for myself just as much as I’m looking out for you.”
“I know.” I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair, since she did have a point. “But it sounds like you’re looking out for Queen Laila, too.”
“I’m looking out for myself,” she repeated, her voice hard. “And as long as my ring is tied to your life, that means I’m looking out for you as well.”
“I know.” I felt like we were going in circles now. “I guess I thought we would start forming the plan to kill Laila the moment we got to the palace. I even tried reading about the Vale today while in the library, and I couldn’t find anything that might help.”
“Queen Laila isn’t so foolish as to keep the key to killing her in a book in the library.” Geneva smirked again.
From the way she spoke of Laila, it sounded like she admired her.
“No.” I crossed my arms, feeling more frustrated than ever. “But it didn’t hurt to try. Better than sitting around all day waiting and doing nothing.”
“You’re impatient,” Geneva observed. “But killing an original vampire is no easy business. The originals have always been secretive—it’s what’s kept them alive for all these centuries.”
“You don’t know how to kill her,” I realized. “That’s why you’re stalling.”
“Like I said, this is no easy business.” Her lack of a direct answer verified that I was correct. “But I will come up with a plan—one that will keep you alive. All I ask is that you bide the time until I do and make sure that the prince keeps you in this competition. Can you do that?”
I opened my mouth, ready to say that I would try. But I closed it, remembering a quote from Star Wars that my brother always reminded me of whenever I was struggling with a new skill in gymnastics—“Do or do not. There is no try.”
My date with Jacen was coming up this week. It was up to me to make sure it went well enough that he would choose to keep me in the Vale. I had no idea how to do that—dating had never been a skill of mine, since I’d always been so focused on sc
hoolwork and gymnastics that I hadn’t had time for dating.
But Jacen had been interested in me enough as Annika, and our conversation in the hallway earlier had gone well. In the hallway, I’d been acting more like myself than I had since arriving to the palace. Maybe that was the trick—I needed to act more like myself.
I could do this. I had to do this.
“Yes,” I told her, trying to sound as confident as I wanted to feel. “I can.”
Karina
The wolf—a boy who couldn’t have been older than sixteen—turned around and ran toward the town. Like the others, he didn’t smell of wolf thanks to the concealment charm the witch Marigold had created for him.
“That’s the final one?” I asked Noah, who stood with Marigold across the boundary.
I couldn’t believe I was helping the wolves sneak into the Vale. But King Nicolae was convinced that if the Vale fell, Queen Laila would have no where else to turn but to him—and that she would finally be his queen like he’d always wanted. When the invitation from Prince Jacen had arrived requesting that two princesses be sent to the Vale from each vampire kingdom, King Nicolae had been quick to select me. Not because he wanted me to win Prince Jacen’s heart—but because he wanted me to work from the inside to help the wolves take down the kingdom.
King Nicolae’s unrequited obsession with Queen Laila didn’t faze me. The only thing I cared about was the blood oath he’d made me—his promise that if I helped the wolves take down the Vale and got Laila to him, he would do everything he could to get me Geneva’s sapphire ring. He was positive that Laila had the ring. Whether or not she did didn’t bother me—by the terms of the blood oath, Nicolae was bound to help me get the ring if I helped take down the Vale and brought Laila to him.
I needed that ring. Geneva was the only witch in the world who could have strong enough powers to resurrect the love of my life, Peter.
I would do anything to have Peter back.
Even if that meant turning against my own kind and fraternizing with the enemy.
The Vampire Wish: The Complete Series (Dark World) Page 32
