It was faerie magic—it had to be.
Even so, I couldn’t deny that I’d enjoyed it.
I paced around the living room, trying to push the memories of my time with Prince Devyn out of my mind. I had more important things to worry about right now.
Such as Queen Laila being dead.
With Laila gone, my chance of becoming a vampire princess was gone with her. But now that she was gone, she could no longer keep me in the Vale, forcing me to use an obscene amount of magic to uphold the boundary.
At the rate I was going, I would use up all my magic within ten years.
For all of my life, leaving had never been an option. Queen Laila would have sent the vampire guards after me to bring me back. She would likely have invoked help from the other kingdoms, too.
If I’d left, I surely would have been dead long before I’d have a chance to die from exhausting my magic.
I’d been so close to getting Geneva’s sapphire ring. Once I had the ring, Laila would have been bound by the blood oath we’d made to turn me into a vampire princess. But no—Laila had to go and act all smug in front of the human girl. She’d wanted to demonstrate how indestructible she was, and how foolish the human had been to think she could kill an original vampire.
The last thing any of us had expected was for the human to be a Nephilim. The Nephilim were supposed to be extinct. They’d all been killed in the Great War.
But apparently, at least one of them had lived.
It explained why Annika had been able to enter the Crystal Cavern and survive. The Crystal Cavern was deadly to all supernaturals and humans on Earth… but Nephilim weren’t from Earth. Their human part was, but Nephilim had angel blood in them—and angel blood was from Heaven.
But I couldn’t just pace around thinking about the past. I needed to figure out what I was going to do with my future.
With Laila gone, I was free. I could go anywhere I wanted and use my magic for me—not because a vampire monarch was forcing my hand.
I looked around my quarters—lavishly designed, holding everything I owned in the world—and realized that I had no idea where I would go. I’d been born here, and had never lived anywhere else. My family was dead, and everyone I knew and cared about was here.
The Vale was my home.
And right now, the wolves that lived in the surrounding land were preparing to attack.
If I left the Vale now, the boundary would come down and the wolves would slaughter everyone who lived here. I couldn’t do that. But I also couldn’t continue using my magic as much as I’d been. If I did, it would eventually kill me.
I would have to get help from the other witches of the Vale. None of them were close to as strong as I was, but with their help, we could maintain the boundary together. That was how all the other vampire kingdoms maintained their boundaries. But Laila had always been against that—she’d thought it was safer to have one extremely well guarded witch maintaining the boundary than multiple. According to her, multiple witches made the Vale more vulnerable to attack.
But Laila wasn’t here anymore—I was. And now, for the first time ever, I had a long, full life ahead of me.
All I needed was for the other witches of the Vale to help me maintain the boundary. I knew them—I was friends with them and they respected me—so I had no doubt that they would rise to the task.
I would go to them soon. First, I needed to wait for the potion to finish brewing and drink it. Because I couldn’t risk getting pregnant with Prince Devyn’s child.
After the deal I’d made with him, I could never get pregnant at all.
Because my first-born child was promised to the fae.
I hadn’t had time to think about the repercussions of that deal yet. After all, when I’d made the deal, I’d assumed I was going to become a vampire princess. I’d thought that living a full life as a witch would be impossible.
With Laila dead, everything had changed.
I glanced at my watch, impatient to drink the potion and get it over with. There were still fifteen minutes to go.
Suddenly, someone knocked on my door, flinging it open without giving me a chance to say a word.
My guard Marc stood in the frame, as commanding and intense as ever. “You need to come with me now,” he said before I could rip into him for bursting into my quarters without permission. “Princess Stephenie has returned.”
Jacen
I’d just found the concealment charms in Laila quarters—with the help of the other vampire princes of the Vale, Scott and Alexander—when a guard came in and told us that we needed to come to the dungeons at once.
We arrived there around the same time as Camelia.
Princess Stephenie was behind the bars of a prison cell, cuffed to the wall. She looked like a disaster and smelled even worse.
“Why is my sister being kept in a prison cell?” Scott’s angry voice filled the room.
Technically, the other vampire princes and princesses of the Vale were my brothers and sisters, but I never referred to them as such. After all, I barely knew them. I especially barely knew Stephenie, since she rarely spent any time in the Vale at all.
I think Stephenie and I had had two or three conversations, at the most. But when I’d seen her, she’d always been decked out like she was preparing to walk the red carpet. She was beautiful, of course. In her human life, she’d been a movie star—she’d been considered the most beautiful woman in the world.
Then Laila had turned her and staged her death. The public believed Stephenie had died in a horrible car accident in the height of her fame.
Now, my glamorous, ex-movie star “sister” wore rags that were covered in her own waste, her skin was caked with dirt, and blood was smeared on her face. Fresh blood—the scent of it was as strong as Stephenie’s rotten stench.
“Princess Stephenie was found at the start of the human village, where she’d drained two humans and was starting on her third,” a guard said. He wasn’t someone I recognized, and he definitely wasn’t one of the guards who had been present in the throne room this morning. “My partner and I were able to stop her and bring her in.”
“You didn’t compel the guards away?” I asked Stephenie in shock. The princess wasn’t a warrior, but she knew how to use her compulsion.
“I lost control of my bloodlust.” She shrugged. “I know what happens to me next. But if you’ll give me the chance, I can explain. Where’s Queen Laila?” She looked around, clearly expecting the queen to appear at any moment.
“The queen is away on business,” Scott said smoothly.
If I didn’t know any better, I would have believed him.
He and Alexander had been informed about what had happened in the throne room immediately afterward. Even though they weren’t present at the time, as princes of the Vale, they needed to know.
At first they’d been shocked, but they’d agreed with the decision to keep Laila’s death under wraps until we established a new chain of command.
They’d also agreed that if any of us could gain Annika’s trust to get her to leave the Haven, it would be me.
Scott turned to face the guard, and continued. “Thank you for your service. My brothers, Camelia, and I will see this through from here.”
The guard bowed and left us alone.
“Erect a sound barrier around us,” Scott instructed Camelia once the guard was gone.
Camelia muttered a few words in Latin and gave a flick of her hand. “Done,” she said.
Scott nodded at her in thanks, and turned to Stephenie. “You haven’t lost control of your bloodlust since you were first turned,” he said. “What happened? Where have you been?”
“I was drugged and kidnapped,” she spat. “A witch brought me to a cell to rot. It was some sort of abandoned supernatural prison. She brought me a squirrel each day—she made me live off squirrel blood.” She shuddered, as if recalling the disgusting taste. “It was just enough to keep me alive, but barely. Most of the time she k
ept me drugged up on wormwood. And while I was knocked out, she took my blood.”
“How do you know she took your blood if you were knocked out?” I asked.
“There were two others—humans—in the cells across from me,” she said. “They told me.”
“Did this witch happen to have chin length dark hair, bangs, and ice blue eyes?” I asked.
Stephenie’s head shot up, and she glared at me. “You know her.”
“I’ve seen her,” I said. “Once. This morning, when she transported Annika to the Haven.”
“You think the witch who kidnapped Stephenie is Geneva?” Alexander asked.
“Geneva?” Stephenie gasped. “You mean the witch that Laila—”
“Yes.” Scott held his hand up, stopping her from continuing. “The one and only. But more importantly, the two humans in the prison with you—what did they look like?”
“One of them was a middle aged woman—she was nothing special,” Stephenie said. “The other was in her early-twenties. She was pretty, I suppose. Maybe even pretty enough to be an actress.”
I tried to imagine the witch and the humans Stephenie described, realization dawning on me. “The younger human’s hair,” I started. “What color was it?”
“Red,” Stephenie answered. “At least, that’s what it was before all the dirt caked onto it.”
“Princess Ana,” I said, and when I looked at Scott and Alexander, they nodded in affirmation.
“What?” Stephenie looked at me, my brothers, and then back at me again. “Who’s Princess Ana? And why didn’t Queen Laila send anyone to rescue me?”
“You go off to places all the time, never checking in for weeks,” Scott said. “We had no idea this time was anything different.”
“But if no one rescued you, then how did you get here?” Alexander asked.
“The witch transported me here.” Stephanie shrugged. “She popped into my cell, dropped me off in the center of the human village, and disappeared before I could go after her. That was when I was hit with the scent of all the blood…” Her eyes went dark, and I had a feeling she was remembering the moment the bloodlust had taken hold.
I’d experienced the same thing myself, back when I was first turned.
“Given your predicament, your reaction to the human blood was understandable,” Scott said. “You’re not going to be held responsible for their deaths.”
“Isn’t that Queen Laila’s call to make?” Stephenie asked, glancing around. “Where is she, anyway? She needs to be informed about what happened to me.”
“Much has happened in the Vale while you’ve been gone,” Scott said. “We’ll get you out of here so you can go to your quarters and clean up. Once you’re ready, we’ll be waiting for you in my room. There’s much to discuss, and no time to lose.”
Jacen
“You can’t be serious,” Stephenie said. “The queen can’t be gone.”
After getting Stephenie out of her cell, she’d hurried to clean up—it had taken her an hour, tops. For her, that was fast. We’d met in Scott’s quarters and had told her everything that had happened in the time she’d been gone.
“We wouldn’t lie about such a thing,” Scott said. “Laila’s gone and the Nephilim have returned. Other than the guards who were there this morning—who have been compelled to tell no one about what happened—we’re the only ones who know.”
“That’s not true,” Stephenie said. “Annika and Geneva know, too. Who knows how many others they’ve told in the Haven.”
“You’re right,” I said. “We can’t keep this secret for long. If the citizens of the Vale find out before we have a chance to tell them, they’ll have less trust in us than they already do.”
“Families are still trickling out after the wolf attack,” Alexander added. “They don’t feel safe here anymore. They’re leaving for the Haven.”
“Unless we take a stronger stance against the wolves, more will follow,” Scott said. “We need to put the wolves back in their place—sooner rather than later.”
“They’re trained fighters, and their numbers are higher than ours,” Alexander said. “Most of the vampires in the Vale don’t know how to fight, and our humans are worthless in battle. If we fight the wolves, we’ll lose.”
“Why are the wolves suddenly rebelling?” Stephenie asked, breaking back into the conversation. “We’ve lived in peace for centuries. We haven’t broken the treaty Laila signed with them when she first settled in the Vale—we’ve stayed in our designated land, and they’ve stayed in theirs. Their sudden hatred of us makes no sense.”
I hadn’t yet told any of them about my meeting with Noah. The meeting had only happened last night, and so much had happened since then.
But with Queen Laila dead, perhaps I could do what Noah suggested—perhaps I could lead the vampires and humans out of the Vale and settle on unclaimed land. It could be the start of a fresh kingdom—a kingdom that didn’t turn humans against their will, and didn’t strip humans of their rights. Most importantly, we would no longer be in danger of war from the wolves.
I wasn’t sure if the others would go for it, but I needed to try.
“A few weeks ago, some of the wolves started receiving visions,” I started, and everyone in the room looked to me, waiting for me to continue. “The visions are from someone they call their ‘Savior.’ Apparently, the packs have been at constant war amongst themselves forever. Their Savior has promised that once He rises, He’ll bring peace and prosperity to the wolves of the Vale. But there’s a catch. Before the Savior rises, He’s demanded that all vampires are cleared from the Vale. That’s why the wolves have decided to kill us all. They feel like they have to do it to give their Savior the chance to rise.”
Stephenie looked at me like I was crazy. Camelia stared blankly at her glass of wine, which for some reason, she hadn’t touched. Alexander’s eyebrows were furrowed, and Scott watched me closely, as if waiting for more.
“How do you know this?” Scott finally asked.
“I met with their leader last night,” I said. “His name is Noah, and he was the first wolf to receive a vision. He calls himself the ‘First Prophet.’”
“Seriously?” Stephenie scoffed and threw back the remainder of her wine, reaching for the bottle to pour herself a fresh glass. “He sounds like a cult leader—not a ruler.”
“He was surprisingly civil—for a wolf,” I said.
“Where did you meet him?” Scott asked. “Going into wolf territory is dangerous. I assume you know that.”
“I didn’t go to their territory,” I said. “I know that would be dangerous. Noah sent a witch envoy to bring me to the Haven, where we had our meeting. He had an interesting proposition, although I told him Laila would never go for it. But now that she’s gone…”
“What was the proposition?” Scott was apparently eager to get the point.
“We can leave this land and go somewhere else,” I said. “Somewhere that isn’t already inhabited. Further north, or maybe even south, to the States. We have a lot of options—all of them better than war with the wolves.”
“Absolutely not.” Stephenie crossed her arms, her expression sour. “The Vale is a respected kingdom, and more than that, it’s our home. Look around at everything we have—the palace, the town, even the human village! We can’t leave all of this behind. If we do and go somewhere else, we’ll have to start from scratch. We’ll have nothing.”
“Our sister makes a good point,” Scott said. “Plus, centuries ago, Laila and the wolves signed a treaty. We’ve done nothing to break that treaty. This land is rightfully ours. If we leave, we’ll look weak. We must stay and fight.”
“We’ll die.” I leveled my gaze with his, unwilling to back down. “You weren’t there in the square when those wolves attacked. I was. It was chaos. So many of our people were slaughtered before the wolves were finally brought down. We’ve been living in peace for too long—the vampires of the Vale don’t know how to fight. And the wolves
only want to kill us as long as we remain on this land. If we leave, we live. Isn’t that what’s important?”
“We’ll have ran from battle and will be the laughingstock of all the kingdoms in the world,” Scott said. “The wolves are animalistic and lack all control. There’s a way for us to beat them. We just need to figure out what that way is.”
“And until we do?” Alexander asked. “We can’t hide Laila’s death forever. We’re going to have to tell everyone—before they hear it from somewhere else.”
“We’ll spin the story,” Scott said. “We’ll tell everyone that Laila went to the wolves to discuss peace, and that they killed her. Not only will it explain her death, but it’ll make our people more fired up to defeat the wolves.”
“A smart plan,” Stephenie said. “But there’s still a major point we haven’t yet discussed.”
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“Now that Laila’s gone, who’s the leader of the Vale?”
Camelia
“I am,” I said the first words I’d spoken since this meeting began.
The four of them—Scott, Alexander, Jacen, and Stephenie—turned their heads to look at me all at once. Their eyes all showed the same emotion—shock.
“What?” Stephenie was the first to speak. “You can’t rule the Vale. You’re a witch.”
“I was Queen Laila’s closest confidant,” I said, since despite the fact that Laila kept me as a willing prisoner as long as I kept up the boundary, it was true. “Not only that, but I’m the one who keeps this kingdom safe from harm. Of course I should step up as queen. It makes the most sense.”
“You’re mortal,” Scott pointed out. “And while we’re grateful for the sacrifice you make to protect this kingdom, we all know you only have a decade left, maybe a few years more on top of that if you’re lucky.”
The Vampire Wish: The Complete Series (Dark World) Page 48
