She struggled to push him back, but he was overpowering her. Adira suddenly recalled some of the self-defense training she’d received as a girl and did the only thing she could think of. She quickly brought down her right hand, grabbed Victri between the legs, dug in her nails, and twisted hard.
The advisor immediately let go of her and staggered back several paces, bent over in stomach-turning agony.
She began screaming again for the guards, determined to be heard this time. Four men ran around the corner, spotting Adira and the advisor.
She pointed at Victri. “Arrest him at once! He attacked me!”
Without further ceremony, the advisor was grabbed by the guards and quickly escorted down the corridor.
Victri looked over his shoulder several times as he was led away from the queen, glaring. He knew he’d let his temper get the best of him, and he’d gone too far, but to be humiliated like this was unacceptable.
There was no particular fear in him about what Adira would do. She’d never had the nerve to stand up to him before, and executions weren’t her style. How he’d get out of the situation, however, would definitely take some figuring, but there would be plenty of time for that in the dungeon.
Adira quickly retreated back into her room after assuring the guards she’d suffered no long-term effects from the attack. While she’d never had the advisor lay his hands upon her in the past, the knowledge that he’d physically tried to push others around in the palace before wasn’t unknown to her. She’d never imagined he’d have the gall to do it to her, though.
Still, he’d goaded her into actions she didn’t want to take before, however, there were a few things she’d never been willing to bend on.
There were other advisors, and one would be given his top position soon enough. She would decide on Victri’s fate once Keiran was dealt with.
* * *
As Keiran’s entourage traveled further into Aleria, they were struck by culture shock. There were checkpoints along the road just as the border guard had said. At each one, the document they’d received upon entering the country was scrutinized and all of his men counted.
Their group was constantly encircled by the Alerian guards who had joined them. None of Keiran’s men were allowed to stray away from the group. They felt more like they were being herded across the countryside than traveling.
They hit the outskirts of the capital city on the seventh day of travel, and were put up at a local inn. The Alerian guards insisted that all of the Tordanians remain inside and not explore outside of the building for the night. Keiran asked for Jerris and Kanan both to stay in his room with him, uneasy with the way their hosts were keeping watch over them.
There were a total of four small beds within the room, even though there were only three of them. They pushed the unused straw bed in front of the door. Though none of them really felt as though the Alerians would dare try and enter, it gave them some sense of control over the situation.
They sat on the ends of the other three beds, talking quietly late into the night as none of them were able to sleep.
“What do you think is going to happen when we reach the palace tomorrow?” Jerris asked, fidgeting with an ale bottle in his hands.
“I’d imagine I’ll be taken in to meet the queen right away,” Keiran said, shrugging. “As we’ve discussed before, there’s no other reason for them to have brought us all this way.”
Kanan had been unusually quiet for the entire day. The constant supervision by the Alerian guards hadn’t been sitting well with the older man. His fears were simmering below the surface to the point his stomach had gotten upset.
The vampire turned his eyes toward the elder guard and quirked a brow. “You’ve not been yourself, what are you thinking?”
“I don’t really know,” Kanan admitted with a shrug. “I agree they aren’t seeking to kill you as it would have already been tried. All the guards watching us, though… If this is just their natural level of paranoia, it’s absurd.”
“I wish I’d had a drink recently and could pry into the minds of those around us better,” Keiran said.
Kanan narrowed his eyes. “For whatever is going to happen, you need to be in the best condition possible. I know you’ve had nothing to drink, as it were, since we left the castle. I’m not going to let you go into that palace tomorrow and not be in top condition.”
“Well, I’m not going to accost one of our men in this inn tonight, Kanan,” the vampire said, shaking his head.
“I’m not asking you to do so.” Kanan hoisted his body up from the bed and walked over to the deteriorating cabinet in the corner of the room.
“What are you doing?” Jerris asked, getting an uneasy feeling.
Kanan started to search through his belongings on the top of the cabinet, finding his knife. He had his back to the other two, so they were unable to see his actions. He looked at the blade for several moments, tensing his jaw as he worked up the nerve to do what he felt he needed to.
With the knife shaking in his right hand from pushing himself to go against instinct, he placed the edge of the steel blade to the underside of his left wrist. There was an acute, burning pain after he dragged the perfectly honed blade across his skin. He set the knife down again hastily and drew in a long breath.
“Kanan?” Keiran got up from where he sat and started to walk toward the guard, Jerris quickly moving to follow him.
The older man turned around, cupping his right hand under his left wrist, blood already pooling in the palm of his hand. He locked eyes with Keiran, and without any emotion in his voice, he ordered him to drink.
The vampire felt his instincts instantly draw him toward the blood, but knowing Kanan had just hurt himself made it hard for him to react.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Jerris yelped, immediately feeling ill.
“Look, either I bleed to death waiting, or you drink!” Kanan took another step toward Keiran. “I doubt like hell you’ll get enough out of this to kill me, and if it betters our odds tomorrow, you need to do it.”
Keiran wavered, switching his attention from Kanan to Jerris and back again. Not having drunk from the source in months, his drive to take advantage of the situation pushed in on him with an unfamiliar intensity. Relenting, he took a hold of Kanan’s left arm and started to bring it toward his lips.
Jerris turned away quickly, nauseated by the sight. “If you kill him, Keir…”
The vampire closed his eyes, tuning out his friend’s words as he started to drink from Kanan’s wrist. The flow of blood wasn’t particularly substantial, but it afforded Keiran several precious swallows that immediately began restoring his senses and strength.
Kanan didn’t watch, having closed his eyes. The pain from the cut diminished as Keiran drank. As some of his energy was drained away by the vampire’s feeding, the guard began to feel intoxicated.
Keiran forced himself to turn away and stop before too long, but he’d gotten enough to dramatically improve his condition. He dragged the back of his left hand over his mouth before moving away several paces.
Opening one eye, then the other, Kanan looked down at his wrist to see blood still percolating from the cut. He quickly pressed his right hand over the wound to begin stemming the flow.
“Was that enough?” Kanan asked, staring at Keiran’s back.
He looked over his shoulder and gave a meek nod, a little drunk from sating his thirst. “Aye, I’m much better.”
Jerris finally believed it was safe and turned around to face the other two, going straight to his father’s side. “Are you all right?”
Kanan nodded and lifted his right hand for just a moment, to show Jerris the wound really wasn’t life threatening. “It’s not going to cause any long-term damage.”
“What if you caught what he has?” Jerris asked, glancing over toward Keiran.
“He didn’t bite me, I’d imagine I’m fine, Jerris,” Kanan replied.
“You better be…” the redhead mu
ttered, stepping back again.
“I appreciate it, I do,” Keiran said, his ability to reach out with his senses beginning to sharpen.
Something caught his attention and he moved over to the small window of the room, overlooking the street one floor below. He placed his hands against the glass and cupped them, allowing him to see down to the ground in the dark. It felt as though a good number of very worried people were nearby, and what he saw alarmed him.
“What’s out there?” Jerris moved closer.
Keiran silently counted before turning to face his companions. “We were escorted through the country by twenty-four guards, but there are at least fifty men outside of this building.”
“What?” both Kanan and Jerris asked.
The younger guard pushed Keiran aside and struggled to see out through the crude, distorting glass of the window. He quickly saw the line of men along the entire front of the inn, all of them facing toward the building.
“Aye, there are a lot of them, and it doesn’t look like they’re interested in keeping someone out.” Jerris turned to face the others.
Kanan had pulled a rag from his belongings and worked to get it tied around his wrist. “They’re making damn certain a particular vampire stays put and under close supervision, I’d imagine.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Keiran agreed, almost overwhelmed by the return of his increased sensitivity to the presence of others. “They feel very concerned. Afraid, actually, and quite strongly so.”
“All right, these Alerians are outright phobic of vampires, so again, why would they invite one here?” Jerris felt anxiety knotting up in his gut.
“We will find that out come tomorrow,” Keiran said, hoping his companions weren’t feeling the worry beginning to tear away at his own composure.
* * *
Thana, Corina, and Magretha were all in the kitchen of the castle. A spring storm had rolled in, and by afternoon, the air was filled with the sound of nearly constant, rolling thunder.
Magretha had been spending more time inside the kitchen helping the other two women prepare the communal meals they provided the servants. She’d started to build a good friendship up with Thana, and she was glad to have someone to talk to while Jerris was away.
The night before, the dinner they’d served had been beef, leaving them with a good number of bones. They had boiled them overnight to make a stock, and they were finally ready to begin adding the other ingredients to the cauldron to make soup. The air was thick with the scent of the stock, and the weather was perfect for such a meal.
The women worked at the long counter in the middle of the kitchen, each preparing assorted vegetables to add in. There was a lull in the conversation between them as they listened to the increasing thunder.
Between two claps, Thana lifted her head, hearing a strange sound from the pantry. She dismissed it the first time, but when she heard it again, the rustling was followed by the sound of a jar being pushed from a shelf and shattering on the floor.
Thana frowned to herself and set down her knife, wiping her hand on her work apron. “We’ve got a rat in the pantry again.”
It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, and Corina looked up from her chopping. “We’ll have to bring in one of the cats again overnight.”
Magretha picked up her cutting board to carry the carrots she’d sliced to the cauldron. “Aye, they’ll be a lot of them coming in this year after such a bad winter.”
Thana moved toward the pantry. She reached out and opened the heavy door, looking at the floor to find out what had broken. What she saw forced her to draw in a sharp gasp. While she wasn’t afraid of rats in the least, what she saw was no rat.
The broken jar had contained a pickling solution and strips of pork fat. The pantry overwhelmingly reeked of vinegar, the ground within splattered with the liquid.
Crouched down amongst the broken shards of glass and strips of gelatinous, preserved fat was a small demon. It was identical to the one Father Beezle had swatted with his shovel before.
It looked up and growled at Thana, half-chewed fat falling from its jaws. One of its small, clawed hands even came up to swat at Thana, but she was able to step back and out of its reach.
The other two women knew Thana wouldn’t have yelped in fear as she had over a rat, and they both quickly moved over to see what she’d found.
Thana pointed at the creature, looking at the two women flanking her. “What in the hell is that?”
“Looks like a demon!” Corina said, placing her hand on Thana’s shoulder to try and pull her back from it.
Magretha still had the heavy cutting board gripped in her hands, though the carrots had been put into the soup before she’d come over. She gave a small nod to herself before stepping forward, lifting the board above her head. In a fluid and hard motion, she hurled the weighty cutting board down to the stone floor, so it would land flat on top of the demon.
It gave out a shrill scream as the board came crashing down upon it, but silence soon followed. The demon twitched beneath the cutting board a few times, but that quickly halted.
“Won’t be using that one in the kitchen anymore,” Magretha said stepping forward and crouching down. She lifted up the edge of the cutting board, seeing the demon crushed and very much dead.
Corina and Thana both came a little closer, seeing the small body. Its legs and arms were splayed out around its crumpled torso, the head unrecognizable after being obliterated by the impact.
“Where would such a thing come from?” Thana asked, never having seen anything like it.
“I don’t know, but we should most definitely alert the guards in case there are more to be found,” Corina said. “I will take what’s left of it down to show Father Beezle. If it truly is a demon, he’ll be able to say for certain.”
“Reasonable enough,” Magretha said, flipping the board over and then scooping up the crushed beast onto the top of it. She stood up and handed it over to the older woman.
Thana was filled with enough morbid curiosity to not back away, now getting a better view of the creature in the light. “I certainly hope there aren’t more of those running around.”
Corina wasn’t thrilled about being handed the demon, and she frowned deeply upon taking hold of the board. Though Thana was intrigued enough to look closer at the demon, Corina didn’t feel the need to examine it further. She walked over toward the counter and set it down before finding a discarded grain sack and slipping the entire mess inside.
“All right, I’ll go show the sentries and then head down into town. I know the two of you are more than capable of finishing up this dinner,” Corina said, taking the bundle up into her arms.
The younger two women simply nodded, still in shock.
* * *
Athan had managed back out of the blizzard and to his forward camp. Upon returning, he’d spoken to no one, simply vanishing into his tent. While men had come along to ask what had happened, he simply waved them off—not even verbally attacking them.
Kayla Sipesh.
Ten years back, he’d pushed Sabetha hard to try and find Kayla after her disappearance. After several hours, the harpy had become seriously ill from the intensity of her attempts to find her. She’d managed to come up with a few brief glimpses of Kayla out in the forest, but there had been nothing in the way of landmarks for her use to track the woman.
Once Sabetha had fallen ill and unable to see anything further, Athan had continued the search on his own in desperation, but it had been futile. Finally, he’d been forced to accept that Kayla had either been killed or died of exposure.
He couldn’t begin to imagine how she’d managed to escape into the Nahli’s frozen wastelands and not die from the cold. The fact she had done so, married a Nahli chieftain, and held obvious influence within their nation bothered him deeply.
If Sytir was representative of the Nahli as a whole, and not just the exception, the vampire knew he had a serious problem on his hands. While Athan was toug
h and able to defeat any group of humans he encountered, the Nahli were going to be a completely different game.
If his human army was going to be worthless in fighting the ice people, he wouldn’t be able to wipe them out. Powerful or not, he alone couldn’t eradicate an entire race of people he didn’t have any advantages over.
He thought he could have killed Sytir if they’d gone into battle one on one. Even without being able to read the Nahli’s mind, Athan’s physical prowess had never failed him. While it was clear Sytir was incredibly fast and skilled, so was Athan.
But that storm… if Sytir was powerful enough to have conjured up such a blizzard or at least control it…
Athan didn’t like it.
However, it was Kayla’s mention that impacted him the most.
He sat on a heap of pillows within the tent and put his head in his hands. The mix of emotions stirring within his heart and gut were tearing him in multiple directions.
By the time she’d disappeared from his castle, she’d been there for over fourteen years and seemed to have resigned to her fate. She’d become agreeable to Athan most of the time, which had nothing to do with any mental manipulation he might have used.
The vampire had eventually fallen in love with the princess, and his kindness toward her had grown sincere. Perhaps it hadn’t been enough, and the reciprocation of her feelings toward him hadn’t been real.
Though he’d been able to see into Kayla’s mind like he could almost any human, the girl had possessed an unnerving gift. There were two layers to her thoughts; one that seemed normal, which he could read, and another further below and hidden from him.
Her time in Turis Lee’s castle had overlapped with Ilana’s for about six years, and the Alerian woman had clearly helped Kayla learn to cover some of her thoughts from the vampire. However, Kayla had taken that ability to a new level, eventually making her even more of a threat than Ilana had ever been. While Ilana couldn’t be read at all, Kayla had been able to openly deceive him.
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