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FLANKED BY THE bloodsucker guards, we’re marched beneath the arch in the wall—a portcullis in the curtain wall of a castle, a castle transported from another time and place.
Textured stone the color of charred ash rises into the dusky sky with multiple levels of crenulated walls and wrought iron balconies and narrow latticed windows, a hard C shape with a turret tower on each end and at each elbow. The oppressive monstrosity encloses a wild garden of overhanging ferns and ponds and rose vines tangled in trellises.
We’re taken through an iron-studded wooden door at the end of one wing, passing through a circular room with a stone stairway that spirals up into the tower, into a wide passageway with a flagged stone floor that is rough and cold on my bare feet. A series of closed doors to our left. The walls are the same sooty stone as everywhere else. No windows. No paintings or adornments except for elaborate swirls of onyx iron swans that clasp the lamplight at regular intervals.
A chill permeates the space, erupts over my skin as prickling goosebumps and settles into my bones. Although that may not be all due to the décor and the cold stone. Gabe sends me worried glances over his shoulder every few steps. Kane’s eyes remain on the bloodsucker in the lead of our small procession.
My fingers are bunched into tight fists at my sides. There will be retribution, the male hunter promised Salmona. On the prince’s judgement.
We’re in a castle that could have been ripped straight from the pages of a medieval history book.
I don’t need to ask to know we’re being taken to some self-styled figurehead of royalty for retribution—whatever the hell that may be. They’re already going to drain us dry. What more can they do?
Torture us first?
Another goosebumpy chill sweeps over me.
A set of iron-studded double doors at the end of the passage takes us into a cavernous hall of dark wood and charred stone and onyx metal. The tall ceiling must be at least three levels high. A series of arched lattice windows crown the full length of one wall, letting in ghostly trails of the emerging dawn. A giant onyx swan swoops from the rafters, feathered in crystal scales of electric light.
At one end, three steps ascend to a pair of iron thrones on a dais—the larger throne carved into a swan in flight, the smaller one nestled within the wingspan. Unoccupied. We haven’t come across another soul thus far, no sounds of the castle stirring for the day.
We cross the hall into another passageway and finally we’re huddled to a stop as the guard with the top knot raps on an oak door inlaid with onyx carvings of swans.
I’m sensing a pattern here. Black swans and dark-stained wood and charred ash stone and onyx metal. I wonder what that says about the owner of this castle. Nothing good, I’m sure.
“Enter,” rumbles a deep voice from behind the heavy door.
Two guards lead the way inside.
Kane catches my eye. His mouth opens, then closes with no words. His expression is as dark and macabre as this castle as he follows.
A finger pokes my back. “Inside, maggot.”
Pressure builds inside me like a steam pot about to blow its lid. Go to hell, bloodsucker.
Gabe brushes past me, his pinkie finger linking mine, a powerful magnet that drags me in his wake across the threshold.
Reclining in an armchair beside the unlit hearth, the pale-haired hunter from the lake rakes us with a lazy look.
Another man—male bloodsucker, more likely—standing with his back to us before a fall of champagne drapes, draws my eye across the austere chamber. Midnight blue cloak spanning broad shoulders, splashed with the braid of his ice-blond hair. One hand fisted behind his back.
My heart tick-tick-ticks like a live bomb inside my chest.
The prince.
I have no doubt of that.
Even with his back turned on us, his presence dominates the chamber, instills a watchful terror in me.
The two guards strike a submissive pose, one knee sweeping the wood-slatted floor and their heads bowed in his direction.
“My liege,” they murmur in unison.
He turns slowly with a broad hand gesture to the bowed guards. “Wait outside.”
They rise and back out the doorway as if they’re afraid to take their eyes off him. My feet itch to follow.
Somewhere between crossing the threshold and here, the pinkie link connecting me to Gabe has become a fully entwined clasp of hot, sweat-slickened hands.
Kane stands on my other side, a fist coiling and uncoiling like a snake preparing to strike. I follow his gaze to a wall of ash stone hung with a torturous display of medieval weapons.
Double-edged broadswords with bulky bronze hilts too big for my hand to wrap. A wooden club with a spiky metal head. Longswords forged in Damascus steel with jeweled crosses for hilts. Short daggers with curved ivory handles and long, lethal blades with a slim grasp. A black baton with a length of chain that splits to hold a pair of iron balls that look like death stars with pointed iron rays. Double-headed axes with stubby handles and elegantly fashioned winged spears. A longbow arranged with a display of feathered arrows. A mechanical crossbow cocked with a steel-tipped arrow.
Weapons to kill in every element man could abuse: bronze, iron, steel, wood and stone.
The prince makes his way around an ornate oak table inlaid with leather the color of dried blood, approaching us with a stride measured in irreverence and disconcern.
We are not a threat.
We are nothing.
He is an ice sculpture of shaved cheekbones and frosted blue eyes and cold beauty. The left panel of his cloak is consumed by a moonlit swan in flight—a spectacular embroidery of ivory highlights and silver-gray shadows.
His eyes brush over me, leaving behind a sweep of shivery chills and the fear of God clutching my chest. There’s no ring of molten gold around the frosted blue of his irises. Human? That thought is instantly dismissed. Not human, but not like the other bloodsuckers either. A hundred times worse. If the other bloodsuckers are demons, he is the fallen angel who forged this hell on earth.
“So,” he draws out, a foreign accent flavoring his tongue with a rich, full-bodied tone, “these are the troublesome creatures? I must say, Rustward, they don’t look like much.”
I could possibly agree. We’re covered in grime from our travels, half-starved and sleep-deprived. I’m a barefooted, bedraggled urchin existing on exhausted hope and whatever scraps of adrenaline haven’t yet been beaten out of me.
The pale-haired hunter—Rustward?—squares one leg over the other. “They do not, my prince.”
Hands clasped behind his back, the prince walks a regal line before us, his chin tipped at an elegant angle, his gaze sweeping across us again and again but never sticking. “I wonder,” he muses. “How did you escape the enclosure?”
He’s not talking to us. Or Rustward.
I’m flabbergasted when Kane steps forward with an answer. “We didn’t escape. We didn’t know we were in an enclosure. We were told to run and the carriage would carry us faster than our legs. We hitched a ride on the back and jumped off when the carriage slowed. That’s the first we knew about the walls.”
I scowl at Kane. What are you doing? He doesn’t feel the prick of my eyes, doesn’t move his gaze off the prince.
The prince pauses his long-limbed pace before Kane. “Are you the leader of this band of misfits?”
Kane’s head juts up a notch. A nerve flutters in the curve beneath his clenched jaw. “I take full responsibility for our actions.”
A low chuckle rumbles from the depths of the prince’s chest. It sounds like death rumbling over warm honey. “You cannot simply claim responsibility to own it. Rustward, is this the one who ended Birken?”
“Not that one,” Rustward drawls.
The prince’s gaze washes over me to settle on Gabe.
Panic swarms through me, knotting in my stomach. No! They can take their retribution and shove it up their super powered asses. My eyes flash to Rustward. “If you want to be a hunter, don’t cry like a baby when the prey fights back.”
He rolls his head back, looking at me down his long, narrow nose. “We weren’t hunting, darling, we were reclaiming.”
Darling? I prefer maggot.
My heartbeat thunders with fear and fury. “We were protecting ourselves!”
Gabe’s grip tightens, near to crushing the fine bones of my hand. “Senna, don’t.”
The prince shifts to stand in front of me, his face a timeless map of golden-crested ridges and shaded hollows—I can’t tell if he’s twenty or a hundred. My eyes lift to meet his frosted stare beneath the slash of his bronzed brow. The only lines on his flawless skin are tiny creases crinkling amusement into the corner of his eyes.
Two slender fingers tip my chin. “You speak bravely, yet your heart is driven with terror.” Those fingers feather along the line of my jaw and press the sensitive pulse at the juncture. “Your lifeblood is galloping.”
His eyes trace to that ticking pulse, the frost melting into the tranquil blue of shallow ocean water. His head lowers fractionally, again, and again, his gaze transfixed to my beating pulse, bringing a mouthful of teeth closer and closer.
The more I try to slow my racing heart and the beating pulse that appears to have captivated his attention, the faster—louder—it thuds.
Sweat bathes me.
This is how I die.
Kane reacts, hurtling across the room with the speed and dexterity of a trained warrior, distracting the prince from my tempting throat. His fingers fall away as he cocks his head to observe Kane slip a sleek sword from its peg on the wall.
Testing the weight in each hand, Kane settles on a right-handed grip, his stormy eyes darting between Rustward and the prince. “Come on, you cowards,” he growls. “Let’s make this an honest fight.”
Gabe curses under his breath. “What is he doing?”
I know what he’s doing. The same thing I was doing with heated words. When there’s nothing left to lose, all we have is this: the choice to not go quietly.
Relaxing in his chair, Rustward regards him with a bored expression. The fact he hasn’t moved a muscle, could have already disarmed Kane five times over but hasn’t bothered, doesn’t bode well.
The prince blurs before my eyes, reappears a few feet from Kane with the jewel-encrusted hilt of a sword in hand. “An honest fight?”
“Swordsmanship, matching your skill to mine without the magic tricks.”
“Now where’s the fun in that?” He strokes the gleaming blade with the same two fingers that stroked my jaw. “A fight cannot be honest if you’re asking me to leave half my skillset on the table.” He shrugs. “Then again, why not? What do I get if I win?”
“You get me.”
“I already have you,” the prince states. “We won’t waste time asking what you get if you win, because that’s never going to happen.”
The prince glances at me as he raises his sword.
Kane swipes a swath of hair from his forehead and angles his sword up, his brows lowered in concentration. The moment pauses on their frozen stances, neither taking the first strike.
Kane is a trained warrior, I tell myself, recalling the way he fought Grigore in the carriage, anticipating moves the eyes couldn’t see. He trained for his ridiculous spy mission. He knew something of what he’d be up against.
The thought doesn’t bring me much relief.
He lost against Grigore.
Kane lunges. Keeping to his word, the prince blocks slowly enough for my eye to track. Metal glances off metal with a ringing clash and Kane’s sword flies from his hand. He lurches into a roll and pops back onto his feet with his sword retrieved in a double-handed grip.
My heart thuds, my blood a river rushing in my ears.
The prince advances a step in Kane’s direction, surges low on a bended knee and slashes upward—Kane knocks the blade away and thrusts, the prince deflects and parries. Kane cries out, his body twisting away from the next thrust. The front of his shirt is slashed, the tear spotting with his blood.
“No!” I rip my hand from Gabe’s grasp to wrap my arms around my hollowed stomach.
Kane’s face contorts with pain but he doesn’t give up. He grunts and lunges with an upward slash, the prince swirls out of the blade’s path, then they’re circling each other. Strike, counter, lunge, block, thrust, deflect...faster and faster, dipping high and low, in and around the reverberations of clanging steel, a lethal dance of smoke and shadows.
The seconds tick into minutes...too, too long. The prince appears to have some code of honor. He moves with quicksilver grace, swirling around Kane’s blade like smoke twirling between the shadows, but he hasn’t blurred into supersonic mode once. He seems to be reining in his superhuman strength.
But as they spin in and out of their dance, Kane’s thrusts become more desperate, the arc of his swings less forceful, his evasive maneuvers more clumsy, as if his sword is growing heavier and heavier by the second.
Kane is tiring, while the prince hasn’t broken sweat.
The prince’s honor, I realize, mimics his swordplay—smoke and illusion. A façade. He may not outwardly use his extraordinary abilities, but they’re a hidden coat of armor, an iron shield against the fragility that makes us human. He could do this for hours, days, without draining his stamina or exhausting his muscles or wearing down his agility.
There is no such thing as an honest fight when it comes to a bloodsucker.
I file that away in the back of my mind, as if I actually expect to live long enough to use it one day. Yeah, right.
A final clash of steel sends Kane reeling, his sword knocked from his grip to clatter against a wall. He lands on his back, the air thudded from his lungs with a guttural groan. In the moment it takes him to get his breath and scavenge some last ounce of strength, the prince steps a polished boot on his chest, the point of his longsword pricked to the base of Kane’s throat.
The blood rushing between my ears ices to a frozen lake. The pain is a nail being hammered into my temple, piercing bone and splitting my skull.
The pain and pressure crushing my chest pushes me to my knees. I pray for the numbing cold that came with Georga’s death, for the dead thing to devour the loss swarming into every corner of my being.
I wince as the prince flicks his wrist.
A ribbon of red sprouts across Kane’s cheek—his cheek!. Not his throat.
“Now you belong to me twice over,” the prince declares, removing the bootprint from Kane’s chest as he stands back, admiring his handiwork. “This one is different. What do you say, Rustward? Something worthy of my bride?”
The pale-haired hunter finally stirs himself from the armchair, two strides and he’s yanking Kane up by the arm. “A handsome gift, indeed.”
Kane struggles, but it’s no use. Rustward locks his arms behind his back with little effort, his gaze gliding to the blood streaming from the gash in Kane’s cheek and into the hollow of his throat. Rustward’s nostrils flare.
“Untouched,” the prince says softly.
“Naturally, my prince.”
I rise to my feet on unsteady legs, the weight lifting from my chest. I’m not sure what’s going on here. Has Kane been spared? It’s almost too good to be true. Which means it is too good to be trusted. But for now, I’ll take it.
Rustward lifts Kane by his locked arms and pushes him toward the door, the toes of his boots dragging on the floor.
Kane’s gaze snaps to me over his shoulder. Hair damp with sweat, plastered to his forehead and slapped to his cheek, strands sticking to the bloodied gash. There’s that storm, however, still brewing darkly in his eyes. He hasn’t given up. He’s not yet defeated.
Rustward hands Kane off to the guards outside the door with a hushed order and blurs. When I look again, he’s behind Gabe, his hand pinched around the base of Gabe’s skull. “Salmona has requested retribution.”
Gabe’s face reddens.
“I believe Salmona already took that retribution into her own hands,” the prince says.
“An unfortunate accident,” Rustward drawls.
The prince gives an elegant shrug. “These things happen.”
They’re talking about Georga.
They’re talking about Georga’s death like she’s nothing, an ant accidently tromped on and instantly dismissed.
Fury lances me, a blind rage fueled with grief and fear and bitter loathing.
“You are vile, despicable creatures,” I spit out. “Georga was a person. She had dreams and hopes. She wanted to live, not just breathe air to survive, but live, and she would have had a beautiful life!”
“Senna...” The redness leeches from Gabe’s face. He stares at me, drills his eyes into me, pleading for me to shut up. “She doesn’t mean it. She’s upset.”
“Of course I’m upset! I’m furious! And I won’t shut up. I mean every word. Every. Last. Word.” My eyes blaze at the ice-bloodied prince. “You and your kind are a scourge on this earth.”
The prince inclines his head, the slightest, briefest acknowledgment of my outburst, then he nudges his chin at Gabe. “That one’s for the buffet.”
Buffet? A table laid with a wide variety of delicious treats...eat all you want!
Are you kidding me?
“No!” I grab onto Gabe’s arm, my feet skidding along as Rustward marches him to the door. My heart is kicking and screaming inside my chest. “You don’t get him! I won’t let you—”
Rustward declaws my fingers from their frantic grip and flings me away into a tumble across the room. My thigh crashes into a chunky leg of the ornate desk with a bone-denting force. An explosion of pain rips a string of shrill curses from my lungs and brings unwanted tears to my eyes.
Before I can scramble to my feet, the prince is there, scrubbing his jaw and observing me like I’m a bug trapped inside a glass.
“This one has a feral charm.” He cocks his head, squaring a frosted look down on my savage glare. “I hadn’t planned on taking a new Silk this season, but I’m intrigued.”
“Will you hunt?”
My head swings to Rustward’s voice, but it’s only him.
Gabe is gone.
“No hunt,” the prince decides after some hesitation. “Deliver her to the House of Ell.”