Slaying the Vampire Conqueror(56)

He hesitated before saying, “That was the start. Nyaxia’s spiteful curse, two thousand years ago. But… my people have endured far more than my kingdom’s suffering.” His face hardened briefly, then his gaze fell back to me. “Humans may believe that vampires don’t understand what powerlessness feels like. And for many, maybe that’s true. But those that follow me do. We understand loss. And we know that it is the worst kind of powerlessness.”

The words were stilted. But the meaning behind them was softer than I knew what to do with.

I cleared my throat.

“You said you wanted to talk business,” I said. “How long do you intend to stay in Vasai?”

Atrius blinked, as if caught off guard by the change of subject.

“Not long,” he replied. “A week or two. Then we will move on to Karisine.”

It stood to reason that Atrius would want to move quickly. We were getting closer now to the Pythora King—his ultimate goal. And Karisine was the next major city-state standing between us and the north.

My brow furrowed at that. I was grateful to have something to think about other than Naro or the past I wasn’t supposed to remember. Battle strategies and espionage were so simple comparatively.

Karisine was a well-fortified city, especially considering that Atrius was losing numbers with every city-state he needed to maintain control of. The idea of taking it by brute force seemed outrageous, and unlike Tarkan, its ruler had not set herself up for such easy assassination. Furthermore, Vasai and Karisine were closely connected by a number of communication routes, far more than Alka had. They’d be prepared for Atrius’s arrival.

I was supposed to be learning how to understand Atrius by now, but I couldn’t fathom how he intended to pull that off.

“It’s going to be… challenging,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

A suppressed smile tugged at the corners of Atrius’s mouth. Like a cat that was secretly hiding a canary in its teeth.

My brow twitched. “You have a plan.”

“I always have a plan.”

I wasn’t sure that was true. He always managed to make it work, I would give him that. But part of what made Atrius so difficult to understand—what made him such a formidable enemy—was that his plans didn’t make sense to anyone else but him. Sometimes I thought he conducted warfare like he fought in battle: entirely in the moment, responding to every change in circumstances in real time, impossible to anticipate.

“So?” I said. “Prove it. Enlighten me.”

He seemed to debate whether he wanted to or not.

“Are you familiar,” he said, “with the island of Veratas?”

“Yes, but—barely. It’s… a nothing island, isn’t it?”

Tiny. Uninhabited. Close to the eastern coast of Glaea.

“It was,” Atrius said. “Easiest conquering I’ve ever done.”

My brows rose now. “Conquering.”

Again, he was silent for a long moment, his eyes far away, a gentler smile playing at his lips. It was a strange expression on him, all those hard lines softened, even under the harsh light of the fire.

“There’s a settlement,” he said.

He spoke so quietly I almost didn’t hear him—like he was bestowing a precious secret to me, delicate as butterfly wings.

“They’ve lived there for a few months now,” he went on. “The husbands and wives and children.”

My lips parted in shock. His civilians? The families of his soldiers were… right over there, in Veratas?

“I—I’d assumed they were in the House of Blood. In Obitraes.”

Atrius shook his head. “No.”

I knew he wouldn’t answer. But I had to ask anyway.

“Why?”

His threads shivered slightly, as if beneath an unpleasant cold breeze.

“My people,” he said, “are not welcome back home.”

My people.

All this time I thought he’d meant the House of Blood. No. He meant his people—the ones who had followed him all this way.

His eyes lowered to the carpet, the fire reflecting flecks of gold in them.

“So,” he said, “I’ve had to find a new one for them. Or find a way to let them return to theirs.”

The wall over his presence, normally so impenetrable, suddenly disappeared, letting forth a wave of deep sadness. Not my brother’s wild grief. This was quiet and constant, like something that had just been accepted into one’s bones.

I felt an echoing ache in mine—something that, perhaps, had always been there, but I tried not to look at too closely.

“Why?” I murmured. “Why can’t you go home?”

Atrius’s eyes at last flicked back to mine, steel-stark against the firelight.

For a moment, the vulnerability in them shocked me.

And then the wall returned, and his back straightened, and his face hardened again. He cleared his throat, as if to force away the remnants of his honesty.

“My cousin, one of my generals, will be launching another offensive from the island,” he said. “Her men will roll in to support us from the sea, under the cover of the mists.”

He was trying to make this discussion businesslike again. It didn’t work. We had exposed too much to each other.