“My queen,” he said before departing.
I watched him go and did not move until I saw Sorin, Daroc, and Isac light torches to burn the corpses. I rose to my feet and headed for Snow. As I reached for her reins, Adrian stopped me.
“I won’t allow you to ride alone,” he said. “Your pain will worsen, and it will make for a difficult ride. I will not have you injuring yourself further.”
“Okay.”
I did not argue, because I was already in pain, and I did not really wish to make it worse. The tension in his brows eased at my agreement, and we mounted Shadow while the others followed suit.
I did not think I was imagining the way Adrian enveloped me. His thighs pressed into mine, and one of his arms wrapped around my waist. During the ride, his lips trailed my neck, dusting kisses across my skin. I found myself holding my breath as each one lingered longer than the last.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice breathless, betraying what his actions were doing to my body.
“Distracting you,” he said.
It was working. I was warm, my stomach was knotted, but the longer we rode, the less Adrian’s distraction worked, and the pain in my arm was beginning to give me a headache. Coupled with the ride, I felt sick.
“We’ll be home soon,” he said against my ear.
Those words helped me relax, and I leaned against his shoulder, my head too heavy to hold up.
It wasn’t until I saw a town that I sat up straighter. We passed through an open wooden gate, and before us, a winding road made a slow incline up the side of a hill, through a large market town, to a castle that loomed, both terrifying and beautiful. The wall of the castle seemed to span for miles, a series of grand arches. Behind it rose the stronghold itself, a cluster of tall and pointed towers, each carved with fine, floral details. At times, the castle itself appeared to be black, but when the light shone just right upon its glassy surface, I could see a deep red gleamed from within.
“Welcome to the Red Palace,” Adrian said.
He continued through the town, and as he made his way along the path, villagers emerged to watch our procession. Some waved from windows while others threw flowers, wheat, or coins into the road at our horse’s feet. It was a far better welcome than the send-off I’d had at home, and the thought hurt my heart.
“Were they ordered to do this?” I asked, having not expected this.
“Do you really think so poorly of me?”
It wasn’t that. It was that I had expected to find that Revekkians were no happier to be under the rule of the Blood King than Lara.
“I take care of my people,” he said. “Just as I will take care of your people.”
“Were you Revekkian?” I asked. “Before you were cursed?”
“I am Revekkian,” he said and added, “And I am not cursed.”
His comment made my heart beat harder in my chest, and I had the thought that if he was not a curse to be broken, what was he? How had he become this?
Adrian did not speak and continued on through the valley, up a steep incline to the Red Palace. As we came to the gate—a large one with black iron bars—I realized I could not see the wall that surrounded the palace for all the trees. Once inside the gate, Adrian rode right up to a set of wide stairs. These were black, unlike the walls of the castle, and a crowd had already gathered upon them.
He dismounted and held his hand out for me. I accepted, tired of the pain that had at first only been in my arm but was now reverberating throughout my body. Despite this, I pulled myself together and watched as a man approached. He was older, his hairline receding almost to the middle of his head, and yet he kept this hair long. He wore dark-blue robes, embroidered with silver, and unlike many of the vampires I’d encountered, his skin was paper-thin and creased.
“Your Majesty,” he said.
“Tanaka,” Adrian acknowledged.
The man looked as if he were about to speak when Adrian stepped past him, pulling me alongside him. The crowd parted. Unlike Tanaka, they seemed to know he was not in the mood to chat.
“Who was that man?” I asked.
“He is my viceroy,” Adrian said and left it at that.
We entered the palace through a set of large, wooden doors and were immediately greeted by a grand staircase, heavily embellished with ornate carvings of the old goddesses I knew from our myths—Rae, the goddess of sun and stars, and Yara, the goddess of forest and truth, and Kismet, the goddess of fate and fortune—who were no longer worshipped by the world at large. I wondered if Adrian had worshipped them two hundred years ago, back when the whole of Cordova had multiple goddesses instead of just two.