Nadia drew my hair over my shoulders, arranging my thick, dark waves to hide the swell of my breasts. When she was finished, I promptly slipped it back.
“Can I resign?” she asked as she retrieved a pearl tiara from the wooden chest at the end of my bed. I did not own many headpieces, because what I had had belonged to my mother, and many came from her native home on the Atoll of Nalani. Her people were islanders. They were mariners, weavers, and horticulturalists, hence my mother’s love for gardening.
I laughed. “And do what with your time? Stitch cushions?”
“Read, you insolent child,” Nadia snapped, but her response was playful and not at all filled with the tension of our earlier exchange.
“I am far from a child, Nadia.”
“You are a child until you marry,” she said.
I rolled my eyes and smoothed my dress, studying myself in the mirror. All my life, I’d been told that I looked like my mother. As much as I longed to hear that, the compliment also left me feeling like someone had gouged out my heart. It was a reminder of her long absence from my life and the sacrifice she had made so that I could live.
“Why must I attend my father while he entertains our enemy with talk of surrender?”
I spoke more to myself than Nadia, though she offered her opinion nevertheless.
“If you are to rule this kingdom—husband or not—it will be under vampire rule from this day forward. You must learn who you are dealing with, and tonight is your first lesson.”
Could that really be true? From this day forward, Lara would answer to the Blood King, a creature who had slaughtered thousands of my kind already. It did not seem real.
“Just be glad, Issi, that the Blood King has not asked for a wife.”
“Are you volunteering, Nadia?”
She glared at me. “Not even I want to be married that bad.”
As much as we joked, dread had been gathering in my heart all day. Today, the world would change, and none of us knew if it was the better of two options. Still, I had to hope my father was right in his decision to be ruled by King Adrian. I had to hope that Adrian, despite being monstrous, still possessed some kind of humanity.
Nadia followed me from my room, down the narrow corridors of my wing. The walls of the castle were all intricate mason work, the brick laid in such a way that even without decor, they were aesthetically pleasing. Despite the beauty and the craftsmanship, the chill seeped through, sending shivers down my spine. Even worse, my nipples hardened, reminding me of my insatiable desire for my enemy.
At the bottom of the stairs, Nadia paused.
“Do not tremble under the gaze of the Blood King. Surrender today, live to conquer tomorrow.”
Nadia’s words were my hope that we would find a weapon that could defeat our enemy. She departed, leaving me to enter the antechamber where my father and I would wait for the arrival of the Blood King, at which point we would move into the great hall. My stomach knotted as I approached the door, but I paused before knocking, hearing Commander Killian’s voice rising from within.
“This is a trap,” Killian said.
“If the king of Revekka decides to slaughter us rather than negotiate, then it will say more about his countenance than ours,” my father replied, his voice warm and resonant. It made my chest feel calm. I loved my father dearly—he was all I had from the moment I was born. I had never seen him make an impulsive decision, so I knew that he’d thought through every aspect of this surrender. Most importantly, he’d thought most about what would protect our people.
“Think of your daughter—” Killian tried.
“Know your place, Commander!”
My father’s voice sent a chill through me that straightened my back, but I was glad for his anger. I was angry too. The audacity of the commander to assume my father hadn’t thought about me. But this—it was bigger than me. Bigger than a commander whose ego suffered at the thought of being submissive to a greater power.
“It is because of Isolde that I have agreed to this truce. I do not wish for her to live in a future rife with violence.”
“And yet she will face a future far more uncertain.”
I took that as my cue to enter. It was either that or see Commander Killian pinned to the wall by my father’s sword, and as much as he annoyed me, spilling blood when vampires were on our doorstep did not seem like the best idea.
My father’s expression smoothed into a mask of calm when he saw me, a sad smile curling his thinning lips. He stood near the fire, a heavy fur-lined cloak making his slight frame look larger. My father had never been a particularly imposing man, but he had a presence, an expression that commanded attention and a voice that communicated dominance. His hair was dark but turning gray. Most of it was concentrated in his beard, which came to a point at his chin.