“You’re coming with me,” he said. His voice was deep and heavily accented. It echoed the same weary exhaustion I felt in his presence—spurred, I’m sure, from days of fruitless searching.
I didn’t move. “I—excuse me? What are you doing here?”
My voice notched up an octave, emphasizing the depths of my shock.
“You’ll come with me,” he said again. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Up to you.”
I rose, staggering a little, pressing myself against the wall like I was truly terrified of the man before me.
“I—I’m not going anywhere with you.”
He heaved a dramatic sigh. Then he crossed the room in two strides and grabbed my arms.
Immediately, I struggled. Not too hard, of course. Not as hard as I could. Just enough to make it convincing. “Get your hands off me!”
He didn’t, predictably. Instead, he dragged me across the room. Even though all of this was going exactly as I’d hoped it would, my heartbeat quickened despite myself when my captor flashed a smile at me and revealed two sharp fangs—so sharp I could practically feel it through the threads. A sudden spike of claustrophobic fear wrenched through me, reminding me far too much of decades ago, and I had to stop myself from succumbing to the instinct to slip his grasp.
Instead, I flailed like a fish on a line and let him drag me.
“Let me go!” I demanded. “Get your hands off me! Let me go!”
For effect, I managed to free one of my hands, then grabbed the metal candle holder from the bedside table, and swung it across his face.
He spat a string of Obitraen curses. His face darkened. I’d opened a gash over his cheek, which now dripped black blood. He glared at me.
“You’re trouble,” he muttered. “You’re not worth any of this.”
Then, without hesitation, he held me tight with one arm, used the other to withdraw a dagger from his belt, and opened a long slice down my forearm.
I hissed in pain, stunned. At first I was confused—if his intention was to either subdue me or kill me, this made no sense. But moments later, as blood bubbled to the surface of the wound and dripped down my skin, I realized:
The vampires of the House of Blood used blood magic.
A slow burning sensation started at the wound, then intensified, slowly, slowly, until it left my teeth grinding and my breathing shaky. The vampire lifted his hand, and without my permission, my arm jerked closer to him—a genuinely disconcerting sensation, like my muscles were no longer under my control.
Then he flicked his fingers up, and suddenly my face was hot, and my head felt like it was splitting in two.
I had trained through worse pain than this. Experienced worse. But this—the feeling that my body was turning against itself—
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
“That’s enough,” my captor said, annoyed, as I slumped back into his arms, and everything went dark.
6
I awoke slowly. My head was splitting. The first thing I became aware of was the scent of snow—strange, because there was little snow in Glaea.
Voices. A language I didn’t recognize at first. Then I realized, it was Obitraen.
Someone shook me, hard, and with their touch came a sickening jolt that stirred me from the inside out.
At that, the threads came alive again.
The vampire that took me from the inn leaned over me, grinning at me in a way that did far too much to highlight the sharpness of his canines.
“Good evening,” he said.
I’d been trained extensively on how to retrieve my consciousness quickly. Amazing what one can do with tightly controlled breath. I quickly took stock of my surroundings. I was in a chair, slumped over. My neck ached, probably from being wrenched forward for Weaver knew how long. It cracked a little as I lifted my head, though I didn’t let my grogginess or the pain show on my face.
I straightened my back, lifted my chin—
—And came face-to-face with the conqueror.
He was right before me, sprawled out in a chair, one heel propped up on a box. We were in his tent, I gathered, the space small for a room but huge for a tent. Though there was another soldier here, the conqueror’s aura dwarfed his, like a wave crashing over rocks.
I could kill him now.
I wouldn’t, of course. It wasn’t my mission. Those weren’t my orders. I wouldn’t disobey the Weaver’s command.
But the certainty that I could, right here, end it, seized me and wouldn’t let go.
He didn’t say a word, but I could feel his stare, drinking me in from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. It’s rare that I could feel that so acutely, just as firm and invasive as hands over my body.