Chapter Four
King Dominik stood in the great hall near the man-sized fireplace lit only for feasts or balls—though there had been none of those at Winter Hill for an age. He held up Friedrich’s heirloom long-sword to the light coming from the window and studied it closely.
Friedrich tamped down the fire burning in his belly. The king always rubbed him the wrong way. He noted that Dominik had already done away with the mourning band around his right arm. It hadn’t even been a month since his wife died.
Mikhail and his second in command—his brother, Dmitri—followed him into the hall, taking up post at the entrance. The king had ten of his own royal guard in their sharp red-trimmed-in-black uniforms lining the walls—a chest-sized black dragon emblazoned on their torsos. As if the king could intimidate by having his red-eyed demonic sigil glaring at his enemies from every uniform, flag, and banner. It probably worked on most people. Not Friedrich.
Next to the fireplace stood three coarse-looking vampires wearing black shirts bearing red cuffs on the sleeves. They watched the king with unwavering devotion, an unhinged look about their expressions.
The raucous noise and laughter of the king’s troops stationed in his front courtyard grated against Friedrich’s nerves. He stalked across the gray marble floor, his boots echoing off the high ceilings, his steps sounding almost as angry as he truly was.
“Your Majesty.” Fortunately, Friedrich was a good actor and a good liar. None of his ire leaked into his voice.
Only when he was finally behind him did the king turn, his gaze still on the gleaming sword.
“This is a magnificent weapon, Nephew.”
He always liked to remind Friedrich that he was king and could touch or take whatever he wanted.
“Yes. A family heirloom. My grandfather’s.”
“Your grandfather…a great man.” Dominik’s ice-blue gaze finally cut toward him.
Great? Not at all. But the cunning and malevolent man standing before him might think so, since they shared like minds.
“Indeed.” He shifted subjects. “I am sorry for your loss, Your Majesty. Lana will be missed. She was a fine woman.”
“Mmm. But not a strong one,” he added without a tremor of emotion for his newly dead wife. She’d died along with a stillborn son, leaving the king with only a frail daughter as an heir. Perhaps that was why he bore a countenance of restlessness.
His uncle was a large man, equal to Friedrich in height, with the languid strength of a mountain lion ready to pounce. Ever since Friedrich had finally grown into manhood and could look him in the eye, he’d sensed the king’s subtle animosity toward him. Friedrich didn’t worship him or cower at his feet as others were wont to do.
“How may I be of service to you, Uncle?” The man never paid courtesy calls.
Dominik placed the point of the sword on the stone floor with a clink, casually palming the top of the hilt. The fact that he hadn’t returned the sword to its place on the wall drove an unnerving shiver up Friedrich’s spine.
The king inhaled deeply, puffing out his massive chest. The man was built bigger and broader than most vampires of the Varis lineage. A cruel twist of fate, for he took pleasure in intimidating and playing with his inferiors before he crushed them. Fortunately, Friedrich was his loyal nephew. Or so Dominik believed. Friedrich had gone through great pains to ensure that he continued to believe so, even though he was close to the king’s brother, Marius, who had betrayed the crown by eloping with the leader of the resistance a few months earlier.
“I come to speak of the Black Lily,” said the king, his dark voice grating, as if he were divining Friedrich’s thoughts.
“Oh? How so?”
“Have you any stirrings in Terrington?”
“What, here? No. At least not that I know of.” When the king eyed him with a doubtful look, he went on. “One of my servants admitted that he’s heard of this Black Lily centered around the Glass Tower. But that is all. None of my people are involved.”
Friedrich congratulated himself on how convincing a liar he truly was. His own pulse remained steady and calm while the king examined him with the glacial stare that had made lesser men piss their pants.
Seeming to come to a conclusion, he flicked a hand out toward his lieutenant of the Legionnaires. “Kostya,” he snapped.
The three vampires near the fireplace flinched at the sound of the lieutenant’s name. Friedrich tried to divine who these men were, but something told him he’d find out soon enough. He knew his uncle all too well. He did nothing without purpose. Displaying these men at their meeting who were not in Legionnaire uniforms but bearing his uncle’s colors was a purposeful move.
Kostya, a snake of a man in his royal guard, stepped forward sharply and put a leaflet in the king’s free hand. The other still rested on the hilt of the sword as if it were his walking stick.
“My troops have made sure these whisperings have come to an end in the north.”
“Have they?” Friedrich slipped a hand casually in his pocket, his tone light as if they discussed the weather.
The king’s mouth slid into a grin, but there was only malice in his steely gaze. “I have my ways.”
“What’s this then?” He nodded toward the length-wise tri-folded parchment in his hand, frowning as if he’d never seen the like.
“Read.” The king handed it to him.
Opening the leaflet, he tried to ignore the dark-red stains in the corner and focused on the professionally printed decree in fine, swirling print:
The heart of the north beats on.
While the crown demands submission and obedience and blood,
crushing us under their mighty yoke,
their downfall will be the superiority they wield without a thought.
Without a care.
Be brave, my northern friends. Be strong.
Have courage and know that you are not alone.
We are many and growing by the day.
Hidden in plain sight, we will rise when the time comes
and fight the good fight.
Will we win? That is uncertain.
Can we win? Without a doubt.
Do not be disheartened if the Black Lily appears silent.
A dormant flower in the south, waiting and watching.
She will bloom again.
We must rally in the north and be prepared.
We will withstand enslavement no longer, my friends.
Gather your strength. Our time draws near.
The heart of the north beats on.
—Servant to The People, The White Lily
Friedrich reread the close before asking, “The White Lily?” He laughed mockingly. “Do we have a second resistance?”
This was the third of its kind he’d read in the last month, but he kept his curiosity planted on his face while he awaited the king’s response.
“No.” King Dominik ambled toward the window, swinging the sword blade up to lay flat against one shoulder. Friedrich followed. “It appears this is simply a faction of the original group, operating in isolation.”
“How do you know?” He schooled his features as he joined his uncle’s side.
“These leaflets haven’t been found anywhere in the south. Only in the northern territories. And since the echoing creed is for the north, it is obviously rooted here.” He turned his biting gaze on Friedrich, voice low and menacing. “In my kingdom.”
Friedrich didn’t dismiss the sinister glare. The king intended to find the culprit and make him pay in the most heinous way imaginable. He must find the fool before his uncle did.
“And where did you find this leaflet?”
The king returned his gaze out the window, watching his troops in the courtyard, then eyed Terrington in the far distance. “In Kellswater.”
Friedrich had prepared for the answer, but his pulse tripped anyway. Kellswater was one of the villages where the inhabitants had all disappeared. It was Nikolai, his cousin’s former lieutenant now working with the Black Lily, who had sent him a brief but informative letter explaining that Queen Morgrid and her son, King Dominik, were responsible. Nikolai had seen Kellswater emptied by Legionnaires, all killed or taken prisoner then whisked away to some unknown location. Finding where they’d been taken had become Friedrich’s first mission. So far, he’d had no luck.
The king slid his eyes to him. “Something make you nervous, Nephew?”
“No.” He returned his uncle’s gaze with confidence. Unwavering. “I’ve just heard rumors that the people of Kellswater have disappeared. My dukedom has little dealings with a settlement that far south, but I wondered if I should no longer be expecting my tithe from them.”
Ice and steel surveyed him carefully. The king’s square jaw tilted and his mouth ticked on one side into a half smile. “I’ll pay their tithe. No need for you to worry about Kellswater.”
“Do you know what’s happened to them then?”
“I said there’s no need to worry about Kellswater.”
“I see.” Friedrich watched two of the king’s men below harassing Sylvia as she tried to veer around them to the servants’ yard. “But we need to be on the watch for this White Lily.” Sylvia swatted the soldier’s hand holding onto her skirt and slammed the servants’ gate on him, quickly making her escape. The soldiers only laughed. Thankfully. He’d seen them do worse.
“Indeed,” agreed the king. “I need a bleeder, if you can spare one of yours.”
For the first time, Friedrich lost his composure, knowing full well that the king was rough with his bleeders if he was in the mood. And all this talk of an offshoot of the Black Lily had probably stirred his blood.
“I do not, Uncle. I don’t keep bleeders here. I choose a new one every week.”
His dark brows shot up. “You still don’t keep a Blood Harem?”
“No. Never will.”
“You’re a duke.”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “Even so, I prefer to choose anew each week.” He had no plans to explain to the king that he found the practice distasteful, because it was his father’s Blood Harem that was the cause of his darkest memory. One that haunted him still.
The king scoffed and turned away from the window. “That should grow tiresome.” He caught sight of Friedrich’s men at the door. “You seem to have many unconventional practices, Friedrich. I hear you dismissed your Legionnaires.”
Of course he’d heard. Directly from the spy or spies he’d planted within Friedrich’s ranks.
“I did.” He strode alongside his uncle, who moved a few paces then stopped before the three vampires by the fireplace. “After Marius left, and it was discovered that one of the lieutenants in the Glass Tower was a traitor for him, I thought it best to select my own men to guard my back.”
And he did believe it best to choose his own men to guard his back. But because he feared they would betray him to the crown and to the man walking at his side.
“I don’t blame you.” He clapped a hand on his shoulder, a rare show of affection, though Friedrich didn’t miss the blade still in his hand. “My brother’s betrayal has stung us all.” Again, deadly menace laced his words. “But we will put an end to this resistance soon enough.”
“I hope so,” he lied.
Dominik finally turned to the three men not of his Legionnaire ranks. Friedrich still didn’t take the bait and ask. It always felt like surrender with his uncle.
Dominik nodded toward them. “These are three of my huntsmen, Nephew.”
“Huntsmen?”
“Yes. A special breed the queen mother and I have concocted.”
Unable to withstand it, he had to ask. “How is that?”
Dominik lowered his voice, but any vampire in the room had heightened senses to hear him. “She injects the blood madness in them, and then I take my turn and give them my elixir.”
It took all of his efforts to mask his emotions and not react. Dominik’s elixir held the power of persuasion of the most brutal kind. Anyone who disobeyed him under his thrall would experience bone-crunching pain.
“And who are you hunting, Uncle?” Acid swirled in his stomach.
“The White Lily, of course.”
The king grinned, his fangs sharp and extended. “I’m so thirsty.” He pointed the blade at the huntsman in the middle. “You. Come here.”
The wide-eyed creature obeyed at once.
“Kneel,” commanded Dominik.
The vampire dropped to his knees, head bowed.
“Give me your arm.”
He lifted it high.
Dominik gripped the man’s wrist and twisted it, veins up. “We got these three from a ship in Hiddleston’s Harbor. Not sure why sailor blood tastes so good,” he remarked, snickering, casting Friedrich a fiendish look. “Must be the salt in the air.” Then he opened his mouth wide, long canines protruding, and crunched into the man’s wrist. The king’s victim whimpered in pain while Dominik sucked loud and long. Friedrich didn’t dare glance away, a sign of weakness to his uncle.
Dominik pulled away with a hiss, the man’s bleeding wrist still clutched in his hand. The king chuckled wickedly. “Look at them.” He nodded to the other two vampires whose eyes had gone black and hollow, their mouths agape and salivating at the tangy and potent smell of blood. “You two want a taste of your brother at sea?”
The two vampires nodded mutely, staring in black-eyed awe.
“Fine.” Swift and brutal, he swung the sword-blade down and severed the man’s arm near the shoulder. The vampire on his knees wailed in agony as blood sprayed the ballroom floor. The two huntsmen stood there in trembling anticipation. “Go on, then. Take what you want.”
They fell upon their fellow huntsmen with savage swiftness, sinking fangs into his neck and shoulder, growling and snarling like the feral beasts they were.
Friedrich slowly turned an icy glare at his uncle. “I don’t need this fucking mess in my home. Uncle.” How he didn’t swing his arm to feel the satisfying crunch of his fist in his jaw, he had no idea.
The king grinned wide, his lips lined with the blood of the man dying on his floor. With both hands, the king pressed the flat of the bloody sword, Friedrich’s family heirloom, to his chest.
“Don’t fret, my boy.” He turned for the door and barked over his shoulder, “Kostya! Have these men clean it up.” He kept marching, thank the stars, but turned at the entryway. “I’m returning to my castle for a time. But you’ll be expected to attend a ball in the coming weeks.”
“A special occasion?” Friedrich ignored the sound of the two savage huntsmen being torn from their prey.
“The queen insists. She has a special announcement to make. And my mother never does anything without a royal celebration and audience. Till then, Nephew.”
His men marched into two parallel lines behind him, the last two dragging by the collar the bloody-mouthed huntsmen. Kostya stopped in front of Friedrich with the corpse tossed over one shoulder and the severed arm over the other. “You might want to get a maid to get the rest of that before it stains. Your Grace.”
Friedrich bit back a string of blasphemous words as they filed down the short staircase to the front door where his butler Holloman held it open.
The duke gave a knowing nod to his loyal servant. No one wanted to delay the king’s leaving.
When the door closed, Friedrich returned to the ballroom, glanced down at the smear of dark blood before the fireplace, then kept walking to the window. His uncle snapped orders to his troops as they saddled up. Mikhail sidled up next to him and watched as well, cold anger simmering around the typically in-control captain.
“Captain, I don’t know what you’ve been told about my uncle, but let us refrain from discussion of his…flamboyant display just now.”
“King Dominik has a reputation that precedes him.” A biting observation, though his voice remained even and steady.
“I imagine so.”
“There is little else I can say about him, Your Grace. Only this. The king doesn’t trust you.”
Below, Dominik shared close words with his lieutenant, that weasel who’d slung the corpse of the huntsmen in the back of their armory cart, then they both mounted their horses.
“I know.”
“I’m not sure that you do,” added Mikhail.
Curious, Friedrich drew his attention away from the window and to his captain of the guard. “What do you mean?”
“I—” He paused, hesitant to confess whatever he planned to confess. “I get a sense of these things. I can tell you that it’s not simply distrust. He already thinks you a traitor.”
Friedrich knew of vampires who had gifts beyond the norm of their kind, but he hadn’t known he’d employed one. This could be dangerous. Or advantageous.
“He’ll find no evidence to back up his suspicions. Whatever they might be.” He watched his uncle’s dark figure gallop down the path away from Winter Hill, his troops in his wake, the red banner with black dragon sigil whipping in the wind.
“That may be,” added Mikhail. “But I implore you to take extra precaution in the near future.”
Friedrich flinched. Did he know of his involvement with the Black Lily? “Are you threatening me?”
Mikhail glanced to the floor and shuffled back a step. “No, Your Grace. I am your captain. It is my duty to protect you at all costs. I only want you to understand the king has plans to find the truth. By stealth or trickery.”
“You got all that with your gift of intuition?” Friedrich’s voice was light, but his thoughts were dark. Mikhail could betray him to the king and that would be all the proof he needed.
“Yes. As I’ve gotten much more with my…intuition.”
Well, bloody hell. “And what are your plans, Mikhail?” His tone hardened. “Do you want more money?”
“No, Your Grace. You don’t understand. I am telling you this…in order that you might trust me.” He held his gaze with unwavering confidence. “I am on your side.”
“Are you now?” He’d kept his dealings as secret as he could from his guard, from everyone except Grant. But it appeared he’d not fooled his captain. “And what side is that exactly?”
“The one against the king.” His jaw clenched with anger. “And Queen Morgrid.”
That’s when the captain’s usually calm exterior hardened to adamant, reminding Friedrich why the Bloodguard were known as the most lethal mercenaries across the land.
“And why would you say such traitorous things?” He had to be cautious.
“Because.” He turned his lethal stare out the window toward the king disappearing into the distance. “My mother was from Kellswater.”
Dawning swept over Friedrich at once. When he hired this man and his band of forty men who’d worked as independent guards for a nobleman in Korinth, he’d been told by Mikhail’s last employer that he was half-blood. His father had been a respected Legionnaire for King Stephanus in the east. That was why he’d come so highly recommended. His mother had been a human from the north.
“I see.” Vampires could only be born of two vampires, so his mother must’ve been changed before Mikhail’s birth. “Your mother was human, you say?”
“Yes,” he clipped. “She met and fell in love with my father when her family moved from Kellswater to Korinth. King Stephanus awarded her the transformation to vampirism as a gift to my father’s long dedication and loyalty. But we had extended family, human relations, still living in Kellswater. Until recently.”
The deadly tone of Mikhail’s voice actually comforted Friedrich. Fortune smiled on him the day the Bloodguard showed on his doorstep. For they didn’t work for just any man. Only men they respected. And trusted. The irony being that Friedrich had trusted no one but Grant, since he’d essentially turned traitor to his royal family. All except Marius.
And now Friedrich knew Mikhail’s mother was from the town that had been attacked and enslaved by the king. Only no one knew where he’d taken the people. Hundreds, even thousands had gone missing, according to a map he’d been keeping, marking where villages were vanishing all at once.
“I’ve also noticed, Your Grace, that you often refer to your uncle, Marius, as your cousin.”
Still distrustful, Friedrich furrowed his brow. “And what of it?”
“This would imply that you had a close relationship with Prince Marius. Both of you of a similar age, it is quite normal to call him cousin, when he is indeed your uncle. Like King Dominik.”
With a sharp shake of the head, he replied, “Not like King Dominik.”
“That is what I’d hoped,” he added, his sharp eyes—one blue and one green—glinting bright with a supernatural flare. “I’d also hoped that your relationship with your outcast uncle, Marius, might still be intact.”
“I see,” continued Friedrich, studying him for a long moment. “Well, then, Captain Mikhail. It seems we have much to discuss.”
He dipped his head in a slight bow. “I’ve been waiting to have this conversation for some time.”
“I wonder now.” Friedrich crossed his arms, raising an imperious brow. “Did you instigate the recommendation from your former employer to come work here?”
Mikhail studied him for a blink then gave a deferential nod. “King Dominik may have spies in the north, Your Grace, but the Bloodguard has them everywhere.”
Friedrich smiled. It wasn’t simply a stroke of good fortune that had sent them here at all. The Bloodguard had a mission of their own. And it appeared to align with that of the Black Lily.
“Let’s go have a talk, Captain.”