I hadn’t thought that spending days in a vampire castle would be a pleasant experience, but the King—no, his name was Grayson—had been very kind to me. A perfect gentleman, of all things.

He hadn’t tried to feed on me, not even once.

Why was a part of me disappointed by that?

None of it made sense.

He had to be up to something.

Vampires weren’t nice.

He likes to toy with his food. That's it.

Of course. The King of the vampires had to be the worst of all of them. He wasn’t satisfied with simply having a thrall at his beck and call, to feed him whenever he had a craving.

No, he wanted to play with his dinner before he ate it. He'd do everything he could to make me feel comfortable before he pounced, and then it would be all over.

He'd probably even kill me when all was said and done.

Maybe the thralls had been wrong. Maybe he did take thralls all the time, but he killed them before word could get around.

He looked at you like a starving man.

Because he wanted to eat me, obviously.

And not in the fun way, I assumed.

Ugh. This was so not how I wanted to spend my days. Round and round, trying to understand Grayson and knowing without a doubt that I wasn’t any closer to figuring it out. He was an enigma, and I was totally screwed trying to guess what his motives were.

With a groan, I forced myself out of my bed and dressed quickly. I laid an ear to the door before leaving my room to enter the living room, wanting to make sure he wasn’t anywhere around.

A quick look in each direction assured me that he was nowhere to be found.

The traitorous part of my mind wondered where he was and what he was up to—but, no, I wasn’t going down that road. I wasn't even going to think about him.

Just five minutes. I could totally go five minutes without thinking about him.

The flowing gown they’d given me to wear—a thrall’s uniform—swirled around my feet as I left the suite of rooms that belonged to Grayson. I was still skittish as I walked the halls of the castle, half-expecting someone to lurch around a corner and scream, "Blood mage!"

But that didn’t happen.

My heart started to hammer against my ribs as I approached the first vampire in the hallway—the first of many. The hall was littered with vampires and thralls.

It was obvious that I wasn’t safe here. I was essentially cattle to these people, and I didn’t have my stakes with me. I felt naked without my hunting gear, without the black outfit that I’d long since become accustomed to.

It was a comfort to remember that my magic couldn’t be taken away from me. The potion I drank nightly prevented anyone from smelling it on me, but it didn’t dull the actual magic.

If push came to shove, I could handle myself.

That knowledge allowed me to straighten my shoulders and walk a little taller, briefly forgetting that I was supposed to be a meek and mild thrall.

When I passed the vampire, he shuffled out of my way, kept his eyes downturned, and murmured a soft greeting to me.

I froze, shocked, and stared at him for a second.

What?

The muscles in his shoulders visibly tightened, and I realized after a moment that he was anxious.

Then I remembered what the other thralls had told me: as the King’s thrall, my status in the castle was great indeed. Greater than that of a good number of the actual vampires here.

I had power.

The thrill of that knowledge buoyed me as I continued on down the hallway until I made it to the kitchen. My encounter with the vampire repeated itself as I passed a number of thralls and vampires along the way. There were a few who responded with a nod instead of looking away from me, but they were still respectful.

I hadn’t expected respect here.

Pushing open the large door, I entered the kitchen.

Laughter died in the air as I walked into the room. There were several other thralls here—this was a ‘safe’ place where they liked to congregate. The vampires didn’t eat regular food, so they didn’t bother coming into the kitchen. All the food was prepared by and for the thralls.

Mostly, there was herd thralls in here, doing the cooking for breakfast, but there were a few noble thralls as well. Hanging out, making conversation.

Or at least, they had been.

Icy stares landed on me, and when I met each of their eyes, I realized they were glaring at my neck.

My unmarred neck.

A blush crept up my cheeks at the implications there—Grayson hadn’t touched me yet, and they were all obviously put out by that knowledge. Every day, it was the same, though for some reason I kept expecting the situation to change. Every day, when I came into the kitchen, the other thralls would look at me with contempt when they saw my neck.

I dearly wished for clothing that would hide my throat. If Grayson wasn’t going to feed on me—not that I wanted him to!—I should at least be able to hide that from the others.

“Hello,” I said as I walked farther into the room. “How are your mornings going?”

No one answered.

I leaned against a counter, looking down at the floor for a moment while I took in a deep breath. All right, so no one wanted to make conversation with me. That much was obvious.

I'd known I wasn’t going to make any friends here, and that wasn’t exactly my strong suit, anyway, but I was determined to have at least one conversation with these people.

A five-minute conversation, and I’d be happy.

You don't want to mess with me when I'm determined about something.

“I was thinking about taking a walk around the grounds later. It’s been a while since we’ve had some fresh air. Would anyone like to join me?” I beamed at them as I finally lifted my head to look at them.

Most of the herd thralls had gone back to their cooking, but some of them were still regarding me with hatred in their eyes.

“The King must not like Nina,” said one woman—a noble thrall, from the looks of her gown—though she didn’t say it to me. She was directing her words to another woman.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, he hasn’t touched her. My vampire couldn’t wait to feed on me the very first night. He was positively overcome with desire. If the King hasn’t touched her, he must think she’s...deficient.”

I reeled from her words as if I'd been physically struck.

My first thought was to defend myself, because she'd wounded my pride. Not at all because a part of me was still trying to figure out why Grayson hadn’t touched me yet.

My second thought was, how the fuck could anyone have that kind of mentality? She was proud that the vampire she’d been chosen by had fed on her, as if that was a mark of maturity.

As if it was something to be desired.

These women volunteered to be thralls, Nina. You knew that going into this.

And yet, I hadn’t wanted to believe that they'd actually signed up for it because they liked the idea of what was going to happen. I’d wanted to believe, as horrible as it was, that they’d volunteered because they'd had no other choice. That it was either this or being destitute.

Neither of those was a good option, but the latter at least implied that they still had their wits about them.

But this woman... She wanted to be fed on.

Or at least, she'd convinced herself that she did. It was probably easier to live with all of this if you went on thinking that way.

“I wish I had Nina’s problem,” a small voice piped up from the corner of the kitchen.

I turned to find the owner of the voice: a young woman, curled up in a ball on the floor. A noble thrall; her sash was checkered blue and silver. Her hair was a mess of blonde curls about her shoulders, as if she hadn’t bothered to brush it today.

Frowning, I walked over to her, then knelt alongside her.

“Hey,” I said, and reached out to touch her shoulder.

She jerked as if she'd been burned.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean...” I bit my lip. Didn’t mean what? I didn’t know where I was going with that.

“No, it’s OK. I shouldn’t have... I’m sorry.” She finally looked up at me, her blue eyes brimming with tears.

Without hesitation, I threw my arms around her and pulled her tight against my chest. I didn’t know why she was hurting, but I recognized the pain in her eyes. Something had upset her—and judging by what she'd said, that something was the vampire who owned her.

Owned her. Like she was property. Like she wasn’t a human being with rights who deserved to be treated with decency.

Wait. Did humans have rights?

It was an odd thought to have at that moment, but I realized that I didn’t know the first thing about how the world actually worked. My entire life had been one cage after another. The cages in the dungeons of the castle, for the most part, and then living with Conall. I hadn’t exactly learned a lot about the politics of the world while I was living with him.

I made shushing sounds as I patted her back, and the tears came pouring out of her—tears that she must have been holding back for a while now, because it was like a floodgate had broken open.

I don't know how long we sat like that, me holding her and her crying, but at long last, she quieted. I held her tight for another moment to make sure that all her tears were spent, then patted her back and pulled away a bit.

“What is it?”

She wouldn’t quite meet my eyes, and there was a blush staining her cheeks.

Embarrassment? Shame? Maybe it was just from the crying.

“You can tell me,” I said.

“He hurt me,” she whispered, then shut her eyes tight as a shudder wracked her body. “He...he...he made me...”

I stiffened, understanding what she wasn’t saying. I closed my eyes and gave myself a moment to regain the composure I’d started to lose. It wouldn’t do her any good if I lost myself to rage right now.

That wasn’t what this girl needed.

I held her away from me so she had to look at me. Her eyebrows were knitted together, a clear sign of her confusion.

“It won’t happen again,” I said, my voice like steel. “We won’t let it.”

“Good lord, what are you going on about over there?” one of the other thralls said from across the room. “Of course it’s going to happen again, just like it'll happen to any of us. This is the way it is, Nina. Get out of your fairy tales.”

The girl I’d been holding sniffled, then offered me a weak smile. “She’s right. This is just how the world works. But I appreciate... Thanks for caring.”

I stared down at her, baffled, then jerked my gaze over to the offending woman across the room.

How could this just be the way it was?

No, I wouldn’t accept this.

I lurched to my feet and stalked out of the room.