JUST TO MAKE SURE THAT EVERYONE KNEW what an asshole he was, Savion moved up the audience day.
Aiko and Kane were scrambling to try to fix the plans to get me out, but they couldn’t sort it. Not without risking my life.
I wasn’t keen on dying.
So instead, they decided to come up with another plan, and I wound up going to his open audience for the people of East S’Kir.
Also known as another bloodbath.
Savion adored taking heads off. It was some kind of sick game for him.
This time, though, the audience was held in the fountain entrance, and the doors were wide open. I stood at the end of the railing of the balcony and could see straight out into the courtyard and beyond.
The Arch of Life was there, Kane and Aiko had explained in hushed tones and quietly slipped away.
Lord Billan stood next to me, and he was also acting funny about the arch. He kept giving it the stink eye.
Finally, I’d had enough waiting and leaned over to him. “My lord, could you please explain what exactly it is we have to fear from this arch? Everyone is… panicked.”
“You don’t have an arch?” He seemed amazed.
“No, we don’t. We never did that I know of.”
He blinked and knitted his fingers a few times before answering me. “The Arch of Life shows everyone their death. We all hold secrets here, my dear Mistress Breaker, and this is not the way you want to leave or enter the castle.”
“Magic?” I asked.
“Ancient, old. A gift from the Three.”
I stared out the door. “Has the king ever walked through?”
“Not that any of us have seen. Odom said that he did once, ages ago when the Spine rose. Just once. And only four people saw him.” Billan leaned forward and glanced at Savion ensconced on his makeshift throne. “He’s vowed to kill the other three.”
To kill? That meant that the people who had seen him were still alive.
Solid money on Dorian being on that list.
Was there anyone that man hadn’t pissed off?
Staring out the door with Billan, I was quietly glad that Aiko wasn’t there. Things had gotten awkward between us since the Blood Rite.
I thought we were becoming friends, but it seemed that his taking my blood—and the subsequent orgasms—had strained him. I didn’t understand, but I stayed back, respecting that he needed the distance.
I missed him, really. I needed a friend. Kane wasn’t in that category, Odom was gone—and Savion hadn’t noticed—leaving Aiko.
This Breaker of the Spine crap was tough on me.
Toss the Bright Sword thing on the pile, and I was really crumbling internally without Roran, Rilen, and Dorian there.
There was rapping on the floor that brought me back out of my thoughts.
The chamberlain rapped his staff on the floor, and I could see someone approaching the front of the stronghold.
They paused about fifty strides down the path and heaved a deep breath, then stepped under the arch of stone and gems there.
The shimmer flowed down over them like heat shimmering over stone on a hot day. Their appearance shimmered as well, their human form rippling and revealing a man who carried his own head.
Savion sighed. “Again with this. Make sure he dies when he walks through the doors.”
And for the next two hours, that’s all that approached the stronghold. Common vampires holding their own heads and losing their real ones as they walked in.
The stones were thirsty for the blood again, and each person was hoisted above the fountain, drained for just a few minutes, and then tossed back out into the blazing sun.
Not a single one of those who approached seemed to take notice of the piles of bodies that lay outside the door.
“Monotonous,” Savion said to me. “They keep approaching to try to kill me, and they are fools. It’s boring.” He turned back to the chamber, and shouted, “Boring! Do you hear me! Boring!”
No one had a chance to answer him. A horse and rider barreled through the arch, not stopping to consider what he was showing anyone.
He shifted from vampire to skeleton and rode straight into the hall. Pulling the horse to a stop, the clomp of hooves loud in the massive room, the skeleton-vampire delivering his message. “Your majesty! General Odom has deserted your army!”
A deadly silence descended over the crowd.
Thick with anticipation and a healthy dose of ‘oh shit’ in it, the silence hung for heartbeats.
Savion stood, slowly. In a burst of speed, he was at the horse and rider. He yanked the vampire off his saddle and threw him to the ground.
I heard his skull crack.
Savion put his boot on the man’s throat as his bleached-death features faded away.
“What do you mean deserted?”
“Just that, sire.”
“Odom would never desert me! Never! He has been here since the Spine rose!”
Billan’s hand found my wrist and started to pull me back from the edge of the balcony. I didn’t resist him.
“Sire,” the messenger choked, holding something up. “I swear. I am not lying!”
It was a letter. Savion snatched it out of his hand and pulled it open as he released the man’s neck from his boot. He read quickly across the paper, and at the bottom, he looked up at me.
Oh, no.
“Fuck,” Billan whispered. “He caught one of the messengers.”
I risked a glance at the lord next to me. His face was twisted in fear and anger.
It hit me.
The guy who had galloped in was a skeleton because he was trying to curry favor with the king. A skeleton meant he had been buried.
What was more favorable than uncovering a plot by a now-former ally to kidnap the Breaker of the Spine? And finding out the Breaker was all for being kidnapped?
Not much.
Except maybe the personal satisfaction of seeing that same king want to kill the Breaker.
Which was where we were.
“You. Little. Bitch.”
I swallowed hard. “Sire?”
He thrust the letter out at me. “You made him turn against me.”
“Who, sire?”
“Odom!” he roared, walking up the stairs toward me. “Odom, you little bitch. He was my chief guard in my dungeons before you were even a thought in your mother’s head. He helped me conquer this place. He helped me destroy what remained of the druids on this side of the Spine. He recruited my armies, my knights, my court—”
He froze on the top step. His eyes locked on my throat.
“Who?”
“Sire?” I couldn’t stop my eyes from rounding in fear.
“Who bit you?”
“Sire, I don’t—”
Savion was in front of me as I blinked. His hand snaked behind my neck and yanked me forward, forcing my head back. My neck was exposed.
“Someone bit you. Who bit you?”
Could he really see the marks from three days before?
“It was the Blood Rite,” he growled. “You were not to be touched. Not by anyone!”
“Crazy, blood-mad vampires aren’t exactly rational, your majesty,” I said.
“So you were bitten! Did you know that unwelcomed and uninvited bites warrant death?”
I didn’t say anything.
He leaned in and sniffed where Aiko had put his teeth. Savion’s eyes snapped to mine.
“You didn’t struggle. That’s why I almost didn’t see them. You didn’t struggle at all.”
He threw me back into Billan and turned to the rest of the room. “She was mine! No one was to touch her but me!”
That was a directive I never heard him utter to anyone.
“Don’t move, girl,” Billan whispered.
I wasn’t about to.
“Who! Who was it she gave her blood to? It was mine alone to take!”
No one spoke. Everyone just stood quietly, not moving, not answering.
He whirled back to me and stalked forward, yanking me out of Billan’s grasp. “You want to give your blood to random men? You want to share with people I haven’t given permission to?” His hand dug into my hair, and he twisted my head sideways, hard, exposing my neck—my vein—to everyone in the room.
He was probably about to kill me, so I threw caution and self-preservation out the window.
“It’s my blood. I am the only person who can give it or withhold it.”
The king growled.
“I am not your private blood source. I will not give you my blood. Who I share with is my business alone.”
He roared.
His teeth ripped from his gums and spiked down into my throat—but there was nothing pleasurable about his bite.
Because it wasn’t a bite.
I screamed.
Savion tore at my throat like a savage, ripping skin and muscle from bone. Chewing on what had been the side of my neck, tearing into it like an untamed beast, spitting out the mouthfuls of sinew and vein—it felt like he was trying to take my head from my body.
Slamming my fists into him, anywhere I could easily swing, I made absolutely no progress against him.
I could feel the wet of my blood draining down the front of my shirt, down onto my pants.
Gods and savior, I was going to die.
“Stupid girl,” he snarled. “I would have made you a goddess.”
But I already was—in the arms of my three men. I didn’t need him to make me one.
His teeth tore at his own wrist, ripping the skin and splashing his blood across my face. I was still screaming, though breathing was hard now, and the sound was airy and non-threatening.
Shoving the torn wrist between my lips, Savion laughed and laughed. His chin was covered in blood and gore from my throat. “Not only will I kill you, not only will I drain you dry, but I will also make you take my blood.”
I tried to shake my head.
He pushed his wrist into me, harder. “Swallow, bitch.”
His skin was in the way of me pulling my lips together to keep him out.
I didn’t want his blood. I didn’t need it.
Trying to shake him off, I realized how much damage he’d done to my throat.
He used his other hand and pinched my nose.
“Swallow, bitch.”
I swallowed.
It was involuntary, the only way my brain thought it could get air into my lungs. The warm blood slipped down my poor, beaten throat and slipped into my stomach.
His tongue licked out and claimed some of the gore from my throat. He closed his lips and let it slide down his throat, licking his lips.
A spike of pain coursed through my entire body. I couldn’t even tell where it started or where it went. It just was.
It felt as if it ripped my very skin from me, slicing me into a thousand pieces. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. My eyes were fixed on Savion’s face.
His gaze was locked on mine.
We have the same eyes.
“No…” His meek word was laced with horror.
Someone’s arm landed on Savion’s shoulder and yanked him back.
I fell to the ground.
“No!” Savion was louder this time.
Everything felt strange, out of place.
“How the fuck are you possible?” His words bounced off the walls of the room and echoed back to me. “You’re not possible! I killed them all! I killed them!”
Through a graying world, I watched him grab a sword off a nearby soldier and raise it to take my head.
Billan’s sword met his before it could reach me, and I felt someone race to me, lift me, and race away with me.
The scent of cool pine drifted to my nose.
Aiko.
We tore down the stairs, out the front of the stronghold. He held me tight, and as we passed under the Arch of Life, I swore I saw his face flicker, obscured by that of an iruku bird—deadly and beautiful.
In my delirium, I put a hand to my face to see if I had changed.
My hand landed ungracefully on my mouth.
On my teeth.
On my fangs.