Page 1 of Taste of Fate

Chapter 1

Tavia

Iwatched as people filed in the assembly room, tension and anxiety on everyone’s expressions. Couples and families clung tightly to each other as they came through the doors and found a place to stand in the waiting crowd.

All the worried faces and hushed conversations were understandable. It wasn’t every day we gathered to find out which one of us would be sacrificed to the vampires.

No, this occasion was a once-in-fifty-years type of deal, an event called the Half-Century Selection. The last time it happened was before most of us were born. The elders would have been children, teenagers at the oldest, when the leading vampire clan came to collect their blood pet.

Amy and I stood against the back wall of the large room, mostly invisible as people came through the double doors, which were propped open. A gentle breeze blew in pink and white petals from the orchard. My cherry trees had just completed their first bloom and I was eager to harvest the fruit to make my cider, wine, and beer.

Some people walking in shot us dirty looks if they noticed us leaning against the wall. I mean-mugged them right back while Amy ignored them.

She was full of nervous energy, shifting her weight and fidgeting with her hands. Even among the low murmurs of people filling up the room, I could hear her breath quickening.

I draped my arm over her shoulders in an effort to soothe her while also keeping her still. If she got too worked up, she could have an asthma or panic attack.

While she was a bit older than me, at twenty-seven to my twenty-four, Amy was smaller and always came across as younger. She had been born premature, and life in a world ruled by vampires wasn’t easy. Along with her asthma, she also had a heart murmur that prevented her from doing a lot of strenuous activity.

In Sapien, the last purely human community in the vampire territory of Sanguine, everyone was expected to work hard and contribute to our little stronghold of humanity. It didn’t matter if someone had asthma, a heart condition, or a broken leg. Not pulling the correct amount of weight led to bullying and ridicule.

I loved Amy like a sister, and there was nothing I hated more than a bully.

When she was six, a boy pushed her down in the mud and made her cry. I tripped him as he tried to run away, then jumped on his back and pounded into him as hard as my three-year-old fists could manage before adults peeled me off of him.

Amy and I had been inseparable ever since.

Our birth parents had left Sapien—and us—to integrate with vampire society. At least, that was what we’d been told with lots of disapproving head shakes and mutters about abandoning your fellow man.

In Sapien, the only thing worse than someone who didn’t pull their weight was someone who left to live among the vampires.

So Amy and I had been raised together like sisters by the entire community. She became known as the quiet girl who preferred cooking, reading, and knitting. As for me? I was the loud-mouthed bulldog who didn’t let anyone fuck with her best friend.

“I already feel terrible for whoever’s going to be selected.” Amy popped her knuckles, the nervous tic she always fell back on. “No one deserves to be offered up like a sacrificial lamb. Isn’t there another way?”

An excellent question I had no answer to. I lifted one shoulder, watching the elderly council members talking among themselves on the raised stage across the room. “Why change a system that works just fine for the dinosaurs in charge?”

“Tavia!” Amy hissed and smacked my side. “Have a little empathy. It can’t be easy choosing who it’ll be, either. Everyone in the compound will judge the council’s decision. Nobody wins here.”

Yeah, right. It wasn’t like we were voting on who to sacrifice or picking randomly from a lottery. The council had been taking anonymous suggestions via notes in a letterbox for the past month, but it was ultimately their decision. And I would never be convinced that it wasn’t a popularity contest. Whoever kissed the council’s asses would be safe. Everyone else was in the running to become a vampire’s next meal.

Every member on the council was at least in their fifties. Harold was nearing eighty. A cynical part of me knew that none of them had put their own names down for consideration, despite all their talk about self-sacrifice for the good of our people.

“Hey, girls.” Robin slid through the throng of people and leaned against the wall next to me with a humorless smirk. “Ready for the shitshow?”

Robin was a woman in her forties with short brown hair, frizzed with gray, and the cheeriest blue eyes I ever saw. She was one of the few who looked out for me and Amy, and was the closest thing we had to a mother-slash-older sister figure. She was also respected enough to hold sway with the council and other community elders, which came in handy when I got in trouble. Which was, to say, a lot.

In my defense, the only reason I had a troublemaker reputation was because the same bullies who picked on Amy ran off and squealed when I gave them a taste of their own medicine. You’d think it would be a simple lesson. All they had to do was stop being assholes, and my fist would stop breaking their noses.

“Do you know who they chose?” I watched Peter, another councilman, close the doors of the assembly room, which meant all one-hundred-and-eight citizens of Sapien were present.

Robin shook her head. “Norma said this morning they were up late into the night discussing it, but not a word of what was decided.”

The murmuring crowd quieted as Nancy, chairwoman of the council, stood and shuffled over to the microphone stand at the edge of the stage.

“Thank you for coming, everyone—” she leaned away from the microphone as a loud screech of feedback filled the room.

People slapped hands over their ears, muttering complaints as someone adjusted sound levels. Nancy tried again, and was successful the second time.

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