Page 23 of On Wings of Blood

I tried to imagine my family back in Aercanum. My aunt, Morgan, and her husband, Draven. Had my uncle, Kaye, become king? What were they doing right now? Did they miss me?

I sat up abruptly, shoving aside the painful ache in my chest.

There was no point in thinking about the family I’d left behind. I knew I’d never see any of them again.

I breathed in deeply, then coughed. Florence Shen had been too polite to mention how badly I stank.

No more melancholy thoughts. There was a bathing chamber and I planned to use it.

The tub was black marble and slippery as hell. But when it was full and I’d successfully managed to get into it without breaking my neck, I sighed with bliss as the hot water soaked into my tired body.

I closed my eyes, running through the events of the day one more time.

I was in a new world.

Somehow, I didn’t think there would be any going back to Aercanum, as much as I longed to return.

Was that the price I had paid? I’d gained a new life but been forced to give up my old one. And everyone and everything I’d loved was in the past.

I was sure many people would kill for a second chance like the one I’d received. But I couldn’t say I was completely grateful.

Not when I considered the world where I’d wound up.

A world where vampires weren’t just the stuff of legend.

No, Blake Drakharrow was an absolute ass. But he was absolutely flesh and blood.

He and his ilk were horrible. But I couldn’t deny how powerful they seemed to be.

This entire world seemed to cater to them. Florence seemed ready to almost worship them. She was happy to be here and she thought nothing of the fact that the vampires might have involuntarily conscripted mortals to be here.

I’d forgotten to ask Florence about the burned out village where Blake had found me. What had happened to it? Why did no one seem to care?

I thought of what the highblood vampires had said about me. That I had the markings of a rider. A dragon rider.

Now that might be the most ludicrous part of all of this. They’d betrothed me to one of their princes because my blood was clearly valuable. And yet they had no actual dragons. Nothing for me to ride. So what was the point?

Unless there was more to my blood than I knew. More than they’d said.

But without another dragon rider to ask, I had no idea how I was going to find out.

I wondered what the dragon riders had been like. What had they been capable of? What had their dragons been like?

And most importantly, why had they all died out?

Of course, there was always the chance this was a mistake. The traits the vampires saw as marking me as a rider in this world, simply marked me as half-fae in Aercanum. Did that mean any fae from Aercanum would be considered a dragon rider here in Sangratha?

Or did it mean I was a fraud? Not someone with rider blood at all?

I supposed it didn’t really matter. Even if I wasn’t what they thought I was, how would they ever find out? There were no dragons to test me with.

All I had to do was try to fit in. Do as I was told. Go to my classes. Pretend I was a docile little lamb like Florence.

All the while, I’d be scheming to find a way out of here.

There was no point simply diving out a window. I needed to know my enemy first. If I’d been given a second chance at life, well, then I guessed I should make the best of it and actually try to form a real life once I left here. And that meant finding out more about this land and its people. There had to be other kingdoms. Maybe somewhere in the world was a place without vampires.

A place I could be free.

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