Page 34 of Cruel Vampire King

“I thought I heard them in the night,” Thessa whispered. “I heard someone talking. You were gone, and I thought… I thought…”

She trailed off as though it was too horrible to say. But in those clear brown eyes of hers, I saw something. She knew something. Something that sparked a deep betrayal. She stared at me as though she knew that when she needed me, I was off kissing Luken. Even now, there had to be something more I could do, but I wasn’t saying the words out loud.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Her eyes fluttered shut. I leaned in, a sob catching in my throat. Her skin was icy to the touch. But she took a laborious breath. She was still holding on. And I needed to warm her up. She was right about the rocks I’d put in the fire—they might explode. So I plucked them out of the fire and rolled them away, then carefully moved Thessa closer to the flames.

She was still sleeping, so I hunted further from the spring for rocks that would be safer. These I brought back and continued to heat the water until it was lukewarm. I tipped a waterskin into her mouth, hoping the warmer water would help fight off any chills.

With that done, there wasn’t much left to do other than wait for the others to come back and keep heating the water. I searched close to the spring but found nothing that could help. There were no fish in the water, either.

Hours passed.

Ysara finished dragging the bodies away, then disappeared without explanation.

More hours passed. Dusk began to fall.

What if there were more elf mercenaries in the forest? What if the others had already been killed? What if Luken was just waiting for Thessa to die to name me the default winner?

Thessa remained cold, so I gathered vegetation from around the spring and built up a small wall against her, on the other side from the fire. Then, I hacked a few branches off the trees with the swords that the elves left. I used these to build a lean-to that would reflect the heat back at her. Thessa moaned a few times but didn’t wake up.

When it was well and truly dark, I checked her injuries. The bindings were wet with blood, but it hadn’t soaked too deeply. Good. The bleeding had stopped at last.

As I moved the scrap of cloth near her collar, a glint of metal flashed. I paused, brushing Thessa’s cut shirt just a little out of the way. A small pendant hung on a sturdy leather strap around her neck. The pendant was in the shape of a heart, with tiny seals edging the outside. The image of a piece of seaweed bent over itself in the middle of the heart, making the letter ‘D.’

***

Darcie’s fingers were cold in my hand as we stood with the rest of our siblings. We were dressed in somber colors. The wind brought the sharp scent of frost to mingle with the salt of the sea. We were lined up on the beach, facing the ocean. The waves rocked a small, closed boat that was tethered to the docks.

“Is Grandma going to come back after she’s finished her trip?” Darcie’s high, curious voice rang out.

“Hush,” Anna snapped at her, tears glistening in her eyes.

I put an arm around Darcie. All she was told was that we had to see Grandma off. Not that Grandma was gone. Dead. That the boat was her coffin, and once it was far from the shore, it would disappear into the water and return Grandma to the ocean where her selkie ancestors came from.

Darcie sighed as she fiddled with her necklace. It was the last thing Grandma gave to her. A heart-shaped pendant with the letter D on it.“It’s for both of us,” Grandma had told her. “My name is Darcie, too.”

“No, it’s not,” Darcie argued. “Your name is Grandma!”

I held my sister closer, pressing my face into her hair. I didn’t want to be the one to explain to her that Grandma wasn’t coming back. We watched the boat float from shore, magically born against the currents and waves to head back to the sea.

Darcie’s little hand closed over the pendant. Her eyes grew distant, and I thought,Maybe she does understand after all.

***

The small pendant was just bigger than my thumbnail. But it felt as though it weighed a hundred pounds as I stared at Thessa.

Chapter 13

Between the loss of blood and the lack of proper care, Thessa slipped into unconsciousness before the others returned. In the morning, Kael put a comforting arm around my shoulders as he looked on with worry at Thessa. Somehow, seeing her close to death like this made everything so much clearer. Emily was right when she said I wasn’t ready for the Blood Trials.

But I think if I was really ready for them, I wouldn’t have joined. To be ready for something like this you had to turn off the part of your heart that cares… and if I did that, I wouldn’t care about Darcie anymore, either. So I’d never be ready. The only question was, now that I knew that was the case, what did I do now?

I couldn’t save Darcie and Thessa both. Could I? Maybe there was something I could do, some bargain I could strike…

Luken told me no last time. Maybe if I changed the offer? Maybe if I promised to be his devoted slave, he’d accept my terms. But even those thoughts had no hope. If he’d been interested in manipulating me into agreeing to be his possession, he could have worked harder the night of the masque. I gave him that opening already.

There would be no miracle, no clever twist to make him change his mind. I had no power over him. He wasn’t a prince bewitched by my beauty and I was no fairytale heroine. That was the sort of thinking that got my family killed four years ago. I couldn’t fall back into those hopes.

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