Page 79 of Slaying the Vampire Conqueror

He said it simply, like it was fact. And I hated that this flooded me with—with—what, affection? Gratefulness?

It shouldn’t have. Yes, he was right, I desired revenge. But that was a vice. It was no great kindness that he had offered me.

Still… it meant something, even if I wished it didn’t.

Atrius set the cup aside and leaned forward, his forearms on his knees.

“You may have gathered by now,” he said, “that my people have had a… fraught history.”

“You mean the House of Blood’s curse.”

Perhaps he flinched at that. Perhaps it was a trick of the firelight.

He hesitated before saying, “That was the start. Nyaxia’s spiteful curse, two thousand years ago. But… my people have endured far more than my kingdom’s suffering.” His face hardened briefly, then his gaze fell back to me. “Humans may believe that vampires don’t understand what powerlessness feels like. And for many, maybe that’s true. But those that follow me do. We understand loss. And we know that it is the worst kind of powerlessness.”

The words were stilted. But the meaning behind them was softer than I knew what to do with.

I cleared my throat.

“You said you wanted to talk business,” I said. “How long do you intend to stay in Vasai?”

Atrius blinked, as if caught off guard by the change of subject.

“Not long,” he replied. “A week or two. Then we will move on to Karisine.”

It stood to reason that Atrius would want to move quickly. We were getting closer now to the Pythora King—his ultimate goal. And Karisine was the next major city-state standing between us and the north.

My brow furrowed at that. I was grateful to have something to think about other than Naro or the past I wasn’t supposed to remember. Battle strategies and espionage were so simple comparatively.

Karisine was a well-fortified city, especially considering that Atrius was losing numbers with every city-state he needed to maintain control of. The idea of taking it by brute force seemed outrageous, and unlike Tarkan, its ruler had not set herself up for such easy assassination. Furthermore, Vasai and Karisine were closely connected by a number of communication routes, far more than Alka had. They’d be prepared for Atrius’s arrival.

I was supposed to be learning how to understand Atrius by now, but I couldn’t fathom how he intended to pull that off.

“It’s going to be… challenging,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

A suppressed smile tugged at the corners of Atrius’s mouth. Like a cat that was secretly hiding a canary in its teeth.

My brow twitched. “You have a plan.”

“I always have a plan.”

I wasn’t sure that was true. He always managed to make it work, I would give him that. But part of what made Atrius so difficult to understand—what made him such a formidableenemy—was that his plans didn’t make sense to anyone else but him. Sometimes I thought he conducted warfare like he fought in battle: entirely in the moment, responding to every change in circumstances in real time, impossible to anticipate.

“So?” I said. “Prove it. Enlighten me.”

He seemed to debate whether he wanted to or not.

“Are you familiar,” he said, “with the island of Veratas?”

“Yes, but—barely. It’s… a nothing island, isn’t it?”

Tiny. Uninhabited. Close to the eastern coast of Glaea.

“It was,” Atrius said. “Easiest conquering I’ve ever done.”

My brows rose now. “Conquering.”

Again, he was silent for a long moment, his eyes far away, a gentler smile playing at his lips. It was a strange expression on him, all those hard lines softened, even under the harsh light of the fire.

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