Page 27 of Queen of Vampire Hearts

Traitorous familiar.

Cassandra led me down two flights of stairs, three different hallways, and into another sumptuously designed room. I peppered her with questions about what she’d said earlier, but she claimed to not understand what I was talking about. The new room wasn’t nearly as big as Lucien’s, but it was much nicer than the apartment I’d left behind in New Orleans. I needed the distance from Lucien and time to figure out my next move, to find a way out.

I wasn’t ready to be someone’s mate, much less aqueen. I could barely keep myself alive, let alone be responsible for an entire species. There had to be a way out of these cuffs. But if I ran, I wouldn’t have him. I hated the treacherous thought whispering through my head. Besides, I didn’t have him now!

I felt the delayed release of jet lag come over me but refused to fall asleep without having it out with Lucien or at least makingsomeheadway on my escape plan. My first step would be to learn my enemy’s strengths and weaknesses to use them against him.I needed to have a plan for getting out of the castle if I couldn’t get the cuffs off and rift away.

Cassandra had silently departed after showing me the bedroom, and I’d lost my only guide through the massive labyrinth. I forged ahead anyway, wandering through the hallways, hoping to stumble across a library or something similar. I needed anything that could help me learn more about the area. The castle’s many switchbacks, dead ends, and identical passageways made it impossible to navigate. It was as if someone had deliberately designed it that way, and I realized they probably had.

It took me almost an hour of wrong turns to find the library. I opened the large doors and couldn’t stop my gasp at the enormity of the room. The shelves were carved from the black stone and stretched to the cavernous ceiling. Books and manuscripts in hundreds of different languages covered every inch of the room. I wondered if Lucien knew them all.

I trailed my fingers lovingly over the spines. Despite what the other witches might have said after I lost my grimoires, I revered knowledge. Though the loss of the books had been freeing in a way. Without the strictly regimented spells laid out to me within their pages, I was forced to come up with my own, branching outside the dictates of the Council. For me, no longer was it Aegis studies battle and Margaux studies healing.

The longer I was without those tomes, the more I realized how truly ridiculous the Council’s edict of power segregating was. If each familial grimoire contained the only spells allowed by each line, we were weak separately and strong together. It made sense that the Council would want to keep individual lines weaker than the collective whole, but it made us unnecessarily vulnerable to other species who preyed upon us.

We should be sharing grimoires, ensuring that knowledge spread throughout the lines to prevent any type from dying out. As an Atreus descendent, I studied battle magic to lead our armies into war should it ever come to that. However, I was a healer on my mother’s side, the Margaux. Her line was responsible for all those who came to me with their wounds. Why couldn’t I be both? Why did we have to choose? No one, including my parents, had been able to give me a satisfactory answer. If those witches in New Orleans had learned shield magic, they might still be alive. So why hinder us? Why not spread that kind of knowledge to all witches? Not just some?

My finger snagged on a black leather-bound tome with silver writing etched on the side, pulling me from her musings.The Vampyr.

Rule No. 2: Use your enemy’s strengths against them.

Lucien was still an enemy, right?Maybe it would be prudent to learn more about my captor. I knew I was lying to myself. In truth, I was dying for more information about Lucien.

The binding on the book groaned as I cracked it open, and I glanced around guiltily, afraid someone might have heard it. When no one appeared from behind a column to accuse me oflikingLucien, I pulled a chair closer to one of the massive windows. I curled up on the seat, tucked my legs under me, and began reading.

Most of the book detailed the various factions inside the Vampire species. I didn’t doubt that no matter the strength of any group, they would fall to Lucien’s power. The way he easily discarded those two vampires in New Orleans spoke to his power and strength. I still shuddered to recall it and couldn’t imagine a foe who could truly defend themselves against him.

What about the Council? Could he protect me from even them? No! I had to protect myself! Just like I always had! Like I would always have to, forever round and round, running and hiding. I tried not to feel disheartened and weary at the thought. It hurt when I reached for my power instinctually, only to feel its absence like a missing limb.

Finally, I came upon the renderings of Lucien. I traced an etching of him astride a massive black steed in ancient armor, charging into battle, his army of vampires at his back.

Lucien Silvano, King of Vampires, charged against the Death Demons. He and his army forced the horde back when they attempted to conquer the realm and extinguish all mortals.

The Demons of Thanatos tried to conquer Earth? When had that happened? Descendants of the Daemon Thanatos, the first death daemon released by Pandora, grew stronger with each kill. Their skin turned a ghostly white when enraged, growing pale wings and horns. I glanced at the date in the sketch’s corner, and my eyes widened. Seventy-five hundred years ago?! How old was Lucien?

Having beaten back the demons, King Lucien struck a deal with the head of the Death faction of demons, Aidan the Forsaken. Lucien promised to entreaty the gods on their behalf for the creation of a demon realm, where all daemons and their descendants could exist in peace without fear of persecution.

Holy hells! Lucien was responsible for the creation of Pandora, the realm of demons? The realm was supposedly a demon paradise, where all the original daemons, those first released by Pandora, lived. However, no one knew for sure.

I flipped through the book to another battle image, this time fighting against lycans, wolf shifters. The etching portrayed him killing the Lycan King, and I read the description below.

King Lucien ended the decade-long battle with the lycans by beheading their bloodthirsty king, allowing Prince Erik’s ascension to the throne.

I’d heard rumors about the current Lycan King, mostly that he was sex on a stick. My friends—former friends, I mentally added—had once whispered about how the werewolf had only to glance at a woman before she dropped her panties. Lucien was responsible for that kingdom as well? He had been busy in the last...however many millennia he’d lived.

I flipped through more pages and noticed the fae queen from Tír nAill shaking hands with Lucien, the date at the bottom was less than a decade ago.

King Lucien brokering a truce with the fae, aiding in eliminating slavery from the Realm of Tír nAill.

Was there anything the vampire hadn’t done? I flipped to the most recent entry. The final etching was of him sitting alone in what I assumed to be the throne room of this very castle. Idly tracing a finger over the image, I noticed how his shoulders hunched, and he appeared lost in thought. Did the artist recognize how lonely he appeared?

Next to the entry, I read,King Lucien awaits his fated mate, the Queen of Vampires, to relieve the unending years that stretch ahead of him.My stomach knotted.

I was that fated mate, and the images of his past, the wars he fought, the miracles he’d wrought, made me more conscious of the fact Fate had very much fucked up when it had chosen me for him. I had done absolutely nothing close to heroic in my immortal life. He’d helped create realms, installed kings. I’d killed my kind.

I closed the book, tossing it away from me. I hated when I thought of that night, of how my fury and my magic became too intermingled. It had built inside me like a volcano, erupting when I’d lost control. Magic had whipped from me, destroying everything. I’d blacked out from the release of so much power, coming to hours later before any of the survivors could.

Flashes of that night still haunted me. The ashes of the witches I’d killed coated my throat, cloying and suffocating. So many dead, all because of me. The looks of accusation from those who’d survived, their disbelief at my power, had driven me away. I had run, escaping like the coward I was, leaving so much destruction and death in my wake. My mystical concussion to erase their knowledge of me was more of an afterthought, only taking root in the memories of those remaining because of their weakened shields.

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