Page 28 of King of the Damned
“That’s why you rule them. They owe their immortality to you.”
I nod. “Yes, but that’s not the only reason. That man I killed in the kitchen? He was younger. Less than a decade as one of us. You can tell how young an immortal is by the hollows of their cheeks. The younger a vampire is, the more malnourished and sallow they appear, because they have not yet fed enough to become strong by vampire standards. Most vampires reach full maturity after about a century, if they even make it that long. The younger ones tend to stick together in their own clans out in the world and either get mauled by the werebeasts or cut down by demon hunters. If one gets killed, the rest fall.”
“Why?”
“Because if you kill a vampire, every vampire descended from them also perishes.”
The weight of my words and my earlier vow begin to settle on her shoulders. “So…if you died…”
“Then the vampire race would cease to exist.”
This is not information humans should ever know. It’s dangerous even, but I have trust in her that she will keep it to herself. I am finally opening up to her, after all. She’s always wanted me to tell her the truth, and now I have. I don’t think she’d do something to jeopardize that.
But as those thoughts enter and leave my head, I turn to her and notice she’s crying. I feel a genuine concern in my heart and wipe away a tear, though they continue to spill faster as she turns her head away from me.
Her lip quivers as she finally meets my gaze, and she whispers, “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
I pretend to be shocked at that conclusion, but the truth is, I’m not sure myself. “Why would you think that?”
“Why else would you tell me how to kill the entire vampire race if that knowledge wasn’t going to just die with me?”
I take her wrist in my hand but she tries to tug it away. I grip it harder and force her to keep her gaze locked with mine. “Everyone dies, Adelasia. Eventually.”
She scoffs. “Yes, you’re right. Everyone dies. After they live full lives and…and…and get married and have babies or spend their entire adult life working towards being a professional dancer. Nobody deserves to die alone in this depressing, empty marble cage!”
I match her outburst with one of my own. “Dying in a marble cage isnothingcompared to the millennium I have endured alone.”
She roughly pushes away from me. “How many other unsuspecting women have you stolen from their lives in a thousand years? Hundreds? For what? Because you’re lonely? Because you like your meals frightened? Does the despair make us taste better?”
“No. Butsilencedoes,” I say coldly, before turning my back to her.
“Maybe you deserve to be alone,” she says to my back.
I turn to her, my gaze filled with enough fury that it causes her to stumble backward. “You think I chose this life? You think I wanted to become a monster? You think I enjoy this life of eternal punishment?! I was cursed because I foolishly gave my heart to a cruel mistress incapable of loving me back. She wanted my devotion, but my heart was too much. It disgusted her. So when she grew tired of my simpering at her feet and worshipping the ground she walked on, she turned me into a monster. She watched me slaughter my own mother and had the gall to tell me it was better this way.”
Her anger suddenly dissipates.
“It was the Tenth Priestess? She was the one you loved?”
“Yekaterina,” I whisper. It’s been centuries since I’ve said her name out loud. I don’t like the evil that lingers in the air with it.
At the admission, Adelasia softens and steps closer to me. Her proximity brings me some peace and the rage within me begins to subside.
“I’m sorry,” she offers gently.
“Don’t be. I don’t deserve nor want your pity.”
“It’s not pity,” she argues. “It’s empathy.”
“Empathy is just pity in disguise.”
“I’ve never met anyone more stubborn than you,” she says, nudging her head against the sleeve of my coat.
“I have.You.”
She playfully scoffs. “I am not stubborn!”
“It must be nice, living in such delusion.”
