Page 36 of King of the Damned
He widens his eyes, and they flicker back to their normal glassiness.
“The Priestesses–”
His words are cut short by a thick wooden stake rising from the floor to stab him through the back, straight into his heart. His body goes through one thousand years of decay in a matter of a few seconds, and he falls to ashes on the black marble floor.
I catch myself with my hands as I fall backward slightly, staring at the stake as tall as I am protruding from the ground.
Dravon is dead, and he’s been immortal for nearly as long as I have. He’s got to have hundreds of thousands of vampires descended from him, and every single one of them just faded into dust.
I stare at that stake for a long while, contemplating his last words and what they could mean, and then it hits me. The fog cast over his eyes was the influence of the Priestesses, using him as a spy over my court.
And if Adelasia saw that fog over his eyes, then there is a very high possibility that the Priestesses now know of her existence.
They’re coming to reclaim their sister when their magic is at its strongest. At the next full moon.
Tomorrow.
I use magic to repair Adelasia’s bedroom and remove any signs of Dravon from the space. It takes not but a few seconds, and I spend nearly the entire rest of the night agonizing over the way she looked at me when I stopped letting myselffeel.
I should have never tasted her. I should have never touched her. The more time I spend with her, the more I’m losing myself in her. She’s on my mind all the time. She never leaves. I can smell her, I can hear her heartbeat, I can feel her presence and now I cantasteher. Not only does she linger in my mind, but now she’s all over my lips and my clothes and I’m wholly consumed by nothing but her.
I shouldn’t have walked away from her earlier, and I know I hurt her in doing so. I can practically feel her heartbreak in my own chest through our shared magic.
I want her more than anything, and coming to that realization while I was with her scared me, because it comes with a choice I can no longer make.
I don’t have the strength to.
Betrayed by my own heart once again, and I dread it more than I have ever dreaded anything before. She is tangled in one destiny that is dripping with blood and another that would ruin her as immortality has ruined me.
Adelasia, my sweet agony. My love is a poison on your lips. A curse far crueler than vampirism, destined to be the fated mate of a man whose life has been consumed by the desire to end yours.
When I return to my bedchamber, I step through the door to find Adelasia, thankfully, asleep. Cassius is in the bed with her. A ridiculous pang of jealousy shoots down my spine at the thought that he’s stolen my place on the bed.Mybed.
I toe off my boots and approach the bed and lightly flick the invertebrate coiled there. He lifts his head and hisses quietly, and that’s when I notice the golden streak down his back and the golden line around Adelasia’s left wrist.
I scowl at him. I didn’t even know he could make vows. He can’t even speak!
“Move,” I whisper angrily. Cassius shows me his fangs as if in warning that he has no qualms about biting me as he did Dravon. He moves to the foot of the bed to make room for me, and I climb into the vacant space as slowly and quietly as I can.
I don’t embrace Adelasia, but I lounge next to her, slumping slightly against the headboard as I watch her sleep. I use my magic to conjure a small jar of medicine for the cut on her cheek. I gather some on the tip of my finger and lightly run the balm along the cut to coat it.
The redness and swelling instantly begin to recede, and she sighs softly in her sleep at the relief. It brings a hint of a smile to my face. I don’t like the knowledge that she’s in pain, however minimal it might be.
I know when the night has reached an end and when the sun begins to rise, because the golden markings of my vow to Adelasia fade from my skin.
Vows have a way of knowing the truth, even if one is in denial about it. Perhaps I was a fool for wagering my life and the fate of the entire vampire race to prove my sincerity, but Adelasia wouldn’t have believed me any other way.
She sleeps through the morning and well into the afternoon. In her time here, she’s become more nocturnal simply because everyone else is. It pleases me to see her adjusting to this life, as temporary as it was always meant to be.
Vampires don’t require sleep, but some do it simply for the routine. Immortality can get incredibly boring. When one has lived for as long as I have–read and witnessed all of history as it happened, traveled the world, learned every language and studied every culture, there tends to be little to do except contemplate the existential loneliness.
It’s the thing I miss most about being a human. Humans are always learning, always clinging to their life because they know their time on this earth is limited. There’s no chance they’ll get to experience everything the world has to offer, and that's why their lives are so precious to them.
Becausetimeis precious to them.
When Adelasia stirs at my side, I sit up straighter. I wait patiently for her to open her eyes and orient herself. She looks at me in confusion and lifts her head from the pillow, examining the room for a moment before her focus comes back to me. Her hand reaches up to feel her neck, and she winces slightly at the tenderness of Dravon’s bite.
“You came back,” she whispers, unable to meet my eyes for longer than a second.
