Brimstone By Callie Hart - 3

“SHE ISN’T ONE of us. How can she be our queen when I can hear her heart beating from here?”

The throne was cold as ice. No cushion padded its seat, and the frigid temperature of the hard stone leached into my back and ass. I squirmed uncomfortably as the beautiful vampire with the golden braids called out across the hall for all to hear.

“Ours might be the youngest court in this realm, but Sanasroth has always prided itself on its traditions. For a thousand years, we were ruled over by the first vampire. A brilliant male, who carved out a home and a future for his children and earned us all the right to belong. He wasn’t just a king. He was a walking god among the living and the dead of this realm, and this . . . this girl ,” she spat, “was human mere days ago. So weak that one of our own had to save her life.” She sent a look full of naked malice in Taladaius’s direction. “How do we replace the creator of our entire species with this ?”

She was an excellent actress. Her words overflowed with emotion as she paced around the star, weaving in and out of the other Lords of Midnight. Most would have been fooled by the hitch in her voice when she spoke of losing Malcolm, but I heard the lie.

Her heart was not broken, because she had no heart. I felt her malign energy radiating from her as sure as I used to feel the heat radiating from the suns back in the Third: Whatever soul she might once have possessed had fled the shell of her body long ago. A dark, cruel thing crouched inside of her now, peering out of her wide, pretty eyes, using her voice to speak.

“Do other courts invite the chicken or the calf to sit atop their thrones in fancy dress to preside over them ?” she bellowed.

A wave of cries went up around the hall in a rising tide of anger. Some of the vampires seated on the benches leaped to their feet, shouting out above the rest.

“No!”

“They would never!”

“Perversion!”

“Anathema!”

“Then why do we crown a lowly creature that would have been food to us only days ago and give it the power to rule over us? Why do we embarrass ourselves like—”

That’s Zovena , Kingfisher said. The sound of his deep voice in my mind startled me; I barely kept the surprise from my face. Though I’m sure you’ve figured that out by now. Tal gave you all their names.

Yes , I answered. She’s Keeper of Missives.

I felt Fisher’s approval in the back of my mind. Yes. See the ring on her hand? The thick band of gold with the purple stone? That marks her as a Lord. All five of them have rings. They’re a source of power, gifted to them by Malcolm. Each supposedly contains the same amount of magic, though it’s rumored that Tal’s is the most powerful. Zovena was Lìssian once, like Tal. He loved her. For her part, I think she loved him, too. But that was a long, long time ago.

I watched the way Zovena glared at my maker now and found no love or warmth of affection for him in her eyes. “You should have left her there to die, Taladaius,” the female seethed. “You could have slit the Bane’s throat while you were at it, too. But no. We all know how much you care about your precious Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate, don’t we? So now you bring them both before us, hand in hand, mates, attempting to install not only a half-blood child as queen but a full-blooded Fae male as king consort along with her! And not just any Fae male. One who has plagued and murdered our people for centuries! Have you forgotten that we are at war with him?”

I waited for Kingfisher to say something, but no response came. Glancing over to where he stood on my right, I found that he was yawning.

I spoke into his mind again. Laying it on a little thick, don’t you think?

His left eye twitched. No, not really. Zovena and I aren’t the best of friends. I’ve heard it all before.

The slender male with the hooked nose stepped forward from his point on the star, deep furrows forming in his brow. He looked to be in his thirties, but gods only knew his real age. “That’s enough, Zovena. Throwing a temper tantrum won’t change anything. Taladaius saved the girl. Now she is of our blood. She killed Malcolm. Therefore, she must ascend. It is our way. We all know it. Hysterics solve nothing.”

“This isn’t hysterics,” Zovena bit out. “This is outrage! On behalf of my brothers and sisters!” She gestured to other members of the Sanasrothian court, seated in their benches, stretching back into darkness. They bayed in response, buying into her rhetoric. “They deserve better. A strong hand. A queen who—”

“Oh, so you still envision a queen on the throne, then? A female like yourself, perhaps?” the hook-nosed male asked.

While they bickered back and forth, I spoke again to Fisher. That’s Ereth, I suppose? Keeper of the Evenlight?

Fisher answered right away. Yes. He and his followers are religious zealots. They worship one of the demon gods. If he gets his way, every single living being in Yvelia will be drained of their magic and turned into slaves. Every continent will be turned into a wasteland paradise for vampires, where they can hunt and kill anything left alive for sport.

Sounds delightful , I said.

The other one is the Hazrax. The last of its kind. It is twice as old as anything else that draws breath in Yvelia.

Taladaius had been oddly vague when he’d spoken of the Hazrax. It was not Fae, but it wasn’t vampire, either. It had come to Malcolm centuries ago, back when the vampire king was still in the throes of forging his empire, and had offered its services to the king. When Malcolm had asked if it wanted eternity in exchange, the Hazrax had sworn to destroy him if he tried to bite it, and Malcolm had believed every word. When the king had asked it what it did want in exchange for its fealty to Sanasroth, the Hazrax had said that it “wanted to watch.” From that point onward, the Hazrax had become Keeper of Silence.

Just yesterday, I had asked Taladaius why the vampire king had allowed the creature to remain in his court if he truly did think it capable of destroying him. Taladaius had just shrugged. “The Hazrax’s magic is shrouded in mystery. No one here knows what it’s capable of . . . but whatever magic or power it showed to Malcolm scared him enough to allow it to stay.”

We knew the Hazrax entered Ammontraíeth many years ago , Kingfisher said into my mind. We haven’t heard tell of it leaving since. It’s rumored that it doesn’t even leave this hall. It doesn’t eat or sleep. It just watches.

The creature’s appearance was terrifying enough without wondering how it could just exist here like this, a constant, unsettling presence. As if he could sense my discomfort, Kingfisher moved on. The old woman is Algat, Keeper of Records. She was a witch once. Cast out by her own clan for meddling in dark magics. She might look like the oldest of the Lords, but she’s actually the youngest. I had cause to deal with her once or twice before she transitioned. Pure evil runs through her veins, Little Osha. Do not underestimate her.

Even as he said it, the old woman’s head canted at an unnatural angle, turning toward Kingfisher, as if she could hear the conversation passing between us. I couldn’t make out much of her face with all that thick gray hair hanging down, but I could see her hideous grin. Rotten, yellow teeth filled her mouth, long as a rat’s. Her canines were so elongated that they pierced her lower lip, streaking her chin red with blood.

Her cloudy eyes locked with mine, and—

I was back in the Third.

I was arguing with Hayden.

I was back in Madra’s palace, fighting to free my hands as Harron came to kill me.

I was in Kingfisher’s bed in Ballard, safe in his arms.

He was inside me, and my soul was full of fire, and—

“Do you think I can smoke in here?”

I jumped out of my skin at the sound of Carrion’s voice.

I’d been staring at the old woman. She had been staring at me. How long had I . . .

An ice-cold sensation flooded my head. It felt as if someone had been rifling through my pockets. I glanced at Fisher out of the corner of my eye, but he was staring at the ceiling, affecting boredom, unaware anything untoward had just happened. When I turned to Carrion, about to ask him to repeat himself, I saw that the idiot had a cigarillo in his mouth and was fishing around in his pocket for his flint box.

“What in all five hells are you doing ?” I hissed. “Do not light that.”

Fisher growled, finally noticing what the true heir to the Winter Court was up to. He stepped back behind the throne and ripped the cigarillo out of Carrion’s mouth, tossing it to the ground.

“Are we keeping you from something, Your Highness?” The voice rent the air in two like a whip.

Ereth stood at the center of the five-pointed star, his cloak thrown back over one shoulder as if he had spun around in haste. Zovena was as still as a statue, as were the others, but I could tell that she was crowing inside.

Once upon a time, I hadn’t been the only apprentice at the Third’s most notorious forge. Elroy had caught me whispering to one of his other students and had been furious that I hadn’t been paying attention to him waxing poetic about different glass tempering styles. This moment felt a lot like that.

I was two seconds away from being scolded like a misbehaving child. That would not be good. The Lords needed to be brought to heel, not offered an invitation to chide me. I had to pull the situation back, to take the proceedings in hand. My first instinct was to apologize for the interruption, but a queen did not apologize.

I raised my chin and stared Ereth down, filling my veins with ice. “Yes, Ereth. Since you’ve finally thought to ask, I do have better things to do than listen to you all bickering like children. I was told this was supposed to be a coronation, so let’s proceed with the business of it, shall we?”

A tense quiet fell over the Hall of Tears. It was only now, with every vampire present stunned to silence, that I realized why this place was called the Hall of Tears: somewhere, out there in the dark, someone was crying. A mournful wail echoed off the columns and then ricocheted around the recessed alcoves —a sound devoid of hope. A shiver ran up my spine as I heard another sob join the first, and then another, and another. Out there, beyond the crowds and the strange white-green glow of the torches, people were suffering.

“My sincere apologies, Your Highness.” Ereth had dropped into a deep bow, pale hand pressed to the middle of his chest. He lifted his head, looking up at me from beneath dark brows, and I saw the mockery in his eyes. “You’re absolutely right. How foolish of me. The night is wasting, and there’s much to be done.”

“The girl needs to drink before she’s crowned.” It was Algat who made the declaration. Her cracked voice reminded me of the reckoning wind that used to howl across the dunes and batter the Silver City: dry and angry. “How can she hope to rule if she is not leashed to the blood?”

Taladaius had explained that he would hold his tongue as best he could during the evening’s proceedings. He had been Malcolm’s favorite—his Keeper of Secrets—which meant that he was not a favorite among the five. He hadn’t wanted to do or say anything to color the actions of the others, but at Algat’s comment, he quickly stepped forward. “She isn’t required to drink,” he said. “No rule or law prescribes it.”

“No law and no rule, maybe, but what of common sense?” the old woman asked, in a sly croak. “Come now, Taladaius. The girl’s a virgin—”

Excuse me?” I couldn’t stop myself. My indignation erupted from me before I could reel it back. “I assure you, I am not .”

Algat gave me a pitying look. “Not of the body, child.” Her head tipped toward Fisher again, the speed and angle of the motion making my stomach twist. “We smell the sex on both you and your mate perfectly well, I assure you. No, you are a virgin of the blood. You have not fed from the life source of the living—”

“She’s still a member of their number,” Zovena cut in with obvious disgust. “I said it before and no one cared to comment on the matter, but how can a member of the living feed on the living? Again, how can she hope to rule . . .” She trailed off, her eyes growing round in her head as she took me in.

I had risen to my feet.

And my heart had stopped beating.

It hadn’t taken long to master the trick. Taladaius had known that his counterparts would take offense over the issue, and so he had taught me how to paralyze the muscle in my chest. It had been simple enough. All I had to do was picture my heart resting, taking a break, and that was precisely what it did.

My blood stopped pumping. Everything inside me stilled. I’d never realized that I could hear the rushing of my blood if I tried to, but I could. And now that it sat dormant in my veins, my inner world felt off kilter. It was like breathing under water; I shouldn’t have been able to do it.

“So she can choose when to be like us, then,” Zovena muttered under her breath. “But that does not make her one of us.”

“If she drinks, she will be.” Algat pushed, apparently dissatisfied that I hadn’t answered to the issue. “This whole court knows that you haven’t fed since you awoke from the Midnight Kiss, girl. Drink from someone, and all will be well. We’ll place the circlet upon your head and then drown ourselves in wine until sunrise, celebrating you as our new queen if you do.”

“And if I don’t?”

Taladaius was halfway across the platform, moving toward me. “Saeris.”

“Listen to him,” Zovena sneered. “ Saeris. He calls her by her name! And why wouldn’t he? He made her. She’s beholden to him . He pushes her forward as his puppet, for him to control from the shadows. If you accept her, then on your heads be it. But know you are accepting a proxy. Know who you’re truly bowing and scraping to when you swear fealty.”

There were traveling theater companies back in Zilvaren who would have committed murder to secure Zovena as one of their lead players; the female was really beginning to annoy me. Thankfully, Taladaius seemed immune to her dramatics. “You don’t have to do anything, Saeris. It isn’t law.”

“It isn’t law because it’s never needed to be,” Zovena hissed. “The ruler of the vampire court should be a vampire . Feeding on the blood of the living should be the greatest pleasure imaginable to our regent. They should enact their basest nature without any need for convincing.”

For all his preparations over the past couple of days, Taladaius hadn’t seen this coming. Maybe he should have. It made sense that these monsters would want reassurances. I was an interloper taking up residence inside their palace. I was half Fae. It was only natural that they were wary of me. Martyrs only knew how they could tell that I hadn’t fed, but it was true. I hadn’t wanted to. Hadn’t needed to.

“My sisters are right, Highness,” Ereth interjected. “If you’d accept a coronation gift from us, maybe it would set our minds at ease. A beautiful young woman to sip from, perhaps?” His pit-black eyes flitted to Kingfisher. “Or . . . perhaps there is a simpler solution to this quandary?”

“No,” I snapped. “If it isn’t mandated, then do not seek to make a spectacle of me.”

Amid all of this, the Hazrax’s head turned from left to right, observing the scene as it unfolded. It said nothing, its odd gills flaring. With its hands clasped together inside the sleeves of its bone-white robe, it took everything in without saying a word. It shifted its body to face me now, though, turning its attention on me . . . and my mate. Kingfisher had stepped forward and turned his back on the gathering—an unimaginable show of disrespect. But I knew Fisher, and he didn’t give a shit about disrespecting the Sanasrothian court. He wanted to look me in the eyes when he spoke to me.

“Just do it, Osha.”

“What?”

“Bite me. Drink. Swallow twice and be done with it. They pursue this to undermine you because they’re sure you won’t do it. But fuck them. This is easy. We take care of this, and we get to leave this room.” In my head, he said, We can go back to Cahlish. Back to Ren, and Lorreth, and Layne.

“He has a point,” Carrion said.

“You shouldn’t even be here, Swift,” Fisher growled irritably. “Keep your opinions to yourself.”

The eyes of a thousand vampires bored into me as I peered around Fisher’s side and looked out at the amassed court. What would they do if I still refused? Many of them had died with magic in their veins. It had corrupted and turned black along with their blood. Some of them were powerful. The only thing keeping any of them from tearing us apart was the Law of Ascension and Taladaius’s edict. But laws were broken all the time, and I did not want to die here , of all places.

Gods.

I took a deep breath.

“All right. I’ll drink from you,” I whispered.

Ereth clapped his hands together, overjoyed. “Wonderful!” He’d heard me, naturally. “Wonderful, wonderful!”

A growl of displeasure issued from the back of Fisher’s throat, but his gaze remained fixed on me, never wavering. He began unfastening the leather straps that held his right bracer in place, undoing the armor. “Block them out. Don’t pay them any attention. It’s just you and me, okay?”

I thanked the gods, the stars, and all four winds because, for once in his life, Carrion Swift kept his mouth shut. If he had made some quip about the fact that he was standing there, standing right next to us, he probably would have lost his front teeth.

I focused on my mate, determined not to fumble this. We had one shot. A single chance at turning the tides in this war. If our play had to be this, then so be it. I would keep a steady hand, but gods alive, it would be hard. This . . . isn’t how I imagined this , I thought to Fisher.

As he slipped his bracer free, his eyes found mine, burning with intensity. A slow, intrigued smile kicked up the corner of his mouth. Oh? So you’ve been imagining this, then, have you, Little Osha?

My blood lit on fire in my veins. The suggestive tone in his voice in my head would have made even the girls who worked at Kala’s blush. No. It was too late, though. My cheeks were glowing, and Fisher was chuckling under his breath, rolling back his sleeve.

You can own your fantasies with me, Little Osha. There is nothing in this realm or the next that I won’t give to you if you desire it. All you ever need do is ask.

Now was not the time. It sure as hells wasn’t the place.

But . . . Holy gods.

Breathe, Saeris.

“Look at her, just standing there. She’s stalling,” Zovena muttered down on the platform. I glanced behind Fisher, a wave of nerves cinching tight in my gut, but Fisher gently took hold of my chin and tipped my face so that I was looking back up at him. The ink at his throat was going wild; I could see the black linework morphing and shifting over the top of his gorget. There wasn’t much quicksilver left in his eye now, but the small amount that remained was also shifting, forming the geometric shapes and patterns among the vivid green of his iris. “Don’t look at her. Look at me. You’re okay.”

And I was.

When Fisher let go of my chin and turned his hand, offering me his wrist, I didn’t think. It was instinctual. The warmth that lived at the back of my throat now became a roaring inferno. I took hold of his arm, a pulse of pleasure already aching in my mouth as I sank my canines into his flesh.

Deep.

So deep.

I hadn’t meant to . . .

I froze, not understanding the overpowering urge I felt to wait . . .

“Drink, Saeris,” Fisher said in a ragged gasp.

No.

No, I needed to wait.

“For the love of the gods, fucking drink,” he begged.

In those long, heady moments, I hadn’t realized that I wasn’t taking anything from him. That I was giving something to him instead.

I blinked as black ink shifted beneath Fisher’s skin, pouring like water down his arm. It banded his wrist and then disappeared, transferring to me. I felt the cool prickle of it settling right in the center of my chest, just below my collarbone, but I didn’t care about the new ink.

I only cared about my mate.

And the blood .

When I drew from Fisher for the first time, pulling at his wrist, I felt the reversal of a flow between us. The changing of a tide. As soon as his blood touched my tongue, an explosion of color and sound lit up inside my head like a thousand fireworks. Fire chased through my veins. Need pooled between my legs, sending a rush of pleasure up through my body so powerful that I wanted to scream. I couldn’t, though. I’d have to stop drawing from him to do that, and—

“Fuck, Saeris.” Breathless. Mindless. Desperate. Fisher’s voice was thick with his own desire. His next words went against everything my body was screaming for. “Stop, Osha. Enough.”

Suddenly, we were in the Hall of Tears.

I tore my mouth from Fisher’s wrist, panting as if I’d been doused with a bucket of cold water.

The Hall of Tears . . .

A thousand Sanasrothians, on their feet, cheering at my hunger . . .

My pulse raced away from me, refusing to listen, refusing to be still.

I turned to Kingfisher, lips parted, another wave of heat and pleasure rocking me to the tips of my toes when I saw how flushed his cheeks were beneath his stubble. His pupils had completely swallowed his iris and banished the green and the quicksilver. His labored breathing had his chest rising and falling so fast. He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and the primal hunger I saw there landed like a physical blow. He was barely in control of himself. If I touched him—

“Don’t even think about it, or I’ll take you right here,” he panted.

Holy.

Fucking.

Gods.

“Well done! Well done!” Ereth stood back in position at his point of the star. His applause echoed above the raucous cheering that flooded the hall. I paid no heed to the Keeper of Evenlight, though. I couldn’t tear my gaze from Fisher. He couldn’t tear his gaze from me. My mate and I stared at each other, panting, our bodies tensed taut as twin bowstrings. The feeling coursing through me was like nothing I had ever encountered before. It went beyond want. There were no words to describe it.

We hadn’t slept together since I’d woken. I’d still been sick from the transition and sore from the injuries I’d sustained in the maze at Gillethrye. But now . . .

Now.

Fuck, I needed him now .

“It’s done! She has fed!” Ereth faced the masses with both hands raised in the air like some prophesying messiah. “She is leashed by the blood. Bound to it, as we all are. There can be no question of her commitment to our people now.”

What the hell was he talking about?

Kingfisher reached out and carefully wiped his thumb over my chin; it came away red. His chest hitched up and down so fast. He hadn’t spoken again yet.

“Crown her! Crown her!” the crowd roared.

I was drunk. Swimming, sinking, drowning. I needed to lie down.

Suddenly, someone was standing in front of me. I tore my eyes away from Fisher and gasped aloud when I saw the Hall of Tears again. Really looked upon it, as if seeing it for the first time. The figures stitched into the wall hangings writhed and cavorted, glimmering in the torchlight. Flecks of gold and silver danced in the air. The darkness had swept away, revealing sumptuous furnishings, and paintings hanging from the walls, and sprays of night-blooming flowers in tall vases, throughout the hall.

Suddenly, crushingly, the Hall of Tears had become beautiful.