14
BLOOD IN THE MILK
SAERIS
Total known dead: 1,373 Total known infected: 1,665 Estimated infected landmass: 2,039 hectares
TAL DIDN’T BLINK as he led the way through the chaotic halls of Ammontraíeth.
The high bloods knelt for me, but it was him they shied away from, averting their eyes—only natural, really, considering the male could boil the blood in their veins with only a flick of his wrist. I’d watched it happen during my coronation, when Ereth’s followers had tried to climb the steps to the dais, and the horrific sight lingered with me even now. It made sense that the members of the Blood Court feared the male.
The pale ghost of his reflection kept pace beside him in the obsidian walls, the image of him so near perfect in the glassy black stonework that I almost had trouble telling them apart. My doppelgänger strode beside me, too, gait confident, head held high. When my hands moved to the silver-tipped daggers at my hips, her hands moved, too. When I turned to stare at her, she stared coolly back at me, her face a mask of indifference, but I recognized the weariness in her. There were shadows beneath her blue eyes.
We’d had news this evening. The kind of troubling news that caused panic.
Lorreth had procured a swift-winged hawk from somewhere and was using it to trade messages with the temporary camp on the other side of the mountain range. Every evening, they would update us with our losses and an estimation of total land lost to the rot . . . and so far, the numbers were not good.
Over thirteen hundred dead.
More infected.
Huge swaths of land blackened and dead.
Teams of warriors were riding out each morning, Danya among them.
They were cornering and dismembering as many of the infected feeders as they could, but it wasn’t enough.
A tide of destruction was creeping across the land, and I was stuck here at the Black Palace, shackled by a crown I didn’t want and a court of high bloods who didn’t want me. It was a sacrifice that had to be made, though. If I refused to lead the Blood Court, then another high blood would assume the role, and that would be far, far worse . . .
The sound of our heels striking the polished floor echoed loudly as we made our way deeper into the bowels of the palace. Lorreth was with Carrion in the training hall, attempting to whip him into shape, and without the warrior at my side to remind them of their manners, it seemed as though the members of the Blood Court had taken to staring. Groups of high bloods halted their hushed conversations, their eyes carving chunks out of me before resentfully dropping to their knees as we passed.
“Ignore them,” Taladaius said, as we rounded a corner and found ourselves alone. We stood at the foot of a long, steep flight of stairs that rose into darkness. “The Blood Court is an archaic place. Its members are like insects trapped in amber. Nothing changes here. We are predictable in our cruelty.
Predictable in our violence. It’s change that is feared most in a place like this.
They aren’t worried about you, per se. More . . . what you represent.”
I hummed thoughtfully, glancing back in the direction of the well-dressed vipers who had been sizing me up so openly. “I know I’ve given you
discretionary rule here, Tal. But I still have ultimate power over this entire court. Have you thought that maybe they should be worried about me?”
My maker—my new friend—hovered in place, foot placed on the first step of the staircase, something dark and intrigued glittering in his pale gray eyes. “I have found myself wondering that question, actually,” he mused.
“And?” A lot hinged on this moment. There was so much unspoken between us. He had saved me and brought me here. He had placed the crown on my head and given me this power . . . and he had never once asked me what I intended to do with it. I was mated to an enemy of Sanasroth. I had already decommissioned their army, as it were. At any moment, it was within my purview to defang the entire court and bring the black spires of Ammontraíeth
crashing down on all their heads.
Tal was more aware of this than anyone.
And yet he shrugged.
“I know you hope to save the high bloods who live here, Saeris. To instill in them some kind of belated moral compass. I know you hope to eradicate the horde and put them in the ground eventually, after you’ve given the court some time to get used to the idea. Apart from that . . . I try not to bother myself with the politics of regents, Your Highness.” His voice held no emotion, but the slight bow he offered me gave the impression that he was being very sarcastic.
“I’m but a lowly Lord of Midnight. It would be impertinent of me to second- guess the motives of our esteemed queen.”
I was puffing and clutching a stitch in my side by the time we reached the top of the stairs. Five hundred and seventy-three steps. That’s how far I’d gotten before I’d given up counting and focused on my breathing; apparently, even half-vampires didn’t possess a bottomless well of energy.
“Why the hell . . . do you guys always insist on . . . making your libraries so fucking . . . hard to get to?”
Tal wasn’t nearly as out of breath as me, but it was satisfying to see he wasn’t totally unaffected by the climb. “It’s a Fae tradition, actually. Malcolm
rejected most of the old conventions when he realized what he had become, but this was one he held to. Our elders considered knowledge a sublime resource.
They decided that the closer to the heavens a court’s gathered knowledge could be housed, the better. There was also some consideration for the idea that the harder you had to work for the knowledge you were seeking, the more you had earned the right to benefit from it. Hence . . .” He gestured to the fifteen-foot- tall lacquered doors in front of us. They were black with panels brushed in gold leaf; twin hissing snakes cast in gleaming gold made for door handles, fangs bared, tongues forking from their open mouths.
Tal wrapped a hand around the snake closest to him, using it to pull the door open. “This was once one of Malcolm’s favorite places in the palace. He began to hate it after a while, though. He stopped coming, which made it one of my favorite places.”
“Close that damned door! Do not let the cat out!” The croaky command came from far away. Female? I wasn’t sure. The voice was too rough to tell. Tal winced, ushering me into the library; he scanned the floor, presumably watching for a cat that may or may not be trying to escape.
Once we were inside and the door was closed, the vampire visibly relaxed.
The Ammontraíeth library was beautiful. It wasn’t as large as the one at the Winter Palace, and there was no glass dome overhead to display the night sky, but that didn’t matter. All libraries contained magic. Even libraries that didn’t specialize in such things. Because what was a book, if not a portal into another realm, another time, another life even. But magic hung thick in the air in this library. It was no one thing I could pinpoint. Not the way the evenlight bathed the spines of the books that sat in the stacks. Not the way the strange pale green fire that burned in the grate by the windows seemed to flicker backward, or down, or . . . in on itself. And certainly not the little birds that flitted and swooped through the air, buzzing the top of Tal’s head as he approached the long table that ran the length of the room.
“Oh. Oh, wow. Is that bird made of . . .” I squinted, trying to make sure I
wasn’t seeing things.
Tal snatched the tiny bird that was dive-bombing his head from out of the air. He held it out for me to see. “Paper,” he said. “Folded to represent one of Yvelia’s rare breeds. They’re called stargazers.”
The paper bird’s wings rustled as it tried to escape Tal’s grasp. It opened and closed its beak, pecking at the vampire’s hand, clearly annoyed at having been
caught.
“It looks so real,” I whispered.
“It is real. It lives here, in the library, among the books. It lays its eggs. It rears its young. It will die here one day.” The bird seemed to object to that statement; it pecked the back of Tal’s hand even harder. The vampire tutted, smiling softly as he raised the little stargazer up and opened his hand, releasing it. It was gone in a flash of white, pinwheeling off into the stacks.
“There are hundreds and hundreds of them up there, nesting in the rafters.
They’ve been here for as long as anyone can remember. Over a thousand years, probably. Someone folded mating pairs a long time ago and gave them a spark of magic. They kept hold of that magic, and passed it on, and passed it on again.”
“But . . . how?” It didn’t seem possible. “They’re just paper.”
Tal was solemn, letting his head hang as he pulled out a chair at the end of the long reading table and slowly sat down. He stacked his hands on his stomach, storm-gray gaze finding me at last. “Aren’t we just the same? Made from the same material as the sea and the dirt and the sky? Folded from the scraps of the gods and entrusted with a spark of magic that makes us real?”
The statement rocked me a little. It undid me at the same time. “You believe that we were made by the gods? Put here by them, as part of some grand design?”
Taladaius snorted. “No, I don’t. I think that one day a magician folded some paper and created these birds.” He let his head drop back, a small smile twitching at the corners of his mouth as he watched the silent birds swooping and wheeling high above our heads. “I think it took a curious mind to combine
the ingredients it took to make us, too. But that’s all. Where any kind of life exists, magic proliferates, Saeris. We create all the wonders of this realm just by being present to witness them, and it’s always magic that lights the way. That is what I believe.”
“He speaks like he knows what he’s talking about,” a dry voice observed from the shadows. It was the same voice that had demanded we close the door.
Tal’s smile became rueful as he turned to face the female who hobbled out of the stacks. She was stooped double, her back hunched, shoulders hiked up around her ears. Deep wrinkles lined her face. The puff of hair floating around her head was as white as the fresh snow that capped Omnamerrin. I had only seen her once before, at my coronation.
Algat’s eyes were shrunken into her head, black and glassy as the obsidian walls of the palace. They skipped over Taladaius as if she found nothing of import where he was sitting and homed in on me with startling intensity.
Hobbling, she descended the stairs and crossed the library, then gripped the back of a chair as, slowly and grumbling openly, she sank to her knees in front of me. “What an honor this is, my queen,” she rasped. “A visit from our new regent. And so finely dressed, too.”
She didn’t hide her sarcasm; it was an artless jab. My fighting leathers were in poor taste, apparently. My boots were mud-spattered and worn. But this was the Lord of Midnight who had made me feed from Fisher in front of the entire court. She was also the one my mate had told me to be most wary of. I didn’t give a flying fuck what she thought about my clothes or the state of my boots.
She was lucky I didn’t make her clean them while she was down there.
She grinned up at me, displaying yellowed, blunt canines. “I knew you’d find your way up here eventually. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Is that so?” Ice hardened my words. I liked very little about the old female. I especially didn’t like the way she eyed me as she scratched the back of her hand.
“Indeed, indeed. Might I get up now, child? These old bones of mine don’t like the draft down here.”
It would have been petty to say no. Reluctantly, I gave her a stiff nod. “You may rise.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty. You have my deepest gratitude.” The crone didn’t even flinch as she popped up from the floor and sprang away, suddenly as nimble as a newborn lamb. “As I was saying, I have been waiting for your arrival. After all, you are hungry.”
The accusation made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. “No, I’m not.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, you are. I feel your hunger beating like a pulse all the time.”
“I don’t need to feed,” I told her in a clipped tone, but she shook her head, her jowls wobbling.
“Not for blood, King Killer. For information. For home. For release.” She cackled as she spoke that last word, like it was something lewd, to be ashamed of. “I feel you hungering at all hours,” she continued. “Insatiable, you are.
Always wanting.”
I rounded on Tal. “This is what you brought me here for? This is how you thought you were going to help me?”
The vampire splayed his hands wide, sighing. “Sometimes the medicine
tastes bad, Saeris.”
“How is she the medicine?”
“I am the Keeper of Records, child,” Algat sniffed. “I know them all better than they know themselves. There are books within this room that you would like to meet. It’s within my power to facilitate an introduction.”
My spine stiffened. “This library doesn’t have any books on Alchemy,” I said.
Algat’s eyebrows had ceased to exist a long time ago, it seemed, but the patch of skin where they had once been rose high up her forehead. “Is that so?”
“Yes. Belikon wiped the whole realm clean of any information pertaining to the Alchemists and their power.”
The ancient female aimed a very serious expression at me, nodding her head sagely, but she couldn’t keep it up; she burst out laughing before I was finished speaking. “Oh, child. You are wet behind the ears. Did you finish suckling at
your mother’s teat yesterday?”
“Algat,” Tal said in a warning tone. “Remember who you’re speaking to.”
The female scowled at the silver-haired Lord. “My memory is as sharp as yours and then some, wraith. I know exactly to whom I speak. King Killer.
Day’s End. The Last Tide. Namebreaker—”
“Enough!” Tal brought his fist crashing down onto the table. The ancient female cut off her tirade, a rope of spittle dangling from her top lip. She stared at Tal for a second, her face expressionless, but the air was suddenly still, thick with a prickling tension.
Tal kept her locked in his sights. He did not look away.
“All right, then!” Algat clapped her hands together, suddenly standing on the other side of the table. Where the hell had she come from? I hadn’t seen her move. As she swung around, her body moved in a jerky, unnatural way that made my skin crawl. “Belikon De Barra! Belikon De Barra!” she chanted in a childish, high-pitched voice that was nothing like her earlier croak. “The king of the Yvelian Fae has never stepped foot across the threshold of your domain, my queen,” she said mockingly. “My father forbade it. That poisonous old toad has never sought an audience with my books. They are intact.”
I didn’t want her to know what kind of an effect this news was having on me, but I wasn’t quick enough. The stooped female heard my pulse quicken, and a rotten smile slowly crept across her face.
“My father was a patron of the Alchemists. He supported their crafts.
Nurtured them. Where others saw only danger, Malcolm of Sanasroth saw
power.”
“What do you mean, danger?”
“Oh, yes. An Alchemist is a dangerous thing. Has no one ever told you what you are? No one’s told you why Belikon and your precious Queen Madra both hunted down and murdered all your kind?”
“Algat.” Tal didn’t raise his voice this time, but he didn’t need to. The single word resonated around the library with the force of a thunderclap. Algat
jumped, the wild light in her eyes sputtering out as she cowed, lowering her head away from the vampire. I felt it, too: a crushing force against the back of my neck that wanted me to bow, kneel, crawl for the male sitting at the end of the table. It was by sheer force of will alone that I didn’t drop to my knees.
“Enough of the games,” Tal said. “She wants to understand who she is and what she’s capable of. She doesn’t need to be scared out of her mind along the way.
You will help her find facts and nothing more—”
A wisp of shadow coalesced in the air before me, taking shape. The blur darkened, falling, and by the time it hit the surface of the reading table, it had become a cat. A black cat, to be precise, with glowing red eyes.
It fixed me with a leonine stare that reminded me of other, far larger cats I had encountered out in the dunes back home, and a thrill of panic chased up my spine.
“Where the fuck did that come from?” I breathed.
“That is Guru,” Algat said, disgruntled. The hold that Tal had exerted over her was broken now; she shot the other vampire a filthy glance as she shuffled down to the other end of the table and started aggressively petting the cat with a
gnarled hand.
The cat was there. She was stroking it.
“He keeps the rats and other pests at bay,” she said meaningfully, again serving up another baleful glare for Taladaius. “I hear you have a white fox living in your chambers, King Killer. I wouldn’t let it out roaming, if I were you.
Guru doesn’t like canines of any persuasion.”
I had made the decision to keep Onyx in my rooms for this very reason. I had no idea what kind of trouble he might find himself in at the Black Palace, and I didn’t intend on finding out, either. Guru seemed pleasant enough, but still. The cat threw back his head and squinted, enjoying the attention as Algat petted him, his tail flicking left and right.
Taladaius shuddered. “I have some other matters to attend to, Saeris,” he said, rising stiffly. “Algat will behave and make herself available to you for as
long as you want to stay here and conduct your research. Right, Algat?”
The female just sniffed.
My maker—he was still my maker, at least for now—made his exit, leaving me with the old female and the cat.
Algat had produced a saucer from her ratty skirts and was pouring a thin stream of milk from a ewer into it when I faced her again. “Do not think,” she said, “that just because that wraith commanded me to assist you, there will not be a cost associated with the labor, Your Highness.”
I huffed. “Wouldn’t dream of it. I am your queen, though. Doesn’t that count for anything?” There was something unsettling about the way the female moved, like a spider that scuttled too quickly. I didn’t like it.
Tucking a mat of unruly hair behind a flopping ear, the female tutted under her breath. “Even a queen must pay her debts, Your Highness. Especially a queen.”
Guru ducked his head and delicately sniffed the saucer of milk. He yowled, sounding displeased, turning away from it and raising his hackles.
“And what will your help cost me tonight?” My tone was sharp, but I was tired of the old female. There wasn’t time for her to be purposefully difficult.
She grinned, as if she was plucking the thoughts right out of my head and didn’t care a jot about my impatience. “Come now. You haven’t ruled over this court for very long, it’s true. But you should know by now that the cost for most things is always blood.”
The crimson marbled the white, blood swirling amid the milk.
Just five drops.
That’s all it had been. I’d watched each ruby teardrop tremble and fall from the pad of my index finger only half as intently as Guru, who had seemed poised to pounce and start lapping my blood straight from the puncture wound on my finger at any moment.
Now his pink tongue rasped at the contents of the saucer with fervor, a rattling, low-pitched purr working out of his throat while he drank.
“He likes the taste of you,” Algat observed, hands on her hips.
“That’s really disturbing.” We had cats back in Zilvaren. People kept them for the same reason Algat kept Guru in the library: They made excellent rat catchers. But cats did not make good pets, as far as I was concerned. They couldn’t be trusted. At least a dog was loyal enough to die in solidarity if its owner dropped down dead in their own home. I’d heard too many tales of cats eating their owners’ faces under those circumstances.
“Guru’s very discerning,” Algat observed, watching proudly as the feline cleared the saucer. “He won’t drink from just anyone.”
“I’m honored,” I said dryly.
Algat harrumphed. “You should be. Now. Books. I’m feeling very generous tonight. Five drops of blood equate to one whole book.”
“Wow. You’re right. So generous.”
“Consider yourself lucky. Normally, I’d only relinquish a few pages. And they would have been in Alchimeran. I’m assuming you don’t read, write, or
speak the language of your people?”
Gods, I wanted to punch her. “No.”
“Hm.” She flared her nostrils, looking unimpressed. “Like I said. Lucky.”
Algat disappeared into the stacks, and I stayed put, declining to follow her into the shadows. Guru remained, perched on the edge of the table like some red-eyed gargoyle, staring at me like he was trying to will more blood out of me.
Gods only knew why I did it, but I squeezed my fingertip over his empty saucer, pressing two more droplets out onto the plate for him. The cat fell upon the gifted blood like he was starving, making a weird gurgling sound as it licked the saucer clean for a second time.
“Here we a—” Algat looked at me. “Tell me you didn’t give him undiluted
blood?”
“I did.”
“Great.” She slapped her hands against her sides, and a puff of dust exploded from her skirts. “He’ll be up chasing the birds and howling for hours now.”
Good. I hope he keeps it up all fucking day, I thought.
Algat huffed. “Well, aren’t you the rudest thing?”
Fuck. She’d heard me? How the hell had she heard me?
“Because hearing things is my special skill, child. And you might as well be screaming your thoughts at the top of your lungs, the way you project them.”
Wonderful. So it wasn’t just Fisher I had to be careful around now. I had to watch out for this old witch, too. “Is there a way I can prevent you from digging through my mind?” I laced the question with as much authority as I could muster.
I had no idea if the female responded because she had to or because she felt like it. “You can command me not to,” she said. “But I would strongly advise against it. You never know when you might need me to hear your thoughts.”
Yeah. I was never going to need her to hear my thoughts. “I command you to never listen to my thoughts or invade the privacy of my mind again, Lord of Midnight. I command you to never read or invade the minds of my friends or my mate ever again, either, too.”
The vampire hissed, baring her fangs, and the air suddenly felt very cold.
Guru arched his back, his fur standing on end. He mirrored his master, hissing, and then launched off the end of the table, turning into a puddle of shadow that fell across the floor and merged with the large shadow cast by a grand writing desk.
“You come with your hand out, asking for help from Algat, and then you bind her hands behind her back?”
“I’ll bind more than just your hands if you prove to be a problem for me.” It wasn’t a threat. Threats weren’t going to make this female bend to my will. It was a fact and nothing more. “I’d like to see that book now. I don’t have all night to waste on this.”
“Seems to me that this should be the only thing you’re focusing on right
now,” the female observed. Her eyes had roved down my body and were fixed on my gloves—and the glowing runes that were burning right through the leather.
Quickly, I hid my hands behind my back, alarm prickling across my shoulder blades. “The book, Algat. Please.” Was it unqueenly to say please? It was probably un-Sanasrothian in general, but I was surprised when the female’s hard glower softened a touch.
“Give me a moment,” she said stiffly. “If Guru comes back, sniffing around for more blood while I’m gone, don’t give him any. He’s had more than enough, thank you.”
She had nothing to worry about on that front. I wasn’t opening my finger for the cat again. Algat disappeared in the stacks, and I spent the next little while inspecting the library’s ceiling.
The stars were a myth in Zilvaren. We were told of strange lights in the sky, brilliant as diamonds in their millions, but without any frame of reference I had never been able to conjure an image of what they would look like. What I had cobbled together in my mind’s eye had fallen woefully short of the truth.
Zilvaren’s sky was a void, punctuated by two burning hot, unrelenting balls of light. But the night sky in Yvelia was spectacular. The glittering expanse was both far away and right there at the same time, as if I could reach out my fingers and touch the whole universe. What had always seemed empty bristled with light and promise. And there were worlds out there. An incomprehensible number of realms.
Whoever had painted the night sky on the roof of Ammontraíeth’s library was a master of their craft. It was remarkable, what they’d accomplished with some paint and some gold leaf. It was so real. If I just reached up— I didn’t make a sound as I hurtled sideways.
I didn’t have time.
The projectile hit me in the ribs, impacting with breathtaking force.
I slammed down onto the floor, not understanding what was happening for
a split second. And then I was moving.
My daggers were in my hands.
I was twisting under the thrashing weight that was trying to pin me to the ground.
Black and gray and streaks of gold filled my vision.
“Get . . . off me!”
But the feral creature—the dark-haired male with the furious blue eyes—did not get off me. He bared his teeth, flashing gold-plated, engraved fangs as he snapped at me, trying to use them to rip out my throat.
“You’re done,” he snarled. So confident. So godscursed sure of himself. He grappled with me, trying to lock a massive hand around my wrists so he could pin my hands above my head . . . but he had made a grave mistake. He’d assumed that I wasn’t going to put up a fight.
He was on top of me—a very heavy problem. I rectified the situation the best way I knew how. It was a dirty move, but so was tackling someone from the shadows and catching them off guard. I brought my knee up hard and smashed it into his balls.
The vampire locked up, wheezing, but he didn’t release me. Not fully. The brief lapse in his grip gave me room to yank a hand free, though. Took me all of two seconds to find the dagger I’d dropped when he’d pinned me. I didn’t flinch as I drove the point of the blade into his side, up, between his ribs.
The vampire shuddered, pulling back. “What . . .?” He looked down in confusion. “I . . .”
“I stabbed you,” I spat. “Now I’m gonna pull out the blade and watch you bleed.”
His eyes shuttered when I did it. Blood didn’t spurt out of vampires the way it did from the living. It ebbed, escaping under a loss of pressure. I felt it, finding its way through the gaps in my leathers, saturating my shirt beneath and slicking my skin. It was unnaturally cool, but at least it didn’t reek the way a feeder’s did. It smelled stale. Strange. Unappealing.
“Sil . . . ver,” the vampire wheezed. “That blade was never . . . silver.” He sagged sideways, hitting the ground with a thump and rolling onto his back.
I was free.
I rocketed to my feet, ready to stab the fucker again if he so much as lifted a finger in my direction. He was still staring at the blade in my hand—the one Fisher had given me to wear at my coronation. I studied it, then held it up for my attacker to see. “Silver tipped. It won’t kill you, but you are not going to enjoy the next few hours. Appropriate,” I panted, “since you just tried to tear out my throat. Now who the fuck are you? And why did you just try to kill me?”
But the vampire didn’t get to answer. Before he could, the interlocking runes on the back of my right hand lit up like a signal flare, and an ungodly pain
blazed up my arm.
Oh, gods, no . . .
Light filled the library.
I had no control over the wave of power that rose up, up, up. . . . and then out of my hand in a white-blue shock wave.
The writing desk in front of me disappeared. It was there, and then it was gone. Then the bookcase behind it, and all its leather-bound tomes. Gone. The leather couch by the window, gone. The wall, with its portrait of Malcolm smirking knowingly out of its frame . . . gone.
Wind whistled into the library, a cloud of dust and pulverized stone swirling in the air like fine snow. The cold crept in and wrapped around my boots, climbing up my legs, into my bones, making me shiver as I stared at what I had done.
There was a twenty-foot hole in the side of Ammontraíeth.
And I had put it there.