Chapter 33

The winding path to the ground level was filled with a loud back-and-forth conversation between Elias and Hayes about the running of the kingdom and the Born Vampires who had died.

Sylvie shut off, finally taking in the place where Elias was born. The glass and silver structures made the castle feel like a trinket or an architectural marvel, not a viable building option that could withstand the weather or the turned beasts hunting outside at night.

While they passed many rooms, nobody appeared on their path, nor did she hear any voices. It was as if they were completely alone in the giant building.

“Most people have decided to desiccate underground to stop the decomposition process and attack from the turned. They may come out now that it isn’t dusk.”

Elias nodded and moved closer to Sylvie’s back, subtly pushing Kian and Rowan closer to her flank while Kerensa paced in front. If it wasn’t obvious she was the weakest link, then Hayes was a blind man.

They exited a ten-foot tall pair of silver doors that seemed to make Hayes and a guard physically strain to open them. It wasn’t until she spotted the body of a pockmarked, crispy vampire blocking the door did she realise why.

And the smell. It was as if the sun had baked and seasoned it with shit.

“Oh god,” Sylvie whispered.

Hayes grunted and spun back to gaze over his entourage before blinking and quipping. “Damn thing mustn’t have realised the sun was coming up. Get it out of here, Horuk.”

“Yes, my King.” The guard dragged the body, and Hayes beckoned the group to follow. Based on Sylvie’s dream and everything she had heard, the idea of the turned creature being mindless enough to stand in the sun and wait for its death seemed... odd.

However, she was careful to keep her expression light as she noticed Hayes’ scrutiny. The last thing she needed was for him to catch on to her catching on to him. The body was too charred to see if a shifter had killed it, but already Sylvie’s mind ticked away, solidifying the King’s guilt.

“Follow me.”

Hayes crunched along a noisy, shimmering path that looked suspiciously close to diamonds. Probably just glass.

Sylvie craned her head to take in the homes on either side of her, each resembling the castle in materials but opposing it in shape, looking more like apartment blocks. She peered through the shrouded windows for signs of life but found nothing.

A bell tolled behind them, and there was a shift. The sounds of hammering, chatter and clanging pots and pans brought the village alive. Finally.

They rounded a corner to a giant square filled with stalls and carts as frail vampires flitted in the morning sun. Soft with a caramel hue, the sun cooled Sylvie’s cheeks rather than warming them, and she pressed her lips together in surprise. At least she wouldn’t get sunburned while she was there.

“Oh, dear Fates-”

“It’s the King!”

“Hush!”

Hayes raised his hands placatingly and nodded at his people as he guided the group into the crowd’s depths. “We are simply here as customers. You may treat us as such. I assume many of you remember my brother?” An accusing tone dominated the sentence, and Sylvie swallowed.

There were a few nods and gasps, but most stayed on their knees, heads bowed.

“Continue on your way, then,” Hayes commanded, waving them on with narrowed eyes.

The frail, sallow-skinned vampires moved tentatively around the square, minding their stores of trinkets, fine linen and elixirs.

“Please,” Hayes said, directing his eyes to Sylvie and the others. “Explore. I will meet you at the square’s north end in twenty minutes.”

With that, he disappeared into the crowd like a ghost, and Sylvie swallowed the ball of fear growing in her throat.

“Easy,” Elias muttered, rubbing a warm, wet thumb across her nape, making her shiver. As the liquid dripped down her back, she knew it was his blood.

Touching her fingers to her neck, she confirmed her thoughts and subtly swiped the excess crimson on her perfume pulse points.

Rowan grunted at her side, and she looked at him, an identical patch of red running into his shirt. He grimaced, shrugging his shoulders, but the side-eyes she had been getting dispersed.

“Stay close,” Kian mumbled at her side before veering to a stall filled with fabrics and dresses. “How much?”

The shopkeep’s eyes seemed to bug from his head. “Fae? Oh, uh. Three tokens.”

“I’m afraid I do not have any of your currency-”

“Oh. Well, I would settle for a vial of your blood-”

Elias hissed and dragged Kian back by the shoulder, his hulking form blocking out the sun as he hovered over the keeper.

“My, my liege! F-f-f-forgive m-me! I meant no offence!”

“Do not touch what is mine.” Elias’ eyes shone blood red as he panned his gaze across the now silent square. Sylvie stepped beside him and subtly brushed her fingers against his, burying her smile as his pinky hooked with her index finger.

“Can we keep looking?” she asked demurely, hoping to keep up the facade of his pet. She wasn’t stupid enough to assume Hayes wasn’t somewhere in the shadows like the slimy creep he was, watching them. No matter how much he looked like the man she loved, he was far from it.

Elias buried his hand into his pocket, withdrew a handful of thimble-sized coins, and handed a few to each of them.

“When you have used them up, return to me. I’m one call away.” He eyed her especially, and she nodded, biting her lip. He was so fucking sexy when he took charge.

Clasping the tokens, she turned and almost bumped head-on with Kerensa, who appeared ready to portal home. Her indigo eyes took in the space with such disdain Sylvie worried she might kill someone for looking at her the wrong way.

“Should we stay together?”

“Yes. Hurry up and pick something. The sooner we spend these, the sooner we can leave.”

The pair huddled through the skittering maelstrom of frail bodies coming to a covered carriage stocked with vials of different iridescent liquids.

“Anti-desiccation, jikir root, hunger suppression, any potion you can dream of, I have,” a woman purred from the side of the carriage, her voice like honey and eyes the darkest brown. Her black hair swished across her back as she spun to face Sylvie and Kerensa, and she smiled, revealing sharp fangs pulling over her lips.

“Hello, pretties. You are the King’s pets?”

“Oh,” Sylvie shook her head vehemently. “We are Elias’s.”

The woman blinked slowly, her lips pressing together in a downturned smile.

“As I said.” Her whisper was barely loud enough to hear over the bustling shouts around them, but Sylvie’s ears just caught it. A question hovered on her tongue, but a flash of the woman’s eyes halted it.

“What would you like to buy today?”

“Do you have any flora occisor?” Kerensa asked, leaning to look into the carriage.

“Ah, you are a deadly sort, are you? Hmm. I recall a vial in the back, tucked carefully in an inhibitor solution. Why might you need it?”

Kerensa looked sideways at Sylvie before reclaiming the woman’s gaze. “My stocks have been depleted.”

The woman nodded with a sly grin and reached into the carriage, carefully lifting a tube filled with clear liquid and, within that, a smaller vial of pure white.

“Oh,” Sylvie muttered, recognition hitting her—the flora killer.

“And you, half-breed. Pick your poison.”

Sylvie racked her brain as Kerensa pocketed the vial and leaned towards the woman, keeping her voice as hushed as possible. “Do you have anything that could make someone fall unconscious?”

She didn’t know why she asked it, but the woman’s follow-up question helped formulate a plan in her mind.

“How fast?”

“Um,” she bit her lip. “Instantly?”

The woman grinned and pulled two purple vials no bigger than a pinhead from her pocket.

“This one,” she rolled the dull-coloured vial, “must be inhaled. Smoked, snorted, et cetera. More so for recreational uses. While this one only needs to be ingested orally.”

The shimmering liquid seemed to call Sylvie, and she nodded.

“How much for the second one?”

She hummed and bowed her head. “Depends.”

Kerensa growled at Sylvie’s side. “Hurry up. We don’t have all day.”

“One drop.”

“Of what?” Sylvie asked, but the rolling in her gut told her she already knew the answer.

“You.”

Her head shot over her shoulder, looking for Elias, but he was out of sight. Kerensa grabbed her bicep, but Sylvie shook her off.

“You are safe to choose,” the woman said. “One drop, or fifteen tokens.”

Sylvie clenched her teeth. She didn’t count the coins Elias gave her, but it sure as shit wasn’t fifteen, and she wanted the potion.

“Fine,” she hissed, thrusting her finger at the Vampire. “Quickly.”

And quick as a flash, the end of a needle pricked her fingertip, the silver edge gleaming in the soft sun for a moment before disappearing in the woman’s pocket. She swiped her finger in the growing bead of blood and ran it along her teeth, her eyes widening suddenly.

“I know that bloodline,” she muttered, a sudden brightness warming her skin. “You should go. But if you succeed with your plans, come and find me. I will have a message for you.”

Kerensa dragged her back into the crowds, and the woman’s final words sent shivers up her back. “About your father.”

Sylvie settled on spending her tokens on a thick gold bracelet for Rowan and gave the rest to a beggar, her mind too frantic about the woman’s mysterious knowledge of her father to properly shop.

“Where is Kian?” she asked Elias, who brooded silently along an empty wall. She wouldn’t have been surprised if shopkeepers had moved from the prime real estate to get away from him. To any who didn’t know him, he was kind of frightening.

Sylvie only found it more attractive, though, especially as he tucked her inside his jacket and stroked her cheek like she were a stray kitten he picked up.

“I’m here, Princess. Let’s meet the others.”

Rowan grunted from his side and buried his hands in his pockets as they pushed from the wall. The crowd parted, the hushed voices not making much sense as they headed north.

From Sylvie’s position, she could only shuffle blindly beside Elias, his coat obscuring her vision.

Then, just as she heard the annoying voice of Hayes ahead, she stumbled, her shin hitting something solid and sending her rapidly to her knees; the mix of stone and shiny gravel sliced her knees and palms, coating the ground in her blood.

“Oh, fuck.” The silence around them forced the hairs on her body to stand on end while she was far too scared to move.

A collective inhale made her tremble, and the shrieks of starving Vampires surrounded them.

With a shout, she was scooped into someone’s arms, and the owner was sprinting, the sound of a hundred pairs of legs pursuing them.

She looked up as Elias grimaced down at her. Their speed was no match for the desiccating vampires, but they would soon gain on them.

Sylvie swivelled her head to find the rest of her family, but the wind whipped at her eyeballs, forcing her to blink.

“Here!” Hayes growled from ahead, dragging a large maintenance hole cover from the ground and shoving Rowan and Kian down. Kerensa jumped of her own accord, and Elias stood at the top, lowering Sylvie to the entrance.

She half climbed, half fell to the freezing tunnels below as Elias dropped the distance behind her, the hole above them dark as the maintenance hole slid back from Hayes’s hand.

“I should have let them drink her dry, stupid fucking half-breed.”

“Shut your fucking mouth, Hayes.”

“Why? She is just a pet. A clumsy fucking one at that.”

Her blood boiled as Hayes pulled a torch free from the tunnel's walls and lit it with a flint from his pocket.

The urge to say fuck you nearly made her head burst, but she turned into Kian’s arms to keep herself in check.

She hoped her red ears and fake sniffling would make him think she was upset or embarrassed, not ready to drug him and stab him to death. She probably would have if he weren’t the only one who could guide them to the shifters.

“Now they’ve had a taste, they’ll be insatiable. The desiccation will be hastened now. Because of her!”

“I know. But if you had refused the requests for turned children, you’d still have humans here to drink from.”

“Shut your mouth. You left. You don’t know what it was like.”

“No. And I’m eternally grateful. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Yes?”

“Indeed.”

The echoing patter of footsteps drowned out any more words, as did Sylvie’s unsteady breaths. Then, as her body calmed, with Kian’s help, another sense rushed over her in strange waves. A knowledge of something. Someone.

She slowed her pace, closing her eyes to let her ears pick up on something. Anything, but there was nothing. Just the soft plink of water dropped from the tunnel above.

No, it wasn’t sound or smell or sight, but something else drew her attention. On the fringes of her mind, the swirling thoughts that were not her own tickled her brain.

Help us. Help us. Help us.

She gasped, drawing Hayes narrowed gaze, but she just chattered her teeth and looked off into the darkness. “I thought I saw a bug.”

He scoffed and sneered before turning back. When his gaze was no longer on her, she spun to stare at her mates, wondering if they sensed her feelings.

Each of them looked at her with a curious expression, none indicating they heard anything as she expected. Even Rowan mouthed, ‘What?’ from her side.

She shook her head then, opting to stay as discreet as possible as they reached a flight of stairs.

“Home sweet home,” Hayes growled, standing to the side to let them pass.

Help us. We’re here...

Sylvie let herself trail to the back of the group as they formed a line to ascend the stairs and let her soft gaze trail up Hayes’s body. His head tilted to the side as he caught her movements, and a smile crept across his lips.

God, she hoped she looked as seductive as she was trying to be. As her eyes met his, passing his giant form, she bit her lip and turned her gaze down before p up the steps.

Don’t go...

Like a lid on a jar, the moment they reentered the kitchens, the connection she had snapped and a presence at her back made her shiver.

She had just found the shifters and knew exactly how she would get them back.