Zander reaches out and slides a finger along the servant’s cheek, shifting a wayward strand of hair off her face. It’s a tender gesture, and one that is about to lead to more as he kneels on the bed beside her and grips her chin, pushing her head back to expose her long, slender neck.
I should turn around and head back to my rooms—
He parts his lips and, with a slight wince, two white, needle-thin fangs descend from his upper jaw.
I blink several times.
This can’t be right. I must be hallucinating.
My hands muzzle the scream that threatens to escape my mouth as I watch Zander lean forward and sink his teeth into the woman’s jugular, while easing her back on his bed. She doesn’t fight, flinch, or recoil.
He’s feeding off her.
Just as the daaknar tried to feed off me.
My head spins as I struggle to absorb what I’m seeing, my mind unable to form a coherent thought. The woman’s chest heaves with deep breaths; her hips curl toward Zander’s body. She reaches up to smooth her hand over his shoulder and along his back, the gentle stroke one of affection. Though I can’t hear anything through the closed doors, I can imagine any sounds she’s making are of pleasure.
She’s enjoying what Zander’s doing to her. How is she enjoying this? Even now, the excruciating burn of the daaknar’s teeth where it bit into my flesh is still fresh in my mind.
Zander suddenly pulls away from the woman’s neck, and his head reels toward the terrace. His heavy-lidded eyes meet mine as surely as if he can see me in the darkness.
As if he knew I was there all along, watching this horror unfold.
I jump out of view and rush back to my side, my feet slapping on the stone, my heart pounding in my chest. I dart through my bedchamber and keep going, running through the vacuous sitting room, pitch-black save for the light of a lone lantern, all the way to the door, my robe a billowing mass around me. I test the handle with a frantic jiggle. As usual, it’s locked from the outside.
“Elisaf?” My voice is hoarse and brimming with panic. “Elisaf!”
Silence answers.
I lean my forehead against the wood with a soft thud. I’ve spent five weeks confined and yet I haven’t felt this trapped since the night of the tower. “Please, I know you’re out there.” I don’t, and the door is flush with the floor, offering me no glimpse of anyone beyond, but he’s always out there. I hold my breath and listen. A boot scuffs against the marble. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
But I think I do. This is what Wendeline was talking about when she said she was afraid to come to Islor. She was afraid because Islorians are … what are they?
Vampires?
A version of elven who drink blood?
It dawns on me. This is the difference between two people who once shared the same ancestry. At some point, Islorians began feeding off humans like bloodsucking vampires.
And King Barris shuttled his own daughter off to marry one of them. Princess Romeria didn’t want to marry Zander because of this. It’s all beginning to make sense, finally.
Wendeline, Elisaf, Corrin … all of them know.
It is a requirement. That’s what Elisaf said about the human slaves, how almost all households have them. He said so many things that I now see through an entirely different lens.
“Elisaf?” Still no answer. Is he truly not there, or is he ignoring me? I hesitate. “Are you one of them?” He said he was from Seacadore, which means he isn’t fully Islorian. So maybe he—
“He feeds off mortal blood, if that is what you’re asking. We all do,” comes Zander’s chilly voice behind me.
I let out a yelp as I spin around, pressing my back against the door.
Zander approaches from the vast darkness like a wraith in the night, his footfalls making no sound. He stops inches from me. “It is safe to assume you haven’t been lying about your memory loss.”
My body is rigid with terror. “What are you?”
His lips twist in a toothy smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, no hint of fangs to be seen. “I’m like you.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t do that.” Do I? My tongue smooths over my incisors, searching for evidence to say otherwise.
His gaze tracks the move, as if he knows what I’m checking for. “I was shocked when I realized you did not remember the profound difference between your people and mine. That Malachi would deprive you of that knowledge was … interesting. I can’t figure out why he would.”
Because I’d be horrified?
His eyes drop to my disheveled robe. “That night in the tower, I was so close …” His fingertips push the collar open to expose where the daaknar left its mark. “What would have happened to me?”
I flinch at the feel of his index finger tracing the scar closest to my collarbone. What would have happened had he bitten me, he means. I remember the moment—he tore at the seam of my dress and lingered over my skin. He wasn’t deciding whether to fuck the woman who broke his heart and betrayed his kingdom; he was deciding whether to sink his teeth into her.
And if he had, he might have died as the daaknar did.
“You can’t feed off me,” I say out loud as I process this.
“I certainly wouldn’t try.” He collects my chin. His eyes are no longer sleepy. They’re full of heat and anger and something else entirely. “Now you know why your kind finds ours so repulsive. Perhaps you’ll remember that the next time you look at me the way you did in the throne room.”
I struggle to push down the paralyzing fear gripping my body. Is that what this demonstration is about? “And what way was that?”
His eyes search my face as if there might be a truth hiding within my features. “As if there could ever be something real between us. There cannot.” He releases his grip of me and strolls away, disappearing into the shadows, back the way he came, to his room and his willing victim.
And I stay pressed against the door for many long moments after he is gone, my limbs shaky, my thoughts scattered.
Elisaf, Annika, the soldiers, the nobility …
All these Islorian immortals feed off humans. And Ybarisans, apparently, though they can’t feed off me.
And I’ve agreed to play smitten queen-to-be to their bloodsucking king. I clutch my hands against my chest, feeling the pound of my heartbeat. I need to find the nymphaeum and get out of this hellish place as fast as possible.
I cradle the stone mug within my palms, savoring the hints of orange and licorice in the herbal tea Corrin delivered. Below me, the lone swordsman twirls around the empty sparring court beneath the touch of dawn’s light. He swings his blade with smooth, practiced strokes as if from memory, a choreographed dance that he has run through a thousand times.
I didn’t realize it was Boaz at first, and when I did, I couldn’t believe it. The gruff, ill-tempered man moves like an armed ballerina. It’s impossible not to admire his talent, even if I don’t care for him.
Even if I now know what he is.
In theory, anyway.
Last night, under the glow of a lantern, I scoured my room for a secret passage, an escape. But my desperate search failed, leaving me little choice but to curl up in my stately bed and dwell on a hundred new questions and fears about this world I find myself trapped in. The hours faded, and while I can’t say what time I drifted off from exhaustion, it couldn’t have been long before Corrin marched into my room with a tray of breakfast. She took one look at my face, nodded solemnly, and stepped out. She knows I am finally privy to the true nature of the immortals of Islor.