“Yes, Master.”

  “Good.” He nodded once, but as he went to turn away, his eyes flicked to the bed and he sniffed the air, moving over and yanking the covers back. My eyes widened in horror when I realized what that feeling was—the slight ache in my tummy and the wetness between my thighs.

  He appeared beside me, lifting my tunic so quickly I couldn’t stop him, and pressed his cold, thick finger between my legs. I gasped, whimpering once before I got control of my emotions, as he drew his hand away and rubbed his thumb across the blood there.

  “It’s a period,” I stated, insulted and so violated. “It happens once a month.”

  He studied the blood, his eyes changing.

  “Still think I’m not human?” I said snidely.

  “Necromancers bleed too,” he said, bringing the bright red blood to his mouth to taste it. I shut my eyes, angling my head away. “Come.”

  “Where?”

  “Menstrual blood is extremely powerful in witchcraft and, oddly,” he said with a laugh, “very hard to come by.”

  “Why is it powerful?” I followed him out of the room.

  “It’s the ultimate sin, the darkest betrayal: the failure of life.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now, when it’s the blood of a necromancer, it will be even more powerful, and worth quite a bit of money on the black market.”

  I smirked to myself, walking along the wide, pitch-black corridor at two steps behind him. If he took my icky period blood and tried to market that, my parents would find out. No one knew that the monarchs profited and benefited in the black market as much as the criminals, or that we had spies operating in there. Elias was researching my genus of immortality, which meant he’d figure it out eventually. And when my parents heard the words ‘necromancer blood’, they’d know where to find me, so I welcomed it.

  But a roll of dread washed through me when I thought about what that would mean: they’d know. They’d imagine me here, see it in their minds, they’d worry about what else he’d done to me if he’d taken my period blood, and my shame would be made public.

  Elias would find out.

  When we reached the stone room with the long bath, Cillian led me to the center and brought down a pair of shackles.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, backing away.

  “I won’t waste a drop of this.” He put both of my wrists in scratchy iron cuffs and I felt my skin pull under my arms as he tugged the ends of the chain, raising them above my head. After fastening me in position, he walked to the storage room across from me and returned with a large silver bowl, lifting my tunic up a little and placing it between my feet.

  “I’ll bleed for seven days,” I said, refusing to let the emotion out in my voice. “You can’t leave me like this for seven days.”

  “I can.”

  “But it’s painful. I need a hot water bottle and ibuprofen. I can’t be chained up like this,” I reasoned.

  Cillian stood, pressing the bowl a little closer with his boot. “I’ll see you in seven days.”

  “Wait,” I called. “I need food. Water. Cillian!”

  He kept walking.

  “Cillian, I’m human. I won’t have the strength to go another week without food.” I pulled down hard on my chains, cutting in to my wrists a little. “Cillian!”

  A big door slammed shut out there, taking me back to my grandfather’s castle when I’d slammed the door on Nate and how it’d echoed the rage behind it, had satisfied me so much. But it all built in me now, churning and boiling, as the small ache between my lower pelvic bones wailed at me, slowly getting deeper.

  By this afternoon, I’d be doubled over in pain, and the bleeding would be so heavy I’d normally need baby-mama napkins, because tampons just wouldn’t hold it all. I’d need Mom there to give me a day off school and stroke my hair, bring me hot tea and watch sappy movies.

  But instead I’d be here, chained with my arms above my head, my legs shaking, bleeding out into a silver bowl for the black market.

  I shut my eyes, but I didn’t want to be trapped in my own mind with the pain, so I cast them out to the ocean beyond the large window and spun my body to face it, keeping my legs apart over the bowl. If I wasted a drop, he’d probably make me do this again next month.

  As I looked out at the ocean, I sighed though, because I realized that if my blood fetched a high price, there’s no way he’d take just one month of it. He’d do it every single month for the rest of my eternity.

  In that, I knew I had to find a way to cope.

  He’d told me when I first got here that when they torture a person, they begin with the smallest, most harmless acts, because what a person can survive, sustain, will build. One day, he’d told me, I wouldn’t be bothered by a beating, or by piss in my cuts. One day, I would laugh at that kind of pain.

  If that was true, then I had to start right now. I had to start reaching deep within myself to learn how to feel beyond it. So, I stared at the ocean, trying to connect to the water, and let my arms relax as much as possible, accepting this as my new normal.

  One day, I would be strong. One day, I would not notice pain as much. And there was peace in that. But there was also peace in knowing that, one day, I would find a way to overpower him.

  And on that day, he would suffer everything he did to me, tenfold.

  Elora

  I came in through the front door of the manor, with the university awake and buzzing at my back, and as I closed the door, set eyes upon my father. And a suitcase.

  “Dad?”

  “Good morning, Elora,” he said, always that little bit too chirpy and yet… there was something underneath it, like dissatisfaction or resentment.

  “Are you going somewhere?” I nodded to the suitcase.

  “I’m leaving for a few months,” he stated.

  “Why?”

  “My body is dying.” He revealed a decaying mass of black flesh on his arm, and my eyes widened in response when he waved a hand over it, healing it with his touch. “My soul and my blood are rich with darkness, and the power, the life within that fruit, is slowly winning a battle against it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I’m going to die.”

  “What?” I rushed in to his side, taking his hand. “Is there something we can do? We—”

  “Yes. I will need the other half of my soul—the light,” he said, glancing back as Mom started down the stairs with Daniel in her arms. “Jason is going to give up his soul but it’s far too damaged to be of any use to me. So, as a gift to him, to heal his soul, I’m giving him six months to experience joy—a life with a family, the woman he loves.”

  “And Mom agreed to this?” I looked up at her. She stopped about six steps away from the bottom, staring down at us as if she just didn’t know what to say. As if her entire world were falling apart right now, and she had no power to change it.

  “No.” Dad glanced at her, coming back to me with a smile on his face. “And my brother refuses her affections. But I trust your mother to do what must be done in order to win him over.”

  “Daddy.” Daniel wriggled in Mom’s arms until she put him down, then he slid over each step on his belly quickly to get to him.

  Dad watched on curiously for a moment, but his eyes were void of any love, any connection or even familiarity at all. And the childhood memories of my loving, funny, playful father died right there in front of me, taking all the light and the joy of the past years and stamping it out, changing those memories for good, as he turned, picked up his suitcase, and walked away without saying a word to that little boy.

  Danny got to the bottom, racing after his dad. He didn’t understand that he’d turned his back deliberately. He probably just thought Daddy didn’t see him, didn’t hear him.

  “Daniel,” Mom called, trotting down after him. I watched, my mouth agape, as Dad opened the door and walked out, shutting it on Danny’s face.

  “Daddy!” he cried, grabbing the handle and hanging off it. “Daddy… wan say bye.”

  “It’s okay, Danny.” I grabbed him, ripping the door open and tossing my gaze down the steps to the cold, heartless man. “Dad!”

  “David,” Mom cut in, pushing past me to get outside. “Daniel wants to say goodbye.”

  He looked at the crying child. “Ara, there’s no part of me that wants that sniveling creature hanging off my leg. Take it inside.”

  “How can you say that about your own son?”

  “That’s just it. He’s not my son.”

  Mom’s heart shattered. I saw it in the look on her face, the way her shoulders came around like she’d been punched. “You never used to feel that way.”

  “Yes, but I’m not me anymore,” Dad said simply, glancing at a few students from the university as they passed. “I’m me two-point-oh.”

  “Daddy!” Daniel cried, hitting at me to let him get down.

  “I can’t be okay with this.” Mom hugged herself, her face paling to a gray-white.

  “Look, Ara.” Dad put his suitcase down and walked up the steps to stand before her, and Danny stopped crying, arching his body in Dad’s direction because he thought he was coming back to say goodbye. “Love doesn’t mean the same thing to me anymore. I care for those who are connected to me”—he looked down at both hands as though they were branches on a tree—“and your son just doesn’t fit there. You do, but not as much as Elora, Harry and…” He said the next name with a deep look of regret. “Aubrey.”

  “Look at him, David,” Mom pleaded, pointing at Daniel. “He’s screaming for you. Don’t you feel any pity?”

  “No.” He didn’t even look at him before saying that.

  Uncle Jase appeared then and closed his hands around Danny’s ribs, sweeping him into his arms. Dad walked away, and Mom and I just stood watching, stunned, as he exited the university courtyard and disappeared.

  Uncle Jason calmed Danny down almost instantly, showing him a bird in the sky and making him laugh when he told him the scientific name, and I was grateful to him for that. I looked over to watch him—one arm under Danny’s body, pointing off at random things with the other. He’d always been a good man, a good uncle, and like a father to Aubrey as she grew up and spent time here with Beth and Lily, but I would never forget this. He may have been human right now, hurt and weak from what the world had done to him, but in that moment, he was ten times the man my father was.

  Mom looked over at me, holding back a thick well of tears, casting her gaze then to Jase and Daniel. I knew she was grateful to him. I knew she was hurt on Daniel’s behalf and just wanted to wrap him up and protect him from the truth. But he wasn't the one who needed protection right now, and yet, as I moved in to hug her, she shook her head and backed away, heading inside.

  “He’s okay,” Uncle Jase assured me in his deep, gentle voice.

  “I’m not so sure she is though.” I nodded to where Mom wandered up the stairs, her steps slow and heavy.

  “To be honest,” he said, handing Daniel to me, “I’m not sure I care.”

  * * *

  Arthur and Harry laughed, lifting their shoulders, opening their mouths and tipping their heads back in the exact same way, which made me laugh. It was so adorable to see them together, see the relationship they had, and it made what happened this morning hurt a little less. I knew Harry would be okay, and I knew Danny would be too. When Uncle Jason was dead and Dad had his soul, even if he never loved him as his son ever again, Uncle Arthur and Harry would fill that void. Even just a little. It put me at peace somehow.

  But, with Lily gone and with Uncle Jason’s death just months away, it occurred to me that life was going to change, no matter what. Mom would be forced to move back here and become queen again, and I knew how much she’d hate that. This isn’t the life she wanted for Daniel, for any of us.

  “What’s on your mind, Elora?” Uncle Arthur asked kindly.

  “I just can’t believe how much our lives have changed… so quickly,” I said, lost in the mundane thoughts of the week I would have had ahead of me if I were at home, with my daughter and my normal life. “I had plans. This weekend. And I was supposed to host an Australia Day barbecue next week, but… it’s all just…”

  Harry got up out of his seat and landed beside me, wrapping both arms around my body. “Same here, sis. Rochelle and I were gonna drive down south for the hotter part of summer and I had to cancel a meeting with a new producer looking to buy my songs.” He drew back from the hug, keeping a hand on my shoulder and an empathetic look on my face. “It’s insane, but this is family, and we are right where we’re supposed to be right now.”

  “Mom’s not,” I said. “She…” She was so fragile already. She’d been at breaking point for years, but it had compounded over the last six months and I’d been so worried about her, watching, almost every day, for signs that she might just leave this place and return to the Spirit Realm for good. Harry didn’t know her like I did, he didn’t see the signs, and Arthur had been gone for so long that he probably wasn’t even aware of how depressed she’d been. They just couldn't understand the gravity.

  “Don’t worry about your mother, Elora,” Arthur offered in that calm, wise voice, making everything seem like it could be okay. “No matter what happens, I will be here to help her through it, even if that means I step up and rule the monarchy while she returns to Australia.”

  “You’d do that?” I rolled my gaze up to meet his.

  He bowed his head. “As would many more who love her.”

  “Hell, even I’d be willing to,” Harry suggested, winking at me. “I’m older than Mom was when she first took over.”

  I smiled at him, the expression slipping away when I felt a stir of very nervous energy behind me, as Ric moved into the room like a solid shape appearing from within a receding shadow.

  “What’s wrong?” I put my coffee cup down and stood up.

  “I was down in the kill suites. A room’s been cordoned off and the House are investigating the contents,” he said, eyes wide and fixed in horror.

  “Why?”

  “A human…” He swallowed hard, as if he’d carried the saliva in his mouth all the way from the kill suite and hadn’t even thought to swallow it. “Several humans have been killed in there.”

  “That happens every day.”

  “Not like this,” he said. “They haven’t been drained. Drank. They’ve been murdered.”

  I glanced back at Harry, about to tell him to wait here, but he’d already seen it all in Ric’s thoughts, clearly, because he shot to his feet, shoving me off as I tried to grab him.

  “Harry.” I ran out of the kitchen and into the hallway after him. “Where are you going?”

  “I have to help them—”

  “You don’t need to see that,” I called, jogging to catch up. “Let Uncle Jason handle it. He’s the king.”

  “He’s not the king anymore, Elora.”

  “While Dad’s gone—”

  “And if that’s true”—he stopped dead and pointed at Ric, his voice breaking under tears—“if my dad did that…”

  “Dad?” I looked at Ric, who shook his head apologetically, too struck to speak.

  “I… he’s gone now,” Harry added, pinching his eyes, “so that makes me the man of the house.”

  Arthur snapped ahead of us all and cut Harry off at the end of the corridor. “No, son, it makes me the man of the house,” he said, relieving Harry of his burden with a gentle hand to his shoulder. “It is our job to protect humans, especially those that reside here, but we must handle this case very carefully to avoid an all-out war with the human faction. We cannot get emotional. And if it is true, if David killed them”—he looked at Ric, who nodded, his eyes wide and hollow—“then we must act to cover up the king’s crime immediately.”

  “This isn’t right,” Harry said, looking down at his shaking hands. “We’re vampires—among the most dangerous, sordid beings on the earth. And I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “It’s not uncommon for vampires to murder humans,” Arthur advised. “I’ve put many away for that crime myself—”

  “Dad’s not a vampire anymore. And that wasn’t just murder. You didn’t see what I just saw, Uncle Arthur,” Harry yelled, but he wasn’t yelling at Arthur. “He tortured them! Why would my dad do that? What is he—”

  “It’s okay.” Arthur turned Harry by the shoulders and led him away in the other direction. “Come on. I’ll make you a stiff drink.”

  I looked at Eric. “What happened to them? Why is Harry so upset?”

  His words couldn’t give me the details, but the look in his eyes told me enough about the magnitude of the suffering.

  “Men or women?” I asked.

  “Both.”

  “How many?”

  “Six.”

  I slowly closed my lashes over the dread. “Does Mom know yet?”

  “No. I don’t think she should.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she doesn’t need to know what your father is capable of. Even if he comes back and even if Jason’s soul cures him of the evil, she won’t be able to forgive this, Lors.”

  “Then you don’t know my mom very well.”

  “But…” He put both hands in his pockets, his shoulders coming up. “Lors, he…”

  I stepped closer, breaking his hesitation with a hard glare. “What? What is it?”

  “He cut the dick off one of them,” he said with measured, tightly-contained rage, looking me square in the eye. “And… we found it…”

  “Found it where? Just say it!”

  “In the…” Those warm brown eyes that I loved carried away from mine to hide the shame, his chin trembling. “He used it to fuck one of them.”

  “While it was cut off?”

  Ric nodded, hiding behind a mass of blonde curls that covered his face in the tilt of his head. I tried to think about how that was possible, forcing the sickening rise of bile away from my lungs with a breath through my teeth when I realized.

  “He’s not a vampire anymore, Ric—”

  “I know.” He put his hand on my back and pulled me in to hug him. “But he obviously still feels the need to kill.”

 

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