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I glanced at Dex.
“It’s too dangerous in the dark,” he said. “Even if Ruhl caught that one, there could still be others out there. We’ve got a better chance of defending ourselves here than in the open fields.”
The others nodded. Roan never looked away from his bag.
I poked at the fire again, and nothing in me could figure out what to say. When we fought my stepmother, I’d seen vampires who had once been part of the castle staff among those she brought to attack the Jeweled Coven. It should have occurred to me to wonder what had become of them after she was gone.
If she was gone…
I shivered, straining to hear any whisper of more vampires coming to attack our camp. I had to believe she’d kept control of them somehow while my father ruled. Otherwise, tales of monsters in the night would have certainly reached his ears and, eventually, mine. But with her gone, there was no telling how many were now out there, tearing apart the countryside.
No wonder my people were hiding. If they didn’t know sunlight contained those creatures, if they couldn’t tell where the threat was coming from, only that it looked like a human until it tried to sink fangs into their throats…
Of course they ran. Hid. Stayed out of sight as much as possible. They were just trying to stay alive against creatures who may even have once been their friends.
Dex sank down beside me and rested his sword across his knees, protectiveness practically radiating from him. I tried to give him a smile, but it was difficult to sustain the expression. My people had to be terrified, and terror could make people do horrible things. What was happening out there right now in my kingdom? What lines were being drawn and agreements being made out of the desperate desire for safety and protection?
And what would Lord Thomas or any of my people do when they discovered I was a vampire too?
14
GWYNEIRA
In all the days and nights that we trekked across the southern province, we saw no more vampires.
And almost no people either.
“So,” Clay started one afternoon while the men packed up the remains of their lunch. “Anybody got a plan for what we do if nobody’s home when we get to this place?”
Dex cast him a frustrated look, though I suspected it was more for saying the worry out loud than for the question itself. They all had to be wondering the same thing.
Gods knew I was.
If the vampires had killed everyone, what would we be walking into when we arrived? I could tell by Casimir’s expression over the past few days that he was already imagining it, and given what happened when the Witch War destroyed his country and the vampire witch killed or turned everyone in his palace, he likely had plenty of awful memories to supply grisly detail. Similarly, Dex had only grown more quiet as we traveled, a grim set to his jaw that made me wonder what memories of the war he was reliving every time he closed his eyes. He never told me, not even when I asked, but he’d also taken to making me and several of the others rehearse sword-fighting maneuvers with him before we collapsed into sleep every night.
It was exhausting, but I was fairly certain reassuring himself we all knew how to fight was the only way he was keeping his own fears at bay.
Because none of this emptiness could be a good thing. Even when Aneira had been at war with Erenelle, we’d still been a thriving country with a population greater than many of our smaller neighbors.
Now, it felt like a land of ghosts.
Some of them with fangs.
By the time we crested the last rise before the stretch of prairie that led to the castle at Sinaria, I could barely breathe from tension. Given that it was now late afternoon, whatever vampires were nearby shouldn’t be able to roam free yet—at least as long as none of them had figured out the same magic that protected me and Casimir from the sun’s rays. What the two of us had was rare, a gift of his angelic heritage and my giants’ magic combined.
But I couldn’t help but worry I was wrong in thinking that the few humans we’d seen since arriving in Aneira simply didn’t know vampires couldn’t come outside during the day. Maybe they had a reason to fear, even in the daytime, and I just wasn’t aware of it.
At least not yet.
The walls of the Sinarian city of Duteliera came into view. Air escaped me, and I heard the others give a similar reaction.
Everything still stood. No smoke rose from the city. No bodies littered the prairie. There were even people working on the grassy swaths close to the city and guards standing on the walls.
A lot of guards.
“Well, that’s a problem,” Dex muttered.
“Yeah,” Clay scoffed. “Those fuckers look like they’re getting ready for a damn war.”
