‘Yeah.’
I swallow. Shadows lengthen, the day turning towards night. As we enter the outskirts of a city built from honey-coloured stone, I wonder what it was like when humans walked these streets. And how they could walk them again.
The feeling grows as we continue north, through a countryside just turning towards spring, our route taking us through England, dipping into Wales, then further north again, the land becoming wilder, granite mountains like humped beasts surrounding rippling lakes. As we lounge in heated pools flanked by crumbling statues, as we wander around the soaring moonlit ruins of an ancient abbey, or dance in the vaulted halls of a walled castle by a river, a place where once kings were made. As we stop on a lonely road, Sophie and I transfixed by the majesty of two giant rusting horseheads rising above the trees, and weep at the futility of it all. As I’m bowed to by vampires, courted and hand-fed as though I’m a creature to be tamed, all the while aware they use my kind as food, living among the beauty humans have created as though we never existed for anything else. Receptions where I’m received with everything from reverence to ignorance, where I insist my humanity be acknowledged, rather than brushed aside. As I’m shown paintings and beautiful buildings and porcelain so fine I can see my fingers through it, each item adding to the ache in my chest, the feeling of something wonderful, irrevocably lost.
As I shake hands with vampires who could kill me in seconds and wonder whether they’re humouring me simply because of who my parents are, or whether they truly believe I’m capable of ruling Raven. As I walk along crowded streets lined with Raven guards, waving, as my image fills the news feeds. As I realise why my mother had me do this, analysing each meeting with me afterwards to make sure I understood what I’d done right, and what I’d done wrong. As I see more of what it means to be Raven and understand what it is I’m fighting to defend.
As I sit with Sophie during the days and watch the landscape slide past. As we pass several Safe Zones. Dark brown towns like scars on the green and rolling landscape, all guarded, all kept apart from the wonder and beauty of the world around them.
And as I spot the red flower symbol here and there. On a crumbling stone wall next to a small bakery in a Safe Zone. Etched into a stone at yet another stone circle. On a rusting shipping container at a dark dock.
It representssomething. Whether it’s a human or vampire symbol, I don’t know. But the fact I’m seeing it in human places, rather than vampire ones, suggests it’s somehow connected to them. But what does itmean?
Illegal hunts are one option; they’re a way to make money, organisers selling spots to both hunters and humans. Perhaps they’re a symbol of a hunt organisation, or a meeting point. Or maybe it’s another rebellion, though things seem quiet on that front. The rebellion I’m currently dealing with comes from vampires, not humans.
Which is why I can’t really focus my energy on this right now. It just feels like too many scattered pieces, that together might mean nothing at all. But there’s a sense of something eluding me, of a whole world out there I don’t yet fully see. I’m trying to understand my realm, but it seems that the more I learn, the less I actually know.
So, I tuck each sighting away, like a piece of jigsaw where I don’t have the picture on the box to guide me. I’ll claim my crown, then come back to it.
Because I want to figure it out.
ChapterSixteen
DARK KNIGHTS
Late one evening, as we head south towards Old London, I’m in my bedroom, trying to make sense of one of the documents from the library. Sophie is sleeping on my bed, rather than in the small cubicle attached to the cockpit. I offered it to her while one of the guards was driving the coach, hastily summoned when we left the latest reception early, after the host mistook me for a blood dancer and tried to offer me to his guests. I frown, shuffling the pages, annoyance a sharp tang alongside the ache in my chest.
One thing this trip has made very clear is what a mistake it was to keep me hidden away. I’m supposed to rule over half the planet. This tour has worked, in that my face is all over the news and social media so at least people are starting to recognise me. But any respect I’m given is because of my last name. It’s just as I realised on my first visit to the Safe Zone. If not for an accident of birth, I’d simply be another human. It’s not surprising at all that Mistral want to challenge my right to rule.
Like it or not, at least half of your subjects will be vampires.
I sigh, trying to work out whether a word on the page says ‘wings’ or ‘winds’. I chose to return to my parents’ world because I realised that the best way for me to change things was from within. The more I learn, though, the more I realise that getting a crown on my head doesn’t make me a ruler. Power handed to me is different to power that I earn. The first will slip through my fingers, if I’m not clever or strong enough to hold it. The second, though, I can wear like a mantle, like armour. Because it will bemine.
What I need to figure out is how to earn it. I don’t want to be a ruler who stays behind walls and guards, using the iron fist of Raven to crush any opposition. I want to make an actual fucking effort to learn about the people in my realm, in the hopes we can come to a solution on how to change things.
Stonehenge, the palaces I’ve danced in, those rusted horses, still magnificent, still rising, yet so very alone, feel like a metaphor for all that I’ve seen so far. Humanity’s greatness, now lost to them. Vampires seem to love all that humans have wrought; why then, do they not value humans the same way?
Because they’re food.
The version of history we learn as children is what we accept, until we grow old enough to question it. I was taught that the Red Rising was a great victory for vampires, something to be celebrated each year. I grew up believing it, content with my mound of velvet-wrapped gifts, the chance to dance at my parents’ ball. But now that I’ve actually seen how things are for humans, I don’t see anything triumphant about it at all. Another thing that’s clear to me is that humans can never be truly controlled. Perhaps the biggest mistake vampires have made is thinking they can be.
This is why I want to see my realm, understand what was lost, and what might be possible, once I gain my crown. Why I’m out here, letting people see who the Raven will be. I might be human, might be protected by my parents and Bertrand and the bevy of Raven guards following in the coach behind. But that’s no different to how my parents live. The only difference is that they have teeth. I need to grow my own fangs, ones of steel and skill and determination. I’m getting better at the Morningstar, at least. Still slow, but it’s coming along. Varin says he’s pleased with me, anyway.
I frown, trying not to be distracted by thoughts of the handsome arms master, even if I have just read the same sentence four times. I continue scanning the pages. These people, whoever they were, seemed to have figured out the secret of coexistence.
Ladye Morvenna, and her dark knights who do reap all that threatens them. There are none can withstande her dark forces, subject to only the ladye. Anyone who tries ys cut down like so many stalkes of wheat.
Wait. Her ‘dark knights who doreap’? That’s quite a specific word to use. Why not just say kill, or destroy?
Her dark forces. My mind goes back to a round table with a relief carving of the realms, of white-knuckled humans in chairs. What had Jane said?We want your dark forces withdrawn. Yet my father was adamant that Raven had stopped attacking the North Wind cells.
Fuck.
Could the dark knights beReapers? No one knows where Reapers came from, or what they stand for. Apart from the fact they hold fealty to no house. What if Lady Morvenna’s community still exists, and they’re defending it? What if Reapers were attacking the North Wind because they got too close? But then why the hell are they targeting Safe Zones, too?
The other flaw in my argument is that Reapers are not a localised phenomenon. They’reeverywhere. Called Dragons in Scorpion lore, Vipers by Lion. And Jaguar calls them El Muerte, which apparently means death.
But if Lady Morvenna’s dark knights really are Reapers, then I want to know more. The description of their community, where vampires and humans live together, is the closest thing I’ve found to what I want to achieve. Kyle told me Reapers were taken to the pits when they were caught – it was where he was when Mistral found him – so perhaps that’s somewhere to start. But, even if I do find a Reaper, how can I get them to tell me what they know? The documents are pretty clear that they protect their community with their lives. It’s a long shot.
