Her bright blue eyes stare up at them filled with pure terror, made even more evident by the smell of fear in her blood. They have her arm in a tight grip, pulling her into the cell door and mocking her whimper with their own.
“What do ya’ think?” one asks the other, sniffing the inside of the woman’s wrist as the other licks his teeth. “Should we have a taste before Lord Kaius arrives?” He smells her wrist again and makes a noise of awe. “She smells delicious.”
The second vampire smacks away his hand, causing him to release the woman. She falls to the floor and backs away into her cell until I can no longer see her from where I watch them. “You know how the Dread Lord feels about sharing his treasures. I have no desire to find myself on the receiving end of his wrath, and if you were smart, you’d be inclined to feel the same.”
The first man mutters to himself, and both stiffen and bow when I reveal myself from the shadows.
Air seems to fill my petrified lungs when I get a better look at the woman in the cell. She’s wearing a dancer’s dress. White. Delicate chiffon draping over her long legs.
Her eyes are so vibrantly blue, even in the dim light, and even brimmed with tears and redness. It’s almost…violent in the most stunning way. Like I could stare right through them and see not only her soul, but my own reflected.
“Lord Kaius,” one of the worms says, pulling my attention from the woman, “We humbly ask for your favor in exchange for this gift,” he finishes, with a grand and over-exaggerated bow.
I turn my nose up in disgust, shifting my gaze to the girl. “I have no need for more cattle. You dare summon me to this decrepit prison for a stupid human?”
They look at each other and smile. “This one’s special.” The shorter of the two suddenly bangs the iron bars, causing the girl to gasp and curl into a ball. “You there! Turn around!” She doesn’t move, so he reaches through the bars and grabs her wrist. “I said turn around,” he repeats, before shoving her, and she hunches herself over her knees with her back to us.
The two worms resume their snickering because they know her value—or at the very least, they’ve heard whispers of the value of a single scar. “We want twenty cattle of our choosing, to do as we please.”
“Done,” I reply. “Has anyone else seen this human?”
“No, sire. We brought her straight here.”
“Where did you find her?”
“Just beyond the valley, in the town of Lemory. We was huntin’ for some fresh meat. Saw her dancin’ in the plaza for one of them full moon celebrations the humans do.” He laughs. “Snatched her right from the courtyard in front’a all of ‘em. Squealed like a pig, she did.”
I let silence fill the air for a moment, and then I reach into the chests of my two subjects, grabbing their hearts and ripping them out. Their bodies fall to the floor with a thud before turning to ash.
The human girl watches me drop the hearts at my feet before I take a handkerchief from my pocket and wipe my hands clean. She gulps slowly, as if trying to swallow bile creeping up her throat.
With a curl of my lip and a huff, I turn from her, stepping over the remaining ashes with every intent to leave this prison and her in it.
But then she softly croaks, ‘wait’, and something deep in the very center of my being compels me to stop.
And in this singular moment, the entirety of my world shifts.
I just don’t know it yet.
Four
Adelasia
“Wait!” I say quietly, but frantically. He turns, staring back at me almost with the same bewilderment as I have.
He’s taller than anyone I’ve ever seen. The top of his head hitting just below the top of the cell door. His silver-toned white hair is halfway tied back and falls just above his shoulders. He’s wearing a pitch-black tunic and an equally dark cape. It hangs over his shoulders and brushes the floor slightly. The light from the single fire outside my cell reveals that the material looks to be raven or crow feathers. They bellow slightly from the draft in the hallway.
“What is your name?” he asks.
The question makes me stiff, but maybe this tiny shred of humanity he’s showing by asking my name is the only saving grace I have to cling to. Carefully, I crawl to the iron door. I grip the bars and pull myself up slightly. I give him a pleading look and something in his chiseled face softens as he squats down to be closer in height to me.
“Please let me out,” I beg.
“Your name,” he replies.Not a question this time.
“Adelasia,” I tell him.
“Adelasia,” he repeats slowly, as if to savor all four syllables. His glowing red eyes flicker to mine. “Are you hurt?”
