Chapter One
Samara
I contemplated licking thefloor of my cell.
It wasn’t the first time. The crimson splatter in front of the copper door taunted me. It had dried days ago, soon after I’d flung the goblet of blood across the cell at Demos’s head. How quickly I’d rejected it, vowing to never taste such a wretched thing, to never betray my true species like that.
But there it was, glistening in the barest light. My mortal eyes would never have noticed it on the dark granite that made up the cavern floor. My vampire eyes couldn’t look away.
I confined myself to the farthest corner of the cell, as if I could ever get far enough away from it. I stared for hours. At times, I’d black out, then suddenly wake with a start. Vampire sleep? Madness? I wasn’t sure. In the first days, I’d raged and wondered how everything had gone so wrong.
Now, I couldn’t do even that. My mind would only let me stare at the dried splotch and consider debasing myself, crawling over and pressing my lips to the ground like a rabid dog that had spotted a puddle of water.
The pain in my throat had spread to the backs of my eyes and the pits of my feet. It was something between thirst, hunger, and crippling emptiness that animal instinct said could all be fixed if I just pressed my tongue to the stone in front of me.
I swallowed, the jagged sensation like a claw down my raw flesh.
I would break soon.
Maybe this was my punishment.
Maybe I deserved it for poisoning the vampire king.
Raphael.
Thinking his name broke through the bloodlust.He’s in a coma, recovering from the poison you put in his veins.That’s what Demos had told me the first day I’d awoken. He’d also taunted me with the fact that Raphael would wake. Would he have admitted any doubts otherwise? Vampires couldn’t lie, but there was no way to know if the true death had finally come.
The general hadn’t been back since to tell me one way or the other.
Because he was punishing me?
Or because I’d ordered him not to bring me blood again?
My thoughts drifted between the raging thirst and Raphael. A coma? It was unthinkable. He was strong, so unfathomably strong.
He’d be stronger than this hunger.
But I feared I wasn’t.
He’d said all fledglings need to feed, but in what time frame? It felt urgent. Like I’d turn to dust if another minute passed in this state… but it had been like that for hours, for days.
More time passed.
I didn’t turn to dust.
I wished I were dead.
Distantly, I tried to summon that anger, but it was too hard to grasp.
There was only the thirst.
I woke. I slept. There was little different until—
Creak.
My eyes widened. Someone was here. A sliver of light cut through the dark.
Iademos?No. Because there was a sound punctuating through the silence of the dark.
