Page 22 of His Realm

“I’m blown away to hear there are vampyrs who eat. I had no idea that blood was not the only protein source available to some species of vampyrs.”

Crazy.

I wanted to ask Sorin to see his teeth, but that would be rude, so I didn’t. I wondered if the inside of his mouth would look like Varic’s with the double canines, but instead of the other teeth being sharp, did he have molars like me?

“This is so interesting,” I told Zev. “They eat in Ophir because the number of people is so small that they can’t rely solely on blood. The holding wouldn’t have survived if there were only blood drinkers there, so they evolved.”

He nodded.

“How did Ophir come to be?”

“All those who live there originally followed Decimus from Rome to Greenland. Some were slaves, so they were taken, and others, the nobles, followed him because they saw the empire falling and didn’t want to stay and figure out what was next with Magnus, and so left with Decimus. Vampyrs all over the world had to decide: stay in the evolving world with Magnus, and then Messina, or retreat from society to Ophir.”

“And now, thousands of years later, everyone who’s there is stuck. Their ancestors made a decision, and they’re living with that choice.”

“Well, some of them are the exact ones who resolved to go with him, but all the original iceni who made that trek are gone.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they don’t live that long.”

“Oh God, why?” I asked, imagining some horrible lottery system that was used to keep the number of people in Ophir at a specific carrying capacity.

“It only stands to reason that if the iceni eat and process food like you do, like a human does, that they would have other commonalities with humans.”

I had to figure out what he meant. “You mean they have short life spans.”

“Yes.”

I turned to Sorin. “How old are you?”

“I am thirty-five.”

Which, if he were human, I would have thought he was. “This is crazy,” I said, and unable to stand anymore, I slid down the steel surface of the door I was leaning on and settled on the floor. “What the fuck, Zev? We have to go and change every part of how that holding is run. The iceni aren’t free, and they have to be. All vampyrs should be free.”

I felt him kneel beside me before he put a hand on my knee.

“We can’t let them be food. What the fuck?”

“Ophir has always stood separate from the rest of the realm. No one has ever questioned that.”

But I didn’t care about what had been done, only what could be done. We lived in the present, but the people of Ophir didn’t know that. Varic needed to fix everything now.

“You’re not understanding because you’re looking at this with human eyes.”

I was shaking and couldn’t stop. I was cold down to my core.

“It’s the way it’s always been there.”

“For those not born lucky, not born to privilege,” I argued. “The iceni are poor, without wealth or whatever it is that Decimus wants. He preys on his own people in a closed society. You have no idea what horrors those people have had to endure for centuries.”

“That’s true, I don’t. I left. And it’s naive to think that liberties have not been taken. When you have a whole group of people at your mercy, few would not take advantage.”

My stomach was twisting into knots just thinking about the atrocities that had probably been committed because it was a closed, insular society no one from the outside was checking on. Ophir was being ruled by a despot, and it could not be allowed to go on.

I had to put my head between my knees and breathe through my nose. It was too much. I couldn’t even imagine— “That’s why they came here, and I nearly killed them all by sounding the alarm.” My vision blurred as my eyes filled. “They only wanted to talk to Varic, to tell him what was happening to the people in Ophir, and I nearly killed their hope, Zev.”

“Stop that now,” he said sharply, and I turned to look at him.