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“You think the best of your children.” Sloane dismissed it easily. “No one ever takes me seriously.” His tone was so self-deprecating it caused Salem to frown.
“You are a good Akrhyn, Sloane, my daughter is a fool not to realise it,” he told him quietly. Salem raised his head and looked straight at Sloane. “Whatever you decide to do, I fully support you. This is your life, and you know what is best for you. Maybe the truth is that this match was never what was best foryouin the first place.” Salem stood and looked at Sloane’s clothes. “Do not go, stay here where you belong.” He walked over to the door and looked back to the young male sitting quietly on his bed. “Please, Sloane, this is where your family are, and they need you.” He hesitated. “Ineed you here, you’re part of my family.”
Sloane looked at him in surprise, and then he slowly nodded. “Then I’ll stay,” he told the Principal quietly. “And before I make any decision, I will talk to Zahra.”
“Thank you.” Salem opened the door before turning back. “She really never deserved you.”
He walked out, closing the door behind him, and Sloane dropped his head into his hands as he felt the weight removed from his shoulders. He knew what he had to do, and he felt better for talking to Salem.
Leonid watched the Made as he put them through the training exercises. He was standing on a raised dais, which Kateryna used when she was addressing her subjects, in the formal ballroom. Leonid usually hated it, but the space was sizeable and perfect for training soldiers. The majority of Vampyres had served as a Sentinel at some point. They lived long lives, and there were very few who had never trained in how to fight Drakhyn. Leonid’s gaze strayed to the Elder Viktor as the old Vampyre watched the training exercises imperiously. Leonid looked at him with contempt, as if Viktor knew what they were doing was below him. The Vampyre had never been outwith the Court. Leonid shook his head slightly in derision as he returned his attention back to the Made.
“My lord?”
Leonid turned to look at Travyr and saw that he had several of the Made behind him, holding newly formed kali sticks. “Excellent, where did you get the wood?” Leonid asked curiously.
“It would be best if you do not know, my lord.” Travyr exchanged a look with his other Vampyres, and Leonid chuckled.
“Deniability against my wife, I appreciate it,” he confirmed ruefully. “I need three Elites,” he told them brusquely as he began down the stairs to walk amongst the trainees. Leonid did not look to see who volunteered, confident that he would have three, and he ordered them to organise groups as the others distributed the kali sticks, and soon he had them all training.
Kali sticks were a good weapon against Drakhyn. It allowed an Akrhyn to wear them down, and if you were dispossessed of the kali stick, you had your sword to rely on. As he worked through the night, overseeing the training, he noticed his wife join Viktor on the other raised dais where the two of them would exchange few words, but Leonid was still curious to know what his wife was whispering across the room.
He corrected the stance of his soldiers and showed others where they were going wrong. He was very grateful that Made did not sleep, but they did tire. Although he was training them twenty-four hours a day, he had to do it in rotations to allow them rest.
He had asked for a Castor, and one had been produced. The Castor had no powders left in order to portal. In fact, the Castor had hardly any powders at all and was currently trying to make more. Leonid suspected it would not go well, as it was only the very skilled Castors who knew the blends of the powders, and even then, they needed to be blessed by the Ancients.
Leonid had a few powders left, hidden in his clothing from his travels. He was not ready to part with them yet for the Castor. Leonid was still not convinced that one of the Made or several of the Made had not turned against their calling and were now sympathisers with the Drakhyn. Leonid knew first-hand how persuasive the Darkness could be. His mind wandered as he walked the ranks of his brethren. Kateryna had been appalled when he suggested that there was a mole in the Court. She had taken it as a personal slight, and now Leonid was tiptoeing around her until she calmed down, or she may spill his thoughts to the Court.
Not for the first time, he wondered why none of the other races of Akrhyn were looking for the Vampyres. Had they not noticed? Was that suspicious? He had tried calling for a Castor, but as yet, he was unanswered. As he considered the state of affairs and any internal sabotage, the Drakhyn were no doubt gathering and plotting against them.
Kateryna had seen an army of them come for those who resided in the mountain. Leonid scowled at the stone above him. He hated this mountain, he hated being underground with limited access to the outside world. A Made was no longer alive, true, but they were still able to celebrate nature. Leonid loved open landscapes, blue skies, warm summer rain. He would happily trek over a mountain, not live under it.
However, the Vampyre Court had been in existence long before Leonid had, and in the early days, the undead sought refuge from the races that thought they were monsters and hunted them. Basically, they hid. They hid and they grew in numbers as they sought companionship, and the Vampyre population was at one point out of control. When the other species realised that Vampyres did not die unless they literally lost their heads, measures were taken to cull the numbers and ensure that they did not become overrun again.
The Great Council passed the decree that to turn an Akrhyn, one needed Council approval. The leaders of the Made reluctantly agreed. Kateryna had not agreed, but being a new ruler, she had succumbed to the pressure of her peers. Leonid knew that there were times she had wanted to turn a loved one or a friend. But she knew her duty, and her place in the Vampyre Court would be precarious if she broke with the law.
Leonid fixed a Made’s stance as he paused and murmured a few words of encouragement to the soldier, an older Vampyre who probably thought his time for picking up a kali stick had long since passed. Leonid glanced to the dais again and noticed his wife had departed, but Viktor remained, his gaze following Leonid’s every move. Leonid nodded in greeting and carried on with his work without waiting to see if Viktor acknowledged him.
“My lord?”
Leonid turned to the Made before him. It seemed he could not make the Made in the Vampyre Court desist from calling himlord. He hated it, and he hated that Kateryna smiled every time she heard him addressed so. “Malack, you have known me for two hundred and thirty years, call me Leonid, you at least can do so,” Leonid told his old acquaintance with slight desperation.
“Leonid.” Malack glanced to the dais, checking for Leonid’s wife, no doubt. “You need to come to the viewing room.”
“How bad?” Leonid asked as they both started walking out of the hall.
“You need to see it.”
Leonid felt dread roll in his stomach as they hurried to the viewing room. It was called the viewing room not because it had any form of human technology in it, it was actually a platform on the mountain that the Vampyres had carved out of the rock to give an unrestricted view of the land before them. Leonid and Malack jogged up the stairs that had been carved into the rock over the centuries to allow access to the room. Malack looked over his shoulder several times, and Leonid finally stopped and turned to him. “What is it?”
“Not here, my lord,” Malack whispered and tugged on Leonid’s arm to continue up the stairs.
“Leonid,” Leonid corrected him as they resumed the climb. When they got to the heavy wooden doors that closed the “room” off from the outside elements, Malack once again looked over his shoulder. “Should I be on my guard?” Leonid asked lightly.
“This way,” Malack answered instead and pushed the door open. The two of them walked outside. The wind whistled around them, and Leonid saw that the snow was falling heavily again. He shivered at the drop in temperature, his Vampyre skin sensitive to the changes. “You will need to wait for it to clear.”
“You could not wait for that moment before we climbed five hundred stairs?” Leonid asked dryly. Malack grinned at him before he closed the doors over. “And you are confident that you can open them from this side?” Leonid asked cautiously.
“I cannot, but we will not be alone for long.” Malack checked the door to ensure it was closed. “It was the only place I thought I could get to you without being overheard,” he confessed.
