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“You can’t tell me that Vladimir is responsible for all the actions of vampires,” I argued. “Your kind has behaved badly long before he ever became Highlord of House Invictus, never mind the emperor. And from what I’ve read, you happily slaughtered humans alongside him during the war.”
Maximillian was silent for a long moment before he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pocket watch. Wordlessly, he passed it over to me, and I opened it to find a miniature portrait of a woman inside the cover. She had long, silver-white hair, kind blue eyes, and a timeless, elegant beauty about her. And she also has the pointed ears of a vampire.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“Odessa Starclaw,” Maximillian said. “My mother.”
My mouth dropped open, and I stared at the portrait. I could see it now—her full mouth and the down-tilted corners of her eyes were the same as Maximillian’s. “Your mother is a vampire? But I thought—”
“That onlyamortecan give birth to original vampires,” Maximillian confirmed. “Which is true. My mother is one of the rare few who survived the birth long enough for my father to turn her into a vampire.”
“So you were essentially raised by a human mother and a vampire father,” I said. No wonder Maximillian hadn’t tried to stamp out the humanity from his vampire children. Unlike the rest of his kind, he didn’t see it as a flaw to be eliminated.
The vampire lord nodded. “She retained her humanity long after she was born, which is why I think I have such a different outlook on humans compared to my brethren. She was Marisian, so she'd tell me tales of the Maris's most revered nautical heroes, who navigated treacherous waters filled with sea monsters to discover new lands. And on stormy nights, she'd recount the legends of the sea sirens who controlled the tides with their voices, and could also lure a man to his death.”
He smiled, and the nostalgia in his voice made my heart ache with longing for my own mother. She’d told me stories when I’d been a child too—of Hecate’s three daughters of fate, the Moirae, and of their male counterparts, Mischos and Skotos, twin chaos gods who relished in upsetting the natural order of things as much as possible just to spite their older sisters. Their antics across the ages had left a tapestry of myths and legends behind in their wake, and I’d often found myself relating to them far more than their older sisters.
“What happened to your mother?” I asked. “Is she still alive?”
“My father killed her.”
The grief and rage underscoring those four short words were like a punch to the gut. I said nothing as Maximillian stared straight ahead, his jaw flexing as he fought to control the emotion radiating from him.
“My mother was strongly against the Eternal Night War,” he finally said, his gaze fixed on Tenebros’s statue. “She hated all the death and destruction we brought to the humans, hated that my father and I were a crucial part of it. She begged us to listen, but we were too far gone, too…” he raked a hand through his hair, a tortured look on his face. “We didn’t realize she was secretly helping the humans until one of Vladimir’s children caught her red-handed. She was dragged before the emperor in chains and sentenced to die at her husband’s hand.”
His expression turned wooden as he gripped the back of the pew in front of him, his claws digging into the dark walnut. “I’ll never forget the blank look on my father’s face as he beheaded her in front of the entire vampire court with our family sword. Will never forget how it felt as though it were my heart being cleaved in two instead of her.” He turned his face to look at me, and theintensity of his gaze rooted me to the spot, leaving me no choice but to stare right back. “My father loved my mother more than anything else in this world. There is nothing he would not have done for her—no storm he would not have braved, no mountain he would not have moved for the privilege of her smile. When I watched him not only callously end her life, but move on as if nothing had happened, I knew then that something was very, very wrong.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Maximillian gently took the pocket watch back from me. “When Vladimir declared war on Heliaris, it was as though a tidal wave of bloodlust had swept over the vampire kingdom. We were all caught up in it—the need to conquer, to expand, to prove our dominance over the daywalkers. It was an insatiable thirst for power that went far beyond survival or tradition.” Shame colored his voice, heavy with the weight of untold regrets. “Psychoros vampires pride ourselves on our mental control—we spend hours meditating every day from the time we are young in order to cultivate our abilities and protect our minds from the strain. Yet I didn’t realize an unnatural haze had descended upon me until the news of my mother’s arrest jarred me awake.”
His gaze hardened, and he gripped my hand, hard enough that the bones in my knuckles ground together. But I was too captivated by the moment to care. “The emperor has some kind of magical hold on us, Kitana. He is using some dark sorcery to force us to do his bidding. That is the only explanation for how he was able to get my father—the most powerful mentalist in our house—to kill my mother without an ounce of hesitation or regret. It also explains how he was able to unite all four houses for the first time in history, when no vampire high lord has ever managed such a feat before. No one can gainsay him, and oncemy inner eye was opened to the truth, I saw the signs of mind-control everywhere.”
“Are you saying you believe the emperor has somehow managed to enthrall every vampire in Noxalis?” I asked, my voice pitched high with disbelief. “That’s impossible. No single person has that much power. And besides, vampires can't enthrall each other.” As far as I understood it, sires could compel their children to obey them, but that invasive level of control ended there. They couldn’t directly control their offspring’s offspring, and they definitely couldn't compel vampires from other houses.
“I don’t understand exactly how he does it,” Maximillian growled. “And I'm uncertain about how far his magical influence extends. But I do know that regardless of which house or family line you come from, it is physically impossible to resist an order from the emperor. That’s why no one has tried to depose him.”
“That’s why you wantmeto kill him,” I said, realization dawning.
“Precisely.” Maximillian gave me a grim smile. “It is impossible for vampires to enthrall witches. You’re the only one who can circumvent his influence long enough to drive a stake through his heart and bring an end to his reign of terror.”
I stared at Maximillian as the full weight of his words crashed into me. King Vladimir had been crowned centuries before I was born, so I’d never thought much about the unification of Noxalis, or how strange it was that the houses had come together so suddenly. If it was true, that King Vladimir was using dark magic to seize power and bend everyone to his will, then Maximillian wasn’t merely making a power play by asking me to kill Vladimir. He was doing it to end centuries of corruption and tyranny.
“How do you know I won’t be affected?” I demanded. “That his power doesn’t work on witches, too?”
“I’ve seen him attempt to compel one once.” Maximillian let out a mirthless chuckle. “She spat in his face and told him exactly what he could do with his commands. He executed her, of course, but it gave me a sliver of hope that whatever mysterious power he has does not work on everyone.”
I glanced at the statue of Tenebros, nervous again. “How do we know your god isn’t the one who gave him those powers, and that he’s not listening to us right now?”
Maximillian snorted. “Our dark father is not limited to altars and temples when it comes to eavesdropping. If he wanted to stop me from enacting my plan, he would have found a way to thwart me long ago.”
He loosened his grip on my hand, and my pulse skittered as he turned my palm up so he could trace slow circles across the inside of my wrist. I turned back to see him watching me with that intensity again, and an electric current ran between us that pulled my body taut like a bowstring. I found myself unconsciously leaning toward him, wanting… I wasn’t sure.
More. More of whatever this was.
“So this is it, is it?” he asked, his voice whisper-soft. “You’re going to climb up to the top of my tower, perform your ritual, and then walk out of my life without a backward glance?”
“I…” my words caught in my throat, and it took me a minute to dislodge them. “How did you know I wanted to go to the top of the tower?”
