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Chapter 1
I rushed down the vampire-infested streets of Sangrael, my heart thrumming wildly.
Most days, I’d take care to move more slowly, to not draw a predator’s attention. But this week my desire to soak away the pain shooting up my fingers and forearms made me act rashly. Even if the relief wouldn’t last long.
Tomorrow night, Palais Immortael would host a ball. That meant that the noble vampires of the court required new gowns, tunics, and jackets, and my master would happily accommodate them. As one of his best seamstresses, I’d been working double-time for the past three weeks, and tomorrow would be the longest day of them all.
Working day and night was bad enough, but the noble vampires didn’t only require fashionable attire. No, they needed party food too. Earlier the same day, I’d given two full cups of blood destined for the palace. Though I’d eaten a small lunch since then, I continued to feel the effects of the bloodletting, but at least that was all I had to do. I counted my blessings that I wasn’t one of the many slaves forced to serve the ball’s attendees in person.
I swung a tight corner around a tavern to avoid a group of gossiping vampires hogging the street, only to nearly run into a particularly nasty-looking bloodsucker. He eyed my wings hungrily, making me tense as I sidestepped him and ran on. A few paces later, I glanced behind me and a shiver darted down my spine.
The vampire continued to watch me, his eyes trained on me like I was a mouse and he the cat, but he wasn’t pursuing. Clearly, he’d noticed my red collar. The symbol of my oppression sometimes also saved me from lower-ranking vampires attacking in the streets.
Finally, I reached bathhouse 9, one of many slave bathhouses in the city of Sangrael. Only the wealthiest masters spared the expense to send their slaves to number 9, and despite hating my general position in life, I counted myself lucky to get to use this bathhouse in particular. While the front of the bathhouse resembled a regular business, it wasn’t one. Natural thermal pools nestled in a vast interconnected cave system awaited inside, making bathing here a more soothing experience than at the lower end houses.
I opened the front door, and immediately the steam and tang of minerals from the natural pools calmed me. I exhaled, relieved to have arrived without incident.
“Your master’s name, girl?” asked a red-haired human guard behind a long desk. All day long, he stood in a small business front attached to the mouth of the cave and deemed whether others were good enough to enter the caverns. A second bald man was present today too, rifling through paperwork.
I ignored the condescension in the human’s tone when he’d called me ‘girl’. At twenty-three turns of the sun, I was a grown fae female, probably no more than three turns this human’s junior. But he had to make himself feel bigger somehow, and the fight wasn’t worth it. All I cared for was a bath.
“Lord Aldéric Laurent.” I waited for the first man to check the ledger, while the bald one peered up from his papers to look me over. His gaze lingered on my wings for many uncomfortable seconds, and a hard glimmer sparked in his beady eyes as he licked his dry lips. I recoiled.
The humans given the job of regulating the bathhouses and other establishments used by blood slaves were a nasty sort. Because the House of Laurent gave them a uniform and a sliver of authority, they thought of themselves as better than the rest of the slaves. As if they weren’t just another bag of flesh to be drained.
“Lord Laurent’s account is in good standing,” the first guard said. “What’s your name?”
“Neve.”
“No number?” He looked at another sheet, this one filled with slave names, to make sure I wasn’t trying to sneak into the bathhouse more often than I was allowed.
“No.” Slaves didn’t have surnames, and even if we did, I wouldn’t know mine. I had not been born to an enslaved fae, but instead had been found in the snow with my dead mother. If my mother had been a slave though, it was likely that she’d be unable to recall many memories of her past. Or of her family. Vampiric powers of compulsion often wiped much of a slaves’ past from their mind.
Though my best friend, Anna, could say otherwise. She’d been born a slave to a mother who managed to recall a little of her past, like the last name she used in the human realm—Anant. Not that Anna could use her ancestral surname. According to our master’s ledger she was Anna-101. Still knowing a little about her family gave my friend some comfort.
I wasn’t so lucky, but at least I wasn’t Neve-35. Numbered. Like a piece of stock fabric or something.
“Alright you’re marked down for the week.” The guard gestured to the door behind him. “You have an hour to clean your bits.”
An exhale parted my lips as I darted through the door, officially entering the cave. One blissful hour of no one telling me what to do, an hour of quiet. Of true rest.
The disrobing area was right before one reached the first cavern dotted with pools and I thanked the stars that it was empty. This time of day was slow, which I preferred.
I threw off my pants, tunic, boots, and, more carefully, removed the red collar. I retrieved my small wedge of soap from my pocket, set the collar on top of the folded pile, and tucked my garments under a bench in a place where they wouldn’t get wet. Threadbare towels waited on a table by the door. I plucked the freshest looking out of the bunch and wrapped it around my curves before entering the bathhouse.
In the first of a dozen interconnected caverns the scent of lavender grew stronger. The purple flower was sprinkled throughout the pools, and refreshed every few hours.
One less accustomed to vampires might consider it a kind gesture meant to calm the bathers, but that was certainly not the case. Vampires had sensitive noses, and lavender shrubs grew wild and abundant in the Vampire Kingdom. Not every master provided soap for their slaves, and many slaves worked in physical labor to build the city. The plant provided a cheap and effective way to reduce their workers’ stench.
I scanned the first cavern. A witch-light lantern illuminated a single pool, making it particularly inviting. I padded over, weaving carefully between other springs as I went, so as not to slip on the damp ground. When I reached it, I dropped my towel, set the soap on the rocky edge, and slipped into the warm waters.
I sighed and dipped beneath the hot water, allowing it to cover my head and soothe the tension in my shoulders. This one went so deep that I couldn’t touch the bottom.
Upon surfacing, I slicked back my long silvery-white hair, draping it over my silver iridescent wings. Stars above, the water melted so much of my tension and eased the ever-present ache in my mutilated wings. I could already feel my strength returning, my body warming from the inside out.
I rarely felt cold, even in the dead of winter. Yvette believed that, because of where I’d been found with my dead mother, I was born a fae of Winter’s Realm. The subjects in that kingdom sustained the cold far better than others. Despite my ancestry, after a bloodletting, I grew weaker, just like any human. In those hours, sometimes for days, depending on how much blood the letter took, I became more susceptible to the cold. Partaking in the mineral pools, the heat rising from the ground to warm the water, felt like being reborn.
If only claiming a new life were that simple.
