But her lady’s maids are screaming, and palace security pours into the room. The queen has backed us into a corner. Eloise is behind me, her dagger raised bravely toward the queen, but there’s nowhere for us to go. A half dozen guards stand between us and the door. If I break apart to kill them, I have to release the queen to do it, and if I do that, she’ll kill Eloise. I squeeze harder, but she’s strong. Her talons dig into my hands. As a vampire, she doesn’t need to breathe. I’m going to have to take her head off to end her. I raise a taloned hand.
Valeska’s eyes shift to the side, no doubt hearing the guards move in behind her, and she grins. Grins like she knows she’s already won. If I behead the queen, the arrows fly and Eloise is dead. If I break apart to take out the guards, Valeska kills Eloise.
My mind races. There must be a way.
Foolishly, Eloise shifts from behind me, locking eyes with Valeska. What is she doing? Does she plan to get herself killed?
The air crackles with her ire as she says in the old language of the vampires, “Valeska, I challenge you for Damien, my mate, under the law of Provocationem Ad Mortem.”
A thrum of power pulses through the room. It blows my hair forward and causes the guards stumble back from us. Valeska uses the distraction to break from my grip long enough to claw at Eloise’s face. Power like I’ve never experienced blasts the queen into the air. She crashes into the wall, denting the stone and sending rocks cascading to the floor. I look back at Eloise and then at Valeska, who is already climbing to her feet, albeit slowly.
Eloise sheathes her blade. “I’ll save you some time while you come up to speed, Valeska. You can’t hurt me, and you can’t have someone else hurt me. And the same goes for Damien. I’ll see you at the first trial.” She takes my hand and pulls me toward the door.
“What have you done?” I whisper. My heart contracts with fear. I do not know this magic, but the last thing I want is for Eloise to challenge Valeska.
“Stop!” the queen hisses from behind me. “You will not go with her.”
Without a glance in Valeska’s direction, I keep walking even when her wails of outrage send her guards scurrying after us. An arrow flies, and I whirl to block it from hitting Eloise. But it hits an invisible barrier and crumples like crushed paper before clattering to the floor. This is old magic. This is dark magic.
“Come on.” Eloise yanks me toward the hall.
The queen screams at the guards. “Call the scribes. No one sleeps until I know everything there is to know about Provocationem Ad Mortem.”
31
Contracts & Provisos
DAMIEN
I’ve never even heard of Provocationem Ad Mortem. Shades have no such magic in Tenebris. “Explain, little bird.”
“Each participant completes three trials.” She looks over her shoulder as we wind our way through the halls toward the exit. She has her hood up, and she’s taking me through the scribes’ passages. Lazarus must have shown her this. “The trials will be chosen for us by rolling dice. There’s a box. Sabrina showed it to me, and I thought I understood, but Lazarus told me more.”
“Sabrina?”
“The master of the Lamia coven. I went to Chicago after you gave me Cassius’s address.”
“For you to see Cassius, not visit with a vampire master.” My protective instincts are working at a fever pitch, but the blood pounding in my ears is my mating instinct obsessing over the vampire stench on her.
“The full moon’s light shines on these octagonal silver disks that open the way for each trial. We’ll be in two different trials based on our abilities. We won’t fight each other. The winner is decided by magic and displayed in a mirror on the lid of the box. The winner of two out of three trials wins you as their mate.”
“What happens to the loser?”
“The loser is executed at the discretion and in the manner the victor sees fit.”
Rage and fear battle for dominance within me. “And you knew all this before you challenged her?” I grit out.
She looks my way, her face a bit paler than before. “I didn’t know the trials were once a month. I thought they were like three days in a row. And I didn’t know that if I lose, Valeska can choose to torture me or something. But I understood the rest of it.”
“Gods. How could you take such a risk?” I growl, dropping her hand. “A human with a few magical abilities is no match for a vampire queen. Do you even realize the mess you’ve gotten yourself into?”
She stops short. We’re just inside a stained-glass door that leads to the stacks and a rear exit close to the marketplace. The light from the next room paints her mouth in reds and purples and sends a dark shadow across her eyes.
“Do you even realize the mess I’ve gotten us out of?” she snaps, planting her hands on her hips. “The last time I saw you, she was torturing you. You were ready to die. I was not going to let that happen. The plan was to break her blood bond and sneak you out of there, but that option went up in smoke when the queen returned early. And well, we were not getting out of that room alive without me using this magic.”
The fire in her voice burns me. I am torn between blessed relief to see her again and horror that she must fight for us, fight to the death. It should be me fighting. It should be me, not her, in the trials.
Eloise releases a deeply held breath. “Until such time as a winner is declared, no harm can come to either challenger or the mate in question. We can be together for the length of the challenge, and she can’t do anything about it.”
