Noblewife Alacine was still married to Spymaster Kavorin, engaged in his daily activities as Intelligence Ward captain, while she begrudgingly performed her wifely duties for the man. In public, Kavorin inadvertently humiliated his noblewife by running around with a harem of younger people. Kavorin, it can be said, was a celebrity of sorts. By contrast, Alacine was his vampiress mistress hidden in the dark.
Though the Five Ministries is believed to be an ancient sect, the truth is the government is a much younger entity than the overlords and overladies would have you believe. That is bydesign, so no one can doubt their rule or authority, and it began with the eradication of the Sixth Ministry, the Knowledge Ward.
The Silverknights, with Heskel Angul among them, were the first humans to utilize and understand the power of silver against vampires, and to refine the ore into weapons. This made them relevant, highly effective, and highly dangerous to the Five Ministries of Olhav. Their order was birthed by vagabonds and thieves breaking into the guarded mines through tunnels in the mountains. Once gathering the ore, they learned to shape it. Then they learned to use it.
Thus began the first real conflict and threat to the Five Ministries, headed by the Order of the Silverknights.
All of this transpired over the course of thirty to forty years, with disagreements turning into battles, skirmishes turning into wars. By the end of it, the Silverknights exacted great pain among the vampires. However, their actions were for naught. The ragtag band of so-called “knights” was simply overwhelmed by the strength and numbers of the vampires.
By the end of the Silverknight uprising, more than twenty years ago, when the Five Ministries finally stabbed the nail in the coffin of the rebels, Silverknight Heskel Angul was nearing old age. Despite his clandestine relationship with Alacine, and her urging, he had refused to be turned into the kind of monster he’d been fighting all his life—and the kind of monster he had fallen in love with.
Heskel rarely saw his son, Lukain, though Alacine made sure to send secretive notes to him in Nuhav, where she had hidden Lukain from the prying eyes of her nobleblood husband and his network of spies. Heskel got to know Lukain—and Lukain understood his father—primarily through letters and couriers.
Half-bloods, also known as dhampir, are born, and age differently than fullblood vampires who are turned from human into monster, as you know. While a turned vampire is fixed in time to the age they were turned, immortalized and ageless in that sense, half-bloods simply age slowly. Their human-tainted blood means they arenotimmortal. So while forty years had passed, Lukain Mortis appeared as little more than a pale-skinned, sharp-toothed boy of maybe fifteen winters. It would not be for another two decades that the “boy” became a man, having the appearance of being in the middle of his twentieth decade.
So, while Lukain was hardly two decades younger than his human father Heskel, to the Silverknight and everyone else, he looked like a lad barely past pubescence. It must be said, too, that Lukain greatly admired his father and his tenacity. Without hardly knowing him, “young” Lukain thought of Heskel as a hero. After living with the humans in Nuhav for decades—practically his entire life since Alacine had hidden him there—Lukain associated more with his human half than his vampiric half.
The feeling was mutual with Alacine and Heskel as well. For decades she had been trying to figure a way to rid herself of her exhausting, humiliating husband, Kavorin. With the strength of the bloodbond, Kavorin held control over her, and Alacine could bring him no harm.
Then, a little more than twenty years ago . . . everything changed.
The Silverknight uprising was quashed. Heskel Angul lived as a dreary nobody in Nuhav, reaching elderly status, while still maintaining the interest of his immortal lover, Alacine.
The change was a whisper at first. A rumor begun by alley-dwellers in Nuhav and addicts looking for a fix: A human had been born in Nuhav, transfused with an amalgamation ofblood that made her unique. There were whispers that a drop of her blood could sever a connection between master and thrall; that it could realign allegiances! Could you imagine?
Alacine Mortis saw her opening—her chance to rid herself of her despicable husband and finally coalesce with the true love of her blackened life, the Silverknight she had kept secret for all these decades. She knew she had to act fast, before old age could catch Heskel and finish him off.
Enlisting Kavorin’s own Intelligence Ward spies in secrecy, Alacine managed to find the redcloud addicts and alchemists responsible for transfusing the infant human with the special blood. They were calling it “Loreblood” because of its power to twist the lore—the history—of the occupant, or some such nonsense.
Alacine procured a vial by one of these gang members, with a few droplets of blood allegedly spilled from the infant herself. Upon drinking the blood, she noticed a marked difference in her disposition toward her nobleblood husband. The bloodbond had weakened. Perhaps not enough to bring her to murdering him, but close.
Something else also happened: The Loreblood droplets made Alacine obsessed with finding more of the essence. But the infant and any sign of her vanished into the wind. Infuriated, Alacine spent years trying to find the human whelp and her special blood.
The worst case scenario soon transpired: Spymaster Kavorin discovered the existence of Alacine’s bastard son Lukain. In a rampage, he went to find Lukain to kill the bastard boy, the mistake. Alacine flew after her husband, incited by the need to protect Heskel’s legacy and her own. She protected Lukain and was raped in front of him while the bastard son was held back by Kavorin’s sycophants.
Things looked dire. It appeared LukainandAlacine would meet their end, and there was nothing Heskel Angul could do about it, silverless and weakened by age.
No, it was Alacine’sfirstson, born one hundred fifty years ago to her first husband—Odael Zey—and turned by his mother’s master—Kavorin Mortis—who showed himself after so many years spent adrift from his mother.
The elder son did not believe in Alacine’s relationship with Heskel. But he believed in rape and the impending death of his mother even less, so he fought Kavorin Mortis.
Alacine found her opening during the skirmish. Though the Loreblood droplets she’d imbibed were not strong enoughaloneto force her hand against her husband, she found a new well of strength when noticing the impending death of both her sons.
And thus, with her son’s help, Alacine killed Kavorin in the fraught battle. Alacine finally exacted vengeance on her ageless husband.
Both sons and Alacine survived, wounded and battered. She married Heskel Angul in secrecy, and applied more pressure to turn him into a vampire so they could spend eternity together. It hadn’t happened yet, but as Heskel reached old age and began to feel the wearing down of his bones, muscles, and mind, he certainly began to see the appeal. After all, the vampires had won. The Silverknights were extinct. What was he fighting for anymore?
All seemed well and right.
Until Alacine Mortis made a heartless decision. When the Five Ministries came calling to inflict judgment on the killer of their Intelligence Ward overlord, Alacine placed all the blame on her firstborn son as the murderer.
She did this because she believed he had grown too strong and ambitious in his own right, while spending decades away from her and building his own life, thralls, and coven. She washurt that her firstborn son didn’tneedher anymore, and even though he had saved her life, she fingered him for the killing she was responsible for.
The elder vampire son fled Olhav. He vanished from existence for years, out of the reach of the Five Ministries—which now lacked a confident spymaster and trustworthy spy network.
It was not difficult to blame the son for Kavorin’s death. He became known as the “Sireslayer” in some parts. He had killed his own human father, after all. He had slain countless other sires during his time as a vampire. And now, in an incredible feat that scared the Five Ministries more than anything, the son had killed his master—the vampire whoturnedhim over a century prior—which was believed to be an impossible act.
And itwasimpossible, because he didn’t do it. Only the drinker of the Loreblood droplets, Alacine Mortis, could have done such a thing.
