Stalwart defenders rose up. The vampires allowed this new city to be built because they were busy conquering the old one.
When it was all said and done, nearly one hundred twenty years ago, two new factions emerged from the settled dust: Old Haven above, home to the vampires; New Haven below, home to the humans. The names of these cities were simplified into Olhav and Nuhav, with the Nuhavian humans erecting barriers to fruitlessly try and ward off their stronger undead overlords.
While Nuhav was being trampled underfoot by the incessant wave of darkness, inside the once-royal city of Olhav was no different. A system of order and control slowly emerged, with the strongest vampires killing off contenders and rivals to form their own factions within the city.
This wretched governmental body would become known as the Five Ministries. Still a fledgling enterprise in these ancient days, there were at first six vying districts, with rapidly changing leaders based on assassinations, usurpations, and uprisings.
Noblewife Alacine Zey was at the forefront of these conflicts, inserting herself where a typical noblewoman would never be allowed to roam in years prior. Nobleman Odael Zey, her husband, had no clear understanding of Alacine’s intentions during this time. He simply cheered his wife’s many conflicts behind the scenes.
For you see, Alacine had found another man during this time. A sheer incubus of a vampire, who promised Alacine great things if the human woman joined his dark legion. By this point, during the initial dalliance of Alacine and this vampiric man, humans had not completely given up on Olhav yet.
This was the folly of Nobleman Odael Zey, a self-righteous and arrogant human. By contrast, the vampire Kavorin Mortis, who sought Alacine’s hand, was quite cunning and wise to see a beautifully dark future with Alacine at his side.
And so it was, Alacine turned on her husband of thirty years. No longer a spry twenty-year-old, the fifty-year-old woman gleefully allowed Kavorin Mortis to turn her into one of his wretched kind.
The great travesty in all this came when Alacine allowed her single child, herson, to be turned by Kavorin as well. The boy was no longer a boy, now a hale, handsome man of thirty summers with ambitions of his own—now trapped forevermore as a pale-skinned angel of death.
Together, mother and son plotted. As the Five Ministries began its rise, Kavorin Mortis saw an opening—an opening he shared with Noblewife Alacine. With blackened hearts, it did not take much for Alacine to convince her newly made vampiric son to slay his very own father. Nobleman Odael Zey’s end came with a flashing knife across the throat one dreary evening, his bulging eyes unsettled to find his own son as his patricidal murderer.
Thus, Alacine remarried to her new master, Kavorin Mortis, and took his name as her own. Showing guile and strength in equal parts, Kavorin took his place among the initial seats of the Six Ministries.
It was Alacine’s idea, from the shadows, with Kavorin as her figurehead—as well as a few others, including a wicked pureblood called Aramastun Wyvox—to eradicate the sixth seat, murder its overlord, and settle on Five Ministries in all. The Knowledge Ward and all its importance was erased, so the history of the vampiric uprising in Olhav could always be concealed and shaped how the leaders of the movement wanted.
Without history, without precedence, the Five Ministries could have easily been one hundred or one thousand years old. No one really knew. No one questioned it. That was the point. The Five Ministries simplyexisted, without anyone questioning its genesis.
Before long, only the eldest humans living in Nuhav remembered a time before the vampires.
It took ten years in total for the Five Ministries to command a stranglehold over Olhav. The once-human nobility of the city had become a vampiric cabal. Their wave of destruction carried down the Olhavian Peaks, keeping the fledgling city of Nuhav underfoot.
The leaders of the human uprising—the last breaths of resistance once beginning innocuously in the silver mines—were either killed or turned themselves. The vampires on the mountain realized an irony about the walled city beneath them, prompting them to allow Nuhav to remain standing: The very walls once erected to keep the vampires out could easily be used to keep the humansin, and thus create an everlasting supply of food for the vampires to drain.
Nuhav’s folly was thinking walls could protect them from their vampiric overlords. The people who founded the city never considered that they were not forging a safe haven from vampires . . . they were building their own prison and slaughterhouse.
Overlord Kavorin was a founding member of the Five Ministries, greatly lauded as a leader and fixture in the emerging nobleblood society. Cunning and ruthless though he was, Kavorin Mortis’ error lay in a simple truth, blinded by his own arrogance and ego: His wife was smarter, more ambitious, and more ruthless than even him.
Alacine Mortis would not stay relegated to her noble husband’s shadow for long. Decades would pass in relative“peace,” without any major conflict disrupting the leadership in Olhav . . .
. . . Until another man would arrive who would threaten the dominion of the Five Ministries and the safety of everyone caught in Alacine Mortis’ growing web . . .
Chapter 12
Sephania
I wake to the sound of screams. My head pops up from the bed with alarm, eyes grimy, and I breathe raggedly when I realize it’s not Garroway burning to death. I blink the crustiness away and see sunlight peeking in through the section of window I left open. It appears to be mid-morning. I haven’t gotten nearly enough rest.
Garroway sleeps naked next to me, housed by blankets that cover his entire body. He grumbles when I poke his side. “Something’s going on downstairs,” I murmur.
The blankets lower, his face shows—just his forehead and eyes. The red orbs are more bloodshot than usual. He hisses when he spots the sunlight in the window. Luckily, the sun points into the opposite side of the room, across from the bed. “Seems our morbid affair has been discovered,” he mumbles.
I’m confused at first.He knows Lukain has been watching us?Then the haze of sleep washes away and I sigh.Ah, right. Pukren.I had forgotten about that weasel after our torrid rooftop session. “Still no regrets about killing him?”
Garroway shakes his head. He looks adorable under the covers. I’d hate to wake him for no reason. “I am happy to make men suffer for your benefit, lass.”
His words take some of the adorableness out of him, yet I find myself chuckling. “You truly do have the strangest ways of showing affection, cub.”
His face crinkles with a smile, though I can’t see it beneath the covers. “Rest your body against mine for a while longer, little honey badger. It’s not nearly time to be awake.”
Yes, because if I sleep the day away . . . I’ll be on a vampire’s schedule and truly see myself no differently than you nightcrawlers.
