This? Being hunted like an animal forsport?
It’s different —worse.
My heart is beating hard in my chest. Adrenaline is rushing through me. The cold night air bites my cheeks and exposed legs.
I am still only dressed in the fawn tunic. The soles of my bare feet sting, where they are sliced open on the sharp rocks and broken glass that must have been deliberately put down.
I must be leaving a nectar scented trail for every Fang Born Blood on the Hunt to follow.
Are they only toying with me?
I twirl around, extending my wings in warning.
Another flash of movement.
Is that a Blood?
My breath catches.
My ravens caw and flutter their wings. They circle me, protectively.
I hear Barnabas stumble, along with a gasp of pain.
We have been running for hours now, since the Guild of Blood Lovers released us from the City Gates out into green fields of fig and date trees.
The Shadow Humans cultivated these silent stretches of farmland for their dark gods in worship: grapes, wheat, linen, and papyrus.
It feels ironic that the vampires would hunt and claim their Blood Lovers through these lands.
Yet I could only hear excited chatter and giggles from the other Blood Lovers earlier, who kept their distance from Barnabas likehewas the monster.
Barnabas hadn’t been lying that the other Shadow Humans were willing.
Where’s the line between religion, fanaticism, and cult brainwashing?
The Scarlet Temple and the Void Cult are just as bad. It’s not only the Bloods’ culture, which is built on worship, but it’s entwined with politics and the court.
Everything here is divine.
How the bloody hell do you fight against something, if someone believes that they’re doing it in the name of their living god?
At the start of the Hunt, I called my ravens to me with a whistle to stop myself from running into the nearest twisted tree.
I raised my arms. “On the sacred ash, my ravens, be my sight and guides.”
Barnabas eyed me but didn’t say anything.
After a moment, my conspiracy of ravens flocked over the city walls like feathered shadows.
“The King of the Ravens greets you.” I grinned, happy with their companionship and flooded, as I always am around my ravens, with a sense of winter forests and a frozen court that is long lost. “Show me the safest route to the Void Pyramids, aye? And don’t let any bastard Bloods catch me.”
The ravens flew around me in circles, cawing their agreement.
I didn’t miss the way that Barnabas also snatched me by the elbow, stopping me from tumbling into ditches or tripping over rocks, however, when my raven honor guard flew too high.
He didn’t make any comment on it.
I knew that he was a good deer with a cute tail.
