“Tomorrow. We are locked in for the night.”
That was not something I wanted to hear.
I stared at the people in chains. “Who are they?”
“Random people. Grabbed off the street. Some criminals. Some dissenters. Some longtime prisoners.”
“Do they know they’re here? What’s about to happen?”
He heaved a deep breath. “Some, yes. A few know. It depends on the depth of his sadism at the moment. He’s pretty whacked out lately.”
Savion walked to the large fireplace at the far end where there were two naked figures on either side of his mini platform there. “Ladies, gentlemen.”
I was choked by the rawneedI felt in the room.
“Let the Rite begin!”
A cheer went up, along with hundreds of glasses in a high-spirited salute.
Aiko and I held our glasses low. We weren’t toasting anyone, and I wasn’t letting my wine out of my sight.
“This is the hard part,” Aiko said. “They’ll be around with gallons of blood and anyone can drink it. Anyone can also spike it or spike your wine with it.”
I took a small breath. “I never asked what would happen if I did take some of your blood.”
“A small amount would actually be good for you,” he said. “It would speed your healing, heighten your senses for a while, and be a boost in general. The problem,” he sipped his wine as a distraction to someone approaching. Clearing his throat, he went on. “The problem is not the blood. It’s what they put it in it. I have yet to be to a Blood Rite where something wasn’t spiked in the blood.”
“Who would do that?”
He shrugged and looked around. “Could be Savion. Could be one of the other Lord Knights. Could be another you ousted in the archery tournament.” His black eyes landed on mine. “This isn’t a court you want to cross. These are not kind people.”
“So how have you avoided this in the past?”
He thinned his lips, then suddenly smiled and nodded at someone as we walked across the room. “For a long time, I didn’t. I went with it. Poison can’t kill us, but it can make us violently ill.” He held a glass up to toast another person in the corner. “Do you know what the most disgusting thing is that can happen to a vampire? Getting violently ill after gorging on blood. We don’t process all of it at once like food. Twelve hours later, we still have half of what we’ve consumed. So if you gorged, and vomit…”
“It looks like a murder scene.”
He nodded tersely. “It also forces our bodies to slow the healing, and it is a horrible cycle. You gorge, you get ill, your body won’t heal, but if you take more blood, you get sick again. Over and over.” He inclined his head again with a pleasant smile. “You have to ride out the poison. If you don’t, you get stuck in a cycle. I’ve known three people to die from cyclical poisoning illness. Two deserved it. The third…”
“A friend?”
“A lover.” The word was clipped.
I touched his arm and said nothing for a moment. He led me through the crowd, nodding at all the right times to the appropriate people.
“So, why did you roll with being poisoned?”
“I was loyal to the king,” he answered, once again behind his glass. “I loved him. He was the man who gave me everything. Until he took the one thing that really mattered to me. Don’t mistake me—I was in love with Rosabeth, but her death was part of the court games. She just didn’t want to ride the poison out and kept taking blood.
“Kumi, on the other hand. Well.”
“Your sister.”
Nodding he took another sip of his drink. “She was loyal as well. She was also careful. Everyone knows that if you sleep with Savion, you best not let him father a child on you. You’ll be dead the day he finds out.”
“Because of the vision.”
Aiko’s nod was brief. “The day Kumi died was the day I first tried to think of a way to kill him.”
