Page 31

“Drak, I can’t. There’s a bounty on my head.”

I shook my head. “It’s dangerous for us here all the time. Does she tell you that bastard king hits her? When her singing voice falters, he strikes her across the face. I watched it happen yesterday. I wasn’t supposed to be in the Blood Room, but I snuck in with a vessel because I had to know why people screamed. Mother was singing through it all. Through the vampires eating people. But when a woman died, the vampire just dropped her body on the ground, and Mother’s voice slipped. He hit her. Twice. Did you know that?”

The tears shimmered at his eyelids. “Yes.” His voice was a pathetic whisper, and it only pissed me off more.

“Fuck you!”

“The king wants my head on a spike⁠—”

“So you’re scared?” I spat. Anger felt better because it kept the tears back. “Be a man, Father.”

He frowned. “Listen, Drakkar, give me more time.”

“You’ve had three years!”

“I’m working on a plan to end this. Axel is here in the meantime, he’ll watch over you. He’s never failed me as a friend, and I’m confident he’ll keep you and your mother safe. If you’re ever afraid, go to him.”

“I’m not afraid,” I sputtered. “Just tell me how you plan to end this.”

“The only way I can.” His voice dropped lower, coming out like gravel scraped beneath the wheel of a handcart. “I have to kill the king. That’s when I’ll return for you and your mother, after he’s dead.”

I raised my chin, trying to look down at him as he was on one knee before me. “And when will that be?”

“When the next Supplication Day opens the castle to villagers⁠—”

“That’s months from now!”

He opened his mouth to respond, but a scream—a very familiar scream—ripped through the halls. We both froze, staring at one another, knowing that sound came from my mother. She was close, but something was terribly wrong. Only those taken to the Blood Room released such ear-splitting screams, and though King Roderic fed on her occasionally, it was never in the hallway outside our bedchambers. He never came this way. Given that the servant’s quarters dominated this side of the castle, vampires rarely ventured this way because it was a boring and drab area of Mara’s Keep.

We didn’t have time to react when the door flew open. It slammed against the stone wall with a splintered bang so loud that goosebumps shot up along my arms, but I refused to jump at the sight of the king standing on the threshold. Beside him, the door hung sideways with the top hinge snapped.

A fistful of my mother’s hair tangled around his hand as she lay against his leg. Tears streamed down her face, drawing dark rivers in the black makeup his servants had adorned her with. She appeared haunted, her makeup resembling the chilling masks worn by executioners, but instead of a predator, she was the victim, ensnared and prepared for consumption.

Except King Roderic wasn’t looking at her.

His glare bored through my father.

In a second, he released my mother, letting her collapse on the stone in the doorway, half inside the room and half in the hallway. In a blink, the king blurred across the room and grasped my father’s throat. He pinned him against the wall.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” he hissed, baring his blood-stained fangs at my father’s face.

Do something, Drak. Be a man and fucking help your father.

I tried to move. Craning my neck, I spotted the iron fire poker resting just out of reach against the wall by the fireplace. Although it hadn’t seen use in ages, my mother told me to defend myself with it if necessary. It wouldn’t kill a monster, but it might startle them long enough to bolt and hide.

Nothing stopped Draugr.

“I’m so sorry, Erik,” my mother wailed. I glanced at her only to wince at the sight of her broken body. Her leg twisted the wrong way, and a bruise bloomed across her chin beneath where her lip split and bled. “I shouldn’t have let you come here,” she continued to babble, her gaze fixed on my father. “I knew they were looking for you, but I didn’t know—” a sob broke her before she swallowed hard and regained herself. “I didn’t know they were watching the old halls.”

King Roderic let out a low chuckle as my father fought to breathe. His toes brushed the floor, and the back of his skull smashed against the wall. The king grinned as he spoke. “This is rather ideal. Since I’ve found you myself, there's no need to reward any vampires or executioners. Bold of you to walk right into the castle. Thought you’d use the old vessel passageways, hmm?” My father whimpered, and it only amused the king. “Did you not realize that these old rooms served this purpose? To seize villagers in the dead of night and haul you inside for a grand feast.”

I flexed my fingers, but I couldn’t get my damn feet to move. They rooted to the floor like Yggdrasil. I dreaded thinking about the gods just as much as the vampires. Odin didn’t come and save us. Freya didn’t care. For all we knew, Loki had created these monsters just to fuck with us.

We were meant to be Odin's chosen, yet the gods proved as merciless as vampires.

When feeling came back into my arms and legs, I shot toward the poker and wrapped my fingers around the cold steel, but it was too late.

The king’s neck bent and his fangs sank right into my father’s face. Like a fucking wild animal, a wolf or a bear, his jaw seemed to unhinge as he bit through my father’s skull, into his eye, and clamped his monstrous mouth over half his face. Instead of drawing blood with his fangs like I’d seen them do in the Blood Room, he bit down harder and ripped the skin and sinew and muscle right off him. My father screamed with what little air he had.