Chapter 3 King of the damned

KAELITH

"You are dying."

Loric's voice cut through the warmth of my chambers like he was announcing the birth of a newborn.

He stood at the foot of my bed with his arms crossed and his grey braid looking as severe as ever. His physician bag was still open on the table where he had spent the last hour poking at my chest like I was a science project.

I turned a page of my scroll. "Good morning to you too."

"The black veins have reached your collarbone."

"I know."

"They will reach your heart within the year."

"The Summons would be glad, hmmm."

Midnight moved in the corner of the room. She had been so still that I almost forgot she existed, which was impressive given that she was tall and dark and easy to spot.

She leaned against the stone wall with her arms crossed. She is my Seneschal and also my shadow and also the best assassin House Veyl-Noctis has ever produced. She is also the only person in this frozen fortress who can glare at me without getting thrown out.

"Is this the part where we beg again?" she asked. "Because I would like to skip to the part where he ignores us."

"I am not ignoring you." I rolled the scroll closed. "I am simply not convinced that a thousand year old prophecy about some weeping bride is going to save my life. Forgive me for being skeptical.”

Loric stepped closer and he sighed deeply, hjaw set the way it always gets when he is about to say something I do not want to hear.

"The prophecy is clear, Kaelith.”

I knew it.

“The Forsaken Bride will come in chains, betrayed on her binding night. Her blood will restore what was stolen from you. If you do not find her….."

"I die. Yes. We have covered this." I set the scroll aside and grabbed the goblet on my nightstand.

It was ynthetic plasma. It was tasteless and thin and I hate it. "The god's vengeance runs its course and the black veins swallow me whole and then the House Veyl-Noctis crumbles.” I exhaled. “You have given me this speech a hundred times and it has not gotten more interesting."

"It is not a speech," Midnight said. "It is your life we are talking about."

"Whatever you say.”

Loric made a sound that sounds like half frustration, he shook his head.

"The prophecy also states that you must mate with the woman. Bond with her and claim her completely. The curse cannot break without that."

"Ah." I took a long drink of the synthetic plasma and made a face. "So I am supposed to find some weeping bride I have never met and convince her to tie herself to a dying man she does not know. Very romantic. I am sure she will be thrilled."

"She will die with you if the curse is not broken," Loric added quietly. "The bond goes both ways. You are bound and she is bound. If the black veins take you, they take her too."

I snorted.

It was not a nice sound. It was the sound of a man who has lived nine hundred years and is being told by the universe that his only hope is a bride nobody has seen and a prophecy nobody can prove.

"So let me understand this," I said. "I am supposed to find a woman who might not exist. Bond with her and if I fail to find her in time, she dies with me. And you want me to be excited about this."

"I want you to try," Loric said.

"What do you suggest? Should I walk through the villages asking every woman I meet if she has been forsaken? Pardon me, madam, were you recently betrayed on your wedding night? No? What a pity. Off to the next village."

Midnight looked like she wanted to laugh but she is not that kind of woman.

"The slave caravan arrives today," she said. "If the prophecy is true, the Forsaken Bride will come in chains. That means she is being sold or traded or captured. The caravan is the most likely place to find her."

"A slave caravan. Even better. I will find my dying bride among the chained and the broken." I set the goblet down harder than I meant to. "This is ridiculous."

"Night Sovereign, please…," Loric said.

"You are making me look desperate.”

"Yes." Midnight pushed off the wall and crossed the room. She is a full head taller than most women, with dark hair cropped close to her skull and her eyes are cold and flat.

"And you will do it anyway, because you are the First Fang and the Night Sovereign and whatever other titles you have collected over nine centuries, and you have never once surrendered to anything. Not even during the french revolution or whatever.”

I looked at her.

She looked back.

"Fine," I said. "Parade the slaves through. I will look at them. I will bleed on them if that is what the prophecy wants. But if none of them is this weeping bride of legend, I want you both to stop quoting ancient texts at me and let me die in peace."

Loric opened his mouth.

"In peace," I added, "meaning with good wine and no physicians."

Midnight shook her head slowly. "You are impossible."

"I have had nine hundred years to practice."

She turned and walked to the door. "The caravan will be here by dusk. I will have them brought to the receiving hall." She paused at the doorway. "Try not to insult any of them.”

The door closed behind her.

Loric gathered his bag while muttering something about stubborn ancient vampires and their refusal to take anything seriously. I watched him go, and when the door clicked shut, I let the mask slip.

The scroll on my nightstand, the goblet of tasteless plasma. The black veins crawling up my chest.

I was dying.

I have known it for three hundred years. The god's vengeance is slow but it does not stop. When the Last Light fell in Carcas and his blood pooled on the temple stones, something marked me. It wasn't a debt, or a hex.

It was a god's dying justice poured into my veins for a crime I did not commit but could not escape.

Only the blood of the Forsaken Bride shall restore what was stolen.

Stolen?

I snort again.

The god's power and the god's life, taken by scavengers on the night the temple fell. Somehow the debt landed on me.

I looked out the window. It was snowing tonight but not as heavy as the days begin.

In fact the caravan wasn't my business at all.

But then, the solution was kind of funny.

A Forsaken Bride, a weeping bride. A woman betrayed on her wedding night.

If she was real.

If she existed.

I reached for my cloak and pulled it over my shoulders to hide the blac

k veins from view.

The caravan would be here like Midnight said and for the first time in three centuries, I let myself hope.