Chapter 35

Clara

What was going on? I didn’t understand. Prince Gideon had arrived and ordered Nora and me to take some test, and my result had apparently been unusual.

What was the test for? I wanted to ask, but no one among the healers understood my signs and I didn’t have my slate with me.

The servants’ healer had understood my signs, but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

The guards and healers led me away from Nora’s room and left me in a small room attached to the healer’s main ward. I tried to get their attention, to mime writing so that someone would give me a slate or some parchment and a pen. No one paid me any attention.

I waited and listened. People tended to talk around me, as if they thought I couldn’t hear because I couldn’t speak. These healers were no different.

From the hushed conversations of the healers, I learned that everyone in the castle was being tested, but not what the test was for. I also learned that my test had been inconclusive, not positive. So I wasn’t what they were looking for, but I was unusual enough for further investigation.

One of the healers approached me after some time, with two guards flanking her. Did they think I was somehow dangerous? I hadn’t even tried to protest being dragged away into isolation.

“Your name is Clara, right my lady?” the healer asked.

I nodded.

“We need to conduct further tests to understand your result. Will you comply?”

I could tell from the grim expression on the guards’ faces that I wasn’t really being offered a choice. So I nodded again.

“We will need a little more of your blood than the last test, I’m afraid,” the healer said.

She held out a syringe. I shuddered, but held out my arm. The healer gently washed a patch of skin near my elbow. She drew my blood with the syringe and then held a little bit of gauze over the puncture.

“It will be just a few minutes,” the healer said.

I held up my hand, to catch her attention.

“What is it? Do you require something, Clara?” the healer asked.

I mimed writing.

“Oh, of course. You can’t speak. Let me hand this over for testing and I’ll bring you a slate and chalk.”

I nodded and held my hands together to indicate gratitude.

It took several minutes for the healer to return, and when she did there was another healer and four guards with her. She did have the slate and chalk, at least.

The healer handed me the slate.

“Do you know what the tests we’ve done were for?” she asked.

I shook my head. I hoped she was going to explain. I clung to my slate and waited.

“A vampire was encountered within the walls of the royal compound. You know this, I believe,” the healer continued.

I nodded this time, and wrote on my slate, “He attacked my friend. I brought her to the healers.”

“Yes, that’s right,” said a second healer. “Lady Nora, Prince Gideon’s mistress.”

“So you are aware of the situation,” the first healer continued. “It has been discovered that the vampire has been hiding among the populace of the royal compound for at least two years.”

I nodded again. I recalled seeing Kyle with Nora at least that long ago, although I could not accurately remember the first time I ever noticed him.

“If there is one vampire in hiding, there may well be more,” the healer said. “So Prince Gideon ordered that all inhabitants of the royal compound be tested.”

I nodded slowly, understanding. The strange test they’d conducted had been a search for hidden vampires. But why was I here?

“I am not a vampire,” I wrote.

I would know, wouldn’t I? I was a werewolf. I had a wolf. I did not shift often, but I could take my wolf’s form and run and hunt. I could even howl; my wolf form wasn’t mute like I was. Sometimes when the moon was high I shifted just for the joy of making noise.

I was a werewolf, not a vampire!

“Well, you are not, precisely, a vampire, no,” the healer said.

What did that mean? I looked around in confusion. The guards tightened their grips on their weapons, as though they thought I might be dangerous.

“Your initial test was inconclusive,” the healer said.

I nodded. I had noticed the strange reaction on the little slip of paper, and the healers’ baffled reaction. I still didn’t understand what it meant.

“Well, after further testing, it appears that while you are not a vampire, you do have vampiric blood.”

“What?” I wrote, underlining the word twice for emphasis. “How?”

“We do not know how, or what this could mean,” the healer admitted.

The second healer spoke up. “We have looked into your records. You are an orphan, are you not?”

I nodded.

“What were you told about your parents?” the second healer asked.

“Not much,” I wrote. “My adoptive mother did not like to talk about them.”

“You must know something,” the first healer said.

“They abandoned me,” I wrote. “They left me behind because I was defective.”

My adoptive mother had never told me, in so many words, that I’d been abandoned. But there were no deaths reported among the pack near the time of my birth. And no one ever claimed me as kin except for her. What else was I supposed to believe?

“There may have been another reason, besides your inability to speak,” the second healer said. “You don’t just have a trace of vampiric heritage. You are a half blood, a hybrid. One of your parents must have been a vampire.”

“That is impossible!” I wrote.

“The tests don’t lie,” the first healer said, “and we ran them twice to be completely certain.”

“No,” I wrote.

“I am sorry that you had to find out like this,” the first healer said.

“If you are finding it out just now,” the second healer said.

“What?” I wrote.

“How is it that you have never noticed anything different about yourself?” the second healer asked.

I shook my head. “I know I am different,” I wrote. “I have never spoken a word and not a single healer has ever been able to say why.”

I glared at the healers as I wrote that. They all insisted there was nothing wrong, that my voice should work. Yet it never had.

Now they came to me and said that I was some impossible creature, a mixture of werewolf and vampire? And they thought I should have known?

“Have you ever had strange cravings?” the first healer asked. “For, perhaps, extra rare meat?”

“No more than any wolf,” I wrote. Everyone had the urge to just let their wolf hunt and eat whatever they caught. I didn’t often indulge in such things, but there was no shame in it.

“But you’re not just any wolf,” the second healer said. “This will go better for you if you cooperate.”

“I am,” I wrote.

“You are trying to pretend that you’ve gone your entire life without realizing that one of your parents wasn’t one of us?” the second healer scoffed.

“I had no idea!” I wrote out.

I could tell that no one, not even the kind first healer, believed a word I wrote.