I was surprised at how calm I sounded when I spoke.
“The day Asha rids the world of the vampires is the day I honor her blessings, Nadia. Until then, I can only be who I am.”
She sighed, not in disappointment but in acceptance—her job was doomed from the beginning. She was supposed to raise me to be prim and proper, a lady who would eventually become queen of Lara. What she’d gotten instead was me. I wasn’t sure what I was yet. Untamed, wild, spirited—they were all words that had been used to describe me. Whatever I was, it did not fit a mold. But I did not think that made me a bad princess or that it would make me a bad queen. What it made me was someone who was willing to rule without a king, and that was something I wasn’t sure this world was prepared for.
“Well,” said Nadia. “If you must be who you are, the least we can do is have you look like a princess. What did you do to your dress?”
I let my eyes drop to my chest. In my frustration, I’d forgotten it had been ruined.
“Oh. I encountered a strzyga on my return from the border.”
I saw no need to lie about that. We’d all been taught to fight, having been born in the Dark Era. It was a skill as necessary as learning to walk.
“If you had stayed with Commander Killian, you would not have had to fight.”
“I like fighting,” I argued.
Nadia’s eyes narrowed on my ruined bodice, and I knew she was connecting the dots—shredded, bloodied dress but no visible wounds.
“Besides, it barely brushed me,” I said quickly. “The blood is his. You know what happens when you hit a vein.”
Nadia shook her head and pointed toward my washroom. “Bath. Now.”
I obeyed quickly, happy to scrub away this day. Maybe I would get lucky and the water would quench the fire raging inside before it turned my bones to dust.
Three
An hour later, I was ready to present to my father. I let Nadia choose my dress, a rarity, and I think in her excitement, she forgot the occasion, because she chose my favorite gown—a cerulean silk with pearl embellishments that ignited like fire against my brown skin. The neckline was square and low, and my breasts pillowed at the very top.
Nadia clicked her tongue, a sign of her disapproval.
“Too much bread,” she said as she attempted—and failed—to force my neckline higher.
“If you think to deter me, you won’t.”
Nadia commented on my weight because it was another part of me that did not fit the mold. My breasts were big, my hips wide. One of my thighs was probably the size of her waist. I didn’t really care though. I was fit, and I could fight. That was more than I could say for her, a nursemaid who had failed to turn me into a docile princess.
Nadia drew my hair over my shoulders, arranging my thick, dark waves to hide the swell of my breasts. When she was finished, I promptly slipped it back.
“Can I resign?” she asked as she retrieved a pearl tiara from the wooden chest at the end of my bed. I did not own many headpieces, because what I had had belonged to my mother, and many came from her native home on the Atoll of Nalani. Her people were islanders. They were mariners, weavers, and horticulturalists, hence my mother’s love for gardening.
I laughed. “And do what with your time? Stitch cushions?”
“Read, you insolent child,” Nadia snapped, but her response was playful and not at all filled with the tension of our earlier exchange.
“I am far from a child, Nadia.”
“You are a child until you marry,” she said.
I rolled my eyes and smoothed my dress, studying myself in the mirror. All my life, I’d been told that I looked like my mother. As much as I longed to hear that, the compliment also left me feeling like someone had gouged out my heart. It was a reminder of her long absence from my life and the sacrifice she had made so that I could live.
“Why must I attend my father while he entertains our enemy with talk of surrender?”
I spoke more to myself than Nadia, though she offered her opinion nevertheless.
“If you are to rule this kingdom—husband or not—it will be under vampire rule from this day forward. You must learn who you are dealing with, and tonight is your first lesson.”
Could that really be true? From this day forward, Lara would answer to the Blood King, a creature who had slaughtered thousands of my kind already. It did not seem real.
“Just be glad, Issi, that the Blood King has not asked for a wife.”
“Are you volunteering, Nadia?”
She glared at me. “Not even I want to be married that bad.”
As much as we joked, dread had been gathering in my heart all day. Today, the world would change, and none of us knew if it was the better of two options. Still, I had to hope my father was right in his decision to be ruled by King Adrian. I had to hope that Adrian, despite being monstrous, still possessed some kind of humanity.
Nadia followed me from my room, down the narrow corridors of my wing. The walls of the castle were all intricate mason work, the brick laid in such a way that even without decor, they were aesthetically pleasing. Despite the beauty and the craftsmanship, the chill seeped through, sending shivers down my spine. Even worse, my nipples hardened, reminding me of my insatiable desire for my enemy.
At the bottom of the stairs, Nadia paused.
“Do not tremble under the gaze of the Blood King. Surrender today, live to conquer tomorrow.”
Nadia’s words were my hope that we would find a weapon that could defeat our enemy. She departed, leaving me to enter the antechamber where my father and I would wait for the arrival of the Blood King, at which point we would move into the great hall. My stomach knotted as I approached the door, but I paused before knocking, hearing Commander Killian’s voice rising from within.
“This is a trap,” Killian said.
“If the king of Revekka decides to slaughter us rather than negotiate, then it will say more about his countenance than ours,” my father replied, his voice warm and resonant. It made my chest feel calm. I loved my father dearly—he was all I had from the moment I was born. I had never seen him make an impulsive decision, so I knew that he’d thought through every aspect of this surrender. Most importantly, he’d thought most about what would protect our people.
“Think of your daughter—” Killian tried.
“Know your place, Commander!”
My father’s voice sent a chill through me that straightened my back, but I was glad for his anger. I was angry too. The audacity of the commander to assume my father hadn’t thought about me. But this—it was bigger than me. Bigger than a commander whose ego suffered at the thought of being submissive to a greater power.