Page 11 of The Golden Rose Of Valenul

“Fuck,” Azriel breathed when she did not move.

The dhemons were so close, and so many vampires were screaming. She watched in horror as Azriel engaged the first. He would die. No one survived them. Even Madan had gotten out through stealth, not brawn, and without him, that keep would have been her crypt.

But the dhemon fell, the wound in his chest soaking the ground with blood. Ariadne gaped at it, mind blank with numb horror.

No time to celebrate. The next charged forward, pushing Azriel back. He stumbled and reached a hand behind him. His fingers brushed her upper arm, then latched on. One arm swung his sword, and the other hauled Ariadne to her feet to push her toward the door. She tripped on the step, falling to the floor just inside the threshold.

Azriel hissed and clutched his side. Fear spiked through her. This was it. The beginning of the end.

Madan appeared beside her. “On your feet, Miss Harlow.”

With the support of her trusted guard’s steady hands, Ariadne clambered upright just as the next dhemon fell at Azriel’s feet. For the first time since the fight began, he looked back at her, eyes wide and brows drawn in concern.

“I’ve got her,” Madan called over the mad rush of guests exiting the ballroom and scattering throughout the manor and grounds.

“Ariadne!” Emillie’s scream over the din jolted through her, and she twisted to find her sister struggling against the crowd. “Come on!”

Her baby sister. She could not let her see this, could not let her get hurt. Mind snapping into focus, Ariadne lurched toward Emillie.

In a blink, Loren appeared. Crimson streaked his silvery hair, and his sword dripped with blood. He pulled Ariadne to him, then whipped around in time to parry a blow from a dhemon breaching the doors. Two now lay at Azriel’s feet, and within moments, Loren had dispatched another.

Ariadne reached out for her sister, but Loren turned back to her and hauled her away from the carnage. “Your father’s study. Now.”

Then Emillie was there, too, dragging her away. “Ari, please!”

Ariadne followed Emillie down the corridor. From the heavy breathing behind her, she knew Loren was on their heels to ensure the path remained clear.

After what felt like an eternity, they slammed into the locked door and pounded their fists upon the wood. In seconds, it opened, and they stumbled inside to join several Councilmen, including their father. Ariadne turned to Loren.

“Lock the door behind me,” he said and shut them all within.

Emillie fumbled with the lock as Ariadne stared at the closed door. Nothing made sense. Why were the dhemons back? What had she done to incite their wrath again?

The deaths outside that door were on her hands.

Chapter 3

Emillie took an alternate path to the breakfast den the following evening. While she typically went down the corridor along the upper landing of the ballroom, she did not want to see the crimson streaks on the floor. Even if it had been cleaned up, she knew what seeped between the boards.

As a Caersan vampire, she was not squeamish. Delicious, metallic blood kept her alive and healthy. But to see it ripped from someone screaming for help…

Emillie paused, one hand against the wall and the other pressed to her chest. Sucking in a long, deep breath, she calmed the spike of adrenaline threatening to overwhelm her. Once composed, she continued on, her slippered feet making almost no sound on the long, thin runner of the hallway.

She did not often miss daylight, but times such as these always made her skin itch for the sun. While her sister found comfort in the night gardens, she found it in a noon swim through the estate lake.

The transition for Caersan vampires affected them all in different ways. Some grew stronger or more agile. Others became enamored with the darkness. Still more flourished in beauty.

Then some, like Emillie, lamented the life they lost. Sixty years spent exploring the world’s beauties snatched away in a single event.

And nothing that happened to vampires was fast. Sixty years dragged as their bodies grew at half the rate of a human’s before coming to almost a complete standstill. The transition took days, for some more than a week. Emillie watched her midday swims disappear over the course of six agonizing days as her body readjusted itself to the curse woven into her blood.

Damn mages. Though vampires and mages had long since put their differences aside, she held a personal vendetta against the magic-wielders from the Mage Wars who punished her for something she had no hand in.

Despite the decades since her transition, Emillie still found herself looking out windows to the lake, yearning for its cool relief from the sun. She passed by such a window with the perfect angle to see the shore she had once laid out on and paused, fingertips on the pane. Never again would she bask in the rays streaming through the leaves of the sycamore.

If she could trade her long life for a mortal one filled with days, not nights, she would.

“You went this way as well.”

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