Page 9 of Given

I shook my head. “I found something new to irritate him.”

The squire grimaced. “Well, it can’t be any worse than what the advance party is about to tell him.”

“What is it?”

He maneuvered his mount until he was close enough to speak without being overheard. “The vampires are at the Bleak Pass…without King Laurent.”

Shock jolted me. “He’s not coming?” It was a longstanding tradition, not to mention the terms of the ancient treaty between Sithistra and Nor Doru, for the kings of north and south to meet at the Pass. Once a year, the king of Sithistra sent blood thralls over the Rift to serve in Nor Doru. In return, the vampires pledged not to hunt humans. The exchange had continued unbroken—and without incident—for five centuries.

“No sign of King Laurent,” Treston said. “Just his general.”

The hair on my nape lifted as foreboding slid down my spine. I sat taller in the saddle, straining to see into the distance. The fort on the Sithistran side of the Rift was a dark smudge on the horizon, but we were still too far away to make out anything else. At the head of the column, Rolund, the Green Guard, and the lords gathered on horseback in the middle of the road. They talked with a pair of dust-covered knights who had ridden ahead to scope out the Pass and prepare the soldiers at the fort for our arrival.

Treston spoke under his breath. “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised Laurent sent Lord Varick in his stead. Word has it the king and his general are quite close.”

“You shouldn’t repeat gossip,” I said, but my mind was spinning. Lord Varick of Lar Keiren was a favorite topic of discussion among Queen Lidia’s ladies. The general of the vampire army was supposedly one of the most handsome males in all of Ter Isir. He was also known to be ruthless in battle. But the detail the women whispered about most often was the one Treston had hinted at.

Lord Varick was rumored to share King Laurent’s bed.

The ladies had even more to say about King Laurent, who supposedly enjoyed both males and females. According to one story, he’d seduced a lady at court to win a bet—and then seduced her husband mere hours later.

Ahead, one of the Green Guards broke away from Rolund’s party and raced toward us. At the same time, Rolund signaled for the column to move. Knights shouted and spurred their horses forward. The carriages began rolling again.

My heart pounded as noise and dust filled the air. “What’s happening?” I asked Treston. “Are we riding to war?”

The Green Guard reached us before he could answer. The Guard’s mouth was a grim slash under the nose piece of his helmet. “We go to the Rift at once, Princess.”

The next half hour was a blur of fear and confusion. My thoughts whirled with speculation as I clung to my horse. Were we hurtling toward a fight? Why would King Laurent send his general in his place? I had no answers to these questions, because Rolund remained at the head of the column with his knights. Fort Sithistra loomed larger. The Thicket cast its forbidding shadow over everything.

We crested a small hill.

And then I saw it.

The Deepnight.

The purple-tinged edge of the vampire kingdom spread across the horizon as if a giant had pulled a curtain over the sky. As we approached the Rift, my breath caught. When I was a child, the Deepnight had stopped at the edge of the chasm. But now the twilight extended so far across the Rift, the crumbling cliff that marked the border of Sithistra was bathed in darkness.

The Deepnight creeps south, or have you forgotten?

No. Not now. Once seen, no one could forget this.

And it wasn’t even the most arresting sight. As the column stopped and Rolund dismounted, my gaze locked on the mounted knights who lined the edge of the Nor Doru side of the chasm.

Vampires. Every one of them. They sat totally still in their saddles, their eyes glowing through the haze of the Deepnight. Their armor was black, each breastplate stamped with the twisted night-blooming rose of Nor Doru. They weren’t ordinary vampires, either. Even from a distance, they were massive. These were males from the warrior class—highborn vampires bred for speed and strength. They served in the highest ranks of King Laurent’s army.

“This way, Princess.”

I looked down to see the Green Guard at my stirrup. “Me?” I said stupidly.

He lifted his hand. “The king wants you at his side when the thralls cross the Pass.”

Confusion pummeled me. Rolund wanted me with him?

I let the Green Guard help me from my horse, and I was grateful for the heavy skirts that concealed my shaking legs as we walked the short distance to the Rift. The yawning chasm split the land like an unhealed wound, the gouge so deep no one knew how far down it went. It ran straight across the continent, severing Sithistra and Nor Doru from each other.

Except here, where the Bleak Pass connected the two kingdoms at the very edge of the Thicket. An eerie silence descended as the Guard escorted me to Rolund, who waited at the head of the Pass.

He turned at our approach, his knuckles white as he gripped the hilt of his solstone dagger. His lords clustered on one side of the bridge’s entrance, the rest of the Green Guards on the other. The Deepnight was so close now it caressed the edges of the men’s boots. It was near enough to touch, like standing under a porch while rain falls just out of reach. Sun beat down on my cloaked head, but a wall of dusk hovered less than a foot from my nose. For the second time in my life, I stood in the sunlight of Sithistra and faced down the perpetual twilight of Nor Doru.

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