Page 55 of Kept

The main temple was even larger than I remembered. There were no courtiers now. No carpet of rose petals to cushion my steps. Just Laurent nude on his knees before the great altar with its mass of blood-red candles and the grinning vampire skull. Varick stood on Laurent’s other side with the golden, salt-coated dagger clasped in front of him.

I clutched my own dagger in a damp hand. I didn’t want to see the Rite of Destru again. Didn’t want to watch Laurent bleed and turn gray. I didn’t want to watch him die.

But I had to—and I understood why he was doing things this way. Lar Guna had publicly questioned Laurent’s right to rule. Laurent was showing him and the other lords why he deserved his crown. But I also knew the gods had been fickle lately. Laurent couldn’t always reach them.

Please, I thought, my gaze on the skull with its candlelit eyes. If you’re listening, please help Laurent. He loves Nor Doru. Please talk to him. I bit my lip as Laurent’s chant echoed through the Sanctum. He rocked on his knees, the muscles in his back flexing. He was so vulnerable like this, the soles of his feet and the cleft between his buttocks exposed. But he was also beautiful. My gaze lingered on the long column of his spine and the round tops of his cheeks.

“It’s a total surrender,” he’d said. “I leave everything behind.” Even modesty. For the longest time, I’d thought the priesthood was a side of Laurent. Now I knew it was Laurent. His devotions weren’t duty. The chant that fell from his lips lifted the hair on my nape. He sounded enraptured. I recognized the tone. He spoke to the gods the same way he murmured his passion in my ear when he thrust inside me.

The candles trembled. Their heat flowed from the altar and warmed my face. Red, waxy trails ran down the altar and puddled on the obsidian floor.

Varick stepped forward, which was my cue to step forward too. We knelt on either side of Laurent and held our knives at the ready as he stretched out his arms and switched to the common tongue.

“I come as I am, in awe and humility. I offer the Rite of Destru.”

Gritting my teeth, I plunged the blade into his forearm and dragged it to his wrist. Blood flowed red and thick. The scent hit my nose, making my mouth water. But the sound of it hitting the bowl turned my hunger to nausea. Some primitive part of my mind urged me to flee—to get up and run from death. But I forced myself to stay and watch as Laurent’s voice grew fainter and his face drained of color.

He kept his eyes closed as he swayed, sweat breaking out on his forehead. His blood filled the bowl. His chant filled my ears. A breeze tugged at my hair. It set the candles dancing in the corner of my vision. I looked up, expecting to see the altar and the skull.

Instead, I saw white.

Everywhere.

My heart stuttered.

Laurent’s eyes shot open, and he jerked his head toward me. “Given?”

“I…” My mouth worked, but no sound emerged. I looked down at myself. My dagger was gone, but I still wore my gown. I knelt on nothing and everything. The air was mist, and yet I could see Laurent clearly.

The ground shook, and a towering male stood before us. He came from nowhere, yet the second I saw him I knew he’d always been there. In fact, I couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t. There was no before. Just now.

I stood. I’d always stood.

Had I always stood? I couldn’t remember.

Laurent grabbed my hand and squeezed. “It doesn’t matter.”

The male observed this. As I observed him, I saw him—and I realized I hadn’t truly seen him before.

My heart lodged in my throat. Because he wasn’t a male. He was death.

DORU.

Like the mist, the name of the god was nowhere and everywhere. It wormed into the deepest recesses of my mind. Slipped under my skin and leaked into my veins. Something warm trickled from my ears. I smelled my own blood.

DORU. The god of death. But he was also the god of life. And blood. They were all the same, I realized. Three in one being. Three in one and one in three.

He resembled Laurent and yet he was nothing like Laurent at all. Cloaked in black like a priest of the Sanctum, his face inside his cowl was beautiful and terrible, with noble features and burning red eyes. His fangs were long and tapered to fine points. Blacker than black, his pupils threatened to swallow me whole. Instinctively, I knew not to stare into them. That I could get lost in those dark circles if I looked too long.

But his most arresting feature was his skin, although I wasn’t sure it was skin at all. Transparent, it stretched over his skeleton, revealing the vein and bone beneath.

My fangs throbbed. I swayed toward him, and I looked into his red eyes and his pupils that were blacker than black.

He smiled.

And then he came for me.

Laurent stepped between us. My husband’s broad shoulders filled my vision. In this place, Laurent wasn’t drained and gray. He was beautiful and golden.

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