Page 101 of Slaying the Vampire Conqueror

“I am being careful.”

I turned to face him. His weariness seeped from him like a stubborn scent. His walls were heavier than usual—they felt more forced, and like it was taking him more effort to hold them up.

But I could still sense what lay behind them.

I gingerly touched my wound. No, the vampire healer had not been able to help me the way an Arachessen healer could have, but she still did a damned good job. The wound hurt, and it would still bleed if I pulled the stitches, but it was far from life-threatening. Interesting that Nyaxia’s magic could be used to heal humans, too, albeit imperfectly.

“How many?” I choked out.

The terrible, ironic echo in those words didn’t hit me until they left my lips. But Atrius heard it immediately, and his face fell.

“Too many,” he murmured. “Too many.”

His answer twisted in my heart, right into the secret wound that had bled there for twenty years.

I knew it was coming. I knew that those people hanging in the trees were already dead, whether their hearts still pumped weak amounts of blood or not. But that did nothing to lessen the shards of anger inside me at Atrius’s answer.

Outside the tent, voices collected. The amount of rage and grief in the presences around us left me dizzy.

“How long have?—”

“We killed all of the Pythora King’s men.” Atrius’s lip twitched into a sneer, weakly, as if this bloodshed was barely enough to bring him satisfaction. “Not a single human soldier made it off that island alive. We ensured that. Even if we had to pay heavily for it.”

A small victory. It didn’t feel like much. The Pythora King would have only sent a small group to the island, knowing they would be sacrifices. Those lives were a small consolation for the number they had taken.

“We took back all the wounded we could,” Atrius went on. “Including you. But there are many more.”

A strange flicker over his face—something I couldn’t quite decipher.

He stood.

“You rest. I need to?—”

But I started to stand, too.

He caught my arm when I was halfway up. “What are you doing?”

“I’m no great healer,” I said, “but I’m not useless?—”

“No.”

“I’m not going to argue with you.”

I stood up and was greeted with a wave of dizziness. Atrius didn’t loosen his hold on my arm.

The threads were alight with activity outside. Pulling him along with me, I staggered to the tent flap and thrust it open.

Weaver help me.

Atrius’s army had been destroyed.

To one side, dozens of bodies lay lined up, wrapped up in white fabric. An entire swath of tents to the east had been destroyed. Everywhere around us, warriors hurried to help their injured comrades.

A ragged breath left my lips.

“This isn’t just from the island.”

Too many injured here. Far more than Atrius had brought to Veratas.

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