Total pages in book: 200
Estimated words: 189930 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 950(@200wpm)___ 760(@250wpm)___ 633(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 189930 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 950(@200wpm)___ 760(@250wpm)___ 633(@300wpm)
My heart lodged somewhere in my throat, next to the messy knot of emotion.
His gaze lifted and met mine. “Yes. Isbeth was the first to Ascend. Not your false King and Queen. She became the first vampry.”
Lies. Utter, unbelievable lies.
“Malec drank from her, only stopping once he felt her heart begin to fail, and then he shared his blood with her.” His head tilted, those golden eyes glittering. “Perhaps if your act of Ascension wasn’t so well guarded, the finer details would not come as a surprise to you.”
I started to sit up but remembered the wound and the fizzing liquid. “Ascension is a Blessing from the gods.”
He smirked. “It is far from that. More like an act that can either create near immortality or make nightmares come true. We Atlantians are born nearly mortal. And remain so until the Culling.”
“The Culling?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“It’s when we change.” His upper lip curled, and the tip of his tongue prodded a sharp canine. I knew this. It was in the history books. “The fangs appear, lengthening only when we feed, and we change in…other ways.”
“How?” Curiosity had seized me, and I figured that whatever I could learn would help if I managed to get out of this.
“That’s not important.” He reached for a cloth. “We may be harder to kill than the Ascended, but we can be killed,” he went on. I also knew that. Atlantians could be killed just like a Craven could. “We age slower than mortals, and if we take care, we can live for thousands of years.”
I wanted to point out everything was important, especially how Atlantians changed in other ways, but curiosity got the best of me. “How…how old are you?”
“Older than I look.”
“Hundreds of years older?” I asked.
“I was born after the war,” he answered. “I’ve seen two centuries come and go.”
Two centuries?
Gods…
“King Malec created the first vampry. They are…a part of all of us, but they are not like us. Daylight does not affect us. Not like it does the vampry. Tell me, which of the Ascended have you ever seen in the daylight?”
“They do not walk in the sun because the gods do not,” I answered. “That is how they honor them.”
“How convenient for them, then.” Hawke’s smirk turned smug. “Vamprys may be blessed with the closest possible thing to immortality, like us, but they cannot walk in daylight without their skin starting to decay. You want to kill an Ascended without getting your hands dirty? Lock them outside with no possible shelter. They’ll be dead before noon.”
That couldn’t be true. The Ascended chose not to go in the sun.
“They also need to feed, and by feed, I am talking about blood. They need to do so frequently to live, to prevent whatever mortal wounds or illnesses they suffered before they Ascended from returning. They cannot procreate, not after the Ascension, and many experience bloodlust when they feed, often killing mortals in the process.”
He dabbed the cloth along the wound, careful not to exert too much pressure as he soaked up the settled liquid. “Atlantians do not feed on mortals—”
“Whatever,” I snapped. “You expect me to truly believe that?”
His gaze lifted to mine. “Mortal blood offers us nothing of any real value because we were never mortal, Princess. Wolven don’t need to feed, but we do. We feed when we need to, on other Atlantians.”
I shook my head. How could he honestly expect me to believe that? Their treatment of mortals, how they virtually used them as cattle, is what drove the gods to abandon them, and for the mortal populace to revolt.
“We can use our blood to heal a mortal without turning them, something a vampry cannot do, but the most important difference is the creation of the Craven. An Atlantian has never created one. The vamprys have. And in case you haven’t been following along, the vamprys are what you know as the Ascended.”
“That’s a lie.” My hands balled uselessly at my sides.
“It is the truth.” Brows lowered in concentration as he peered down at the wound, he glanced up at me only when he laid the cloth aside. “A vampry cannot make another vampry. They cannot complete the Ascension. When they drain a mortal, they create a Craven.”
“What you’re saying makes no sense.”
“How does it not?”
“Because if any part of what you’re saying is true, then the Ascended are vamprys, and they cannot do the Ascension.” Anger burned through my chest, worse than the liquid he’d used to clean out my wound. “If that’s true, then how have they made other Ascended? Like my brother?”
His jaw hardened, eyes turning glacial. “Because it is not the Ascended who are giving the gift of life. They are using an Atlantian to do so.”
I coughed out a harsh laugh. “The Ascended would never work with an Atlantian.”