Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 85552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
We passed three young dominas playing near a turquoise-stoned fountain, splashing water and chasing each other around the fountain’s lower edge. The girls must have been no older than teenagers.
Octavia groaned as she watched them and dragged me through the court’s exit. “I hate being around these blithering sluts. They’re all stupid dominas.”
Careful, I’m one of them.
I swallowed my anger.
“My father leaves to meet with his War Council and do you think any of them considers breaking away from their slavery? No.” Octavia scrunched her nose up as if she had caught an alarming scent. “All these whores can think of is spreading their legs for my father to birth his soldiers and princesses.”
Dominas delivered princes too, but I chose not to correct her. Births were a sore spot for many who lived on the castle’s grounds. Any baby boy who wasn’t a prince served in the Quiet King’s army for twenty years.
Baby girls became princesses if the king deemed them pretty. He was actually blind, deaf, and mute, but he made decisions by analyzing the girl’s faces with his fingers and communicating his choices by speaking them in our minds. He read all of our thoughts and knew when we complied with his wishes. When the girls grew, the king married them off to leaders in other territories.
There, the princesses were expected to add halflings to the foreign population.
Baby girls he considered ugly remained as servants in the castle.
However, the king murdered all boys born with black marks, trailing up the side of their legs. I was told by an old domina the marks signaled the sign of a prince, one strong enough to conquer the king. Whenever a delivery nurse or guard spotted the birthmark on an infant’s leg, the king ordered the little prince’s death.
One night after four princes were delivered, the king’s voice had boomed in all of our heads with rage, “Kill them all!”
Only a monster would murder his own kids.
May the vampire god Ambi, damn him to Hell.
The first time I witnessed the slaughter of baby princes I decided to escape and vowed to never bear the king’s kids. It was why I walked next to Octavia, silent and nodding in agreement. She was my path to freedom, and if necessary, I would call myself a blithering slut to get her help.
“Hurry, Camille. I don’t know how long Xander will stay at the tavern.” Octavia lifted her white dress with her hands and ran. Her feet slammed against the pavement. “He’s the best Path Finder in the city and knows every hidden route out of this godforsaken place.”
My sandals clicked and clacked on the sidewalk as I sped up, carrying the bottom of my robe in my hands.
A few blue roses dropped from my hair, falling to my shoulders and making their way down to the pavement.
I couldn’t keep up with Octavia. Although she was only half vampire and human, her stamina and speed surpassed my human legs.
“Quickly!” she called back, now several feet in front of me.
We passed the Statue of Creation—an image of the Quiet King, thirty feet high, carved in red coral stone and sitting on a throne made of skulls. Two moons rested in his lap. At his feet, a crowd of dominas gaped at him, their arms full of babies suckling from their bare breasts.
I pray I’ll never have to see this horrid statue again.
Twenty minutes later, we arrived at a black-and-white checkered building completely made from concrete. The king forbade builders to use lumber for business structures since wood was lethal to vampires.
Wood pierced their flesh with ease like a sharp knife slicing through water. If that material stabbed into their hearts, it was impossible for them to heal the wound, even when they drunk the curing blood of a domina.
Therefore, copper houses and buildings made of brass outlined most streets.
Poorer homes and businesses were made from concrete structures. No one had windows. It was to keep out the sun. Its light seared vampire flesh and caused permanent burns.
Is this the place right here?
A metal sign hammered near the roof read, Blood Spirits!
We dashed through the door.
Loud chatter and guitar music greeted my ears.
A portrait of the Quiet King hung behind the bar.
My legs burned from the journey to the point I wobbled a little as we maneuvered through a crowd of drunken vampires and humans. Vampire men dressed in gray business suits gathered around and laughed with human women draped in amber robes with gold tattoos of the sun upon their foreheads.
All the human men huddled together in green work uniforms and gossiped over mugs of beer.
It was pretty easy to tell a vampire from a human. All the humans appeared short, frail, and with tanned skin. Almost all humans possessed brown hair or gray if they were old.