Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Nadje hadn’t had a pressing mission for them, so she’d tried to shrug off his easy absence from her. Yet as of last night, she’d landed a new job, had met with a promising contact in Umber during her feeding field trip. He wanted information only found in this castle, information she could get. For a price.
She grabbed her chamber keys and a pile of folded linens, then debated bringing her other tool—a small, glass vial.
Was she only going to clean? Or to work on her next getter-of-things mission?
Inkletter had warned of the dangers of snooping around the castle alone. Maybe she should wait for him. He could watch her back, teleporting her out of danger in a flash.
But she didn’t know when he’d be back, and time kept passing.
Mamă’s words echoed: We’ll save up some gold and buy passage out of here. One night, we’ll be free.
She’d had four days before she’d burned to death.
With that memory in mind, Nadje pocketed the vial, then climbed ten stories from the servants’ ward to the royal floor.
The abandoned hallway stretched before her, lined with luxurious rugs. The doors to the princes’ and princesses’ chambers loomed like gaping mouths.
A prickle crawled across her nape. Ever since her exchange with Baelor the Unraveler, she’d felt watched, but the sensation hovered even more intensely here…
Outside, rain pattered. Inside, moans leaked through thick doors, pleasure and agony intermingling.
The eldest daughter of Neculain and Sereth had an amputation fetish, was aroused by regeneration. The youngest prince spent every hour all but attached to an intoxispell vaporizer. Another son drained donors to death, then forced revivals. Prince Resurrector’s success rate was questionable.
This floor was a level of hell—the bleeders, the feeders, the deviants, all locked into sin. If Lia hadn’t escaped Bloodreach, would she have become like her siblings?
Some said the drugs that kept the donors docile had the opposite effect on the royals who drank from them, making them crazed.
Or maybe this castle was as dangerous as the Badlands, twisting any occupants who couldn’t get free.
Nadje frowned at a small figure curled up on the floor down the hall, then hurried to help. But as she approached, her steps slowed.
A donor’s corpse. Discarded beside a tray of broken bottles. Trash for pickup.
The female’s face was blank. Glazed eyes. Pierced jugular. Not much older than Nadje had been when her mother had died.
Would this one’s mother ache for her child? Or be unaware of what had been stolen?
Nadje leaned against the wall, and her breaths shallowed, the smell of ash thickening in her nose.
Not now. Not now.
She shoved the waking nightmare aside and hurried to the last door on the hall, the heir’s suite. She pasted on a fake smile and knocked. “I’m here to service the room!”
Silence.
Every entry into Coștin’s chamber risked her life. But more than her maid duties pushed her onward.
She unlocked the door and slipped inside. Flickering light from lanterns cast shadows over the open curtains and the untouched bed. Coștin wasn’t here.
She locked the door behind her, dropped her linens atop the spread, then headed straight to the closet.
A safe sat on the floor, a matte black cube with golden embellishments.
Golden. Like Coștin’s infamous sword. Even the General of Nothing had taken a head here or there.
A chill slid over her skin.
The first time she’d discovered the safe during her cleaning rounds, she’d wondered what a royal needed to protect. No one dared steal from him. Something valuable must lie within. Something she might need.
Her new patron, a Berserker related to Shieldchief Arctos, had hired her to gather intelligence on the blood donors—their number, their condition. He hadn’t mentioned the queen overtly, but he must wonder why Yrsa hadn’t stormed Bloodreach to liberate her people.
Prince Coștin had boasted about having influence over an entire faction. What if he had some kind of unholy leverage over the queen?
Again, Coștin was the epicenter. And Nadje sensed the safe held the answers.
She recognized the mystical sigil locking the safe. She’d once smuggled a similar one from rogue witches to a client. Only Coștin’s blood could open it.
His fangs often sharpened outside his control—like wayward erections—and he never cleaned up after himself. His blood was usually everywhere.
She’d brought the vial to collect any trace. Yet the newly cleaned floors gleamed back at her.
“Lia,” a voice moaned from the bathing chamber. “Need you, soră…”
Nadje froze.
He was here.
Out of his mind on an intoxispell!
Silence resumed. No movement sounded. Passed out?
Some impulse carried her closer to the chamber. Steam curled in ribbons, redolent with the tang of blood and the musk of magic.
Nadje nudged the door open an inch. The hinges gave a small whine, stealing her breath. But the sound didn’t rouse him.
He lay submerged in a large tub, head tipped back against the marble rim, the pale line of his throat gleaming in candlelight. His lashes fluttered against his cheeks as he dreamed. His chest was still. His neck belied no pulse.