Ruler [Blood Magic, Book 3]

Prologue

"And if that only raises the ire?" Arthos asked, earnestly. "You cannot demand obedience without trust, your Majesty. And our numbers are no longer so large you can rule by brutality alone as your father did."

The lines on the king's forehead deepened beneath the ring of his gold, human-bone-accented crown and his claw-tipped fingers curled into the eye socket of the skull he'd just been stroking. In his father's time, this hulking, black marble-floored chamber had been filled with a powerful and robust council, but in the tumultuous months since his murder, the ranks of the bloodline's allies had dwindled and fallen, not unlike autumn's turning leaves. Loyalty has never been more fickle, the king thought dourly.

He knew what his people called him in the hallways and the workshops, in the kitchen and the prison, and what they whispered in classrooms when the full-blooded were certain those who hadn't yet transitioned couldn't overhear. The young no doubt heard anyway. He was the Traitor King. The unwanted, unworthy successor. The one who should've died and taken the dishonour he'd done his bloodline to the grave. He had, after all, fought against his own in the worst Nosferatu massacre in hundreds of years; it mattered little that he had revealed a long-standing ritual of murder in the process. His detractors were quick to write off his untraditional transition as the work of sorcery and the populace had glommed on; it was all simply more fuel for the engine of distrust.

The attacks hadn't merely been physical, they'd been ideological, as well. The Nosferatu's core beliefs about birth and transformation and the importance of carefully executed ritual in both these undertakings provided them with the same enveloping sense of safety as the compound's subterranean walls did. They clung to the old ways with a sense of pride, honour and cultural responsibility. "The new king will lead the Nosferatu to ruin," the fundamentalists decried, loudly and publicly, before planting the idea that whole thing was being orchestrated by the sorcerers, who'd already poisoned the king against his people once. His Majesty was a diseased heart pumping puerile sickness into the body of the populace, a sickness that needed be eradicated before more damage could be done. This smear campaign had turned his remaining supporters against him more effectively than all the assassination attempts combined.

"Then our downfall is inevitable." The king uttered the words slowly, as if it pained him to say them aloud. "However I will fight to the death before I abdicate. We cannot leave our enemies powerful enough for this dissent to spill out topside." His voice was icy, despite the fury still churning in his iridescent eyes. "I trust you both will stand beside me."

"No," Arthos said.

"No?" The king shifted forward in his seat, pinning his adviser in his gaze. "Don't tell me you're turning turncoat after all these years."

"That's not what I meant, your Majesty," Arthos quickly corrected. "What I should have said is, 'No, we haven't tried everything.'"

Boras turned and gave Arthos a death glare of his own.

"You have my attention," the King said.

"The sorceress. Bring her back under your control, and your people will follow. Use the bond, as Garstatt did before you. In it lies the solution. You just need to harness it - harness her - and claim its power."

Arthos pretended not to notice how the King's heartbeat sped up and how his grip on the skull's eye socket tightened visibly, his bony knuckles erupting sharply against the stretched translucent skin of his hand. It was no secret His Majesty had chosen to make his regular meal a bleeder who bore an undeniable resemblance to the sorceress his father had once imprisoned, nor that lately his pursuits had become downright esoteric for a Nosferatu, at least from what Arthos had been able to witness of the king's "work." It hadn't been much, though, since His Majesty kept most of his pet project locked up upstairs in one of the larger, unrented units of the self-storage facility that served as the human front for the compound. Sometimes he even slept in that 10' by 10' concrete-walled room, on an old, plaid, moth-eaten sofa he'd carried in there after someone had left it outside for disposal. Hardly appropriate accommodations for royalty, let alone a ruler who lived under the constant threat of assassination. He refused to be dissuaded though, insisting he was doing important work whenever Arthos or Boras got overly persistent with their questions or attempted to find out what was inside the mysterious packages that were now being delivered on a near-daily basis. Arthos worried this king would lose himself to the same madness that had claimed his father. Unless the sorceress could stop it somehow.

When the king didn't immediately shut down Arthos' talk of retrieving the sorceress, Boras' frown deepened into a fissure spanning his entire face. Over the last few months, His Majesty had made it clear talk of her was verboten, and re-opening that Pandora's box was simply not something Boras could stomach, not when the king's rule was already dangling precariously over the precipice. The girl had proven to be a fatal miscalculation last time, and she'd undoubtedly be the same thing now. "Bringing that mass murderer back here won't earn you the trust you want, your Majesty," he fumed. "How many more of our kind would you see dead?"

"As many as it takes," the king snapped. "Or do you forget? This is still my throne, regardless of the braying of the brainwashed rabble." Despite his youth, his callous, unwavering tone made plain who held the authority here. "But," he said, turning to Arthos, "there is little point in acquiring the sorceress if she brings war to our gates, if the cost of this proffered stability is genocide. The penalties in the contract are specific."

"What about the loophole?" Arthos asked. They'd specifically written into the contract for just such an occasion and, surprisingly, the sorceress hadn't challenged it. "What if she comes to us of her own accord?"

"If she does, how do we keep her here?" The sorceress was no longer ignorant of her lineage, and her body count could not be easily dismissed either. As much as he loathed to do so, the king had to admit Boras had a point; she could be as dangerous as the assassins, even if she didn't come towing a phalanx of pissed-off sorcerers.

"Some things only you can do, your Majesty," Arthos said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Only what it does," Arthos told him. "At any rate, we should worry about getting her here first."

The king smiled; it was neither a kind smile, nor a remotely human one. His white fangs sank into view beneath his faintly bluish upper lip, making his expression even more predatory. "Not a problem," he said, feeling more confidence than he had throughout the entire meeting. After all, this course of action had already been set in motion by forces much bigger than both him and the Nosferatu. He just needed to give it a shove.

His ready assurance drew looks of surprise from both vampires. Arthos raised his own almost-invisible, downy-haired eyebrow at his leader.

"She considers her humanity a strength," the king explained. "All we have to do is turn it into a landmine, a trap. Then she will have no choice but to come to us."

"Trickery will only make it more difficult to keep her here," Arthos advised. "You are not who she once -"

"Didn't you just say only I could do it? So let me do it," the king interrupted, silencing any further dissent. A moment later, he stood up, signalling the end of the conversation. Boras and Arthos turned, faced one another, then each stepped two broad paces backward. If the rest of the council had been here, they'd have done the same: ritual deference to royalty as practiced over hundreds of years. The king descended the stairs from his throne and passed between his advisors without giving either another glance. Boras immediately moved to fall into step behind him, but was promptly waved off. This meant only one thing: his Majesty was going upstairs again. "Two weeks," the king intoned as he threw open the throne room doors and disappeared into the hallway.

"You're going to get all of us killed," Boras said to Arthos, once the King was out of earshot.

"Maybe," Arthos allowed. "But there's no denying this is our last best chance."