Prince Leonidas
Returning to Rerimas is a seven mile trip from the Crescent Woods done in a matter of minutes for me by foot. As soon as I make it to the castle I direct myself to the dungeons. This is where prisoners from the human Kingdoms are sent. Rather than punish law breakers by a death penalty, the rulers sell them to Rerimas for gold.
"Prince, you return so soon," the Keeper frowns, scrambling to his feet and bumping into his stone podium as he rushes to bow.
My stomach gurgles distracting me from giving a response. I know the veins under my eyes are still present. I massage my jaw when my gums begin to ache and a burning sensation singes the inside of my neck.
Observant, the Keeper whistles a tune and two of his wardens emerge from the darkness of a stone tunnel behind the podium.
"What will you be having today, my Prince?" the Keeper asks as he turns to me.
"Cadomian," I manage to rasp as my heart slowly pounds in painful hard beats. The wardens are less attentive and take their time reaching for a harness-like leather rope and rummaging for a set of keys from a metal box. "Now!" I demand.
The men jump at my outburst and rush back into the shadows of the tunnel. Meanwhile, my eardrums throb, vision blurs and hands clutch my head as a stabbing pain shoots through my brain.
I thirst.
Cadomian blood.
Her blood.
I want it. I need it.
"My Prince," the Keeper speaks cautiously, "you're showing symptoms of triggering. Should I send for the Queen?"
The skin on my arms turns pale in color. Faintly, I can hear the wardens a mile down the tunnel unlocking a cell. Before I reply, my instincts take over me and the Keeper is no longer in my sight. Instead, I suddenly find myself beside the wardens. They are startled at my presence and quickly back out of my way.
The bars of a cell door are ajar and as soon as I enter I face two women and three men. The women are crouched low in the back right corner of the stone cell grasping each other while the men are on their feet in defensive stances. I meet eyes with the largest of them.
Within a heartbeat, I have him out of the cell and restrain his arms behind his back. His body curves backwards exposing his neck to me and I can't resist. Shivers rush down my spine in anticipation and my fangs pierce through his white skin. The moment his sweet, fragrant blood fills my mouth my gums no longer ache and my throat stops burning. Closing my eyes, I wedge my fangs deeper widening the lacerations and my headache begins to fade.
Delicious.
Body thrashing, he attempts to break from my hold managing to yank his thick neck from me and my mind fogs over at the lack of contact. All of the stinging and aches return and I fall out of cognizance. I only vaguely hear shrieks echo against the stone walls that somehow paint red.
By the time I regain awareness, intestines among other organs decorate the walls, floor, and cell bars. The body of the man is in shreds and heaps against a wall of the tunnel. My clothes drip but pains diminish.
Panting, I place a hand against one of the cell doors. Screams fill the air again and I glance up to meet the eyes of crying women. They nearly stack atop one another trying to move as far against the back of their cells as they can.
My heart aches, but this time out of guilt.
We don't usually kill the prisoners when we feed from them. Our Kingdom will lose all of its gold if we constantly pay to bring in replacements especially of male prisoners who tend to produce the most blood.
"Your Majesty," the wardens bow when I glance over to them. The shorter of the two takes a single step forward.
"A-are you stable?"
Before I answer, I take a moment to see that my skin is tan. My senses sharpen and I am able to distinguish voices at the entrance of the dungeon. The Keeper is about to send guards to report to my mother. Disregarding his question, I rush to the dungeon entrance.
"Return to your posts," I command the guards, who don't hesitate to obey. Then, I approach the Keeper who nearly trips over himself trying to back away from me. Snatching the collar of his tunic, I pull him close. "Be the Keeper of your tongue tonight."
"Y-yes, your Majesty," he squeals.
"Leonidas!" A melodic, powerful voice fills the room. "Don't threaten the man for trying to do his job."
The Keeper grins in gratitude of our Queen. I narrow my eyes, but release him from my grasp turning to face my mother.
She stands tall for a woman at five feet and seven inches. Although she is a vampire, her skin shows the age of a mortal in their forties with wrinkles around her neck and down her cheeks. Regardless, she is stunning. A mix of shiny silver and bright white strands draw one's eyes to her short hair. Deep blue eyes stand out from her pale skin, but are as mesmerizing as lake water. The casual black gown she wears only draws out her features more.
"Why does the smell of a corpse and the sound of cries creep up the tunnel?" She asks with a tilt of her head as though she already knows the answer.
The wheels of a wagon whine and squeak as the wardens remove my mess. My mother watches as they pass by and looks at me expectantly.
I know I should answer her, but I can't find the words. She can't find out where I was or about who I was just with.
"Come," she says and begins to walk from the dungeon.
We don't engage in conversation as we take the back staircase up to the North Tower where my quarters are. She walks ahead of me the entire way, but stops when we reach the door to my bedroom. I continue forward to open the wooden door for her, but before I can pull down the handle, she stops me.
"Bathe and I will wait here until you are done. Looking at you like this might trigger me," she says.
The wardens would hate me. She would kill until sunrise.
Nodding, I enter the dim room and shut the door behind me.
"Leonidas, you're hurt!" My thirteen-year old servant, Alec, exclaims. His short leather boots tap across the white wooden floor as he runs up to me and reaches out a hand that I briskly slap away.
"Too hasty," I hiss, critiquing him with stern eyes. "Use your senses."
Cupping the hand I hit with his other, he takes a single step back. His thin blond eyebrows scrunch together and wrinkle his forehead as his blue eyes assess me. I wait as his nose twitches and eyes rise to mine.
"You killed someone in the dungeon, and you-" he takes a few tentative steps back realizing I could relapse to my trigger-state. "Who triggered you?" he asks next.
Ignoring him, I begin to peel out of my clothes. He stands still as I toss the bloody fabric into his arms. As soon as I finish, he balls them up and tosses them into the flames of my fireplace at the center of the north wall.
My skin has dry flakes and streaks of blood in various places. When I finish glancing over myself, I find Alec also taking in the sight. Veins as thin as hair strands begin to darken under his eyes.
"Alec," I speak up and they quickly recede when he meets my eyes. "Stop staring and go start a bath. The Queen is waiting for me in the hall."
A few minutes later I am neck deep in the hot water of my freestanding oval bathtub. Shutting my eyes, I allow my face to join my body under the sheet of bubbles that stain red. If I could stay here the rest of the night, I would.
Underwater is the only place I can go to listen only to the sound of my thoughts.
Axelia is the name that resonates. We don't usually exchange so many words when we fight. She must have been stalling for Herakles to arrive. For once, I am grateful for his peevish habit of interrupting. Axelia shouldn't have been so willing to feed me her blood. Her recklessness is wearisome. Just thinking about it rattles my nerves.
Spikes my thirst.
Groaning, I come up from the water startling Alec who is sitting beside the tub with a towel.
"If you talk about what happened maybe you will feel better," he suggests.
He isn't wrong.
"Someone I fought tonight frustrated me," I mutter.
"Frustration is your trigger emotion. That's why you killed a human in the dungeon," he reasons, scooting closer. Then his eyes widen. "Was it the Princess?"
Water spills over the edge of the tub as I cover his mouth with my hand. "No," I lie and gesture to the bedroom to remind him of my mother's presence. "It was a Cadomian warrior."
He nods in acknowledgement, so I let my arm sink back into my lap and with nothing more to say, close my eyes.
Only vampires of Royal blood experience triggering. We each have an emotion that sends us spiraling out of control. The episodes vary in duration. Tonight wasn't nearly as horrific as other incidents of my past. It's such a bothersome trait.
It's like being caged within oneself. I can see, feel, taste and experience every moment of the carnage but I can't stop it, can't control it, no matter how badly I want to. It's as though my thirst becomes its own entity, possessing my body and driving it to its highest limits. By the time it's over, I'm left absolutely exhausted. Sometimes even falling ill afterwards, a result of my body rejecting the overconsumption of blood. At times, I've even regurgitated flesh.
Stomach churning, I shake my head to clear my thoughts. Opening my eyes, I find Alec focusing on scrubbing my skin.
"How did you stop from attacking the warrior? Shouldn't you have killed them?" he wonders.
"I shouldn't have killed anyone."
"Okay, but you did. Why wasn't it the warrior?" he presses.
Without Herakles' interruption I might have hurt her. When I got close to her neck, I could almost drool imagining what her blood would taste like. Cadomian blood on its own is savory. Drinking it from a royal would be gratifying.
I have sympathy for my father.
"Alec, where is the sponge?"
His boots slip as he scrambles to his feet and a moment later I feel a soft material on my chin. The blood of a Cadomian flows through his veins tonight, too. Sensitive to the aroma, I lift a hand to block his wrist and take the sponge from him.
My trigger-state doesn't distinguish species.
"Go."
"You won't answer my question?"
"Alec."
With a huff, he turns and leaves out the door to my bedroom. I hear him acknowledge my mother, who thanks him for putting up with me and tells him to return to his family for the evening.
"Is he going to be okay?" he questions her worriedly.
My heart warms.
"Not when I'm done with him," my mother jokes and he giggles.
Minutes later, I drain the bloody water. Watching it sink away stirs me. A thought crosses my mind that it is a waste, and I shake my head. Turning around, I dry off and wrap the towel around my hips.
"Mother," I say, and she enters the room. I watch as she takes a seat in a small couch by the fireplace and make myself comfortable leaning against the edge of my king-size bed.
"So," she begins and arches an eyebrow, "what made the warrior who triggered you so lucky?"
It doesn't surprise me that she asks.
"The fight was over by the time I started feeling symptoms," I half-lie.
A gust of air chills my skin as she now stands before me with a hand cupping my chin.
"Leonidas," she warns. I brush her hand from my face, so she grabs the front of my neck and pulls my face close to her own. "I dare your post-trigger attitude to challenge me," her voice is low and ominous. "Answer."
I smell Cadaekin blood in her veins.
"Prince Herakles shot an arrow at my head and interrupted," I grumble.
At my response, she releases me and returns to lounging on the couch.
"Oh."
I rub my neck when it tingles as something inside heals. She didn't even choke me.
"I'm sorry I lost control in the dungeon," I speak up when she doesn't ask anything else.
Her expression is casual and she shrugs. "It's coming out of your allowance."
Figures.
"You walked me here and waited for me to bathe just to tell me that?"
She's not even yelling at me.
"No, I came with you because I care about you," she corrects. Then her blue eyes meet mine as she crosses her arms over her chest. "We have a meeting tomorrow. The Royal Court is requiring all kingship to gather in Cadaekin."
Tomorrow?
It's been a while since my last trigger episode. I don't know if I'll be stable enough to endure sitting in the same room with humans, let alone Axelia.
Sensing my unease, my mother rises to her feet and slowly joins my side.
"I need to make sure you are stable," she speaks in a somber tone.
The door to my bedroom opens and the Keeper brings in the remaining Cadomian prisoners from the same cell as my victim. I realize this is why she sent Alec home for the night.
I rise to my feet. "No, I-"
"You will kill all of them tonight and fill every last vein in your body," she declares. Despite her harsh tone, I see sorrow behind her glare.
Already a stinging burns my throat, a rumble stirs my stomach, and my gums ache. The prisoners have only been in the room for a few seconds. I try to fight down the symptoms, but my resistance makes my head throb and my chest tighten. My mother places her cool hands on my cheeks and brings her lips to my ear.
"I'm sorry sweet Prince, but you must," she whispers. Then she waves the Keeper out of the room and hurries past the crying women and bound men. "I will see you at dawn."
The moment my door seals shut I rush into my bathroom to distance myself from them. If I can avoid their blood until morning I will overcome the trigger episode.
"We're going to die," one of the women cries.
"No, he won't do it," another comforts.
"He can't help it," a man states.
To tune out their voices, I turn on the bathtub faucet. As I lean against the side of it I forget it is already wet and my right hand slips. When I lift it, Cadomian blood permeates my senses and I think to lick my skin clean.
Groaning, I squeeze my eyes shut and clutch the sides of the bathtub.
"He's coming for us," a woman screams.
I nearly cough out a cry as pains strike my stomach, heart, and brain like lightening. Every muscle in my body constricts and when I feel my instincts drive me, I force my body to the bathroom sink instead of the door. In the mirror, I see black veins intertwine down my cheeks and my skin is snow white.
I'm so thirsty. Like I haven't had a drop of blood in weeks.
"What are you waiting for?" another man shouts to me.
His question reminds me of Axelia and I remember she will be there tomorrow.
Surrendering to my instincts, I feed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Image: of Queen Ida
Thank you for reading! Please share your thoughts of the story so far in the comments.
Cast from this chapter:
Prince Leonidas: Francisco Lachowski
the Keeper: Andy Serkis
Alec: Jacob Tremblay
Queen Ida: Jamie Lee Curtis