The Seventh King

EPISODE 3 — "What the Dark Chose"

EPISODE 3 — "What the Dark Chose" — Part 1

The figure in the corner didn't move.

Ethan looked at it — at him. The silver eyes caught the room's light and returned something that wasn't quite a reflection. The edges of him were soft, imprecise, like a photograph taken slightly out of focus.

"How long have you been in my apartment," Ethan said.

"I've been in your apartment, off and on, since you were seven." A pause. "You couldn't see me then."

"And now I can."

"Yes." The figure — Kael — tilted his head. "That's because you died last night. Well —" Another pause. "Almost."

Ethan looked at him.

"You have a ghost on the third shelf of your bookcase," Kael added. "Very old, completely harmless. She just likes the light in the evenings."

Ethan looked at the third shelf. Back at Kael.

"What am I," he said.

Kael smiled. It was not an unkind smile. It was the smile of someone who had been waiting a very long time to have a particular conversation and was now savoring the opening.

"I'll answer that," he said. "But first — the mirror. Go look."

The bathroom mirror was small, slightly spotted with age. Ethan stood in front of it.

He looked at himself.

Same face. Hollow cheeks, dark circles that were new since last night. Same jaw, same slightly crooked nose. Same dark hair going in three directions.

Same eyes.

He leaned closer.

His eyes were brown. They had always been brown — the flat, unremarkable brown of someone who, if asked to describe their own appearance, would say average height, brown eyes, nothing notable.

They were still brown.

But.

Deep in the iris — so deep it was almost not there — a faint ring of violet. Barely visible. A color that had no business being in his eyes, in a ring so thin it might have been a trick of the light.

"It gets stronger," Kael said, from the doorway of the bathroom, which Ethan had not heard him approach. "When you use the abilities. When the power rises. They go fully violet — quite striking, actually."

"Abilities," Ethan repeated.

"Five. Progressive. You've already activated the first, though you don't know it yet."

"What's the first."

"Blood Memory." Kael moved back into the main room. "The ability to absorb the memories and skills of those whose blood you take." He paused. "You'll understand it better when you use it intentionally."

Ethan stepped back from the mirror.

"No vampire in the history of the seven kingdoms," Kael said quietly, "has ever had a reflection."

Ethan looked at himself one more time.

"What you are," Kael said, "does not have a name yet. Because nothing like you has ever existed before."

Kael talked for the next four hours.

Ethan listened — completely, without interrupting, building the picture as the pieces arrived. He asked exactly four questions, all of them logistical. Kael answered all four without deflection.

What he now knew:

Seven kingdoms. Seven races — Vampires, Werewolves, Fae, Witches, Hunters, Demons, and the crumbling remains of Humanity — each with their own territory, their own power structure, their own centuries of grudges and alliances and betrayals.

A war that had been burning for three hundred years. Not the kind with front lines and declared battles. The grinding, territorial, political kind that never fully started and never fully ended.

And at the center of the map — geographically, historically, symbolically — a seventh kingdom called Cinderfall. Without a ruler. Without a court. Without any of the seven races claiming it.

Empty for exactly three hundred years.

Exactly as long as the war had been running.

Ethan had noted that without commenting on it.

"The Tome," he said, when Kael finished. He looked at the book, still sitting on his desk where he'd placed it. "It chose me."

"It recognized you," Kael said. "There's a distinction."

"Because of the bloodline."

"Yes."

"Whose bloodline."

Kael was quiet for a moment. The quiet of someone choosing how much to say.

"That answer comes later," he said. "When you're ready for it."

Ethan looked at him.

"How will you know when I'm ready."

"I've been watching you for nineteen years," Kael said. "I'll know."

The hunger arrived properly at seven in the evening.

It had been building all day — present, insistent, but background. Now it moved from background to foreground with a speed that alarmed him.

"Kael," he said.

"Yes. I know." Kael was standing at the window. "You need to feed."

"I'm not—" Ethan stopped. Reconsidered the automatic denial. He had promised himself, when he was very young, that he would not argue with obvious facts because they were inconvenient. "I don't want to hurt anyone."

"You won't. Not if you're careful." A pause. "The degree of feeding required to cause lasting harm is significant — far more than a new vampire typically takes. Your instincts will regulate it."

"The Blood Memory," Ethan said. "You said I'd understand it better when I use it intentionally."

"Yes."

"What happens if I use it unintentionally?"

Kael looked at him. "You absorb someone's entire history without meaning to." A pause. "It happened this morning. With the book. You didn't realize what you were doing."

Ethan thought about the basement. The darkness moving through him. The sense of something arriving all at once.

"I absorbed the Tome," he said slowly.

"You absorbed what the Tome chose to give you," Kael said. "There's a distinction." He paused. "There's always a distinction, with the Tome."

Outside, the city was moving into night.

Ethan stood up.

"I'm going out," he said.

"I know," Kael said.

"I'm not hunting."

"I know that too." A pause. "Ethan."

He stopped at the door.

"The city at night is different now," Kael said. "You'll notice things you couldn't before. Don't be alarmed by what you perceive. Be curious."

Ethan looked at him for a moment.

Then he walked out.

— END OF EPISODE 3 —