The Eternal Blood Crown

Elena: Here is the chapter content of the novel, maintain the format as "normal.Elena: The prison carriage had just rattled over the seventy-ninth joint in the bridge when the girl opposite me asked, “Is it true they make even the dead pay taxes in Obsidian City?” I had been counting the clatter of the wheels and almost missed the question. “If the dead can still pay taxes,” I said, “at least that means they let you keep some money.” She blinked, then buried a laugh in her scarf. There were eight of us in the carriage, each with a numbered black cord around one wrist. The escort had told us not to bother exchanging names. Someone in the city would tell us what we were called. The girl whispered hers anyway. Mia. Seventeen, with a brother four years younger. A faded red thread was wrapped around her other wrist; he had given it to her the previous winter, when he was learning to tie knots. “And you?” she asked. “Elena.” A man at the far end of the carriage lifted his head. He introduced himself as Ryan. He was around thirty and had guarded merchant caravans until his employer had put a shipment’s unpaid taxes in his name. That was how he had ended up here. It had been a long time since I had given my name to a stranger. I didn’t want to reach Obsidian City and find that I had forgotten it myself. Ryan rubbed the black cord around his wrist. Gray meant labor service, blue meant a registered resident, and red meant a contracted blood source. Black meant the academy had yet to decide which ledger we belonged in. He had seen people receive their pay. He had also seen wages swallowed whole by charges for food and lodging. “They call us registered personnel,” he said. “Makes it sound as though we have a choice.” I hadn’t grown up in a poor family’s cottage. Until I was seventeen, I had lived at Greymore Manor, on the edge of Moonshadow Forest. It wasn’t a grand house, but it had a study crammed with old books, my mother Elowen’s dispensary, and a small stable someone kept swept even in winter. My father, Lucien, had been a Holy Light knight. He had kept a little land after leaving the order. He taught me to ride, to find my way, and to read the fine print at the bottom of a contract, where the letters were no bigger than flecks of ash. My mother had been a healer. When villagers came to her, she never began by asking what they could afford. She taught me to stop bleeding and prepare medicines. I was allowed to make a mess of the dispensary, provided I put clear labels on every bottle afterward. At breakfast, Father read the newspaper aloud as if delivering a battle report. Mother quietly took the burnt side of the toast for herself. On snowy evenings, the three of us crowded into the study to hear Father describe the time he had ridden his horse into a bog. I thought I would leave to study medicine, then come home on weekends to help Mother sort her shelves. It never occurred to me that I might need to find another home. There were odd things about me. Cuts healed faster than they should, and the deer in the forest would eat salt from my palm. Mother said I had a strong constitution. Father told me not to show strangers my wounds. I assumed it was the sort of thing all parents worried about. On the third night after my seventeenth birthday, men carrying banners marked with a blood-red sigil came to the manor. Father took me to the narrow passage beneath the dispensary and pressed his old ring and a sealed letter into my hand. He held my fingers closed around them. Seventeen years earlier, he told me, someone had entrusted me to him and Mother. They were not my birth parents. They were the people who had raised me from that day onward. I couldn’t make sense of it. All I could ask was why he was telling me now. Something slammed against the door overhead. “Go to Obsidian City. Find my friend Adrian Voss.” He pushed the letter deeper into my palm. “Show him the ring. He knows what we haven’t had time to tell you.” I wanted to ask whether Mother knew too, but he was already pushing me into the passage. I heard him draw his sword on the other side of the door. Later, I heard the beams collapse. I never heard his voice again. Mother had stayed in the front courtyard to treat an injured stable hand. By the time I crawled out of the passage, the Holy Light Church had sealed off the grounds. One escort officer said she had been taken for questioning. Another said there was no one by that name on his list. The Church soon froze the manor’s deeds and our savings. The few gold coins Father had sewn into my cloak barely got me to the border. For the first three months, an apothecary Mother had once treated hid me in her back room. She taught me to keep separate notes of my pursuers’ names, the markings on their wagons, and the dates I saw them. After that, I copied accounts at way stations and treated caravan drivers’ frostbite in exchange for food and a place to sleep. When I had money, I paid for a ride on a freight wagon. When I didn’t, I walked with the salt traders. I never stayed in one place for long, but I hadn’t crossed the wilderness entirely alone. At eighteen, I learned that Mother had been taken north. I couldn’t find the original transfer ledger or Adrian. The address Father had given me was empty, and Adrian’s antiquities shop had moved several times. I followed the receiving stamps on caravan records until they led me to Obsidian City. By then, my money was almost gone. In two years, everything I had learned about Mother had come with doubts attached. There was no report of her death. I couldn’t let “missing” be the end of it. I still needed to ask her why she and Father had kept the truth from me for seventeen years. I also needed her to know that it hadn’t erased a single day we had spent as a family. Early that winter, I finally found Adrian in the secondhand market outside Obsidian City. He recognized the repaired c***k inside Father’s ring. But the first thing he said was, “Your mother is alive.” “I could only establish that the Church sent her north,” he added. “They sealed the list afterward.” I wanted to demand everything he knew. He was already sketching three possible transport routes and setting them in front of me to check. There was an original transfer ledger inside the city, he said. It could tell us who had last taken custody of her. We agreed that I would use his sponsorship papers to enter through the human visitors’ passage at the west gate. He would bring his shop’s goods through the northern freight gate, then meet me at the shop that evening. He also needed to apply for access to the ledger. If I went to the archives with him, he feared they would identify me before we learned anything. The plan fell apart at the west gate’s registration window. A guard showed me an order issued that morning: Adrian’s shop was suspected of holding artifacts sealed by the Church. His trading license had been suspended, making his visitor sponsorships invalid with immediate effect. The night before, he had been drawing routes for me. By morning, he was no longer allowed to vouch for anyone. I didn’t know who had reported him, or whether he had already passed through the freight gate. The guard said I could go back outside. He kept the ring and letter, claiming they were evidence in a case involving a fugitive wanted by the Church. When I demanded a receipt, he checked the box marked “Refused inspection” on my entry form. The supposed additional test required only a drop of blood. I watched the needle break my skin and the testing stone turn from gray-white to dark red. The clerk offered no explanation. He stamped my form with a blood-service requisition seal. If I left, the ring and my only lead to Mother would be locked in the council’s storehouse. If I stayed, I would be sent to the academy. I stayed and wrote my objection to the requisition on the back of the form. The ink was still wet when the guard shoved me into the carriage. The west gate guards couldn’t assign me a post. City law required everyone bearing that seal to be delivered to Obsidian Academy before sunset for a second blood test, a number, and an assignment. The city called it an academy. Noble children studied etiquette and blood magic on its upper floors. Beneath them was the human blood registry. Assignments to kitchens, laundries, and nobles’ private blood stores all began in its ledger. Adrian’s sponsorship would have admitted me as a visitor. Once my name went into the blood-service register, he couldn’t simply collect me in the street. He never managed to take me to his shop, but he caught up with the carriage at the bridge. Standing among the coal carriers, he raised two fingers: our signal that he was still looking for the ledger. I didn’t know whether he could get me out. I couldn’t make his promise my whole plan. First I had to survive the blood drawing, recover the letter, and find out where Mother had been taken. Mia noticed me reaching toward my collar but didn’t ask. She took half a hard biscuit from her bundle and broke off a piece for the youngest girl in the carriage. When a guard barked at us to sit still, she picked the crumbs off her knees and ate them. I remembered that about her: she acted before she talked. While the carriage waited for its papers to be checked in the outer district, I watched children delivering charcoal. They could chase one another through the snow, which made them freer than us. Yet they too wore cords of different colors. Mia recognized the gray ones. Her brother Noah had been given one when he made deliveries to the outer district. Ryan pointed out the blue cords: registered residents could enter the noble quarter with a delivery pass. Gray-cord laborers had to stay by the outer wall. Those children might earn a few coppers and go home at the end of the day. If their families owed taxes, they could be put into a carriage like ours once they turned sixteen. I hadn’t received my city number yet, but I could already see how Obsidian City decided where a person was allowed to go. I remembered going to the village market for salt with Mother when I was ten. A child fell into icy water. I reached for him without thinking and cut my palm on a stone. Mother wrapped it in her scarf so quickly that I barely saw the wound. She didn’t inspect it until we were home. She didn’t scold me for helping. She asked who would have pulled us out if I had fallen in too. I thought she wanted me to be selfish. Then we made two ropes with hooks and left them by the bridge for anyone to use. She had wanted me to be ready. Mia saw me watching the gray-cord children. Noah would have joined them, she said. He always thought keeping busy could earn the family one more meal. Their river valley had fallen behind on its grain taxes the previous year. A town official had brought her a three-year blood-service contract. If she signed, he said, he would keep thirteen-year-old Noah off the child labor register for the time being. So she signed. He promised monthly payments to her family. She had yet to see a single receipt. “Food, medicine, transport,” Ryan said. “They can deduct all of it. Three years can be over and the debt still there.” I asked Mia where home was. A river valley to the south, she said, where the water shone in spring. She described it so carefully that I could almost smell the wet grass. For two years, I hadn’t called any way station home or asked fellow travelers when they would return to theirs. We hadn’t even reached the inner city, and already I knew there was a river waiting for her. The walls emerged through the snowy mist, black as a row of frozen teeth. Once we passed through, the sweet smell of roasting chestnuts reached us before the iron tang of the blood exchange. There were stalls selling gloves and women choosing cloth with children at their sides. Across the street, noble carriages rolled past the stone channel where humans queued for grain. I hated that the chestnut stall had almost made me forget why we were there. As Mia climbed down, her foot slipped on the frozen carriage shaft. Her bundle slid toward the horse’s hooves. She lunged, and I caught the strap before she reached it. The guard had already raised his whip. “She isn’t running,” I said. “She couldn’t outrun your horse anyway.” “Sharp tongue.” “It’s cold. Talking keeps it from freezing.” The lash tore my old cloak but missed Mia. She pushed a wooden whistle back into the bundle and pressed the torn fabric together. “A whistle isn’t worth getting whipped for.” “I didn’t say it was.” I asked whether her brother had carved it. She nodded. I didn’t tell her about Father’s letter, or how the guards had taken that too. Sometimes you reached for something even when you knew better. We stopped outside the academy while the guards lined us up by height. Above the gate were the words “Knowledge and Order.” Below them, people came and went carrying empty blood vials. For the first time, I could see how the academy was laid out. The silver towers above us belonged to the vampire nobility’s children. They studied blood magic, etiquette, and the rules of inheritance there. The stone halls below connected the registry, archives, and infirmary: the places where everyone’s status was recorded. The lowest corridors led to the kitchens, laundry, and blood management offices. Those of us with requisition seals would be assigned from there. At the academy’s northern edge stood a separate black tower. Everyone called it the North Tower. We had come for blood tests, numbers, and assignments. I heard someone say the North Tower used very little blood, but what it did use was expensive. Only certain people were allowed inside. Mia pulled up her scarf to cover the chilblains on her cheeks. When I asked about her brother, she said Noah always burnt the bread and claimed he had been saving the crisp edge for himself. If she didn’t go home that night, he might never know what sort of carriage had brought her here. I found I no longer wanted to think of her as someone I had merely met on the road. Mother had once taken in a lost child during a blizzard. The roads were closed, and we had enough food for another week. She gave him the larger bowl, then quietly watered down her own soup that night. I had asked why she had to concern herself with everyone else. “You can get yourself through today,” she said. “You can also give someone a reason to remember you tomorrow.” I had always thought that was a luxury. As the academy gates opened, it sounded like another way to keep a number from swallowing you whole. The assignment hall was warm enough to make my head swim. The rules on the wall read “Minimum age for blood service: sixteen” and “One fixed quota per month.” A woman asked when she would be paid. The clerk pointed to her account. Food and medicine came out first; anything left would be paid when her term ended. She said she had signed for two years, but the ledger included another transport charge. He told her to appeal at the next desk. Light from the tall windows fell across white stone. On one side, noble students waited for uniforms. On the other, we waited for numbers. Two students were betting on which blood slave would faint before the drawing. A boy at the back of our line clenched his fists. I caught his sleeve. Hitting a noble wouldn’t buy anyone’s freedom. He pulled away, but he stayed where he was. The registrar sat between the queues. Her hands were red from scrubbing away medicine stains, and she kept hot water and bandages on her desk. She passed an old man a cup, then crossed out his name and replaced it with a number. When my turn came, she compared the west gate’s requisition seal with the dark red mark from my second blood test. The first had brought me here; the second decided where I would go. “731,” she read. “North Tower. Daily blood collection.” I looked toward the academy’s northern edge. The tower stood apart from the other buildings, its black walls almost lost in the gathering dark. I had imagined a vampire noble’s residence would be full of velvet and gold. “That isn’t an ordinary blood-source ward,” the registrar said, following my gaze. “The North Tower handles special blood sources, old war archives, and the prince’s private offices.” “Why me?” She paused over the ledger. “That is what a great many people would like to know.” The people around us went quiet. “What about my name?” I asked. “You won’t need it.” Her pen stopped. She seemed to wish I would stop asking questions where everyone could hear. “I will. It’s Elena.” Students laughed behind me. She looked up, glanced at the tear in my cloak, and wrote “Elena” in the sliver of space beside 731. Then she turned the ledger over. “I’m Vera. Don’t ask questions like that at the North Tower. They don’t like surprises.” I remembered her name. I also remembered that she was the first person in the hall willing to write down mine. The boy who had clenched his fists was assigned to the underground kitchens. He nodded as he passed. Mia’s blood test was unremarkable, and she was quick with her hands. She went to the laundry, though she would still owe her monthly blood quota. The mark from my test was too dark. Vera assigned me to the North Tower, cut off my black cord, and replaced it with the red one of a contracted blood source. I told her I hadn’t signed a contract. She saw my objection on the back of the form and hesitated, but tied the knot anyway. Work didn’t replace the blood drawing. It only determined where they kept us. Mia and I didn’t say goodbye. Promising to see someone tomorrow felt like tempting fate in Obsidian City. An open bridge led from the academy to the North Tower. The night market below was still trading. Children’s laughter mingled with the scrape of chains on stone. I counted windows, guards, and railings I might be able to climb. Father had taught me to look for exits first. He hadn’t believed escape was always possible. He simply didn’t want me to leave staying alive entirely to someone else. There were no velvet drapes inside. Broken swords hung in the corridor, maps were scorched at the edges, and a copper basin held old bandages that had never washed clean. I learned later that the North Tower had begun as the academy’s wartime command post. When the war ended thirteen years earlier, most of it was sealed off. Cassian had taken it over as a place to keep old records and handle special business. Only a few rooms remained in use. As I passed the study, I checked the lock first, then the window frame. Only then did I see the map of Moonshadow Forest on the desk. “The first blood slave to look at the map.” The voice came from the shadows. A man stepped into the lamplight: black hair, golden eyes, an old leather glove on his left hand, and a faint scar across his brow. I had heard his name at the way stations. Cassian Aldrich, the Obsidian Prince. He had led the army that held back the Night Tide on the western frontier. He had also wiped a village off the map in a single night. In every story, he was invincible. The man before me looked as though he hadn’t slept properly in weeks. “The map is near the door,” I said. “I actually looked at the door first.” He didn’t smile. His gaze caught on the edge of the necklace showing at my collar. His gloved hand rose halfway, then dropped. “Who gave you that?” “Someone I’m looking for.” I tucked it away. Mother had given it to me when I was little. If he recognized it, I needed to know why. I wasn’t ready to ask in his study. He took my assignment slip from the guard and frowned at the collection schedule. “You’ll stay in the North Tower tonight. From now on, anyone who wants your blood comes to me first.” “That sounds like a different lock,” I said. “I’m not sure it counts as protection.” He looked toward the door and, to my surprise, didn’t argue. Then the horns sounded along the walls. A warning light flared at the west gate, another by the academy, and a third outside the North Tower window. I hadn’t even made it to my first blood drawing, and someone was already following the route I had taken. Worse, when Cassian saw my necklace, he had looked as though he knew the person who had fastened it around my neck.